20 Favorite Horror Films
Nov. 2nd, 2017 07:43 pmThis is for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beer_good_foamy, well more or less. And I just can't figure out how to do the user id in DW. [ETA, thank you <anoyo.]
In no particular order, because I can't rank them and this is off the top of my head, so I am allowed to change my mind or can be persuaded. I tend to be largely agnostic about this sort of stuff. Also, there's a distinction between scarey horror, and horror, also between thriller and horror. Horror -- tends to be about things that are well, horrific, scare us, and often fantastical.
1. A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick -- I was going to put the Shining in this category but I honestly think A Clockwork Orange is better. Filmed earlier in Kubrick's career, it's tighter and less flamboyant, or grandiose. It also sticks with a solid moral theme. Kubrick isn't as angry here and there's an intimacy with the audience that his later work often lacks. Anthony Burgess, however, did not like this film any more than Stephen King liked Kubrick's take on The Shining. Burgess felt Kubrick did the American version of his book, which left out the final chapter -- which in effect has the lead character looking back on what he did, and moving past it. Without that final chapter, Burgess felt the story was pure allegory.
In both cases, I preferred the film version to the books. Which is odd, because it is usually the exact opposite. The Shining I felt was scarier in the film version than the book, and less simple or safe. It haunted me more. And A Clockwork Orange, was also scarier and more horrific in the film, it
also felt riskier and less safe. It certain continues to stay with me. Who can forget, Malcolm McDowell singing "Singing in the Rain" after he kills a bunch of people? The film felt like a satire and allegory all wrapped in one. Looking at pop culture as Kubrick often did and revealing the ugliness underneath. At the same time, the film is wickedly funny -- see the Singing in the Rain montage.
For those who haven't seen it, it's a psychological morality tale about the government attempting to rehabilitate criminals by modifying their behavior. Or rather attempting to modify it. Removing, in effect, their free will.
2. The Haunting of Hill House by Robert Wise -- Wise unlike many horror stylists of his generation is a minimalist. His films are stark, with few special effects, and relying purely on camera angles and the actors to convince the audience. In The Haunting of Hill House, a paranormal specialist and psychologist gathers a group of volunteers in an allegedly haunted house for a weekend to determine if it is haunted and the effects of it on the group. Typical set-up, but based on Shirley Jackson's horror novel of the same name, we watch as the characters slowly become unhinged, one in particular...
A psychological horror film caught within the confines of the Haunted House trope. Skip the remakes, and watch this old black and white film. It gave my younger brother nightmares for years. And my brother could handle horror films -- he used to go to them and come back and regale me with what happened, often warning me away from the more frightening or gorey ones. This is the only one that bothered him.
3. Jaws by Stephen Spielberg -- Spielberg first major film, and among his best. It's also a statement in minimalism. Spielberg had a problem when he filmed Jaws up in Martha's Vineyard -- the animatronic shark did not work. It wasn't scary, and it kept malfunctioning. It looked like a fake robotic shark. So, he had to film around it, choosing to show very little of the shark and taking a page from Wise, he focused on the characters. Because we fell in love with the characters, we became terrified for them. The film is best known for the final arc where we have three men in a small fishing boat, played by three amazing character actors, Robert Drefuss, Robert Shaw, and Roy Schnieder. They don't quite get along. And they have different takes on the shark. And they are hunting it in a shark hunting boat...but, it's not big enough. The tension slowly mounts...
This is one of those rare films that I stop to watch whenever it pops up on television. When I first saw it as a child in the 1970s, it scared me. Now, I appreciate every moment of it.
4. Silence of the Lambs by Jonnathan Demme -- Saw this one with my brother after we spent the day arguing over the color of paint. We were busy painting my parents basement at the time. This was way back in the early 1990s. Anyhow, the film sticks in your craw. It's a masterpiece on multiple levels. Although not a film I feel a need to re-watch. Based on the Robert Harris novel of the same name, the story is about an FBI agent who has to get help tracking a deadly serial killer by visiting the serial killer's psychiatrist and profiler. Only one small problem, the psychiatrist is deadlier than the serial killer. So deadly, he's kept in isolation, and forced to wear a face mask and be bound when transported. To obtain information from him, they engage in a game of quid pro quo, he tells her something, when she reveals something sacred or important to her.
