Spooky Season

Topic

I thought it’d be fun to do a horror movie thread as it’s October. I’m a big fan of horror as are a lot of others here. I honestly think it’s the most potent and interesting genre along with sci-fi–but, in movies at least, there are probably more great horror movies than sci-fi movies.

So: A few questions–

What horror movies have you watched this October?

My answer: I haven’t had a lot of time for movies with the new baby but I’ve watched Tigers Are Not Afraid, The Shining, and Kwaidan. Plan on watching Viy (1967) sometime this week.

Who is your favorite scream queen?

My answer: Laura Dern in Inland Empire

Who is your favorite slasher? Your favorite monster?

My answer: Leatherface and BOB

Who is your favorite horror director?

My answer: Tobe Hooper made maybe the ultimate horror movie with Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but David Lynch’s spin on horror is the most interesting to me and probably the scariest I’ve seen

What horror movie has scared you the most?

My answer: Inland Empire

What is the most recent horror movie to really wow you and why?

My answer: I’ll give two answers: the one I most recently watched and the one that was most recently released. First is Kwaidan, a Japanese anthology of ghost stories from the 60s. It’s up there with 2001, Barry Lyndon, Blade Runner, Suspiria, and Andrei Rublev as the most beautiful movie I’ve ever seen. Masaki Kobayashi frames every shot perfectly, directing three of the four stories on elaborate sets that are even to recreate an epic samurai battle on barges. Each story has its own primary color which are foreshadowed ingeniously in the opening credits. Kwaidan is more haunting than scary, but its use of color and intricate sound design ensure that its images will linger in your mind and unsettle you long after watching.

Midsommar is my other pick. I loved Ari Aster’s Hereditary when it came out, and still really like it, but on second watch the cracks began to show after the events were no longer a surprise. I haven’t had time to rewatch Midsommar yet but I doubt this will happen, as Midsommar doesn’t hinge on surprise. You know what’s going to happen as soon as the four hapless characters arrive at the Swedish nature commune celebrating its annual midsommar festival, and the movie derives its tension and most disturbing sequences from that foreknowledge. It also has some of the most shocking and imaginative gore I’ve ever seen.

What are your favorite horror movies? Try for 31 in honor of the season but if you can’t/don’t want to bother that’s cool, too.

My answer: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Alien, The Vanishing (1988), Videodrome, Don’t Look Now, Inland Empire, Possession (1981), Suspiria (1977), Under the Skin, The Thing (1982), The Innocents, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Rosemary’s Baby, Audition, Perfect Blue, The Exorcist, The Shining, The Neon Demon, Goodnight Mommy, Fire Walk With Me, It Follows, The Invitation (2015), Midsommar, Kwaidan, Donnie Darko, Black Christmas (1974), Pulse (2001), Altered States, Deep Red, Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Replies

I’m not a huge horror fan in general, but occasionally when a horror movie is done well I really love it. It tends to be mostly sci-fi horror that I really enjoy.

In that vein, I guess the only horror movie I’ve watched so far this October is the original Terminator. Watching last night I found myself thinking how it’s the only one of the Terminator films that can honestly be classified as a horror movie, but it really works on that level – there are nightmarish scenes and disturbing moments in there in a way that isn’t true for any of the other movies in the series.

I feel like the same is true for the Alien movies too – they become sci-fi actioners after the first movie, but that first movie is a true horror classic.

The Terminator is a great choice. I usually think of it as purely sci-fi because of what the franchise became but you’re right, it’s a lot like Alien in that the first is almost a different genre from what followed.

I love the practical effects in Terminator. The scene when Arnie’s doing surgery on his face has a very noticeable cut to a prop replica of his head but it still works viewing it today because the movie’s whole aesthetic is crude and gory and a little ugly (in a good way).

I’m currently doing the 31 Days of Horror challenge so I’m watching a lot of horror movies (though I’m behind at the moment). I’m doing dumb little video reviews of each one afterwards.

My all time favorite horror film is The Thing. I’m not sure what’s my favorite recent horror film. Though the one that’s really stuck with me is The Invitation. It’s from 2015 so I don’t know if that counts as recent though.

Will_C wrote:

I love the practical effects in Terminator. The scene when Arnie’s doing surgery on his face has a very noticeable cut to a prop replica of his head but it still works viewing it today because the movie’s whole aesthetic is crude and gory and a little ugly (in a good way).

