Posted on 11/23/2004 9:31:31 PM PST by John Robertson
What's your favorite horror movie...and why? What fried your hair, and still makes it jump if you get a little too tired and you remember a sequence or two from something that scared the stuff out of you.
I've always dismissed horror movies as a waste of time, but the older I get, the more I realize they must serve some function--some cathartic function--because they are an enduring genre, and each generation likes to find its own favorite scary movies. Heard a commentator saying the other day, the reason the country is so preoccuppied with horror films right now is, it's a horror we can "handle," versus the real, terrorist kind of horror.
While not "jump out of my seat" scary, I found Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with DeNiro unsettling.
"Let's Scare Jessica to Death"--a low-budget film from the early 1970s. A young woman is discharged from a mental hospital and moves to a Connecticut farm with two male friends, where they encounter a mysterious hippie girl. They ask her to move in with them...and strange things begin to happen. Is Jessica losing her mind? Are her friends pulling an elaborate hoax to drive her insane? Really creepy. Especially when Jessica hears the whispering voices:
"Jessica...Jessica, it's blood. It's blood, Jessica."
And you pointing that out gets a chuckle from me. I didn't realize the double entendre.
What about Humanoids from the Deep? or Pirhana? or Any of the Toxic Avenger movies? ;0)
Classic: THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN, THE HAUNTING (1963), ROSEMARY'S BABY.
Modern: THE GRUDGE is quite scary, though it kind of falls apart toward the end. THE RING is also quite scary, but falls apart toward the end.
Haven't we all wanted to murder our friends for having a slightly better-looking business card?
The guy who wrote those short stories and screen plays, Clive Barker, is one seriesly disturbed dude! He was involved with the Hellraiser and Candyman movies, as well as Lord of Illusions: All of which are really disturbing movies.
Actually, he did another movie that I really liked (for some reason): "Nightbreed." Again, it had some very disturbing scenes, and he got David Kronenberg (sp?) the horror director, to play a role in the movie.
But I'm still partial to the Evil Dead movies. I don't know why.
I know why... Because they're GREAT movies! Bruce Campbell ROCKS! Sam Raimi proves he doesn't need a zillion dollars to make a really entertaining movie! I also liked Roger Corman's comedy/horror movies, like "The Raven," with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre! Funny as hell, not really scary, but great fun to watch
Mark
As others have noted, BLAIR WITCH PROJECT - I saw it before the hype and found it terrifying.
Yeah, same thing with the King novel, "It". The book was terrifying. I knew that the movie would never do it justice, so I didn't bother with it. I mean, it would have to be about four hours long to pack the events of the book in.
I hear rumours of a Bruce Campbell remake of Evil Dead... with a bigger budget. I'm of two minds on that... ;0)
The Pit and the Pendulum Like most Hammer films, its production values were second only to Edward Wood's in cheese and wooden acting. But the scene in the basement where they exhume Vincent Price's wife scared the crap out of 10 year old me. The music, the characters, and the setting all combined for a fantasia of delightful fright.
The House on Green Apple Road This one was also a turkey, but was remarkable only because it scared me in spite of my being unable to watch it at all.
When I was a kid, the movie ran on a local TV station after hours, with stern warnings about its gore and scariness. My parents were going out to a party and left me in the care of my older brother, who flatly refused to let me watch it with him. With a little help from a vivid imagination and what I could hear of the dialog from the top of the staircase, I had nightmares for 3 days about this movie that I never even saw. (I did see it years later, and it bored me to tears).
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface) wasn't even the scariest part of Tobe Hooper's original masterpiece. The old grandfather attempting to bash the female ingenue's skull with a sledgehammer always sends me to Creep Factor 10.
The Zapruder Film Some real horror. And it really happened.
Alien If you didn't jump through the movie theater ceiling when the chestburster came out of the egg and attached itself to Kane's faceplate, you're made out of sterner stuff than I am.
Trainspotting Yes, its only a movie. But the wasted lives and intellect portrayed made me want to slash my wrists after watching it.
Ghost Ship Made about 7 bucks at the box office. Plenty of cheese, plenty of bad acting, worst soundtrack I've ever heard. But the introduction of cultured European cruise liner passengers to a certain piece of wire cable in the first 5 minutes made me cringe and laugh at the same time. Marvelous stuff, but it goes downhill rapidly after that.
Frankenstein? The Wolf Man? Dracula? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Jason and Co? Naah - didn't scare me a bit.
NO QUESTION: THE RING, I love disturbing visuals. That cause me a few days unrest and my girlfriend 4 days of nightmares. I can't even mention Samarra without her screaming to shut up......!!!!
No. I don't like to be scared out of my wits, and I won't put myself in a position to be. I started to read one Stephen King novel (I don't remember which one) and couldn't finish it.
I don't like amusement park rides that go round-and-round, real fast, either.
Hell, I'm 53. There's just some stuff I don't want to do any more.
I didn't think American Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were scary until later when I imagined how terrifying it would be to be chased down like that and hacked to pieces.
Under the "not really a horror movie, but it scared the pants off me variety" -- At Close Range with Sean Penn and Christopher Walken. Based on a true story, it's about a criminal lowlife father (Walken) who has his sons killed to avoid having them testify against him to a grand jury. Walken was at his absolutely sociopathic, evil best!
"Bio-Dome" with Pauly Shore. It was a horror to sit through.
The two scariest movies I've seen; Alien and Communion.
As for Alien, it was a pretty singular achievement too. The second movie was a great action flic, but lost the horror element. The third movie stunk and the fourth was not only horrid but pure feminist pablum. Yes the whole series had an underlying feminist angle, but the fourth movie decides to replace action and plot with an ideological hammer. The same problem, interestingly enough, that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had with its 7th, and final, season.
As for Communion, I'd read far too many alien abduction type stories when I was in junior high (they had a ton in the school library for some reason) and the movie just plain struck a nerve.
Oh, and as for Hellraiser, IMO, was never that scary. The better Hellraiser movies are interesting, while the worst just gross, but I can't say any of the movies induced fear...
Nonsense! The scary part is how seriously he takes music by Phil Collins and Whitney Houston.
I cringe at that part too, then start laughing as people are falling down dead, cut in half, and that little girl is standing there where she was dancing with the captain, looks up at him, and the op of his head falls off. I thought that was COOL.
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