Jodi Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and John Glenn play the leads. It's not a film you'll forget.
5. Aliens by James Cameron -- most people prefer Ridely Scott's Alien. But I've never been able to watch it. This one, I enjoyed more. It was a bit more fun and just as scary. Cameron manages to get you to care about all of the characters, and the final sequence of the battle of the Mom's, the Alien Queen vs. Ripley is tremendous.
6. Terminator by James Cameron -- Cameron found a new way of doing the slasher pick. He created a robotic monster who would not die and had him portrayed by Arnold Swazerneggar. This may well have been Arnold best role. It's a love story wrapped inside a slasher pic, inside a dystopian nightmare. Much like Clockwork Orange and Aliens, Cameron comments on the horrors of corporate endeavor and worse technology. But only as an aside.
7. Let the Right One In by Tomas Alfredson -- this is a Swedish film about a girl vampire who befriends a boy who is being bullied. It's not what you think. One of the more twisted and chilling vampire tales of recent years. Use of winter landscapes to build on the chilling effect are quite good, and there's a subtly to the story lacking in most vampire films.
8. The Vanishing by George Sultzer - the Franco/Dutch version, not the remake, 1988 -- a young man obsessively searches for his girlfriend after she disappears from a rest area without a trace. Possibly one of the scarier films that I've seen. Could not re-watch. Haunts me to this day.
9. The Lost Boys by Joel Schumacher -- this is my favorite vampire film, and I think it may have informed Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a quirky film, and more humorous than scary, featuring Keifer Sutherland as the leader of a bunch of punk vampires, who seduces Jason Patrick into joining them, via Jamie Gertz.
10. Blair Witch Project -- weird film, and in some respects more frightening than most. It is loosely based on a legend of the Blair Witch, and is about a trio of documentary film makers who decide to search out the legend...and well, run into more than they expected. More psychological horror than gore fest. There is no gore. Not really. It's shot in black and white, with a jarring hand-held camera. Gave people motion sickness at the time.
11. A Nightmare on Elm Street by Wes Craven -- this film scared me more than any of the other slasher pics, and I could not get rid of the images long afterwards. Best known for the scene where Johnny Depp is eaten by his bed and ground into hamburger meat. My brother saw it first, told me the story, and I ended up seeing it later in college. I really wish I hadn't. Couldn't sleep for days.
The ghostly presence of a serial killer enters the dreams of a group of teenagers and kills them in their dreams. Literally. Their dreams make him corporeal and able to kill him. He's not alive except inside their dreams.
Changed the slasher genre completely.
12.Andromeda Strain by Robert Wise based on the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, another minimalist effort, about a deadly virus that a disease team has mere moments to solve. It is so deadly it eats the flesh of whatever it is in contact with. Filmed in color this round, it's simple and thrilling. It may be more thriller than horror, although the disease was rather horrific. The disease is from space.
13. An American Werewolf in London by John Landon -- a hilarious and frightening werewolf film, that poked fun at itself. An man gets bitten by a werewolf in London and goes on a killing spree, killing his best friend first, then is visited by his friend's rotting corpse.
14. Shaun of the Dead by Edgar Wright -- this is a 2004 British horror comedy about zombies, before they did such things. It's about a working class bloke who kills a bunch of zombies when they invade.
15. Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg -- the first one. This film has two possibly three excellent sequences...the first one when the Tyrennus Rex breaks out of its cage during a power outtage, and the second one, when the valiciraptors hunt various characters trying to put the power back on. Good cast, and great special effects. Has a sense of wonder and fear, when science takes things a step too far.
16. Tremors by Ron Underwood stars Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon, hilarious film about a bunch of people in a small desert town plagued by giant monster earth worms.
