As another reviewer mentioned, this film was horrifying to those of us who saw it as kids when it first came out. Horrors of the Black Museum was produced before technical effects became morph-driven and so fake they're not believable (even though they might be scary). Unlike Fiend Without a Face (also mentioned in these reviews) or The Blob, this movie doesn't rely on mechanically produced monsters. which means an imaginative child or paranoid adult could perhaps picture its horrors actually happening. A stretch, surely, but still . . .
Pre-movie sequence demonstrating colors and hypnosis was funny and hokey even when the film was first released. The horrors, however, had many children (me included) suffering from nightmares for years. The binocular scene was particularly frightening, but not as frightening as the beheading scene. I cautiously checked the tall bedroom ceiling in the old farmhouse where I grew up for a long while after seeing this flick.
Overall, after getting over the heebie-jeebies that lingered for years afterward, I have fond memories of this film. Anyone who is a fan of the 1950s chiller genre might enjoy the dated look and feel of it as well as the scare-factor it can generate in a viewer.
Pre-movie sequence demonstrating colors and hypnosis was funny and hokey even when the film was first released. The horrors, however, had many children (me included) suffering from nightmares for years. The binocular scene was particularly frightening, but not as frightening as the beheading scene. I cautiously checked the tall bedroom ceiling in the old farmhouse where I grew up for a long while after seeing this flick.
Overall, after getting over the heebie-jeebies that lingered for years afterward, I have fond memories of this film. Anyone who is a fan of the 1950s chiller genre might enjoy the dated look and feel of it as well as the scare-factor it can generate in a viewer.