THE VAULT OF ILX Top 100 HORROR Movies Poll Voting Thread (voting closes May 9 *~*~*~*2012*~*~*~*)

Oh no--I want to vote for the original Stepford Wives, which no one nominated. If it's okay, Eric, I'm going to send an addendum with five more films you can just tack on at the end.

I don't know that psychological stuff can ever really be compared to 'torture porn'. There is something in the explicitness of the latter that seems more objective, where psychological stuff may really resonate with one person and fall flat with another, because it just can't operate in that objective field quite as well.

Spoorloos is going to be reasonably high on my ballot. I don't think that the first half is that great, it seems quite banal, but that banality ensures that the second half/ending makes me crumple all the more.

Didn't know what you were both talking about till I looked it up. Pretty sure I saw the original on TV once; definitely saw the little-regarded remake (same director, weirdly enough).

Yeah, I think it was one of those 'move to America, remake your hit' scenarios. But ffs, they ruined it so bad.

those [The Tenant and Inland Empire and Possession] are three of my favorite films, horror or not.

contenderizer, I'm gonna double up on my earlier recommendation of Images just for you. I share your love for those three films, and Images is in much the same vein.

Just finished watching Deadgirl. Ugh. Well-made, but...hmm. I openly acknowledge that there are people in the world who are generally awful and I don't really need to see movies that just underscore that awfulness. Really persuasive argument for the forced castration of the entire male gender, though, if that's your thing.

^ that was my response. admired the craft, intelligence and willingness to pursue an idea to its logical extreme, but i didn't enjoy the experience one bit.

voted. morbz will be happy to hear that my #1 vote was for a silent foreign film from 1920

The Golem?

The Golem was my #5. My #2 was also a pre 1940s foreign movie.

Forgot to vote for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dybbuk_(film) - would've been in my top 25 for sure.

Eleven ballots now and a tie at #1. For fun.

sort of regret getting all po-face srs about breaking the waves, catharsis and those "full, wracking, heartsick sobs" up there. sheesh, me. it's all true, and i wanted to be matter-of-fact rather than coolly faux-casual & self-mocking, but i have a tendency to slip into dewy-eyed, handwringing earnestness when i don't watch myself.

note to future self: don't do that

No prob, dude. I had the same reaction to Tree of Life and reported as much on its accompanying thread. Dewy-eyed handwringing solidarity.

write in for Hitchcock's Frenzy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKBV5QPzP8

As soon as I finalize an addendum to my list, I'll be writing in the original Mummy, directed by Karl Freund (who was the cinematographer on famous Lang and Murnau films...and I Love Lucy!)--completely slipped my mind during nominations. Very, very atmospheric. Kael: "No other horror film has ever achieved so many emotional effects by lighting; this inexpensively made film has a languorous, poetic feeling, and the eroticism that lives on under Karloff's wrinkled parchment skin is like a bad dream of undying love." I've never seen Freund's Mad Love with Peter Lorre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbkuJrTPa4I

i saw mad love last year and thought it was kind of awful. would like to see the 32 mummy again as it's been forever, and i do remember enjoying it

Mad Love looks pretty crazy. It shares Gregg Toland with Citizen Kane, and Kael plausibly suggests that Welles may have based his look for Kane as an old guy on Lorre.

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width_scaled/hash/8e/7b/ck8.jpg http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/1935-mad-love-3.jpg?t=1335124356

I'd forgotten about this--surprised it wasn't nominated for the title alone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEgq22jLho8

I saw it on TV years ago. More early-'70s esoterica: The Pyx, a Canadian film with Karen Black and Christopher Plummer that used to play on TV here regularly. If you're interested, this seems to work.

if i had waited to submit my ballot until after i saw cabin in the woods, it would've for sure made my list. at least somewhere in the top 50

Oh crap nobody nominated The Asphyx either!

Haven't seen "Frenzy" since high school, going to rewatch it, thanks abanana.