17. Pan's Labrynth by Guillermo del Toro think Cupid and Psyche but far twistier and darker. "Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to the phantasmagorical cinema that defined such early fare as Cronos and The Devil's Backbone with this haunting fantasy-drama set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and detailing the strange journeys of an imaginative young girl who may be the mythical princess of an underground kingdom. Her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), recently remarried to sadistic army captain Vidal (Sergi Lpez) and soon to bear the cruel military man's child, shy young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is forced to entertain herself as her recently-formed family settles into their new home nestled deep in the Spanish countryside. As Ofelia's bed-ridden mother lies immobilized in anticipation of her forthcoming child and her high-ranking stepfather remains determined to fulfill the orders of General Francisco Franco to crush a nearby guerilla uprising, the young girl soon ventures into an elaborate stone labyrinth presided over by the mythical faun Pan (Doug Jones). Convinced by Pan that she is the lost princess of legend and that in order to return to her underground home she must complete a trio of life-threatening tasks, Ofelia sets out to reclaim her kingdom and return to her grieving father as Vidal's housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verd) and doctor (Alex Angulo) plot secretly on the surface to keep the revolution alive."
The visuals are amazing. See for the cinematography alone.
18. The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock -- this is based on a Daphne Du Maurie short story. I read the story in high school, the movie is far more disturbing. And possibly the most disturbing that I've seen regarding animals gone wild.
Hitchcock like Wise, employs minimalism. It starred Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, and Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleschett. The story is simple, birds mysteriously begin to attack the people of a small coastal town. But Hitchcock films it in such a way that builds dread and suspense slowly.
19. The Cabin in the Woods by Drew Goddard -- a twisted meta-narrative on the horror trope, which references and comments on every horror trope out there, while at the same time, poking fun at them and playing homage to them. It's hard to say if it is satire, parody, or just plain meta.
The story is simple -- a bunch of kids journey into the woods, but here's the twist...were they pushed into going? And why? And is the horror manufactured?
20. The Dead Zone by David Cronenberg -- starring Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen. A man awakens from a coma to discover he has a disturbing psychic detective ability...based on a Stephen King horror novel. It's actually my favorite of the Stephen King adaptations, with Stand By Me, a close second.
beer_good_foamy, well more or less. anoyo.]In no particular order, because I can't rank them and this is off the top of my head, so I am allowed to change my mind or can be persuaded. I tend to be largely agnostic about this sort of stuff. Also, there's a distinction between scarey horror, and horror, also between thriller and horror. Horror -- tends to be about things that are well, horrific, scare us, and often fantastical.
1. A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick -- I was going to put the Shining in this category but I honestly think A Clockwork Orange is better. Filmed earlier in Kubrick's career, it's tighter and less flamboyant, or grandiose. It also sticks with a solid moral theme. Kubrick isn't as angry here and there's an intimacy with the audience that his later work often lacks. Anthony Burgess, however, did not like this film any more than Stephen King liked Kubrick's take on The Shining. Burgess felt Kubrick did the American version of his book, which left out the final chapter -- which in effect has the lead character looking back on what he did, and moving past it. Without that final chapter, Burgess felt the story was pure allegory.
In both cases, I preferred the film version to the books. Which is odd, because it is usually the exact opposite. The Shining I felt was scarier in the film version than the book, and less simple or safe. It haunted me more. And A Clockwork Orange, was also scarier and more horrific in the film, it
also felt riskier and less safe. It certain continues to stay with me. Who can forget, Malcolm McDowell singing "Singing in the Rain" after he kills a bunch of people? The film felt like a satire and allegory all wrapped in one. Looking at pop culture as Kubrick often did and revealing the ugliness underneath. At the same time, the film is wickedly funny -- see the Singing in the Rain montage.
For those who haven't seen it, it's a psychological morality tale about the government attempting to rehabilitate criminals by modifying their behavior. Or rather attempting to modify it. Removing, in effect, their free will.
