Great Films of Gothic Horror and RomanceIts not a gothic horror, its a gothic romance has been repeatedly asserted about this weeks Crimson Peak our review from modern gothic maestro Guillermo del Toro. But while the distinction may seem important to del Toro and stars. Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddlestonand Jessica Chastain, it ultimately means less than you might think its more a difference of degree than of actual type. After all, horror is usually concerned in some way with death, and romance is concerned with love, but love and death and how one is bound up in the other is the very essence of gothic. Kung Fu Panda Downloading. All gothic romances have elements of horror, and its only few gothic horrors that are entirely devoid of romance and none at all if we take romance as simply love in all its forms. Beyond the essential, though, there are obvious hallmarks of the gothic film. Romance Films Beyond Beyond CastNoirs with Raymond Chandlers Philip Marlowe Over the years from 1939 to 1958, Raymond Chandler wrote seven fulllength Philip Marlowe novels. Directed by Fritz Lang. With Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer, Arthur Franz. A novelist aided by his future fatherinlaw conspires to frame himself in. T he year 2006 was a boom year in a number of different respects. Production reached its highest level in a decade and a half, with 108 films released in theaters. In Beyond the Lights and other films, most not from the major studios, there is a recognition that authenticity can be a goal for more than white men. History of Sex in Cinema The Greatest and Most Influential Sexual Films and Scenes Illustrated Feature SoftCore BFilm Movie Queens of the 90s and Beyond. JPBEYOND2/JPBEYOND2-master675.jpg' alt='Romance Films Beyond Beyond 2015' title='Romance Films Beyond Beyond 2015' />Often revolving around a female protagonistvictim, the gothic movie often includes a fraught love triangle, a big house appointed in luxurious and ornate style, ghosts of the real and imaginary variety, themes of sexual repression andor jealousy, and Vincent Price. But gothic films are also often extremely beautiful, not just with respect to production design, but in terms of the kind of philosophy they attempt to grapple with the relationship of the living to the dead, and the strange, vertiginous attraction that the spiralling unknown can exert, even as it terrifies the hell out of us at the same time. Gothic films dance along the line between life and death, between good and evil, between salvation and damnation, which makes the best of them so eternally, compulsively, titillatingly enjoyable. Here are just 1. 8 from the hundreds and hundreds of gothic horrors and romances any one of these should definitely put you in the right frame of mind for the newest entry into the canon from del Toro who, in Pans Labyrinth and The Devils Backbone has already given us two classics in the loosely defined genre. Rebecca 1. If it initially seems somewhat surprising that in conversation del Toro has namechecked Suspicion and not Rebecca as his primary Hitchcockian influence on Crimson Peak, it may simply be that Rebeccas gothic archetypes are so deeply ingrained as to go without saying. Hitchcock was always attuned to the frequencies of the subgenre anyway his  Jamaica Inn from the previous year is a prime example, while The Birds and Vertigo, to name a couple, have strong gothic elements. And here he is adapting the Queen of literary gothic Daphne du Maurier. Starring a perfectly Bambi like Joan Fontaine also the menaced wife heroine of Suspicion, a brooding, caustic Laurence Olivier and an archetype spawning Judith Anderson as demonic housekeeper Mrs. Danvers almost the entire checklist is present and correct. Manderley, to which the noticeably unnamed heroine famously dreams shes returning, is a massive, opulent mansion Fontaines girlish child bride is so daunted by her new station as to be haunted by her husbands dead first wife there are portraits of dead people, staircases, conflagrations, portentous dreams and faces lit from below. And there is also a subtext about escaping the choking patriarchy and classism of the English social structure Oliviers character is a British aristocrat, Fontaines is an American, and the contrast between the sunshine of Fontaines simple goodness and the perversity represented by Rebecca is a neat meta reflection of Hitchcock embracing American values in his first U. S. film. Bram Stokers Dracula 1. Not the best Dracula by any means that could, and probably will, take a feature of its own to ascertain, obviously not the first probably 1. Nosferatu, nor the last whichever version was released in the last five minutes, Francis Ford Coppolas silly yet stately picture is certainly among the gothiest. Take the lavish production design that stuffs every possible corner with gargoyles and candelabras and drapes the cast and furnishings alike in swathes of velvet in various shades of coagulating blood. Amidst all this damask, the actors either sink Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder or camp it up Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, and very little of the film is actually frightening. But this is also a factor of taking the ultimate horror story and refocusing it as tale of doomed love in a time of Victorian sexual repression. So Ryders pure Mina Harker provides the white throat that tames the savagery of Oldmans ancient vampire, just as her friend Lucy Sadie Frost is punished for her licentiousness by being, erm, raped by a wolf, while callow gentleman beau Jonathan Reeves is semi willingly seduced into an orgy by a trio of comely Drac hags. Coppola returned to gothicism with Twixt but, hugely flawed though it is, his Dracula remains his best entry in the canon, not least for how overtly it eroticizes the story. And for Tom Waits Renfield eating flies. Bride of Frankenstein 1. Mary Shelleys most famous creation, and even the legend of the stormy night with Lord Byron on which she birthed it haunts the fringes of this list like the lumbering Golem it is. So why choose the original films sequel While both movies are undoubtedly gothic and the Hammer Horror Curse of Frankenstein is arguably even more so, its Bride that better explores a truly fundamental tenet of gothic fiction the inextricably intertwined nature of sex and death. The first films genius director James Whale whose biopic Gods and Monsters takes its title from a line in this movie was in fact reluctant to return for the sequel. But pressed by Universal, which he more or less blackmailed into letting him make a passion project in return, Whale eventually relented, deciding to make the film, which he did not believe could be better than the original, merely a hoot. But that belies his perfectionism, and many iterations of the script later, Whale turned in The Bride of Frankenstein, which is probably his masterpiece. Featuring Boris Karloff again as the monster, but adding Elsa Lanchester in a double role as Mary Shelley and the iconic Bride who has made perhaps the most indelible impression on pop culture per minute of screen time ever, the film is still stunning to look at, astonishingly moving and yes, also kind of a hoot.