The Haunt Of Fear: ILX Top 100 HORROR Movies Poll Results Thread

stop doing that immediately

i like a lot of things about jaws, but it's never been a favorite. apostasy, i know.

an american werewolf in london, otoh, i love to death. watched it a billion times during my teen years, still quote lines all the time. griffin dunne is so great as the progressively rotting jack.

i think that you can stream deep red on Netflix, if yer that curious.

Yes you can.

it's horror you can believe in!

didn't vote for eyes without a face, though i should have. it's a bit slow, but the imagery is unforgettable. glad you all too up the slack.

Deep Red is my favorite Argento! Glad to see it up here.

cronenberg seems to cast leads who transmit a quality of alienation and emotional disengagement. he also situates them in physical environments that are un-home-like and inhospitable: dull color schemes, unpleasant dwellings, drab commercial and industrial spaces, aggressively sharp modernist offices to denote wealth and status. he pays a lot of attention to the built environment in these films, but isn't always trying to make it look slick and inviting. this may simply be a product of a careless eye, but i like the weird, industrial-film texture. the brood is his most satisfying film in this regard. basically ever shot documents some weird but distinctive place in which you wouldn't really want to spend any time.

he's also documenting the fallout of midcentury modernism's optimism about the extent to which human society and behavior might be happily mechanized. in his view, the brutalist apartment block might well be a hive, but it's not necessarily a happy and harmonious one. this gives the mechanical, off-kilter quality of his films some real thematic bite.

I really like this observation, and I think it's partly why he was the inevitable choice to adapt J.G. Ballard, because, well, he kinda IS J.G. Ballard, only on film.

xp ok you're right, stopped.

But if you REALLY want to be haunted forever, watch Franju's short "Blood of the Beasts" that is on the Eyes Criterion DVD. Warning: it's about a Paris slaughterhouse and cannot be unseen.

yeah, I got about two minutes into this

i like a lot of things about jaws, but it's never been a favorite. apostasy, i know.

― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Monday, May 21, 2012 12:32 PM (2 minutes ago)

we can be apostates together!

i'm really spoiling some of these films for myself by going to You Tube and watching the scenes that folk are saying are the scariest in each.

Shameful admission: I YouTubed the ending of Sleepaway Camp after all the commentary. I figure it's not anything I'll ever watch anyway.

deep red is stunning, maybe the most cinematically accomplished of argento's films, all the more impressive in that it avoids the fantastical lighting and set design he's famous for.

Argento's real miss and miss for me

all argento movies just blur together for me, i am engaged when watching them, i like them, but after they're over ... they just don't really stick with me, except for some vague ideas about eye makeup.

I met Cronenberg once & asked him why he tended to cast bug-eyed actors in his movies (Stephen Lack, Jeff Goldblum, a couple more I can't remember) & his response was just that "big eyes look good on film." He went on to talk about how his own beady eyes looked lackluster on film. (See Nightbreed, I guess.)

http://www.latimes.com/includes/projects/hollywood/portraits/don_knotts.jpg

Damn--just wasn't enough time.

wasn't there something recently about how Goldblum's very big head made him a perfect movie star? on ILX i think. normal heads look tiny.

Goddamn does Deep Red ever bore me to tears.

except for some vague ideas about eye makeup

lol

Goddamn does Deep Red ever bore me to tears.

it's funny how personal boredom is. martyrs bored me to tears, but deep red is wall-to-wall with shots i'd happily watch for ten minutes.

okay, eye makeup and lingerie -- argento movies are like the "marie antoinette" of horror -- good soundtracks and clothes

perfectly colorful too!

true - pretty sure i got some great home decor ideas from argento movies

okay, eye makeup and lingerie -- argento movies are like the "marie antoinette" of horror -- good soundtracks and clothes

― sarahell, Monday, May 21, 2012 1:00 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

perfectly colorful too!

― game of crones (La Lechera), Monday, May 21, 2012 1:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sarahell's apartment:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WpmVnJ42314/TJaEJLavsBI/AAAAAAAACGo/Br5wJUhBX0I/s1600/suspiria_dragon04.JPG

Geez, we should all be so fortunate! The house in Psychomania remains one of the homes of my dreams, but Argento Homes TM is perfectly compatible with my preferences in home decor.

"You know who invented the Internet? Al GORE!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7098/7242643922_b4cb3de7b4_o.jpg

45. PULSE [aka 回路]
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2001
(375 points, 13 votes, 1 first-place vote)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse is the one great horror film I've seen in the last ten years. (no blood that I can recall, but totally unnerving)
― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 4, 2010 12:03 PM (2 years ago)

Pulse blew me away. I am all about glacially paced post apocalpytica, and with ghosts.
― toastmodernist, Tuesday, February 2, 2010 2:07 PM (2 years ago)

ok now that i am temp not posting from iphone, i wanted to expand on my sleepaway camp is dark as it gets theme. heres a post from a thread about most important endings that kind of sums it up for me:

it also works because the ending is so, so dark that it makes you kind of go back over the rest of the movie and realize that it is just as dark, hidden under the tropes of a teen slasher camp movie. i mean, the whole movie is about children killing other children, adults joking around about wanting to sleep with children, and killing adults trying to sleep with children, but its done in this bizarre low budget campy almost silly tone.