2. The Haunting of Hill House by Robert Wise -- Wise unlike many horror stylists of his generation is a minimalist. His films are stark, with few special effects, and relying purely on camera angles and the actors to convince the audience. In The Haunting of Hill House, a paranormal specialist and psychologist gathers a group of volunteers in an allegedly haunted house for a weekend to determine if it is haunted and the effects of it on the group. Typical set-up, but based on Shirley Jackson's horror novel of the same name, we watch as the characters slowly become unhinged, one in particular...
A psychological horror film caught within the confines of the Haunted House trope. Skip the remakes, and watch this old black and white film. It gave my younger brother nightmares for years. And my brother could handle horror films -- he used to go to them and come back and regale me with what happened, often warning me away from the more frightening or gorey ones. This is the only one that bothered him.
3. Jaws by Stephen Spielberg -- Spielberg first major film, and among his best. It's also a statement in minimalism. Spielberg had a problem when he filmed Jaws up in Martha's Vineyard -- the animatronic shark did not work. It wasn't scary, and it kept malfunctioning. It looked like a fake robotic shark. So, he had to film around it, choosing to show very little of the shark and taking a page from Wise, he focused on the characters. Because we fell in love with the characters, we became terrified for them. The film is best known for the final arc where we have three men in a small fishing boat, played by three amazing character actors, Robert Drefuss, Robert Shaw, and Roy Schnieder. They don't quite get along. And they have different takes on the shark. And they are hunting it in a shark hunting boat...but, it's not big enough. The tension slowly mounts...
This is one of those rare films that I stop to watch whenever it pops up on television. When I first saw it as a child in the 1970s, it scared me. Now, I appreciate every moment of it.
4. Silence of the Lambs by Jonnathan Demme -- Saw this one with my brother after we spent the day arguing over the color of paint. We were busy painting my parents basement at the time. This was way back in the early 1990s. Anyhow, the film sticks in your craw. It's a masterpiece on multiple levels. Although not a film I feel a need to re-watch. Based on the Robert Harris novel of the same name, the story is about an FBI agent who has to get help tracking a deadly serial killer by visiting the serial killer's psychiatrist and profiler. Only one small problem, the psychiatrist is deadlier than the serial killer. So deadly, he's kept in isolation, and forced to wear a face mask and be bound when transported. To obtain information from him, they engage in a game of quid pro quo, he tells her something, when she reveals something sacred or important to her.
Jodi Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and John Glenn play the leads. It's not a film you'll forget.
5. Aliens by James Cameron -- most people prefer Ridely Scott's Alien. But I've never been able to watch it. This one, I enjoyed more. It was a bit more fun and just as scary. Cameron manages to get you to care about all of the characters, and the final sequence of the battle of the Mom's, the Alien Queen vs. Ripley is tremendous.
6. Terminator by James Cameron -- Cameron found a new way of doing the slasher pick. He created a robotic monster who would not die and had him portrayed by Arnold Swazerneggar. This may well have been Arnold best role. It's a love story wrapped inside a slasher pic, inside a dystopian nightmare. Much like Clockwork Orange and Aliens, Cameron comments on the horrors of corporate endeavor and worse technology. But only as an aside.
7. Let the Right One In by Tomas Alfredson -- this is a Swedish film about a girl vampire who befriends a boy who is being bullied. It's not what you think. One of the more twisted and chilling vampire tales of recent years. Use of winter landscapes to build on the chilling effect are quite good, and there's a subtly to the story lacking in most vampire films.
8. The Vanishing by George Sultzer - the Franco/Dutch version, not the remake, 1988 -- a young man obsessively searches for his girlfriend after she disappears from a rest area without a trace. Possibly one of the scarier films that I've seen. Could not re-watch. Haunts me to this day.
9. The Lost Boys by Joel Schumacher -- this is my favorite vampire film, and I think it may have informed Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a quirky film, and more humorous than scary, featuring Keifer Sutherland as the leader of a bunch of punk vampires, who seduces Jason Patrick into joining them, via Jamie Gertz.
10. Blair Witch Project -- weird film, and in some respects more frightening than most. It is loosely based on a legend of the Blair Witch, and is about a trio of documentary film makers who decide to search out the legend...and well, run into more than they expected. More psychological horror than gore fest. There is no gore. Not really. It's shot in black and white, with a jarring hand-held camera. Gave people motion sickness at the time.
