When you think of stories about romance on the screen, horror might not be the first film genre that comes to mind. But affairs of the heart have long played an important role in the greatness of many a memorable chiller, as you’re about to see here with this selection of Classic Horror Movie Love Scenes:
There you have my favorite five…though, ask me tomorrow and maybe I’d pick five others, including some of the runner-ups I’d considered when putting this together, like the marvelously creepy moment when Peter Lorre and Frances Drake are pushed together for one of cinema’s most uncomfortable kisses, in director Karl Freund’s delightfully sinister Mad Love; the psychedelic coupling of Duane Jones and Marlene Clark in the hypnotic vampire cult film Ganja & Hess (which Spike Lee just remade); the risqué “roll in the hay” between Gene Wilder and Teri Garr in Young Frankenstein—not to mention the hilarious consummation of the woo pitched between the monster and his mate (“Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you!”)…
(For those keeping score, the wonderful Mel Brooks classic turned 40 this year! Now that gives one the chills)
The restriction of choosing but five hallmarks of horror movie love scenes also caused me to leave out whole categories of exploration, including the “have-sex-and-die” scholarship that became wildly popular during the “mad slasher” craze of the 1980s (though the line to that theme can be drawn straight back to the Victorian thinking that informed a certain classic vampire tale), the Sapphic charms of the Hammer “Karnstein Trilogy” and other same-sex-oriented terror tales, and so on.
I have little doubt, though, that readers will now be able to dig up plenty of other classic horror movie love scenes from their own favorite fright flicks and share their memories of those in the comments. And remember, if you’re currently blessed with a significant other, there’s extra fun to be had in doing your own research!—since nothing brings a devoted couple together quite like snuggling up in the dark to protect each other from the shivery shocks on the screen.