It may be bias, but I'd be surprised to see Salem's Lot place this high. It just isn't that good.
― carl agatha, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:31 (twelve years ago) link
I am starting to worry that some of my more beloved but non-canonical stuff is not gonna make it - God Told Me To, Basket Case, Society
― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
yeah Salem's Lot is iffy since a lot of folks probably discounted it due to it's tv status, too
― Darin, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
lol I wouldn't hold out too much hope for Basket Case!
― Darin, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
If I don't see Poltergeist …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtoELWWEoTk
― it was a dark and stormy genitals. (Phil D.), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
Awww Basket Case. That probably won't place but I mourn its absence with you.
― carl agatha, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
At this point, I guess Motel Hell isn't going to place.
:(
(I am dispirited at the lack of confidence in Motel Hell, here - not suggesting it is out of the running, by any means..)
― "horror shirt" (Pillbox), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
But who will mourn The Human Centipede with me? ;_;;_;;_;
― carl agatha, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
the shining is going to be too high goddammit
― the acquisition and practice of music is unfavourable to the health of (abanana), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 11:25 PM (6 minutes ago)
how is this not one of the greatest horror films of all time? Are you arguing genre?
― kraudive, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:35 (twelve years ago) link
I hadn't really considered that the sci-fi thing might compromise votes for Alien and The Thing (don't think Videodrome will make it, but I've already been wrong about approximately 57 things wrt these results). They might wind up towards the bottom of the 25 as a result, but I'm confident they'll show up.
― Quiet Desperation, LLC (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:36 (twelve years ago) link
Motel Hell is allright but I didn't vote for it, a bit too slow in places. Harvest sequences are amazing though.
― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:37 (twelve years ago) link
I don't know, ppl are exhibiting some pretty high class taste so far in these results. But Motel Hell is a scrappy, can-do movie so maybe! Just maybe!
There's got to be love for a guy wearing a pig head and having a chainsaw fight, right?
― carl agatha, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:37 (twelve years ago) link
You have a co-God Told Me To voter in me, Shakey, but I don't think it has a chance in hell at this point.
― Quiet Desperation, LLC (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:38 (twelve years ago) link
best thing abt Motel Hell imo is the VHS cover art:
http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/4074/19802020motel20hell20vh.jpg
― "horror shirt" (Pillbox), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:38 (twelve years ago) link
Carl, I would not have minded Human Centipede at, say, #89. So I'm basically with you.
― The Thnig, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:40 (twelve years ago) link
I thought The Thing and The Exorcist would be fighting for the top spot and that the former would win.
― kraudive, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:42 (twelve years ago) link
unless there's a Criterion Collection version of Motel Hell I'm unaware of, it prob won't place :(
xp
― Darin, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:42 (twelve years ago) link
― kraudive, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 7:35 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
shining is not very scary and seems to come at horror from the wrong direction -- why's it so sterile and expensive-looking?
― the acquisition and practice of music is unfavourable to the health of (abanana), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:42 (twelve years ago) link
As much as I'm vibin' on these poll results, I'd really like to see the results of a parallel low-class horror movie poll.
― Quiet Desperation, LLC (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:43 (twelve years ago) link
Not telling anybody what to do but man I hate the part of the poll where everyone starts speculating on the top results, takes all the fun out of the rollout
― O_o-O_0-o_O (jjjusten), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:45 (twelve years ago) link
Garbage-y stuff I'm sad won't be showing up here: Brain Damage, Pieces, Cathy's Curse, God Told Me To (hell, any Larry Cohen), the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels.
― Quiet Desperation, LLC (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:46 (twelve years ago) link
Basket Case is on my ballot, Shakey, so keep hope alive.
― it was a dark and stormy genitals. (Phil D.), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:47 (twelve years ago) link
The Shining was pretty f. scary I reckon, the scenes in the shower, the twins, REDRUM. It gets to me.
Sterile? Hmm, I really don't get that. The snow and hotel are perfect. This is even before we speak of JN's performance.
