Best Horror Movie of All Time
- Thread starter FSUTribe76
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scared the hell out of me. My parents took me to see it at 8 years old. Thanks parents.
I kind of agree with this. If a movie features an Earthquake 20% more powerful than any in history, I still wouldn't call it a horror movie, just because it's not realistic.
By this definition make Jurassic Park would be horror movie...I can see it, but it's too broad for these purposes I think.
On a side note, on Saturday my daughter's college had a quadruple feature...Psycho, The Exorcist, The Shining, and Poltergeist. Not a bad way to spend the day.
Poltergeist scared the hell out of me as a kid, but I wouldn't really put it in that company.
Poltergeist scared the hell out of me as a kid, but I wouldn't really put it in that company.
The Exorcist was not my idea of a scary movie. Now Alien, that was a scary movie!
Steven Spielberg is not a traditional horror director in that he doesn't 100% adhere to the classic stereotypical formula of show horrific monster/maniac/disease/death for 80 minutes then have some type of cathartic event where the good guy wins, monsters are defeated, disease is cured or sluts are killed but good girl survives (other than Duel). But he does a LOT of family inserted into horrific situation movies where the horror is juxtaposed against the families strengths or weaknesses and that's the main reason he was drawn to Jaws (the Peter Benchley book is more explicit that it's about a family about to tear itself apart in divorce with the wife sleeping with Hooper). Jaws, Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and War of the Worlds, are all movies that are straight forward horror movies (although Close Encounters has a positive end I suppose) wrapped around some type of family drama. He takes delight in putting families in horrific settings and even ET started life as a horror film called Night Skies about five aliens mutilating cattle, killing people and terrorizing one family where one of the aliens ends up befriending the autistic young son because he is himself beat up by the other aliens and "Buddy" saves the family but ends up himself stranded and tortured by the U.S. government. So while Jaws is definitely a hybrid film and Spielberg himself likes to say it is primarily about family, it's still a horror movie just wrapped around a family soap just like Poltergeist and War of the Worlds.
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Jaws & The Exorcist, out of the list. I won't get into the debate, but I consider Jaws Horror.
Guilty pleasure: Nightmare on Elm Street.
I don't want to steal the thread, but some of the newer Horror flicks I really love:
You're Next
The House of the Devil
It Follows
The Babadook
Guilty pleasure: Nightmare on Elm Street.
I don't want to steal the thread, but some of the newer Horror flicks I really love:
You're Next
The House of the Devil
It Follows
The Babadook
Am I alone in really liking the Conjuring? Also liked the Ring and the original Saw. My only issue with Saw was the lead actor...couldn't take the Man in Tights seriously. Replace him with Brad Pitts 7even character and put Ed Norton across from him chained to that bathtub and its the best horror movie of all time, IMO.
My favorite entire Franchise is the 8 Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I wouldn't really call them scary, I just found compelling the idea of your subjective reality turning into a dream and a predator stalking you there.
Aliens (#2) probably scared me the most, if you want to use that word. I just thought it was very tense. But nothing is really tense if I'm not immersed in the theatre experience....sitting in the dark with total attention on the movie.
Aliens (#2) probably scared me the most, if you want to use that word. I just thought it was very tense. But nothing is really tense if I'm not immersed in the theatre experience....sitting in the dark with total attention on the movie.
The Conjuring was pretty fun. I forgot all about The Ring. I love that movie. Picked up the sequel at a flea market. As per the norm it was pretty forgettable.
Exorcist without a doubt. I'll add the original The Evil Dead as well.
Saw that movie in Miami when I was six. It was a family beach weekend. Was scared to go in the water for a loooong time. Only movie to have an effect on me.
I love horror movies but i am not afraid of old houses, birds, big dogs, old cars, weird children, dark hospital corridors, fog, bad dreams, etc.
Evil Dead isn't horror. Horror comedy fo sho but not horror. The budget made it campy and Rami kicked it up a notch with part 2.
Well if you're a big fan of the Evil Dead just be aware that Starz is doing a marathon of the trilogy on October 30th which goes straight into the new Ash Vs Evil Dead series starring Bruce Campbell on the 31st.
Pass and pass on Audition as well. If it's pure exploitation you want then you have to go Italian with the Fulcio zombie movies plus Cannibal Holocaust and the whole Italian Amazonian cannibal subgenre. No one has done horrific gore like the Italians.
If you haven't seen Ringu or Ju-On which was made into the grudge you should check out the originals.
The Exorcist did a number on me. Saw it in the theaters when I was like 11-12...I think there was a re-release that was showing in Tally back in the day. My older brother decided to hang out with his girlfriend afterwards so I got to walk home alone...I remember I ended up walking through some woods near Godby Highschool as the night turned foggier by the minute. I think it was on the west edge of Ocala road...
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Yeah, I understand you can define "horror movie" as broadly or as narrowly if you want. All those fit under broad definitions of horror movies. But I still don't think of them (except Poltergeist) when I think of them as part of the horror genre.
But hey, they bottom line is that Jaws scared a lot of people, so that's a good enough qualifier. Maybe any movie that scares people is a horror movie, that's fine.
In a broader definition that includes Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Silence of the Lambs, etc, I would absolutely put Misery in that category. And I would also put another one classic right near the top of the list:
For anyone that isn't turned off by older or black and white movies, do yourself a favor and check out Night of the Hunter.
Basically every horror flick in the 70's/80's was campy. Evil Dead was/is a horror flick in my opinion.
This coming from the guy who added: Chucky, AW in London, and Shaun of the Dead. Love all those movies but they are the definition of Horror comedy.