My wife and I had exactly this conversation watching it last night. It’s such an obvious cut to a model but somehow I think you still go with it. It helps that the model is so good.

Similarly, the endoskeleton chase at the end is clearly stop-motion and puppetry, but it’s such good stop motion and puppetry that it doesn’t matter – and somehow that weird jerkiness of the stop-motion adds to the nightmarish, unreal quality.

That constant onslaught of the endoskeleton in the factory is really chilling stuff. I can believe it grew out of Cameron’s own nightmare.

rory wrote:

My all time favorite horror film is The Thing.

Great choice, another one I really like.

Does something like Silence of the Lambs count, or is that more of a thriller?

Carrie would be up there for me too. I know that The Shining always goes down as the top movie to be based on King’s work, but Carrie is more satisfying for me – there’s more there to connect with.

I think if it’s disturbing/horrific enough a thriller can count as horror. I’d say Seven is a horror movie, same with Silence of the Lambs.

With horror I tend to focus on how disturbing a horror movie is over its scariness because a lot of great horror movies aren’t that scary but they’re all disturbing in some way. Though disturbing is pretty broad, I guess in horror there’s usually a supernatural element, or something macabre (which accounts for a lot of serial killer movies but not all, like I wouldn’t count Frenzy or Zodiac as horror), and there should always be a permeating eerie mood.

I always use Stephen Kings definition: Horror is the invasion of the natural by the unnatural.

So films like Seven are horror because their killer is so extreme that they’re unnatural.

I like that.

[KandorLives]

Horror was a genre that I didn’t have much exposure to until I was an adult, basically, so I don’t have a big knowledge of the genre. I do enjoy watching various horror films though and exploring the sub-genres, though like Dave I think that the sci-fi horror nexus is pretty much my gateway. I also tend to like the ones that allow the main character to fight back, even if that lessens just how scary the movie might be. My wheelhouse is more Evil Dead 2 than The Evil Dead.

What horror movies have you watched this October?

None, so far. I don’t think that Zombieland really counts. I’m sure that I’ll see some though, sooner or later.

Oh, I forgot about Color Out of Space. Looks like I’m up to one.

Who is your favorite scream queen?

Hmm. I’m struggling with this one,so I’ll just say Anya Taylor-Joy for now. Looking forward to seeing her in the new Edgar Wright horror movie.

Who is your favorite slasher? Your favorite monster?

At this point, I think that Rambo is actually a fair answer to the first question. For the second I’ll go with the Thing.

Who is your favorite horror director?

What’s the criteria for this? Anyway, I’ll go with Miike, even though he’s done plenty of other stuff. He manages to disturb me with something in non-horror movies, and he doesn’t shy away from his villains be brutal and sadistic in his straight action movies. Seems like the sensibility of a horror director to me.

What horror movie has scared you the most?

The first thing that comes to mind is Kill List.

What is the most recent horror movie to really wow you and why?

Us would be the best one that I’ve seen this year. The doppelganger concept is interesting and ripe for discussion, plus the movie was executed pretty well with the right amount of levity. I liked how much of a genre movie it was rather than being one of the so-called “elevated horror” flicks.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by KandorLives.

I’ll do my answers later but if y’all haven’t taken a listen to the Lore podcast, you need to.
Some episodes are ok but most are pretty creepy and all are well produced. Definitely worth 30 minutes of your time.

Dave wrote:

Will_C wrote:

I love the practical effects in Terminator. The scene when Arnie’s doing surgery on his face has a very noticeable cut to a prop replica of his head but it still works viewing it today because the movie’s whole aesthetic is crude and gory and a little ugly (in a good way).

My wife and I had exactly this conversation watching it last night. It’s such an obvious cut to a model but somehow I think you still go with it. It helps that the model is so good.
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Similarly, the endoskeleton chase at the end is clearly stop-motion and puppetry, but it’s such good stop motion and puppetry that it doesn’t matter – and somehow that weird jerkiness of the stop-motion adds to the nightmarish, unreal quality.
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That constant onslaught of the endoskeleton in the factory is really chilling stuff. I can believe it grew out of Cameron’s own nightmare.

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I have never seen old movies that way, or old Dr Who. I don’t think anything is better because it was done with old tech or a bit cheaper than they wanted to.
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I understand that people say that and I’m not going to argue that you don;t see it that way, but I cannot get there from here.
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Anyway; fav horror films.
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The Fog, Jaws, Alien, Halloween, The Exorcist, The Conjuring, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula (Hammer), Get Out, Us, Scream, The Thing, and lots more.