― kraudive, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
I do agree that results so far have been, for lack of a better term, largely "high class". Not sure if that's a good thing or not.
― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
I would've killed a man to get Tourist Trap on this poll.
― The Thnig, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:49 (twelve years ago) link
xp yeah sorry - I agree best not to talk about films before they come.
It was only that I came to the thread and realised I hadn't voted when DNL came too early.
― kraudive, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:50 (twelve years ago) link
Would 'low-class' mean a lot more US-centric?
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:51 (twelve years ago) link
not really - see giallo and asian horror
― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:52 (twelve years ago) link
Shame that Roeg had to go and and Shyamalan the ending.
feh, ending isn't the best thing about the movie, but it's great!
― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:55 (twelve years ago) link
hey guys i basically lost the last two days because of the need to pay my rent. did i miss anything?
― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:55 (twelve years ago) link
everybody keeps forgetting about it's alive, obvious top 5 lock
― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
I think I've probably disagreed with you before on this jjj - I really like the situation where you've got 11 films competing for 10 spaces, and each entry ratchets it up further as to which one is going home with nothing (eg Lethal Weapon in the action poll). I'd have thought the horror poll would be best suited to this :)
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:57 (twelve years ago) link
― O_o-O_0-o_O (jjjusten), Mittwoch, 23. Mai 2012 00:45 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Especially in a genre where it's all about suspense!
Going through the upper ranks of my own list and mostly only having stuff left that either will not place anymore or classics that inevitably will occur, there is one single dark horse left in the race for which I will be really pleased to see it included at this point. It even was referenced upthread, by a rather spoilerish picture.
― the europan nikon is here (grauschleier), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 22:58 (twelve years ago) link
best thing abt Motel Hell imo is the VHS cover art
motel hell gots a number of best things about it:
head feeding systempig maskchainsaw duelcheerful redneck murder couple"meat's meat, and a man's gotta eat"
― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:02 (twelve years ago) link
some damn scary shit very early on in The Shining but almost ALL the scary bits are in the opening 25 minutes (Danny screaming silently, the first sight of the girls, the blood emptying out of the elevator) after that it loses a lot of the scare factor and goes for thriller stuff and gags and walruses blowing old men in tuxedoes.
― piscesx, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:06 (twelve years ago) link
Blown By a Walrus: The Stanley Kubrick Story
― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:09 (twelve years ago) link
also, Motel Hell was temporarily the nom-de-ILX for Alex in NYC.
― Boris Kutyurkokhov (Eisbaer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:12 (twelve years ago) link
re: The Shining - I was just on a Shining thread a few weeks ago and marveled at this post by difficult listening hour:
this movie is such a total goddamn masterpiece. for some unfathomable reason my parents let me see it when i was like 11, when yes i was wimpy enough to be seriously creeped out by the weird little girls but more importantly 11 enough to be bone-level shaken by STOP SWINGING THE BAT. GIVE ME THE BAT, WENDY. and by all the abusive-father fear in general (nb my father was upstanding but sometimes there were years my parents fought a lot and probably any kid who's ever seen his dad yell at his mom can queasily jive w/ this angle of the shining).