11. A Nightmare on Elm Street by Wes Craven -- this film scared me more than any of the other slasher pics, and I could not get rid of the images long afterwards. Best known for the scene where Johnny Depp is eaten by his bed and ground into hamburger meat. My brother saw it first, told me the story, and I ended up seeing it later in college. I really wish I hadn't. Couldn't sleep for days.
The ghostly presence of a serial killer enters the dreams of a group of teenagers and kills them in their dreams. Literally. Their dreams make him corporeal and able to kill him. He's not alive except inside their dreams.
Changed the slasher genre completely.
12.Andromeda Strain by Robert Wise based on the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, another minimalist effort, about a deadly virus that a disease team has mere moments to solve. It is so deadly it eats the flesh of whatever it is in contact with. Filmed in color this round, it's simple and thrilling. It may be more thriller than horror, although the disease was rather horrific. The disease is from space.
13. An American Werewolf in London by John Landon -- a hilarious and frightening werewolf film, that poked fun at itself. An man gets bitten by a werewolf in London and goes on a killing spree, killing his best friend first, then is visited by his friend's rotting corpse.
14. Shaun of the Dead by Edgar Wright -- this is a 2004 British horror comedy about zombies, before they did such things. It's about a working class bloke who kills a bunch of zombies when they invade.
15. Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg -- the first one. This film has two possibly three excellent sequences...the first one when the Tyrennus Rex breaks out of its cage during a power outtage, and the second one, when the valiciraptors hunt various characters trying to put the power back on. Good cast, and great special effects. Has a sense of wonder and fear, when science takes things a step too far.
16. Tremors by Ron Underwood stars Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon, hilarious film about a bunch of people in a small desert town plagued by giant monster earth worms.
17. Pan's Labrynth by Guillermo del Toro think Cupid and Psyche but far twistier and darker. "Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to the phantasmagorical cinema that defined such early fare as Cronos and The Devil's Backbone with this haunting fantasy-drama set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and detailing the strange journeys of an imaginative young girl who may be the mythical princess of an underground kingdom. Her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), recently remarried to sadistic army captain Vidal (Sergi Lpez) and soon to bear the cruel military man's child, shy young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is forced to entertain herself as her recently-formed family settles into their new home nestled deep in the Spanish countryside. As Ofelia's bed-ridden mother lies immobilized in anticipation of her forthcoming child and her high-ranking stepfather remains determined to fulfill the orders of General Francisco Franco to crush a nearby guerilla uprising, the young girl soon ventures into an elaborate stone labyrinth presided over by the mythical faun Pan (Doug Jones). Convinced by Pan that she is the lost princess of legend and that in order to return to her underground home she must complete a trio of life-threatening tasks, Ofelia sets out to reclaim her kingdom and return to her grieving father as Vidal's housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verd) and doctor (Alex Angulo) plot secretly on the surface to keep the revolution alive."
The visuals are amazing. See for the cinematography alone.
18. The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock -- this is based on a Daphne Du Maurie short story. I read the story in high school, the movie is far more disturbing. And possibly the most disturbing that I've seen regarding animals gone wild.
Hitchcock like Wise, employs minimalism. It starred Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, and Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleschett. The story is simple, birds mysteriously begin to attack the people of a small coastal town. But Hitchcock films it in such a way that builds dread and suspense slowly.
19. The Cabin in the Woods by Drew Goddard -- a twisted meta-narrative on the horror trope, which references and comments on every horror trope out there, while at the same time, poking fun at them and playing homage to them. It's hard to say if it is satire, parody, or just plain meta.
The story is simple -- a bunch of kids journey into the woods, but here's the twist...were they pushed into going? And why? And is the horror manufactured?
20. The Dead Zone by David Cronenberg -- starring Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen. A man awakens from a coma to discover he has a disturbing psychic detective ability...based on a Stephen King horror novel. It's actually my favorite of the Stephen King adaptations, with Stand By Me, a close second.