What horror movies have you watched this October?
My answer: None. I think the closest I’ve come to watching horror recently is the TV series, American Horror Story: 1984. AHS 1984 is less about being scary and more about taking the piss out of the genre.
Who is your favorite scream queen?
My answer: I don’t really have one. Maybe Jamie Lee Curtis.
Who is your favorite slasher? Your favorite monster?
My answer: Nosferatu
Who is your favorite horror director?
My answer: F.W. Murnau
What horror movie has scared you the most?
My answer: Not a movie but a miniseries – Salem’s Lot (1979). I was 11 years old when I saw it and it scared the hell out of me. Since then, I can honestly say I have never been scared by a horror movie.
What is the most recent horror movie to really wow you and why?
My answer: Shadow of the Vampire (2000) – I love Nosferatu (1922) and it was a wonderful bookend to that movie.
What are your favorite horror movies? Try for 31 in honor of the season but if you can’t/don’t want to bother that’s cool, too.
My answer: Nosferatu (1922), Frankenstein (1931), Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dracula (1931), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), The Invisible Man (1933), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Shadow of the Vampire (2000), Salem’s Lot (1979 miniseries), Häxan (1922)

Shadow of the Vampire is great. It’s fittingly a very dark movie but it’s also really funny to see the film crew react to Willem Dafoe’s vampire thinking he’s just a very eccentric actor. I like Herzog’s Nosferatu remake, too, although I still haven’t seen the original even though I have the DVD of it. I’ll have to fix that soon.

I’ve only seen stills of Haxan so far but it looks fucking incredible.

SteveUK wrote:

I have never seen old movies that way, or old Dr Who. I don’t think anything is better because it was done with old tech or a bit cheaper than they wanted to.
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I understand that people say that and I’m not going to argue that you don;t see it that way, but I cannot get there from here.

I think you might be misunderstanding what I’m trying to say – maybe I’m not conveying it very clearly.

I’m not saying I think it’s better because it’s done low-tech or cheaply. I’m saying that in the case of Terminator the film mostly overcomes the limitations of the effects because everything else about the story is so good. Arnie’s eye-removal could be done a lot more convincingly with modern effects, and it would probably be better, but I don’t think the dummy head ruins the scene either.

And in the case of the stop-motion animation of the endoskeleton, I think it’s an inadvertent result of the technique that it adds an otherworldy, dreamlike aspect to the way it moves. Again, I’m not saying it’s better because it’s crude or cheap, just that it still works despite that.

Will_C wrote:

Shadow of the Vampire is great. It’s fittingly a very dark movie but it’s also really funny to see the film crew react to Willem Dafoe’s vampire thinking he’s just a very eccentric actor. I like Herzog’s Nosferatu remake, too, although I still haven’t seen the original even though I have the DVD of it. I’ll have to fix that soon.

I’ve only seen stills of Haxan so far but it looks fucking incredible.

Watch the original Nosferatu then Shadow of the Vampire, back to back. It’s a blast.

Definitely make time to watch Haxan. It’s insane.

I can’t remember them all but there are a bunch of great horror movies from the silent era that hold up surprisingly well.

What horror movies have you watched this October?
The new Addams Family cartoon movie. It wasn’t horror but it was pretty horrible.

Who is your favorite scream queen?
Neve Campbell from Scream.

Who is your favorite slasher? Your favorite monster?
Michael Myers. Dracula.

Who is your favorite horror director?
John Carpenter.

What horror movie has scared you the most?
Jaws. It’s innocuous now but it made a huge impact on me growing up.

What is the most recent horror movie to really wow you and why?
The updated Halloween. It wasn’t as good as I was hoping but it was true to the spirit of the original and I’m a big Danny McBride fan.

What are your favorite horror movies?
Halloween original, Halloween 2018, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Alien, Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Ring, Jaws, Psycho, The Thing (1982), The Shining, It Follows, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Disney cartoon), Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton), the various Hammer movies.

