posted on October 11, 2001 11:53:09 AM new
Halloween has always been a treat for me, not so much for the candy but the horror movies I could depend on seeing. I'm curious what others have as their favorites? I have a small list of what I consider the cream of the crop.
Bride of Frankenstien This James Whale's classic holds the top honors for me. This movie had it all, horror, comedy, satire, and pathos. This was the first sequel that dwarfed it's original in my eyes. Of all the great Universal horror movies this was the one that was an example of how to make a horror movie.
The Haunting Robert Wise's 1963 movie is hard to beat. This one is one of the most intelligent horror movies. No special effects but it manages to be one of the best hair raiser I've ever seen, this one can really rattle you. Don't confuse this with the very, very, bad remake full of special effects recently released.
Rosemary's Baby While Roman Polanski might be my last choice as a baby sitter as a director he's great. This was the first of the modern adult horror movies, it put the gothic horror in modern setting.
The Exorcist William Friedkin's blockbuster is one I remember clearly seeing at the theater. When I went to see it I took a shortcut to the theater through an alley, when I was walking back to the car I walked around the block in the street lights. Really a scary movie that was well crafted.
The Thing Howard Hawks made classics in every genre there was. Christian Nyby got directing credits but Hawks directed all but 7 minutes of the movie. Hawks frequently gave others credit for his work. The Thing was the first movie of its genre.
Those are my top 5 horror movies. Any other horror movie fans?
posted on October 11, 2001 11:58:42 AM newSalem's Lot. The scene where the little boy vampire floats outside his friend's window and taps his fingernails on the glass to come in always freaks me out.
Alien. The sequel, Aliens, was a great sci-fi/action/adventure flick, but the original was a true horror movie. The fact that you don't actually SEE the title critter for most of the movie just adds to the suspense.
I love The Exorcist {i just bought the newly released "Version You've Never Seen" on DVD), but I still find it a little too intense to watch at one sitting in a darkened room.
Barry
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The opinions expressed above are for comparison purposes only. Your mileage may vary....
[ edited by godzillatemple on Oct 11, 2001 11:59 AM ]
posted on October 11, 2001 12:30:23 PM new
And don't forget the original "Halloween" by John Carpenter. All the sequels were crap, but the first one was actually intelligently written and well acted [for a slasher film, that is].
The same can be said for "Psycho" [the original, not the recent "refilming" with Vince Vaughn].
Barry
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The opinions expressed above are for comparison purposes only. Your mileage may vary....
posted on October 11, 2001 12:39:37 PM new
These are in no special order. Some times I think with horror movies the cornier the better.
Motel Hell
Night of the Living Dead ( I even liked the remake)
Phantasm
Satan's School for Girls (the original)
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Jaws
Halloween 1
Nightmare on Elm Street
Horror movies are my favorite, so I have seen most of them.
posted on October 11, 2001 12:46:58 PM new
Carpenter's "Halloween" was a nice work. Carpenter also did the score for it, which really added to it. Carpenter is a big Howard Hawks fan, he remade 2 of Howard Hawks movies. Carpenter's version of "The Thing" is very good.
Another to add is "Little Shop of Horrors." The movie wasn't that great but the director Roger Corman deserves a special place in Hollywood history. He was very efficent, he made "Little Shop of Horrors" in 2 days and 3 nights. Roger Corman also recognized talent, he opened doors for Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Ron Howard, and Johatan Demme to get into directing movies.
posted on October 11, 2001 01:14:01 PM newgodzillatemple: Not really a horror film, but it does have that one great scene:
groups of soldiers gathered around a 2-3 foot diameter tomator chained to a table, all pointing their rifles at it while a scientist examines it with a stethoscope. Suddenly he straightens and says: "Gentlemen, I have bad news--this is a cherry tomato! Camera quickly switches to a supermarket parking lot where a two story tall tomato is rolling down an a woman with a shopping cart...
posted on October 11, 2001 01:14:27 PM new
I didn't really know if Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is considered a horror movie. I guess a spoof movie is more like it. But I figured hey attack and killer are both in the title!
posted on October 11, 2001 01:24:33 PM new
"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" had a budget less than my first car payment. The movie did have something you don't see in million dollar budget movies though. There is one scene (probably the most expensive in the movie) where they hired a helicopter that was to land and an actor playing an F.B.I. agent is suppose to come to the camera and say some cheezy line. What happened instead is the pilot was so excited he came in for a hard landing and backed off real hard. The helicopter's tail rotor struck the ground. The coper goes into an uncontrolled spin and crashes and the camera is rolling the whole time. They simply dubbed in "Oh my God! One of the tomatoes attacked the helicopter pilot!" The crash was real, nobody got hurt, but the helicopter was a loss.
posted on October 11, 2001 01:50:04 PM new
I watched Polterguist when I was a kid ... I snuck and watched it after my parents had gone to bed, because they normally wouldn't have let me watch movies like that.