Frenzy WAS nommed iirc.. I had included it on one of my nom lists & removed it after searching the page to discover someone else had listed it. It is indeed missing from the master list upthread, but if it was in fact on the nom list, it should be fair play, right Eric H?

I thought write-in votes were fine, the noms list was just for memory-jogging, right? So you can vote for anything, but it's less likely to make it into the top 100 if it isn't on the list. Or am I wrong?

ok here is where i stan for THE CHANGELING (awesomely spooky 1980 haunted house flick starring George C. Scott - NOT the Angelina Jolie joint). In the interest of perhaps persuading a few of the uninitiated among the electoral constituency to check it out before voting, here is a YouTube w/ the first 15 minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUKE_CGOjnE&feature=related

Not sure why Frenzy was left off the list, but yes, any movie is fair game, really.

Oh crap nobody nominated The Asphyx either!

― i love the large auns pictures! (Phil D.), Sunday, April 22, 2012 7:17 PM

I thought about it, not sure why i didn't. I wouldn't vote for it but it's a good flick. kind of obscure I guess? super-unique premise.

re: the asphyx and the pyx (oddly similar names)

these were tapes that every video store had back in the 80s & early 90s, and i probably picked them up 20 times each without ever renting either. i deliberately gave them the skip because the packaging was so sad, and i'd learned to distrust tapes without credibly horrific screenshots on the back.

http://vhscollector.com/sites/default/files/vhscovers/Asphyx(Small).jpg

xpost

So much effort went into that monster, i.e. conjuring up an equal opportunity phallic/vaginal beast.

the dude on the asphyx cover looks like Carl Sagan.

Ok so I sat out the torture porn discussion on this thread partially because I don't want to be that guy and partially because I've prob already said most of the stuff I would say on that other thread but I will say that a) anyone w/a serious interest in the genre has to confront this stuff on a deeper level than hold on a second this is too long for a zing post

sorry that was driving me crazy - to continue, if you have any sort of interest in the genre, the gulag placing of viewer defined torture porn is an empty cipher. giallo stuff is crazy, violent, misanthropic, and mostly anti-woman, but its gotten to the point of art acceptance so that gets a pass. texas chainsaw massacre gets a pass. but on some sorta sliding scale martyrs/hostel/saw/the butcher/toe tag/guinea pig are eventually devalued as empty or debased or wrong or reprehensible. i dislike several of those examples, but i dislike them because of their qualities, not their membership in a group. the fact that this happens withing peeps that are aficionados is kind of weird to me and seems like a capitulation to the idea that horror is a guilty pleasure or wrong in some way, unless it has been elevated over time. deadgirl for me is a case in point - it is unpleasant, and it is nihilistic, but it is a million miles from thoughtless or prurient. i dont expect people to be as convinced of its value as i am, but i think that the reductive way it gets discussed is sort of willful at times - it is unpleasant, it is uncomfortable, and it says terrible things about people and their capacities for the worst possible scenarios. but that nihilism is too easily dismissed (i fear) when it is wrapped in the context of a horror film, because then it can be easily discarded as baseless or pandering to an audience. i liked cabin in the woods a lot more before i read the various interviews where the creators talked about how they were critiquing the laziness and excessiveness of modern horror, because when viewed in that way, it seems pretty clear that they actually want to bowlderize horror, bring it back to the point where it was jokey and safe and fodder for teens being edgy with a knowing nod from their parents sitting upstairs and making popcorn. ignoring edge-treading gonzo unsafe horror in favor of winkwink thinking person stuff like pontypool or the genre lapping exercises of house of the devil or drag me to hell or the well mannered nordic sanitization of let the right one in (several of which i like, one of which i love) seems to smack of the same shame based self-loathing that makes game geeks talk endlessly about how video games are art, or can be. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an ugly human hating monster that was further out of bounds of society at the time than martyrs or human centipede could ever hope to be, and acting like these films have somehow crossed some new line is straight up revisionist history.

jj otm!