Oh man, Brotherhood of the Wolf!! I love that movie. I don’t even remember how I first heard of it but I remember hunting for it in video stores when I was a kid. I wanted to watch it for the martial arts and the wolf monster, little did I know that it starred the same actress who’d just blown my mind in Matrix Reloaded and that this movie featured, um, a lot more of her…

I felt the same about Halloween 2018. It was right in so many ways but still fell short just a bit. I wished they’d focused more on Laurie and her daughter than on the granddaughter, whose storyline was pretty familiar.

Speaking of Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Company of Wolves is my answer to what movie has scared you most. I watched it on TV when I was like 12 or so because my older sister was watching it with friends, and that movie stuck with me for a long time. The way its horror is just a part of that surreal world it creates really struck me and stayed with me.

There are lots of horror films that have good sections, or even single shots. For all the kicking that the IT movies are getting from some people, they have great sequence here and there, in amongst the (much) lesser material.

It did have some very cool visual moments.

And I did like the depiction of IT itself in the movie a lot. To me, it felt like what Skarsgard and the director were going for was making IT a more alien presence than it was on the old TV movies. An incomprehensibly alien creature that tries to mimic the way humans talk and move, but fails with a very uncanny effect. It was a cool approach.

Company of Wolves is another really good choice. I can’t imagine seeing that as a kid, Stephen Rea’s transformation alone would’ve given me nightmares for a month.

Some great practical effects in that movie.

What horror movies have you watched this October?

None, closer I have come is Evil, the Tv show. George is a trip.

Who is your favorite scream queen?

I was infatuated with Catherine Mary Stewart from Night of the Comet

Who is your favorite slasher? Your favorite monster?

Jason /Frankenstein

Who is your favorite horror director?

David Lynch

What horror movie has scared you the most?

My answer: Fire Walk with Me, although the first horror movie I ever saw sticks with me and that was Legend of Boggy Creek
What is the most recent horror movie to really wow you and why?

Split, the tunnels, the girls, the mystery of who James MacAvoy was going to be next

What are your favorite horror movies? Try for 31 in honor of the season but if you can’t/don’t want to bother that’s cool, too.
i don’t think I have even seen 31 horror movies. I will agree with others that Brotherhood of the Wolf was a great movie. Mark Dascasos has always been a favorite all the way up to WU Assassins. I even watched Iron Chef occasionally because of him.
other horror movie favorites: Most Stephen King movies Shining, Dead Zone are among my favorites, Dog Soldiers(first time I saw Sean Pertwee who I loved in Gotham)

As someone who loved Halloween so bad that i considered this month the greatest holiday of all time (period), i’m being the cowardly lion when a comes to horror movies, So here are all my answers.
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What horror movies have you watched this October?
None, at least not yet. It’s kind of disappointed that there’s no new horror films this October, they could’ve save a Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark, The Curse of La Llorona, It Chapter Two or few horror film that came out earlier this year in October to better fit the Halloween theme.
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Who is your favorite scream queen?
I honestly don’t have one, cats maybe?
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Who is your favorite slasher? Your favorite monster?
For a slasher, it’s hard for me to pick either Jason Voorhess or Freddy Krueger as the best 80s horror slasher character (sorry Chucky and Myers :( ), i guess i’m sticking with Freddy, he’s a fun yet creepy character (nobody takes that crown away from Robert Englund)
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As for a monster, Universal Monsters would’ve been an easy pick one of these iconic monsters, but Xenomorph from 20th Century Fox’s Alien series is still the most badass monster ever (i also like the Predator)
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Who is your favorite horror director?
I like John Carpenter, but obviously Guillermo del Toro is the true winner for me, he and his team nailed the designs for monsters.
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What horror movie has scared you the most?
I used to be scared of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 as a kid (i think i was 9 years old when i sew it), as an adult that f*^king Lamberto Bava’s Dèmoni 2 haunts me in nightmares till this day, especially the lady demon, it scared the living crap of me that i’ll never going to watch that movie ever again.
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What is the most recent horror movie to really wow you and why?
Sadly i don’t have any of shocker from movies this year, but i have to say that Peter Jackson got me surprise, the reason for that is i discovered he used to direct an indie mature movies, specifically Braindead. The director i well familiar with his big blockbuster Hollywood movies such as the Lord of Rings franchise and the 2005 King Kong remake (it still wonderful movie).
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What are your favorite horror movies? Try for 31 in honor of the season but if you can’t/don’t want to bother that’s cool, too.
Jaws, The Ring, Tremors, Mars Attacks!, It (1990), John Carpenter’s original Halloween, Alien (1979) & Aliens (1986), Predator, An American Werewolf in London, John Carpenter’s The Thing, Braindead, Evil Dead 2, Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Scream (1996), Blade (1998) & Blade II, Dawn of the Dead (1978) & Night of the Living Dead (1968), Child’s Play (1988), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th Part I, II & III, Night of the Demons 2, The Exorcist, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Army of Darkness, From Dusk Till Dawn, Shaun of the Dead, The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth and Tim Burton’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

[SteveUK]

Rocket wrote:

Who is your favorite scream queen?

