Horror Movies

So after my third watch of the VVitch it got me thinking. I’m obsessed with this movie, and I think it may have actually cracked my top 10. So being a lover of lists I thought it was time to update mine. I know everyone posts mostly about the recent crap they’ve taken a chance on but I’m really curious to see what movies you like from the genre. The ones that keep you coming back. I’ll go first ...

Hmm, typing out of my ass rather than thinking about order or actual top of the tops:

The Tenant, Island of Lost Souls, Devil Doll, Hausu, Black Christmas, Carpenter's The Thing, Alucarda, Repulsion, The Shout, Evil Dead Trap, Suspira, Alien Prey, Shivers.

Lucky 13.

Awesome David, great list! Thanks for sharing, this is exactly why I wanted to do this. Find some new stuff to watch instead of knowing what to avoid.

The Tenant, Repulsion and Suspiria are all excellent.

I still have to get around to watching Island of Lost Souls, Black Xmas, Alucarda, Evil dead trap, and Shivers. Thanks for reminding me.

Keep them coming! Oh and ultrakaiju an AWIL pub crawl could be lots of fun.

^ Have you seen Skolimowski's The Shout? What a bonkers ride that one is. More people need to see Alien Prey, too. I just love Norman J. Warren.

Man, so many more came flooding to the front of my mind as soon as I clicked Submit...

Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now
Donald Cammell's Demon Seed and White of the Eye*
Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness
Andrzej Żuławski's Posession
Eckhart Schmidt's Der Fan
Richard Franklin's Patrick
Giulio Questi's Death Laid an Egg
Vicente Aranda's The Blood Spattered Bride
George Romero's Martin
Erle C. Kenton's House of Frankenstein
Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men...

I need to stop.

EDIT: I can't not mention William Girdler's Day of the Animals and The Manitou. I just can't.


*Not exactly horror, but there's plenty of murder and the like.


Edited so that it will be slightly less annoying to read.

Last edited by toothaction on Mon Jun 13, 2016 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"The Witch" feels a lot like it was directed by Ben Wheatley, but it wasn't. "High Rise" felt to me a lot like a David Cronenberg film, but it was directed by Ben Wheatley.

I'm so confused!

I'll throw a list out there for the heck of it. This would be my Top Ten Classics:

1. Eraserhead*
2. Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy" (Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant)
3. Halloween (OG)
4. The Thing (OG)
5. Alien
6. American Werewolf
7. The Evil Dead (OG)
8. Videodrome and/or Shivers
9. Suspiria
10. Phantasm

*Yes, I consider this horror, and yes it will top any list I create because it's my favorite film of all time. Guess there's not much out of the ordinary here. But these are the films I can go back to again and again. I've got some new movies that could make up a whole other Top Ten at least.

^^ Original Thing or the carpenter version?
Btw, der fan is a great movie. One of my favorites.

Original "Thing" is The Thing from Another World. I think it's a safe bet that Mark's talking about the one with Keith "Reverse Giraffe" David in it.

You've seen Der Fan, Greg? I feel so much less alone now!

Just giving him a hard time. Yeah I'm a big fan or der fan. Had an import copy on dvd for years. Always trying to get people to watch it. With this celebrity culture it still holds up.

I don't think I could possibly choose favorites. I've always had trouble with favorites... Never really had a favorite color because every color looks a certain way when paired up with other colors, just like every movie is so different, arg!

I have to say though, I really loved The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and American Werewolf in London.
I didn't see either of them until the past year or so. (I know, it's sad) TCM was absolutely bonkers, and nowhere near as mindlessly gory as the title suggested. AWiL was just such a wild ride with really impressive special effects, makeup, and prosthetics.

I like reading lists but can never really make one, two favorites would have to be Ghost story and Salems lot. If I ever did a list those would be right up the top.

Ah, since I brought up prosthetics and effects, I just remembered... The first Hellraiser! I absolutely loved the first movie, it was so crazy and disgusting with all of the KY Jelly flesh goo. Pinhead is probably one of my all-time favorite villains, he's just a complete creeper.
Second movie was alright, but it all went horribly downhill afterwards. I watched some more anyway... I think I stopped after the movie that my boyfriend and I jokingly called "Hellraiser in Space". So bad.

Um what, where is all the love for Ghost Fever?

I can never make lists either...

Ill just add some that I dig.

elm st.3 (such a fun one, and has its own vibe to me), cabin fever, the blob (80s ver.), wolf creek, ghoulies, house of the devil, children of the corn, wickerman (OG, is it even horror? ), Are you afraid of the dark? (TV series, probably the best kids show ever created and I still watch it often on dvd)

^^
OG Wicker Man definitely classifies as horror imo! Hated the ending to Berberian Sound Studio the first time I saw it, but once I got over it not being a straight-up giallo homage like Amer I started loving this bizarre little film. More Lynch than outright "horror", though.

