So tonight I watched a dvd of the old version of Amityville Horror I just bought. It's funny, this movie scared me as a kid, but really didn't make me jump once now. I remember a doll that had eyes light up in it, or am I thinking of another movie? Anyhow it got me thinking how most movies that scared me when I was younger really don't scare me anymore. This caused me to search deep (via the web) of what are the all time scariest movies ever? It's really a list of what you'd expect. Exorcist -9 out of 10 times tops the list. The only thing scary about that movie is Linda Blair's make up and that ghostly face that appears when the priest's Mom walks up from the subway. I REALLY don't think that is the scariest movie of all time. Nor do I think slasher flicks are really that scary. To me a scary movie is often what you don't see. It's suspense. Not a axe falling into a head. I'm hard pressed to think of a single movie that would still scare me. I wanted to say Pet Semetary, but I bet even that would not scare me now. Maybe the original Japanese version of Dark Water? So what movie scares my fellow skullbrainers?
I saw exorcist as an adult during the rerelease and loved it. I had no idea how far they would go but I really liked it. As a kid I my mom took to see poltergiest and I think I was 7 and was freaked. As an adult? Meh the movie is okay. However..one movie that still kind of holds up is the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just the whole low budget vibe and the fact that a lot of the gore is offscreen.
I'm not big into scary movies, but I'll agree that even in college the original TCSM really creeped me out. The other movie that comes to mind is Seance, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. I saw it at the Seattle Film Fest years ago and it just had a very melancholy vibe to it, and the ghosts were subtle and creepy!
I thought of one recent movie that looked good but will unfortunately never see the light of day here, at least as a Region 1 DVD. The spanish horror film REC, which as we speak is being remade and released here as Quarantine in October. That will probably be overdone crap. The original film (from the trailers) looked really scary.
After watching the orig texas chainsaw massacre, I saw no need to watch any horror movie ever again. Freakin scariest movie ever, period. Now, I only watch comedies.
Here's what's scary about it: It's NOT the devil, it's NOT the puke and the spinning and all that. It's the fact that a loved one is going through something so traumatic and horrid and all you can do, ANYONE can do, is watch. That's horror. That's something I've been through, and I feel the Exorcist, past it's surface, truly conveys that and is WHY, deep down, is usually top of the list whether someone knows it or not. Most horror movies are about watching the main character, who you associate with yourself, being the victims or hunted. The Exorcist you're supposed to connect with the priests and the mother. Not Reagan. She's what you have to watch and hear and know is there, and you can't make her better. That's why, for me, it's on top as scariest movie of all time. I go to bed, think about it more and more, and realize the lack of power and control, if any, I have. Rant. Over.
Amityville Horror (original) always gets under my skin. THe Exorcist, I've never seen the whole thing, but from what I did see--it was very good. I think The Ring is very good and a lot of fun. It creeped me the fuck out when I first saw it. The Exorcism of Emily Rose was kind of creepy too. Browsing around the local indie video store, me and my friends have seen some whacked out shit in foreign films. Some of it looks like it might be good.
The movie that creeped me out the most when I first saw it back in college was 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' just because the actors were just ordinary looking as were the situations. The low budget feel definitely worked in its favor. It seemed very 'real' and it disturbed me deeply at the time. I wonder if it would 'hold up' for me if I saw it now. My 'classic' go-to horror flick is The Shining, directed by the master Stanley Kubrick. Many unforgettable scenes, and the presence of Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall (who does 'horrified' very well.) make it my choice for scariest movie ever.
