A closer look at Martin Scorsese’s filmography reveals many horrors
There’s no need to preach to this choir, I’m sure.
We know that American director Martin Scorsese, one of the founding fathers of the American New Wave of the 1970s, is among the greatest filmmakers in the century-plus history of the motion picture. His style, humanity, cynicism, visual eye, sharp ear for sound and music, his use of actors as muses, his black humor and absolute, unapologetic adoration of cinema in all its guises.
All these things define the artist that is Martin Scorsese.
And although a casual glance at Scorsese’s movies reveal a director whose greatest claim to fame comes in the form of operatic crime dramas like Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed and so many others, a deeper look at the work sees much horror at the cores of many of his most beloved pictures.
Because Scorsese loves horror. He knows it. He thrives on it. And hell, he comes from the world of Roger Corman, one of the biggest names in genre film history.
So lets squeeze Scorsese’s filmography even tighter and see the handful of movies that emerge that are so filled with dread and terror both psychological and visceral that – though they were marketed differently or pretend that they’re some other sort of cinema – are in fact horror movies.
See if you agree with our selections…
Scorsese Horror
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Taxi Driver (1976)
This one is no secret. Much has been written about Taxi Driver’s horror influence and in turn, it’s influence on horror. Without Taxi Driver there would be no Maniac. And without Psycho or Vertigo there would be no Taxi Driver. The Hitchcock connection is alive in the sound of Taxi Driver as well, with Scorsese commissioning the great Bernard Herrmann to compose the score for the film. It would be his last (he literally passed away hours after completing it!) and it may be his best. New York City is one giant haunted house and Robert De Niro’s sociopathic Travis Bickle is the ferryman, ushering his cavalcade of lowlifes through the neon Hell he is lost in. Violent, hypnotic and deeply disturbing, Taxi Driver is a powerful, borderline surreal film with a jazz-like script by Paul Schrader and fluid direction by the master.
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The King of Comedy (1982)
An anomaly upon release, The King of Comedy is still an odd film and that’s what makes it such a towering work. A sort of bizarro world version of Taxi Driver with De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin an even more unhinged fringe dweller, a star-stalker who dreams of being the world’s greatest stand-up comedian. After repeated attempts to befriend him, Pupkin kidnaps his idol, late night comedy host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) and launches a scheme to ransom his way into appearing on the show. Blacker than pitch, the absurdity of the situation is funny but underneath King of Comedy’s skin lies an unsettling portrait of the toxic, parasitic nature of celebrity culture.
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After Hours (1985)
Another venture into the heart of New York darkness, After Hours is a ratcheting nightmare that is only funny because of just how improbable it all appears to be. In reality however, every maniacal thing that happens could happen. Griffin Dunne (An American Werewolf in London) gives the performance of a lifetime as Paul, an average guy looking for some sort of connection who, after meeting a quirky girl (Rosanna Arquette) in a coffee shop, takes her up on her offer to visit her in SoHo after hours. What happens next is by turns horrifying and hilarious as Paul is sucked into the underbelly of the city with no hope for escape. Anxious, uncomfortable, stylish and addictive, the movie gets extra points for the eerie score by David Cronenberg’s right hand man Howard Shore.
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The Last Tempation of Christ (1988)
One of Scorsese’s most controversial works, calling The Last Temptation of Christ a horror movie may be a stretch, but when you think about it, most biblical tales serve as the basis for the genre. Certainly the story of Jesus as illustrated here in a script by Taxi Driver’s Paul Schrader (based on the 1955 book) is dark, erotic (yes, Jesus has sex) and unsettling, unlike Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which goes for gore to illustrate Jesus’ suffering, Scorsese and Schrader show the life of a man trying to make the best decisions and save mankind, despite the efforts of those around him – including of course, Satan! - to derail his predestined mission. Decidedly R-rated, this adult film is bloody and fantastical with a moody, pulsing score by Peter Gabriel.
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Cape Fear (1991)
Scorsese’s muscular attempt to turn J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 Robert Mitchum/Gregory Peck thriller into a sort of testosterone-choked giallo is a violent, obsessive work with De Niro almost a human cartoon as psychopathic ex-con Max Cady, targeting the lawyer (Nick Nolte) who helped put him away. Oddly, De Niro is not only channelling Mitchum’s lunatic in the original, he’s also riffing on Mitchum’s iconic turn as preacher Harry Powell in 1955’s Night of the Hunter, with scripture-based tattoos covering his body. Gorgeously made and intense, the movie goes off the rails towards the end when it mutates into an ultra-violent slasher saga. Great score by Elmer Bernstein, itself a quote on the original Bernard Herrmann music.
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Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Scorsese, Schrader and New York City synch up again for this kinetic, surreal and drug-infused fever dream about a man who has seen too much death and is sinking into an emotional and physical quagmire. Nicolas Cage plays that man, paramedic Frank Pierce who thunders around Manhattan after hours, trying to save both decent folk and lowlifes alike and who is now haunted by the ghosts of those he thinks he failed. When he meets a troubled woman (Patricia Arquette) he tries to save her and hopes that she will do the same for him. There’s the typical strain of Catholic pain and torment in Bringing out the Dead that links it as much to The Last Temptation of Christ as it does to Taxi Driver and the movie is deeply disturbing and surreal.
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Shutter Island (2010)
Perhaps the one film on Scorsese’s oeuvre that can be called a horror movie without the need for a defense of any sort. The director himself cited the great Mario Bava (evident in the outrageous color schemes and nods to films like Kill Baby, Kill), Val Lewton and even German expressionist films like Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. There’s also a dose of The Wicker Man in the plot mechanics that brings Leonardo DiCaprio’s Marshal Teddy Daniels to the titular island, a remote mental hospital where inexplicably a patient has vanished without a trace. Shutter Island is almost too much to endure, filled as it is with baroque, hallucinatory imagery and noir-steeped style that never, ever ends. It’s Scorsese’s Suspiria but far more singular. A horror masterpiece.
