With the Academy Awards just around the corner, the film season is heating up. If you’re anything like me, then I’m sure you’ve been doing your best to hit the theater, though you still have an extensive list of films you need to see before March 7 (especially since you weren’t expecting several of the films that popped on the list to be nominated). In the spirit of the nominations, I think it’s time we examine the types of movies the Academy chooses to honor year after year after year, and I think maybe we should reconsider giving our full allegiance to the select voters.

I’m not saying that some of the films shouldn’t be recognized because it has been a fine season thus far. However, there is one genre that is habitually overlooked, and it’s not the drama or the comedy or even the psychological thriller.

Call upon your knowledge of Academy Award nominees. In the past decade, films like The Reader, American Beauty and Mystic River have garnered critical acclaim and have won many little statues of golden men. Recently, independent films – the ones that were made for no money but feature big names who want to break away from whichever typecast plagues their professional career – have made a grand entrance onto the awards scene. The Academy even loves hobbits, wizards, Nazis, blue people, drug addicts and the like.

But, think hard. What was the last horror film to win the prize? Which alien, thing, scary clown or killer robot was last nominated as Best Actor?

Well, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense was nominated for six back in 2000. It did not take home anything. Before that, there was Silence of the Lambs, which was nominated for seven figurines, and it actually ended up taking home five, including Best Picture. But that was back in 1992, nearly 18 years ago.

Now we have to jump back another 18 years to 1974 when a scary movie called The Exorcist depicted a girl possessed by the devil and brought fear to audiences around the world. It was nominated for 10 Oscars, but only won two, losing Best Picture to Redford and Newman’s The Sting.

And that about sums up horror films in the Academy Awards. What is so tragic and what may make you a little angry at first is this fun Oscar fact: Alfred Hitchcock, the master of horror whose films are still analyzed and admired by film lovers looking to emulate his impeccable style, was nominated five times for Best Director. He didn’t win once.

For one of his most famous films Psycho (1960), Hitchcock lost the Oscar to Billy Wilder who directed The Apartment. Have you seen The Apartment? Don’t worry, I haven’t either, but I bet you have seen Psycho. The Academy can’t get it right every year.

If you have time to add another film to your ever-growing list, the Alex Film Society is screening the classic on Saturday, Feb. 13, at Glendale’s historic Alex Theatre at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. The film that stars Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins is a psychological horror about one woman’s mysterious disappearance after spending the night at a local motel. Very few people do not know what happens next, and I highly doubt there is any film enthusiast who hasn’t seen the famous shower scene, the film’s most popular sequence.

Prior to the movie, three lucky audience members will be selected to recreate the scene in the shower by giving their best blood-curdling scream. The winner will receive a romantic dinner for two just in time for Valentine’s Day and tickets to the next AFS screening.

Also, Hilton Green, the assistant director of Psycho, and Stephen Rebello, author of The Making of Psycho, will be on stage before the screening for a discussion about how the film has become one of the most famous horror films of the century.



Alex Theatre is located at 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. For more information, visit alexfilmsociety.org.