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

while I will amiably bend like the reed whatever the outcome, I wouldn't mind the top 20 being a little less chin-stroky.

"Coincidentally, I EAT GLASS for the Lord!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7235/7255248470_2ff4c904c2_o.jpg

21. BRAINDEAD [aka DEAD ALIVE]
Peter Jackson, New Zealand, 1992
(598 points, 19 votes)

I just watched Braindead for the first time in years and I want to change my vote to that.
― onimo, Saturday, June 23, 2007 8:07 PM (4 years ago)

I like it when matey shoots a huge fuck-off hole in a zombie, sticks his shotgun through the hole, then cheerfully shoots other zombies through it, using the first zombie as a shield.
― chap, Saturday, June 23, 2007 8:37 PM (4 years ago)

if you want dead alive just watch fucking dead alive, geez
― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, October 7, 2009 4:26 PM (2 years ago)

xxxp Speaking of which one day we need to do a poll of the " . . . In Space!" horror sequels. Critters vs. Jason vs. Hellraiser vs. Leprechaun vs. ?

!!!! YAYYYYY BRAINDEAD

now that's more like it

ha, I just looked at my ballot and the highest-placing non-chinstroky movie is... Shaun of the Dead

What, Eric, no picture of the bloody custard available?

god I love Braindead so much. Like in a 'why don't you marry it' way

urgh

I am probably never going to see that movie, no matter how hilarious people say it is

Wow, no first place votes! I first watched this with my friend Aaron, who is a horror FREAK, on a DVD made from a badly-copied VHS import from New Zealand. We were both absolutely flabbergasted at its constant inventiveness and audacity, from the very beginning with the explorer dude to the time the credits rolled. Zombie intestines are among the all-time great movie jokes.

while I will amiably bend like the reed whatever the outcome, I wouldn't mind the top 20 being a little less chin-stroky.

― da croupier, Wednesday, May 23, 2012 5:15 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agreed, and Braindead's presence (finally!) makes me v. happy.

part of my problem w/ jacob's ladder was that I was soooo ready to love it. great marketing campaign, at the time I was in college and suffering my own, uh, disconnections from reality... this movie had me in the palm of its hand. in the theater I was loving the hell out of it, but instead of being straightforward and just going for it, it got overly complicated and it felt like I was drinking sweat from the screenwriter's brow. such a letdown.

I checked back in again in the late 90s, and still found it problematic. maybe it's time for another watch.

love this movie

The crappy claymation rat-monkey, the zombie baby, the aforementioned shotgun gag, the zombie that is just a head from the eyes up getting kicked around the floor, everything in this is so, so, so, so great.

DJP you would probably love it too.

it's definitely too gross for some. my wife enjoyed the beginning and still bailed when the mom's blister popped during the love scene

btw i want people who declaimed "shaun of the dead" but are happy about "dead alive" placing to write a post justifying, at length, this dissonance so i can pointedly ignore it

i voted for both, my conscience is clear

Ditto.

i love both but only voted for Dead Alive, Shaun feels like such an ilx canon movie that it was going to place too high no matter what

Great great movie. could've stopped making movies here and Jackson's rep would have been secure imho.

we all know it's because one is popular and recent and the other is older and a cult movie so don't waste your fingerskin

JL: Totally forget to include that one, so add about 25pts to its surprisingly good result, very good and subtle build-up in the first half.

if anything jackson's rep would be more secure if he stopped making movies here imo

(I know n/a is talking about the exact inverse of ppl like me but...)

The reason why I loved Shaun but can't even face the idea of watching D/A has everything to do with the grossout factor. Why does a horror comedy have to be as gross as humanly possible for it to be good?

btw i want people who declaimed "shaun of the dead" but are happy about "dead alive" placing to write a post justifying, at length, this dissonance so i can pointedly ignore it

lol is this directed at me? Shaun of the Dead does maybe a quarter of the things Dead Alive does, and half as well.

I skipped Braindead/Bad Taste in this poll, but I voted them high in the comedy poll, very happy about one or both of them making it...