It scared me so much that I still - to this day - won't watch horror movies.
posted on October 11, 2001 01:54:29 PM new
I use to afraid of a movie called
'The Crawling Eye'
My older siblings use to terrify me with anything and everything...they would stay up late at night and think up things to do to me to turm me into a blithering screaming idiot. My parents thought I had an over-active imagination. BUT--now I can be in situations that scare my siblings --I'm a rock. Lonely houses, graveyards, and spooky places get them in a tizzy but I was so spooked as a kid that it doesn't bother me at all now
[ edited by Zazzie on Oct 11, 2001 01:55 PM ]
posted on October 11, 2001 02:19:17 PM new
I stand by Let's Scare Jessica To Death, which I described here a little more than a year ago:
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spazmodeus posted on September 16, 2000 08:08:33 AM edit
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Let's Scare Jessica To Death
This one's got it all. Zohra Lampert is Jessica, just out of a mental institution after a nervous background. She, her neo-hippy husband and his pal move into an old Victorian house in Connecticut, complete with spooky tower (and this house can still be seen today off of I-95 near Exit 67, in Old Saybrook). They buy the house to get away from the city and to revitalize the old apple orchards on the land. Little do they know that the house is haunted by hundred-year-old vampire Abigail Bishop whose family once owned the house (incidentally, there is a Bishop's Orchards in Old Saybrook, probably where the filmmakers got their inspiration). The villagers are all weird and go around with giant bandaids on their necks, grinning (it's dreadfully apparent that these parts were played by local yokels which gives the film a queer realism). It was made in 1971, so it has that gritty, grainy seventies B-film quality that I love so much. Lots of old country graveyards (Jessica makes gravestone rubbings which sort of come alive at night and whisper to her -- or is it her madness returning?) Jessica is reluctant to share her misgivings about the house (and the mysterious but attractive young female squatter they find living in the house when they arrive) with her husband, for fear that he'll think she's having a relapse and send her back to the loony bin.
Another great thing about this movie is that it stars unknowns (they were actually soap opera players of the seventies) so it makes it that much easier to suspend your disbelief.
It's also a fact that there were suspected cases of vampirism in Connecticut and Rhode Island during the 1890s. More than one corpse was dug up over the years, its heart cut out and burned to ashes in the name of routing a vampire. In fact, newspaper clippings about the Rhode Island cases of vampirism were found among Bram Stoker's papers. (Broker, of course, wrote Dracula).
The ending of Let's Scare Jessica To Death is a perfect moment of quiet horror. Rent it tonight.
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I also really like Jacob's Ladder, which starts out as a horror movie but transcends the frights to end on a thought-provoking metaphysical note.
posted on October 11, 2001 06:47:38 PM new
1.Captain Kronus Vampire Killer-Rare Hammer
2.Amityville Horror-True Story
3.Friday The 13th-Betsy Palmer The Killer
4.Brides of Dracula-Great Hammer Movie
5.Halloween 2-Michael Myers In Hospital
6.Meg Whitman Television Interviews
posted on October 11, 2001 07:25:57 PM new
"The Crawling Eye" !!! Yes! Forgot about that one!
"Attack of The Giant Crab Monsters"
"Race With The Devil"
"Night Of The Lepus"
I am not kidding. I could watch those old "B" drive in/Saturday Fright Night movies again and again.
But for a really really scary movie....
"Trilogy of Terror"......just the part where the little voodoo doll chases the girl all over the house! Whoopee! Yikes and a bag of chips (er, popcorn!)
posted on October 11, 2001 07:48:43 PM new
If you have not seen The Others with Nicole Kidman, you must see it, the ending had more of a plot twist than The Sixth Sense. Fabulous movie.
[ edited by snowydayz on Oct 11, 2001 07:51 PM ]
posted on October 12, 2001 12:11:19 AM new
OMG!!! Thank you so much ohandrea for coming up with Trilogy of Terror! I saw that one as a kid and had nightmares about that damn voodoo doll for years, but Mom & I could never remember the name of it. You have totally made my Halloween, bless you!
posted on October 12, 2001 05:48:43 AM new
Tod Browning gave us 2 horror classics, one everyone has seen and the other you need to see.
Dracula With Bela Lugosi is hard to turn away from, it does have a hypnotic effect. If AMC or Turner Classic Movies shows it this Halloween make an effort to see it. They've added something to the movie that was missing when it was first released... a score. Philip Glass composed the score and it is played by the Kronos Quartet, and it works great!
Freaks Banned for years in many countries it is a very disturbing movie. No special effect can match its impact because you are painfully aware these aren't special effects. It does deal with the lives of these unfortunate people in a much better light than you'd have thought would be possible for the 1930s. If you haven't seen it, see it.
posted on October 12, 2001 08:15:08 AM new
Hi uaru,
The name escapes me, but the one with the pod people starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter was good. It was remade with Donald Sutherland.
There was also a really scary one back in the '50s where people were sucked into the earth, marked with an X on the nape of the neck, and reappeared as zombies. A little boy knew about it, but no one believed him. The head alien was just a head encased in glass.
Really good movie. Would love to see it again. Do you recall the title?
posted on October 12, 2001 08:43:45 AM newThe name escapes me, but the one with the pod people starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter was good. It was remade with Donald Sutherland.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, yup, a definite classic from director Don Siegel.
There was also a really scary one back in the '50s where people were sucked into the earth, marked with an X on the nape of the neck, and reappeared as zombies. A little boy knew about it, but no one believed him. The head alien was just a head encased in glass.
posted on October 12, 2001 10:20:24 AM new
Thanx Femme! Yeah! The Omen...I'll have to ask my friends to remind me to look for it on TV...
I loved it...and of course, I have always been a big fan of Gregory Peck.
As far as SciFi horror, I loved Demon seed...This Robot develops it's own intelligence, and emprisons this woman in her own home, then proceeds to artificially impregnate her with a "robot" child...Julie Christie was the mother.
I do not like blood and gore either...Old horror movies, like "The Tingler", used shadows and creepy music far more successfully chilling than pools of blood. brrrrrrr......
[ edited by snowydayz on Oct 11, 2001 07:51 PM ]