I was infatuated with Catherine Mary Stewart from Night of the Comet

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I’ve met her (and Kelli Maroney) when I was in LA this year. One of my friends is a Podcast maker and he knows them quite well. She’s very nice, good laugh, very dry and sassy sense of humour. She also doesn’t seem to age like a normal person.
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http://www.postpoppodcasts.com/wtwon/2018/7/17/what-to-watch-on-netflix-episode-32-catherine-mary-stewart-night-of-the-comet-the-last-starfighter-weekend-at-bernies

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by SteveUK.

I really want to contribute to this great thread but I think I need to set aside a good hour to think and construct my post !!!

Chris, you are definitely 50% of the reason I made this thread, looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

MaxMaxmarvel123 wrote:

as an adult that f*^king Lamberto Bava’s Dèmoni 2 haunts me in nightmares till this day, especially the lady demon, it scared the living crap of me that i’ll never going to watch that movie ever again.

Damn, now I’ve really got to watch this! I have the first one on DVD but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Rocket wrote:

Most Stephen King movies Shining, Dead Zone are among my favorites

Dead Zone is really good, definitely one of the strongest King adaptations. The book’s maybe King’s best and Cronenberg gets most of what works about it onto the screen. Walken’s great, too.

I’ll keep doing this in little bits, or I’ll never get it done…

Who is your favorite horror director?

My answer: It’s probably Peter Jackson, if you even count his splatter movies as horror. When it comes to actual horror, it’s probably John Carpenter or… no, wait, the only right answer here is George Romero! He created something truly special that he developed over several movies, in a way that no other director managed to do. Oh, fuck! If we count Cronenberg, it should be Cronenberg! Or, thinking of Cronenberg and his performance in Nightbreed, maybe Clive Barker, just for Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions (Hellraiser is great and all, but it never really stuck with me all that much)… no, I’m sticking to Romero. Definitely Romero.

What is the most recent horror movie to really wow you and why?

I’ll say “Us”. (And before that, it’d have to be “Get Out”.) For all of its flaws (and it was flawed, compared to “Get Out”), it had both a great concept and great execution. And its ideas and visuals stayed with me for a long time. Hell, even thinking about it now, I’ve got the rhythm of I Got 5 On It in my head again.

@KalmanL was asking for horror recommendations in another thread so I’ll give a few here. Now that October’s over this can become a general horror movie thread.
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I avoided horror for years but some movies still managed to slip through. I think my first proper horror movie was The Ring. The Shining was another early one. Both are still among my favorites, but they have some intensely terrifying moments (The Ring more so).
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A few classics you can’t go wrong with: The Innocents, The Exorcist, John Carpenter’s Halloween and The Thing.
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Some newer gems: The Invitation, Get Out, It Follows, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
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But I think the perfect gateway horror movie is Don’t Look Now. It’s not too scary but has the kind of dark psychological exploration that horror excels at. Donald Sutherland plays a father grieving his young daughter who died in a freak accident. The movie takes place months later in Venice, where Sutherland is overseeing the restoration of an old church. He keeps seeing and having premonitions of a small figure in a red raincoat like the one his daughter died wearing and starts to wonder if she’s come back to life. He begins to lose his grip on reality, which is paralleled in the editing of the film which splices images from the past and future into the present narrative. It’s a real masterpiece, as moving and beautiful as it is eerie.

I was so tired I forgot I had watched The Shining, which I liked. I don’t know how I forgot it!

Does anybody have other suggestions?

Try this?

Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, and 30 More Directors Pick Favorite Horror Movies

It’s a grab bag of quotes that various directors have made in interviews at different times about horror films that they love, or that really scared them, or that were relevant to a film that they made. Scorsese talks about one that Will recently reviewed in the watching thread, so that was cool to read.