Yeah, I totally love and voted for both Shaun and Braindead.

if anything jackson's rep would be more secure if he stopped making movies here imo

tbf he did follow this with what I consider his best movie, Heavenly Creatures

The grossness in Dead Alive is so cartoonish though.

Jacob's Ladder, wtf is wrong with you people?

^^^

And, um, Braindead is a hilarious, fast-paced gorefest and the Shaun of the Dead is a slow-to-mid-tempo mild-chuckling barely-earning-its-15-rating not-really-horror film, so I don't see the similarity.

Fatal Attraction is a better horror movie than Jacob's Ladder imo

Why does a horror comedy have to be as gross as humanly possible for it to be good?

It doesn't, but it's all in the way this one doesn't just cross a line, it pole vaults over it.

The reason why I loved Shaun but can't even face the idea of watching D/A has everything to do with the grossout factor. Why does a horror comedy have to be as gross as humanly possible for it to be good?

I think you have a misapprehension about the gore. Like I said somewhere upthread, it's hugely gory just in terms of sheer quantity, but it's mostly really cartoonish and ott (kinda on par with the bloodshed in Kill Bill 1).

Hot dog, I'm happy to see this. When it comes down to my very top few votes, it ends up being the movies that serve well as horror films but also just plain move me. And JL is just filled with crushingly sad scenes. So beautifully shot, and what a great balance between a drama with extremely believable/sympathetic/complex characters and total surrealistic nightmare.

OTM, including "Hot dog". Not my #1, but high on my ballot. It hooked me when I first saw it right after it came out on video* and it has completely held up since. I have a terrible vocabulary for film, but I love the photography and the tone, and the characters. This is yet another in a list of movies that REALLY made me want to live in NYC.

* 9th Grade: No movie theaters within a reasonable drive and no VCR, so when I visited my brother in NC, watching it was at the very top of my MUST-DO list.

I don't think anyone else has come close this bar of grossness in the subsequent 20 years, which is pretty impressive.

That said, neither Shaun nor Braindead make my ballot, but I'm not very into horror comedies.

i love that it feels more like slapstick than horror despite all the fluid, but pus is pus and some people just don't want to spend 2 hours looking at pus

Why does a horror comedy have to be as gross as humanly possible for it to be good?

well, this is THE joke, basically - to carry horror movie tropes to their most comical, cartoonish extremes. But it's not the gore in and of itself, a lot of the movie's appeal also stems from the sheer number of batshit ideas thrown at the screen: chasing a homicidal zombie baby around a park, a kung-fu fighting priest, the ultimate in freudian-castrating-mother-figures, etc.

xp

kinda on par with the bloodshed in Kill Bill 1

closer to Evil Dead 1, imho, but even sillier

er Evil Dead TWO

oh God aLMIGHTY, jACOB'S lADDER IS A PISSPOOR PADDED tWILIGHT zONE EP

I mean, NYC in Jacob's Ladder is all so muted and grimy and trashy and grinding, which I was attracted to, and cut with the feeling of sanctuary of their apartment, plus sweet human stuff like the girls on the street singing "Mr. Postman" made it seem like a magical place to live.

xp to myself instead of working

It is still one of my favorite movies.

Morbs you don't need to press Shift when you have caps lock on.

(as we tell our secretary OVER AND OVER AND OVER)

I love the subtle (?) body horror/monster stuff in Jacob's Ladder, e.g., the horn on the nurse at the VA clinic and the tail that the bum on the train pulls into his jacket.

Just forget about the end of JL if you must. That's why it's better on subsequent viewings. You don't all caught up on "Wha...? Was this a trick ending...?" and you just let yourself sink into the torn soul of this guy. Whether it's alternate realities or two different timelines, who cares, it cuts like a cleaver. Of course, if you don't like it, you don't like it.

Does Jacob's Ladder have someone being attacked by someone's GI tract, which is simultaneously farting? No? Then at least it placed below Dead Alive.

I think my real problem may be that there's no way Adrian Lyne made one of the top 25 anythings, ever.