which also ties into the whole "never get greenlit in a million years" thing stevie quoted.

pulse is great, and i should have probably voted for it

agree w all this, but don't see it as a fault. looks great + sounds great = good enough for me.

oh, i don't see it as a fault either! it's just that there were at least 50 other horror movies that did more for me, so i didn't vote for any argento.

agree w all this, but don't see it as a fault. looks great + sounds great = good enough for me.

yea, that's why remaking suspiria seems like such a dead end to me. the plot barely makes sense and its positive qualities (music, set design, use of color, etc. ) are all very tied to the people working on that production and time in which it was made. odds are we get something that looks like a teal & orange razor commercial.

but I guess every horror movie needs a remake or twelve now. I should stop getting worked up about it already.

and one of those 50+ movies that did more for me was The Brood. In their colorful puffy jackets, they reminded me of evil teletubbies, which made it even more awesome!

Of the (relatively, for an old guy) newer films I don't know, Pulse is the first one that's really caught my attention; just watched the trailer and it looks fantastic.

"Gets rid of RING around the collar ... by getting rid of your COLLARBONE!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7095/7242856284_8cb5055658_o.jpg

44. RINGU [aka リング]
Hideo Nakata, Japan, 1998
(382 points, 12 votes)

The Ring

the scene in Pulse of the girl approaching in that uncannily slow/off way was probably one of the last scenes to effectively freak me out

The fuck is Jaws doing that low?

Eyes Without a Face total precursor to Human Centipede.

still haven't seen any of the japanese ringu/ju-on films. which ones are worth it?

None of them, unless you like shadowy figures lurking in the shadows and cursed inanimate objects.

"This is it, Freddy! Your big break in THIS COUNTDOWN! Welcome to SLOT 43, BITCH!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7228/7242856552_c17ee9c640_o.jpg

43. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
Wes Craven, USA, 1984
(384 points, 16 votes, 1 first-place vote)

I saw nightmare on elm street in the theaters in 1984 and yeah, it was pretty scary. particularly the early moments when you're not sure whether the characters are awake or dreaming. the classroom scene was memorably disorienting and, yes, surreal. years of sequels, copycats, and the cultural ubiquity of freddy have dulled the impact but at the time it was pretty freaky. the thought that you couldn't escape the killer, shoot him, call the cops, whatever, the lack of control or agency contributed to the freakishness of it. trying to stay awake to stay alive? that grounded the horror in an inevitable biological process, similar to how rosemary's baby derived its horror from an impending birth. I'd say ANOES and the evil dead were the only films I saw that year that really scared me. ANOES gets a bit formulaic in the last act but it was a pretty innovative concept, and the idea that it wasn't scary at the time is a laughable one.
I saw it again in the past 5 years or so and was surprised by how brutal the freddy character is, before he became a silly icon. freddy isn't treated like a punchline machine, he's a nasty unpleasant child murderer and he acts like one.
― (e_3) (Edward III), Wednesday, July 14, 2010 8:48 PM (1 year ago)

surprise nightmare on elm street movies

Two more to reveal today, but it's going to have to wait a couple hours.

nice screen cap there

Pulse!

still haven't seen any of the japanese ringu/ju-on films. which ones are worth it?

I didn't vote for any of them, but I generally appreciate the sensibilities on display. If you are curious, I would prob suggest just starting w/ the first of either & going from there. Both series are remarkably consistent (some might say one-trick).

don't want to derail, but can anyone recommend some good books/essays/articles on J-horror? I've read a few things on the animistic influences, and on some of the folk origins of the female ghost, but I'm also kinda interested in the J-horror (and sometimes Japanese horror comic) take on the Internet, digital media, video, people disappearing (often into media or through media), etc. Japanese horror tends to approach these ideas in much more interesting (and hard to read) ways than American horror does

Ringu screencap is all time. As discussed on the nominations thread, Ringu didn't do much for me, but that screencap is chilling.

This is so right on, too: "the thought that you couldn't escape the killer, shoot him, call the cops, whatever, the lack of control or agency contributed to the freakishness of it. trying to stay awake to stay alive?" That's what affected me the most when I first saw it.

Also the one fingerknife scraping against the wall when he's walking down the dark alley, and oh god, the hand in the bathtub...

Sorry, that's some bad writing there. Second bit is about Nightmare on Elm Street.

Also: long-armed Freddy in the alley.

A few years back I watched all 7 movies in the franchise (I don't count Freddy vs. Jason or the remake in this group), and I was surprised by the overall quality of the films, even with the increasing silliness of Freddy. Basically, I think they kept on getting lucky with directors with surrealist bents. Part 4: Dream Master and Freddy's Dead are the weakest, but even those have moments. 2: Freddy's Revenge and 5: Dream Child are both underrated.

i'm one of the few who thinks that pulse is a real disappointment relative to cure. the spooky parts work like gangbusters, the photography and color coding are often great, but the incoherent plotting and aggressive "DO YOU SEE?" foregrounding of subtext really get on my nerves.

as i say this, i realize how similar my complaints are to the missing-the-point criticisms typically lobbed at argento, and how much the film's strengths resemble his (stylization, composition, creepiness).