I’m actually thinking Horror of Dracula, the Hammer film starring Christopher Lee as the title character. Lee was of course a great actor, and Peter Cushing’s in it, and Tarkin is one of my favorite side villains, and I adore the novel Dracula.

Will_C wrote:

But I think the perfect gateway horror movie is Don’t Look Now.

A good companion movie, IMO, is Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1978) which also gave us one of the greatest memes of all time

In the UK ‘Don’t Look Now’ was released with ‘The Wicker Man’ as support feature. Has there ever been a better A and B movie combo?

Damn, that’s a great pairing.

Rocket wrote:

Will_C wrote:

But I think the perfect gateway horror movie is Don’t Look Now.

A good companion movie, IMO, is Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1978)

That version of Bodysnatchers is one of my all-time favorite movies. I think it’s a perfect movie. I love how it uses foreshadowing, like the garbage trucks picking up huge masses of hair-like substance which you first see long before you learn what’s going on.

Would Hellraiser or Nightmare on Elm Street be too intense? I saw something that makes me want to watch them.

garjones wrote:

Has there ever been a better A and B movie combo?

I saw SERPICO and DEATH WISH on a double bill in 1974; and I paid the “child” rate for my ticket, so that was a pretty good combo.

Anonymous wrote:

Would Hellraiser or Nightmare on Elm Street be too intense? I saw something that makes me want to watch them.

They might be too intense, tbh. One of the characters in Hellraiser is skinless for most of the movie, and there are a few other parts that are almost as gory.

Nightmare is pretty campy but also very gory. Maybe read a little about Freddy Krueger and see if the kinds of stuff he does might be too much for you. Horror’s a great genre but enter it slowly if you’re at all nervous about being affected too much.

One other thing: practical effects-based gore looks pretty fake by modern standards so you may find it more amusing than scary. I think that was the case for me with Nightmare (it’s been a while) but Hellraiser I think is still pretty shocking.

I actually watched Hellraiser yesterday. I wasn’t that disturbed, actually, because the gore seems so realistic for that time, especially because the lightning effects for the puzzle box are so bad, so I was more into “Oh my G-d, they were able to make such good special effects in the early eighties” then the creep factor and at the risk of sounding like a creep, the angles they got for the gore scenes are beautiful, in their own weird way, just because you can tell how much effort went into shooting them to accentuate the gore. Honestly, gore doesn’t scare me, but accentuates a scary performance or a scary plot point. Honestly, the teeth-chattering Cenobite was more of a visual scare for me then Frank. As I said, gore alone doesn’t disturb me that much, it’s how smartly the director uses it that scares me, so Hellraiser isn’t scary to me because of the gore, but because of how Barker (especially as a first time director) used it.

Will_C wrote:

I avoided horror for years but some movies still managed to slip through. I think my first proper horror movie was The Ring. The Shining was another early one. Both are still among my favorites, but they have some intensely terrifying moments (The Ring more so).

THE RING was surprisingly effective. I think when people look back on it, that film will be seen more as one of the movies that paved the way for the reinvention and reinvigoration of the mainstream horror movies that continue to be successful today more than starting the wave of much less effective or successful remakes of Asian horror films like THE GRUDGE, SHUTTER, THE EYE, etc. It managed to be tense and scary – imbued with a sense of dread and disorientation – more so than films before or after it have managed.

Though, I do miss that period of films where the monsters had personality or presence. Freddy Kruger is the best example, of course, but I think Tony Todd’s Candyman – at least in the first movie – was probably my favorite. There was also Pinhead, Michael Myers and Jason, but they didn’t really have a lot of personality – just imposing presence. And in most of the sequels, it just got ridiculous at times. At least Freddy was intended to be something of a horror anthology host who happened to jump in to the stories he’d usually introduce. He was a sort of combination of HBO’s the Crypt Keeper and DC’s Plastic Man.

A movie that has gotten some more positive attention over the years, but was pretty forgotten after it came out is William Peter Blatty’s EXORCIST 3: LEGION. Based on his novel following up the detective Kinderman from The Exorcist, a few years after the events of the first book and film, it sort of created the template for the supernatural police procedural before those had even really existed. A few years later, we’d have The X-Files, so maybe it was ahead of its time.

Speaking of the X-Files, its “spin-off” series MILLENNIUM was actually pretty seriously dark and scary. I often feel that some series about serial killers today go a bit too dark when compared to the tone of the rest of the show, but I really haven’t seen much nowadays that just went as deep into pure evil as MILLENNIUM (or a few X-Files episodes, actually).