I agree with you to the extent that anyone's making the argument that you're countering, jjjusten. I personally don't care to watch a lot of that more extreme stuff because it's maybe just too much for me. I wouldn't place any qualitative value on that "too much"-ness, though, or make any claims that it's worthless trash because I'd prefer not to watch it. As I said upthread, I seem to enjoy the psychological equivalent of those more extreme horror movies, but I wouldn't blame somebody one bit if they were, for example, too uncomfortable to sit through Possession. And if that person were to saddle their discomfort with a negative qualitative judgment, I'd have to assume that their gut-level revulsion played as much of a role in the critique as their critical faculties did. I think some people are always going to equate 'deeply unpleasant' with 'bad'.

while we're on the subject, and lol @ me reading waaaaaay too much into things, i was struck at the time by a scene that appears in both hostel and the hills have eyes, the two most explicitly intentional "post-9/11" horror films i can think of. it may be that i'm misremembering things, but iirc, in both films a protagonist character is trapped, bound and tortured. during the torture sequence, two of the fingers on his/her right hand are cut off [cue drudge sirens]. it's almost too ridiculously on-the-nose to mention, but i was kind of blown away at the time by *the symbolizm*.

― yuppie bullshit chocolate blogbait (contenderizer), Friday, April 20, 2012 3:52 PM (3 days ago)

ha, nice catch there

obv I'm with mr justen all the way but the torture porn bashing in this thread has been mild to non-existent, most folks have acknowledged that martyrs and deadgirl are unusual and well-made films, even if the content or overall message isn't for them.

obv I'm with mr justen all the way me too -- i think he summed it up nicely.
I have been under the impression that anyone who bothers to post to this thread is (1) into horror movies and (2) pretty well schooled on the varieties and (3) not a total psychopath. Maybe that's naive on more than one count, but I don't think so.

as for deadgirl, I haven't seen it, but my lurker has and his opinion was the same as everyone else's here afaict -- well executed (pardon the choice of terms there), but could not recommend and never need to see/think about it ever again.

In making my list I've determined that Horror Comedy is my favorite genre of horror movies.

That and the Human Centipede, which is sort of a comedy.

I watched Cat People and Curse of the Cat People yesterday. Saw the original years ago; don't think I'd ever seen the second. Very good--I'm tempted to cast a dual vote for the two of them (you could enjoy the second without having seen the first, but I think it helps), but I know how Eric feels about melding the two Godfathers into one vote, so I won't. The first is scarier and more of a pure horror film, so I'll go for that. The sequel has some genuinely frightening moments involving the old woman's daughter, though, just like the first is as dreamy and as strange as the sequel--they flow together well.

Can I please do some light but earnest campaigning for my favorite movie on this list, and one of my favorite movies of all time?! A movie for which I engaged in overseas tourism? This song is great. And no one can deny that OH GOD OH JESUS CHRIST is a terrifying moment the first time you see it? I just posted this to another thread and it was so good I had to put it here too. It's that time of year again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDLi4v8evJM

Positive The Wicker Man will be Top 10--I had it slightly lower on my ballot.

Yeah, if the Wicker Man doesn't make it to the top 10, I will not only eat my hat but declare all the results invalid.

(And force everyone who didn't vote for it to watch the remake on eternal repeat.)

Is the symbolism that the two fingers are the twin towers?

I tried to watch Creepshow last night; I got through the one where Patsy Stone's dad crawls out of the grave and kills her while she lies there immobile for 30 seconds, and about 10 minutes into the one with the green moss, and just couldn't do it anymore. OTT dumbed-down shit grates on me so hardcore.

Congratulations. You are not a child of the '80s.

i dont think 'wicker man' needs shilling, tbh.

the second greatest horror film about rl european heathen customs is 'sukkubus - teufel im leib', but im aware that no-one outside k4r4g4rg4 has seen this, so i didnt nominate it.

Also, you of all people decrying OTT shit, Stevie, smdh at you.