The first time I saw "The Exorcist," the thing that scared me about it wasn't anything visual, it was the voices. Mercedes McCambridge multi-tracked at different speeds in different languages and dialects, mixed with garbled pig sounds and such. The soundtrack really freaked me out. It didn't help that I was on LSD and had just seen "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for the first time on the same evening. (I'm gong to regret this confession some day.) Anyway, I still love "The Exorcist," many years later and sober. I don't really find movies scary all that much, more spooky than scary, although in the recent past both "Wolf Creek" and even aspects of "Cloverfield" were pretty intimidating. Many will disagree but I still find watching "The Blair Witch Project" alone in the dark to be scary. "The Haunting," an old Robert Wise movie in which you never see the ghosts, is pretty darned spooky. "The Shining" still gives me a creepy feeling. I agree that "The Exorcist" isn't about Reagan per se, but the issue of her pubescence could be said to be an aspect of "what's really going on." I think the movie is about human perceptions of the nature of evil more than "the devil." It never resolves what actually happened 100%, and in some ways even contradicts its own explanations. I think that was intentional.
"Texas Chainsaw" never bothered me that much. Fact I found it kind of irritating. All that screaming ... I wanted to kill the girl myself. Saw "Eraserhead" about the same time and that had a much more powerful effect on me. "Exorcist" and "Shining" are both good. My vote goes to "Suspiria" though. Or maybe "Don't Look Now" (though I'm not sure if that's really a 'horror' film?)
I loved the Haunting. Another great b/w scary movie (and another favorite of mine in general) is Eyes Without a Face. But be prepared to read as it is subtitled.
Overall: Exorcist Recently: [Rec] (Boycott the remake! Seek out the original) I've shown [Rec] to a lot of people and it's effectively won over a lot of people who like myself hate POV horror. It's very well made and is probably far better then the US remake from the guys who made that horrible (POV) film Poughkeepsie Tapes which was the only horror film in the last ten years I was so bored by and unimpressed with I wanted to walk out. That includes the underwhelming Strangers which was pretty bad. How the filmmakers for the Strangers did not have to pay some sort of licensing fee for remaking Them (Ils) I will never know.
A couple of weird ones... In the Mouth of Madness The Eye (original not the crappy remake) Night of the Hunter
The Excorcist was damn scary. Audition is pretty disturbing. For atmosphere, The Innocents is hard to beat (the old b/w, not the re-makes). The Devil's Backbone is also a great ghost story. All the new gore/snuff film suck! That's just shock - no intelligence behind em at all.
Oh yeah, The Shining! I worked in a warehouse back when I was in school, and a certain hallway reminded me of The Shining. Once when I came back down to the office from there my co-worker said it reminded HIM of The Shining w/o me mentioning it. So we started talking about it and our boss came back from lunch and just heard us talking about the hallway and he said it reminded HIM of The Shining. That place sucked to close up all by myself...6 stories with freight elevators and fire doors, probably 800K+ sq/ft.
I sure i'll cop some flack for this but Blair Witch Project scared the utter shit out of me. I didn’t even see it at the cinema! Watched it at home on DVD by myself a few years after the hype died down. The bit at the end with them facing the wall is stuck in my memory. Still creeps me out to think about it. Apart from that, you can’t beat the pure Terror of Chainsaw Massacre & Exorcist.
The agonizingly quiet stretches in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Exorcist are some of my most vividly scary memories but Ju-On: The Grudge had me curled up into one corner of my couch. I even thought the remake was pretty creepy too.
In the Mouth of Madness was a great movie. Great Lovecraft-influenced feel. Dagon is also a good (low budget) movie with a very Lovecraft based feel to it. Neither is really that scarey though. I tend not to find much that is truely scarey in any movie... although in recent memory I do remember being startled pretty well by one scene in 30 Days of Night. Where the Vampire jumps through the kitchen window and rolls off the table. Totally unexpected.
I'm pretty old school so Hitchcock's Psycho, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original) and the first Alien movie kept me up at night. These days the nightly news will usually do the trick.
I forgot about that. What I found cool about that movie was the sounds they used, like Exorcist, it creeped me out more than the visuals. I saw it before The Grudge hit, had no idea what I was walking into. All I knew was it was, as I put it, "some Japanese ghost movie."