‘Millenium’ went from being a serial killer show to something else entirely, with angels, demons and a looming apocalypse. Then it all fell apart thanks to behind the scenes, network, money and all-that-sort-of-thing problems.
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But for a brief window, it was quite unique.

You know what I haven’t watched for years but I enjoyed at the time? Event Horizon. It falls into that sci-fi horror crossover space that appeals to me and I remember it being pretty unsettling and disturbing.

Looking it up online, it seems like there were a lot of scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut but which pushed the gore and sex into far more explicit territory. I’m not sure that would have helped it to be honest – part of what made it work was the suggestion of nastiness without giving you too much of it.

It’s a basic ‘haunted house in space’ concept but I remember it working pretty well. I’m not sure whether I should revisit it as I don’t know whether it would hold up.

Will_C wrote:

But I think the perfect gateway horror movie is Don’t Look Now. It’s not too scary but has the kind of dark psychological exploration that horror excels at. Donald Sutherland plays a father grieving his young daughter who died in a freak accident. The movie takes place months later in Venice, where Sutherland is overseeing the restoration of an old church. He keeps seeing and having premonitions of a small figure in a red raincoat like the one his daughter died wearing and starts to wonder if she’s come back to life. He begins to lose his grip on reality, which is paralleled in the editing of the film which splices images from the past and future into the present narrative. It’s a real masterpiece, as moving and beautiful as it is eerie.

I love Don’t Look Now; it’s a perfect movie. It’s so brilliant in how it generates so much tenseness and fear even though basically nothing actually happens. Until it does.
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Tidbit that I probably mentioned before sometimes: The German title for Don’t Look Now translates as When the Gondolas Wear Mourning (“Wenn die Gondeln trauer tragen”). It’s one of the weirder ones.

Anonymous wrote:

As I said, gore alone doesn’t disturb me that much, it’s how smartly the director uses it that scares me, so Hellraiser isn’t scary to me because of the gore, but because of how Barker (especially as a first time director) used it.

Barker is also not very interested in scares, which is a contrast to most horror directors. He is far more about the aesthetics of horror.
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Have you watched Nightmare on Elm Street yet? You definitely should. It’s great fun, and I don’t think it’d be too intense, not after all these years. If you like it, you can skip directly to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which is Freddy in a somewhat different way and with a bigger budget.
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Speaking of Wes Craven, watch Scream at some point, but only after you’ve got some slasher movies under your belt.
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And as a general recommendation, given that I named him my favourite director: Watch Romero’s zombie movies. Watch Night of the Living Dead, and the original Dawn of the Dead. They are the origin of the modern zombie movie, and still the best movies in that genre. And they’re not just great zombie movies, but also have a lot to say about modern society. They’re really important movies. And if you want to top off the zombie genre, watch 28 Days Later, which is Danny Boyle’s take on the post-apocalyptic zombie movie.

Argh, speaking of slasher movies, or… this is a bit of a different genre from slashers, but, um, you know, the whole being-attacked-by-hill-billies thing… I don’t know how far you want to go with this horror thing, Kalman, but probably the most terrifying movie I have ever seen is still the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s not an easy movie to take though. And I’m not talking about gore or scares here, but generally psychologically.

Dave wrote:

You know what I haven’t watched for years but I enjoyed at the time? Event Horizon. It falls into that sci-fi horror crossover space that appeals to me and I remember it being pretty unsettling and disturbing.

Yeah, Event Horizon was great. Still the best movie Paul W. Anderson ever made. Well, apart from his debut Shopping.

Christian wrote:

KalmanL wrote:

As I said, gore alone doesn’t disturb me that much, it’s how smartly the director uses it that scares me, so Hellraiser isn’t scary to me because of the gore, but because of how Barker (especially as a first time director) used it.

Barker is also not very interested in scares, which is a contrast to most horror directors. He is far more about the aesthetics of horror.
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Indeed. Aside from looking disturbing, I didn’t find Frank that scary until he met Kirsty. Then the “Come to daddy” line was chilling- In fact in the first two acts of the movie Julia was more scary then Frank, just because of her blind acceptance of it all. I understand why Barker wanted her to be the centerpiece, but exploring her psyche in sequels would have been running the risk of ruining her in the first movie. Some things are best unexplored.