We do this thread every year, so might as well make it official. My perennial favorites are still The Thing and The Shining. I always accepted the theory that MacReady gives Childs gasoline in the whiskey bottle instead of liquor since he was making molotov cocktails previously. He smiles at the end because he realizes Childs is actually the monster. The Shining is such a cerebral mind-fuck that it gets better each time I watch it. The book and its sequel book are lame though.
The eighties is the true horror movie decade. Exploitive and excessive, trying to shock the viewer into oblivion.
Any of the three Clive Barker stories that he also directed. That be: Hellraiser, Night Breed and Lord Of Illusions. All three are uncompromising, ugly fun for their entire duration. Perfect for this time of year.
The Hellraiser movies are so fucking weird, but Au love them. IMO the only ones worth watching are the first two. The most recent ones got really stupid quick. The guy that replaced Doug Bradley as Pinhead is unintentionally funny as hell.
First one is a masterpiece. They got increasingly bad after that, though like you I think Hellbound is watchable (not to mention gross as fuck).
Alien is the horror movie that usually comes out on top as my favorite It's a shame the series took such a nosedive, though. I was really bummed that I missed a 70 mm showing of The Thing at this independent movie theater by me. I've never seen it on the big screen and getting to see Rob Bottin's effects in 70 mm would be just awesome (and nauseating) to see. The same movie theater is running a series of the old Universal horror movies that I, shamefully, never watched before. I watched the original Dracula last week and got to watch The Invisible Man today. It was great to see some of them, but it was kind of jarring to see how slapsticky/shticky they could be. You would have a scene in Dracula where he hypnotizes/drains one of the female leads followed up with some cockney sanitarium worker collecting Renfield after he sneaks out of confinement with goofy music playing in the background. I also wasn't expecting Invisible Man (a movie made in the 30s) to be so violent. A goofy scene with Griffin chucking ink in some police constable's face.........and then bashing said constable's head in with a stool while laughing maniacally. Not to mention derailing trains and gleefully shoving people off of a cliff. Crazy to think what sort of stuff the Hays code would permit and what was forbidden.
There are some FUCKED-UP pre-code horror films. Freaks is a true classic film, The Black Cat and Maniac have nasty shit in them as well.
Is there a more polarizing horror film than Prince Of Darkness? The plot and acting are cringe-worthy, but it’s probably one of the scariest films ever made.
Yeah, its a really odd movie. I really want to like it because it does have some legit scary parts, but its just all over the place. I havent seen the third movie in the trilogy, In the Mouth of Madness, but I think its safe to say The Thing is the best of the three. Second worst movie of Donald Pleasence's career.
I think they've remade (or plan to remake) just about every John Carpenter movie.......except this one. And this is the one that I would love to see get remade. There are some pretty good ideas and concepts there. Unfortunately, they don't quite hit the mark. Although demonic hobo Alice Cooper and Egg Shen as a badass theoretical physicist are always great.
In The Mouth Of Madness goes well with The Thing. It has HP Lovecraft-style monsters, Sam Neil is great in it and it’s genuinely creepy. Better than Prince Of Darkness. I love it.
If anyone hasnt seen Babbadook, I highly recommend it. Its a really interesting twist on the whole Monster movie theme.
What do you guys think is the single scariest scene in a movie? I wanted to ask this because I just watched “Apostle” on Netflix. It has a scene in a cramped open sewer that —for the first time in decades— a scene in a movie actually terrified me enough that’ll I will openly admit it. It was sixty seconds of unbelievable horror lashing at a character from all angles. Best and scariest horror scene since the “Alley Man” in Mulholland Dr.
The diner/alley scene in Mulholland Drive is definitely up there. That scene freaked me the fuck out. You know the directing is good when the scene is in the middle of a city in broad daylight. I think the scene that really got me the most was the church scene in 28 Days Later. I almost shit my pants the first time I saw it when the zombies just pop up and look at him after he makes noise, and then the priest bursts through the door. Also the entirety of Jacobs Ladder.
I love schlocky sci-fi, and to that end, I have to say that I was really impressed with how well Pitch Black did when I watched it in the theatre. Sure, the over-the-top acting of Vin Diesel, and the solid "meh" of a storyline was nothing to write home about, but their use of blackness and the imagination, combined with the full-on surround sound audio effects, did a fantastic job. There's the one scene in particular where you hear all sorts of shit going down, but can't see anything because it's, well, pitch black. Then the soon-to-be-dead guy sparks up a lighter/match to see what's going on around him, only to reveal that he's surrounded by hammerhead velociraptors. He realizes he's fucked, then kills the light, and you hear the mayhem and gore. It was quite well done, I thought. Even better was the whole film hue. When they initially shot it on location in Australia(?), the film that was shot was improperly stored and was partially exposed/damaged, which resulted in a really strange, other-worldly tint/hue look. The Production crew was initially pissed and tried to fix it by doing some major colour correction in post, then they full-on embraced it after they realized that it did a fantastic job of making it look like they were on another planet.
I liked that movie. NOBODY was safe in it, and I liked the “hero” being a murderous asshole in it. David Twohy made it, he did “Arrival” with Charlie Sheen which was the opposite of schlocky: intelligent, well-thought out (even plausible) science fiction. Check that one out if you haven’t seen it. My favourite scene in Pitch Black is when the animals come out of the ground the first time. You see MANY crawl out, and then suddenly hundreds of thousands fly out in almost a mist, which promptly tear a girl to shreds.
I’m surprised it took this long for Jacob’s Ladder to get mentioned. That movie is, and always will be a wall-to-wall nightmare. The only setback is that lame “Shaggy Dog Joke” ending that wrecks the narrative completely.
Along the same line, while maybe not necessarily a "halloween" movie, the original Alien was awesome, and I say still stands up today. The first time the alien burst out of the chest? Terrifying.
It's been quite a while since I've seen it. I remember it being a good movie, but remember none of the details. Might have to go rewatch it.