No point repeating everyone else's excellent lists, so I'll just add some titles that haven't been mentioned yet:

Jigoku
Burnt Offerings
Zeder
A Tale of Two Sisters
The Island (HK)
Freaks
Who Can Kill a Child?
Just Before Dawn
The House with Laughing Windows
Viy or Spirit of Evil

With all this talk about the Thing, I thought it might be worth mentioning Scream Factory is doing a collector's edition of John Carpenter's version with a TON of great stuff:

https://www.shoutfactory.com/film/film-horror/the-thing-collector-s-edition

NEW 2K Scan Of The Interpositive Supervised And Approved By Director Of Photography Dean Cundey
NEW 4.1 Audio Mix Created From The Original 70MM Six Track Dolby Stereo Soundtrack (5.1 Audio Mix Also Included)
NEW Audio Commentary With Director Of Photography Dean Cundey
Audio Commentary By Director John Carpenter And Actor Kurt Russell
NEW The Men Of Outpost 31 – Interviews With Keith David, Thomas Waites, Peter Maloney And More…
NEW Assembling And Assimilation – An Interview With Editor Todd Ramsay
NEW Behind The Chameleon – Interviews With Visual Effects Artists Peter Kuran And Susan Turner, Special Make-up Effects Artist Rob Burman And Brian Wade And More…
NEW Sounds From The Cold – Interviews With Supervising Sound Editor David Lewis Yewdall And Special Sound Effects Designer Alan Howarth
NEW Between The Lines – An Interview With Novelization Author Alan Dean Foster
John Carpenter's The Thing: Terror Takes Shape – A Documentary On The Making Of THE THING Featuring Interviews With John Carpenter, Kurt Russell, Special Effects Make-up Designer Rob Bottin, Matte Artist Albert Whitlock And More! (80 minutes – SD)
Outtakes (5 minutes – SD)
Vintage Featurettes From The Electronic Press Kit Featuring Interviews With John Carpenter, Kurt Russell And Rob Bottin (12 minutes – SD)
Vintage Featurettes – The Making Of A Chilling Tale And The Making Of THE THING (1982 – 14 minutes – SD)
Vintage Product Reel – Contains A Promotional Condensed Version Of The Film With Additional Footage Not In The Film (19 minutes – SD)
Vintage Behind-The-Scenes Footage (2 minutes – SD)
Annotated Production Archive – Production Art And Storyboards, Location Scouting, Special Make-up Effects, Post Production (48 minutes – SD)
Network TV Broadcast Version Of THE THING (92 minutes – SD)
Teaser Trailer
Theatrical Trailers (U.S. And German)
TV Spots
Radio Spots
Still Gallery (Behind-The-Scenes Photos, Posters And Lobby Cards)
And Still More To Be Added!

That is pretty great news. The Thing and Alien are two films I have always wanted to see an outfit like Criterion or someone tackle a very proper restoration of, with correct colour timing, cut scenes, etc., fixed up. Yes, they have been released inordinate amount of times on various media, but we ever so rarely get a definitive version. Which is annoying, because that is just what makes them release more and more 'versions.' *well that, and money, naturally. Anyways, thanks for the notice Chris. Here's hoping SF does an amazing job on the BD.

No point repeating everyone else's excellent lists, so I'll just add some titles that haven't been mentioned yet:

Burnt Offerings

That movie messed me up big time as a kid. Watched it again a few years ago and it was still just as scary. That ending is the stuff of nightmares.

Ah, since I brought up prosthetics and effects, I just remembered... The first Hellraiser! I absolutely loved the first movie, it was so crazy and disgusting with all of the KY Jelly flesh goo. Pinhead is probably one of my all-time favorite villains, he's just a complete creeper.
Second movie was alright, but it all went horribly downhill afterwards. I watched some more anyway... I think I stopped after the movie that my boyfriend and I jokingly called "Hellraiser in Space". So bad.

I loved the early Hellraiser stuff. I was always amazed that Clive Barker did a pinhead story in the 80's and nothing for the next few decades but not long ago he finally finished the book called The Scarlet Gospels which is the return and finale of the Pinhead. Wonderful horror story. I am done with my copy if you'd like it. I generally read books and give them to someone else to enjoy.

Absolutely! I'd love to give it a read. I have to confess, I've only read Clive Barker's first two Abarat books a loooong time ago... Did a double take when I started getting into horror movies and realized that Clive Barker was more than just a young adult book author!
And sorry for a slight derailment, but has anyone ever tried to start up a SB book exchange? I think that would be so darn cool, especially since media mail is pretty reasonable.

(Oh, and Grats on 666 posts.)

We have a long-neglected book thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24350
You should maybe bump that and see if we can get a swap meet going!

Derail continued...

My favorite YA horror writer is definitely Kelly Link:


Of course, she's probably the only YA horror author that I've read! A friend of mine handed me her Magic for Beginners a few years ago and within the week I was buying used copies for everyone I know!

A great book I got from the library, remember those, is called Out of the dark by Ursula Curtiss. Its the novel that the film I saw what you did from 1965 is based on. Different enough from the movie to keep it interesting. It's from 1954 and a bit pricey to buy so that's why I went the library route.

Just watched Rigor Mortis. Another movie that leaves me wondering "why?!?"
I enjoyed it. It was really different from anything I've ever seen up until this point. It centers around an apartment tenement and a "hopping vampire," aka a jiangshi. (The closest way I can explain it is a reanimated corpse with rigor mortis, so it can't walk, only hop.)
But the end... Another disappointment.

Basically, it's insinuated that the entire movie took place in the main character's head during his last moments as he hung himself.

What did any of you think of the ending? It just kind of made everything pointless to me.