I hadn't really thought of most of those as horror either. Thinking about it, I'd go with Jaws as horror, since the shark's behavior was practically supernatural. But War of the Worlds for me was too true to the HG Wells novel too be anything but Sci-Fi, just very dark sci-fi.
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Bruce Campbell - one of the more underrated actors of our generation.
Chucky is classic slasher flick.
I added Shaun of the Dead and American Werewolf in London w/ the specific caveat of being (dark) comedy horror greats and I should have also added the entire Evil Dead trilogy.
Camp isn't quite comedy. Evil Dead had comedy kicked up to a crazy level (zooming in and out, Ash's facial expressions, the demons and their antics) and camp b/c of the budget restrictions Rami encountered (filmed at a family/friend's cabin, hired family and friends).
Chucky and Freddy dropping one liners isn't camp, seeing wires hanging from a floating demon who makes sexual jesters is.
The original of The Haunting was very scary. Based on a Shirley Jackson story, it was a psychological thriller. I saw it as a kid and the theater would turn the air conditioner way down prior to the "cold spot" moments in the movie. They timed it just right a few times and the result was you would start to get this premonitory coldness right before the characters in the movie experienced it. It was pretty neat the way they did. Jackson also wrote "The Lottery" one of the most anthologized short stories ever.
From a distance that Pic looked ok. I'm so sorry I looked up what it was about.......right when I was thinking about lunch too.
Chose Halloween as my favorite, something about the original I really like. Like it could actually happen, up until he gets shot 10 times, then falls off the balcony and gets up. I think the best on that list is The Exorcist followed by The Shinning.
For the guy that said Event Horizon, that movie did a number on me as well. Could have been due to the shrooms, but stayed with me for a while. Still get freaked out 20 years later watching it
For the guy that said Event Horizon, that movie did a number on me as well. Could have been due to the shrooms, but stayed with me for a while. Still get freaked out 20 years later watching it
I guess the bigger question now is, which movie are you picking for Halloween night? The wife and I haven't decided yet and are hoping we don't have to settle for the Poltergeist remake.
Going to watch The Babadook tonight. Anyone else seen it?
Going to watch The Babadook tonight. Anyone else seen it?
There was a movie in the 70's called "The Town that Dreaded Sundown" that I also found very scary when I was a kid.
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I haven't been babadook, but it's on Netflix and just added it to my queue.
The only thing definitively my wife and I will be watching is both the original Rocky Horror and the BBCs 40th anniversary gala live performance of Rocky Horror starring Stephen Fry (set up to record on Oct 25th).
Other than that, I imagine we'll watch the original Halloween and I've got some stuff saved up on my DVR from the past month including Beetlejuice, Pet Sematary, Dawn of the Dead remake, Thirteen Ghosts, Re-Animator, and the 50's War of the Worlds plus I'm recording the Evil Dead marathon on Starz. So I've got a lot of tv watching to do.
The good news is that I'll already have my "partying" done by actual Halloween as I've already gone to HHN at Universal, went to two separate costume parties down in Tampa and on the 30th I'm going to the Creature Ball at Wakulla and then heading over to a get together hosted by some friends of my wife. So Halloween day, I'm just planning on watching some boob tube.
I haven't been babadook, but it's on Netflix and just added it to my queue.
The only thing definitively my wife and I will be watching is both the original Rocky Horror and the BBCs 40th anniversary gala live performance of Rocky Horror starring Stephen Fry (set up to record on Oct 25th).
Other than that, I imagine we'll watch the original Halloween and I've got some stuff saved up on my DVR from the past month including Beetlejuice, Pet Sematary, Dawn of the Dead remake, Thirteen Ghosts, Re-Animator, and the 50's War of the Worlds plus I'm recording the Evil Dead marathon on Starz. So I've got a lot of tv watching to do.
The good news is that I'll already have my "partying" done by actual Halloween as I've already gone to HHN at Universal, went to two separate costume parties down in Tampa and on the 30th I'm going to the Creature Ball at Wakulla and then heading over to a get together hosted by some friends of my wife. So Halloween day, I'm just planning on watching some boob tube.
Had the same experience...caught bits and pieces when I wasn't supposed to when my mother was watching it on HBO and I wasn't supposed to be in the room. Found the brief snippets terrifying enough to stay with me for a long time.
So a month or so ago I decided to go ahead and watch it...woof. The acting is bad, there's some really poorly timed and executed attempts at humor...just comes off very cheesy. That said, it's a reasonably faithful (compared to most "Based on..." horror) retelling of a true story, and the visuals around the killer's appearance are still pretty striking. I didn't think it held up very well at all, but that said I think it's pretty positively viewed by critics overall, so maybe I'm not seeing some of what they appreciate. Definitely doesn't live up to what I would have considered the movie that most terrified me (without actually seeing it) as a child.
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Seen the Babadook. It's pretty well made, but it didn't quite live up to the hype for me. Probably would have liked it more if I hadn't heard so much praise about it. It's just fine.
It's more psychologically scary than really scary, and it's a little repetitive as it goes. It's worth seeing, especially if you have kids. If you don't have kids, not sure how well it will play, as the psychological part is really tuned to tap into some insecurities about parenting and parental love.
Stuff can really get to us when we are kids that seems absolutely silly when we are older. More than one kid was terrified by the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.
My mother took my older brother and myself (age 8 at the time) to see It's Alive at the theater not a great idea mind you. I was afraid to get in our van after the movie and remember having dreams for a week or two of that baby getting me in the middle of the night. I tried watching it again about 15 years ago and it was just awful. Thinking about this my son is 9 at the moment and I don't think we have freaked him out yet with a movie. I need to act quickly to continue the tradition.