when i loved it as a kid/teenager it was for the situation, right, the ISOLATION and wendy's POWERLESSNESS and UNCERTAINTY -- it's neat how, even though wendy is an audience surrogate in the sense that she's the one who's probably subjected to the most terror throughout (the kid is big too sure but wendy has a whole layer of maternal fear for him as well as for herself, and plus she gets satanically yelled at by jack nicholson, reads his book, etc.) she's the only one in this haunted house movie who doesn't see any ghosts until the last ten minutes. i remember scoffing at the school that claims native-american-genocide overtones, but those are really there, honestly. and not just in secret-code clues in the pantry (lolest thing i noticed re: the pantry on this viewing was the little stack of snacks jack puts together after he's been locked in there, yelled GO CHECK IT OUT! HEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHE, etc.,: packet of oreos and some peanut butter. they should have put him in the meat locker scatman crothers demonstrates at the beginning and had him just tear into a raw ham.) jack's a blue-collar white guy with cultured aspirations who's feeling humiliated economically (SHOVELING OUT DRIVEWAYS, WORK IN A CAR WASH -- ANY OF THAT APPEAL TO YOU? -- this important+telling line comes right after probably the pinnacle of the OTT Jack LOLs, which is when he says IT IS JUST SO TYPICAL OF YOU TO START THIS UP NOW... JUST WHEN I AM REALLY IN TO MY WORK), and furthermore resents that what he at least hopes was an accident with his son's arm a few years ago has made it necessary for him to stop drinking and be really contrite and feel further unmanned, and is seduced on one level by an Evil Supernatural Power, in the form of a bunch of well-dressed whites having a perpetual power-drenched cocktail party in a luxury hotel built on a conquered graveyard (nice touch: "i believe they actually had to fend off a few indian attacks while they were building it!"); and on another level just by the ability, up there in the snow, to really show his family who's boss. he gets drunk on this nasty fantasy of privilege that's built on bones, and when the hotel needs to spur him on it suggests to him that he's not Man enough to do his job and that his son feels safer around an n-word than around his father. all that stuff's there even tho it's secondary; it's good reinforcement around the domestic psychodrama.
<3 the performances across the board, too. duvall is a total martyr; she spends the entire second half of the movie working in discrete, successive shades of panic. (she turns out to be super competent and nervy, but how sad is the part where she's had the presence of mind to bring the baseball bat downstairs but is so scared she can't remember what she wants to talk to her husband about?) jack reverts to his roger corman days, but without restraint; it's hilarious. (although morbz otm upthread singling out for warmth/depth the scene where he wakes from his nightmare, the last time in the movie he's halfway lucid.) finally, scatman crothers gets "larry, just between you and me, we got a very serious problem with the people taking care of the place. they turned out to be completely unreliable assholes."
― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:08 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Darin, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:13 (twelve years ago) link
Island of the Alive very nearly made it onto my ballot.
― Quiet Desperation, LLC (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:14 (twelve years ago) link
thanks for that DLH post, darin, great read
― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:18 (twelve years ago) link
man i would so love it if Salem's Lot beats all the other King adaptations. it damn well deserves to IMHO.
― piscesx, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:18 (twelve years ago) link
i think you're forgetting about a little movie called...maximum overdrive
― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:19 (twelve years ago) link
crikey i'd never even heard of that.
― piscesx, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:22 (twelve years ago) link
it wasn't a walrus, it was a bear!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmOoekbK6YI
― Boris Kutyurkokhov (Eisbaer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:22 (twelve years ago) link
also still kinda secretly hoping rawhead rex places ahead of candyman.
― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:23 (twelve years ago) link
do you know why i said walrus? it's because the man in the mask is the spitting image of basically all 4 masks from The Beatles I Am The Walrus video mixed together.
i mean.. check it out
http://www.indiewire.com/static/dims4/INDIEWIRE/1a94009/4102462740/thumbnail/485x341%3E/http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/0f/a21ae0698e11e19987123138165f92/file/magical-mystery-tour-03092012.jpg
http://livingwithanerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/the-shining-stanley-kubrick-jack-nicholson-bear-suit.jpg
― piscesx, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:26 (twelve years ago) link
somebody please shop them over the guy's lap
― Chris S, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:31 (twelve years ago) link
Discussion/debate will no doubt arrive in full force later, but the biggest problem I have with "The Shining" is similar to one of the many problems I had with "Black Swan:" if you're making a movie about someone going nuts, it doesn't help the narrative terribly to have them more or less nuts from scene one and nuttier from there on out. You need a before to make the after more effective, imo.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
But yeah, pretty much everything not with Nicholson in it is pretty tense/spooky.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:40 (twelve years ago) link
as a kid i didn't see jack as nuts-from-frame-one but then my dad was a lunatic asshole so those parts were some italian neorealism shit
― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 23:43 (twelve years ago) link