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

From what I remember, Ugetsu was mildly freakier than Kwaidan.

But I'll stop, since it's bad manners for the poll host to engage in politicking.

A ghost story may or may not be horror, I would say.

I never found Ugetsu horrifying or freaky, maybe in part because I identify with the ghost.

Just previewed the first couple minutes of "Dementia." Wow, that does look amazing. Soprano in the credits music is Marni Nixon!

Not that you can't be horrified while identifying with the source of horror...or even because you identify with the source of horror...
(xpost)

I don't think netflix has Dementia on disc does it? I really don't want to watch it on youtube. I think the half hour, public service film Apaches is about as far as I'm willing to go down that route.

Have been thinking about the relationship of "ghost story" to "horror" ever since I first saw The Devil's Backbone (which I will be seriously voting for, btw). It's in many respects a straight drama, and the ghost is more a figure of sympathetic pity than fear, but I nonetheless consider it one of the best horror movies of the last decade or so. The combination of supernatural elements, gothic atmosphere, creepy suspense and occasional jolts of real terror are enough to convince me that it belongs on my ballot.

The ghost story is one of the most basic and essential "scary story" models, and tbh, I'm inclined to consider almost any at least moderately creepy movie featuring ghosts part of the horror genre.

I don't think netflix has Dementia on disc does it? I really don't want to watch it on youtube. I think the half hour, public service film Apaches is about as far as I'm willing to go down that route.

It had copies of the Kino edition a few years back. Haven't checked recently. And yeah, it's gonna suffer for the low tube quality a lot more than Apaches.

there are plenty of movies with ghosts I wouldn't consider horror, anything from ghost to fanny and alexander

harry potter

etc

Speaking of things that are on youtube in fairly poor quality, I would like to rep once more for The Signalman. It's a 40-minute film, so possibly bearable in this format, but I haven't watched it through myself. Almost certainly my favourite Ghost Story for Christmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmBkK7N3Hhc

I think "fantasy" is a suitable label for non-horror films featuring ghosts

there are plenty of movies with ghosts I wouldn't consider horror, anything from ghost to fanny and alexander

...harry potter

yeah, that's why i threw in "almost" and "moderately creepy" as qualifiers. like if creepiness and scariness seems to be a substantial part of the point, and if it's got non-comedy ghosts, then i'll probably a horror movie. of course it's arguable that creepiness and scariness are "a substantial part of the point" in the later harry potter films, so it's a judgement call more than a hard-and-fast rule.

"seems"

ugh

"...then i'll probably consider it a horror movie"

I did cut Pan's Labyrinth cuz it feels more like "dark fantasy" than horror to me, so the distinction I'm observing is obviously vanishingly thin.

Courtesy of my lurker, these movies were ;_; missing from the nom list (I take responsibility for not participating, just answering the question from like a zillion posts ago)

Wicked, Wicked
I Can See You
From a Whisper to a Scream
Just Before Dawn
Who Can Kill a Child?
Wendigo

never seen any of those, and three of the first four are completely unfamiliar to me. i'm curious, though.

Ugetsu, along with a few things on the nomination list that I also excluded because I don't really consider them horror, would probably, if I were to include them, displace items in my current top 5-10. I would probably be more willing to consider them if they would occupy lower positions. I guess I don't want to have my top horror movies to be things I don't strongly feel are horror. But I will think about it some more.
The stuff that is at the top of my list is not all stuff that is unambiguously considered horror either so I am also not sure what distinction I am using exactly. It's just intuitive I suppose.

ok who can kill a child? is a big oversight. crap.

Who Can Kill a Child?

Damn it! That's such a good film and totally didn't occur to me.

Also missing, and not really obscure at all: Dementia 13.

^ was on my late nom list

wendigo's the fessenden film? I did nom his habit but I doubt it will make my ballot.

I thought of Who Can Kill a Child? but I didn't nominate it because I don't really like it. I guess I should have nominated it anyway. Oh well.

I stopped compiling this list once the voting thread opened, but I would've nommed these in addition to some ones already mentioned above

awakening of the beast (1970)
baby blood (1990)
willard (1971)
beware! the blob (1972)
body snatchers (1993)
castle of blood aka danza macabra (1964)
children of the damned (1964)
crawlspace (1986)
curse of frankenstein, the (1957)
dracula aka horror of dracula (1958)
frakenstein created woman (1967)
revenge of frankenstein, the (1958)

Children of the Damned is the only of the not-nominees mentioned so far that I'd have seriously considered, but I would have wound up cutting it anyway. I've avoided Who Can Kill a Child? because it doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd like. Is it really all that great? Murderous moppets is a great idea, but I figure that Village of the Damned is hard to top on that score.

The Curse of Frankenstein is nominated, isn't it?
I could have sworn Castle of Blood was as well, but it doesn't seem to be on the list upthread. Odd.

Who Can Kill a Child gets extra points for being a super grim movie in a really pretty setting, so that is something I like about it.

It's really, really good. Quite different to Village Of The Damned - less of a sci-fi element.

what i mostly hear is that it is "disturbing"

when it comes to 21st century horror fandom, i find that "disturbing" is generally code for "do not watch this"

that a hard line to toe

Any film in which children kill and are killed is going to be a struggle for some people but it's not gratuitously shocking for the sake of it.

No, and when people can't stretch their imaginations enough to include the possibility of an island of evil children, I'm not sure I care what they think anyway.

contenderizer, you liked shankland's the children didn't you?

Any film in which children kill and are killed is going to be a struggle for some people but it's not gratuitously shocking for the sake of it.

cool. i'm sort of itching to see it now.

as far as the "disturbing" thing goes, i don't mean it as a rule. i just think that the incorporation of super-transgressive, gutter-dwelling exploitation aesthetics into mainstream horror fandom has had a terrible effect on the genre. i mean, i'm a gorehound and a fan of extremes, but i am beyond sick of attempts to find and make "the most disturbing ever". not saying that who can kill a child? belongs in that company, btw, but i have seen it described in similar terms.

i hate to say this, but i think that horror, when taken as a form of pop-cultural entertainment, is inherently trivializing, inherently desensitizing. there's nothing really wrong with that, but i don't like the fact that films like salo and a serbian film have become an important part of pop horror's fan culture. personal taste, you understand.

contenderizer, you liked shankland's the children didn't you?

oh hell yeah! great movie. i'm not opposed to child-harm in films, and not opposed to grim and distressing content. i've just learned to be wary.

I just wanna quickly stump for Images, which is probably Robert Altman's most overlooked film (like, I've literally never heard/seen anyone talk about it ever). It probably would've been another director's greatest film, but Altman had the poor judgment to make it in the midst of making some of the best movies ever, so it was a bit overshadowed. It's very much of a kind with Polanski and Lynch's "am I losing my mind?" films (although much more subdued), and it's really gorgeous to look at. And you can apparently watch the whole thing on YouTube.

as far as the "disturbing" thing goes, i don't mean it as a rule. i just think that the incorporation of super-transgressive, gutter-dwelling exploitation aesthetics into mainstream horror fandom has had a terrible effect on the genre.

twas always thus in the lifetimes of just about everbody posting in this thread. except maybe the good doctor.

i do think the search for "extremes" can easily lead to freebasing terrible torture gore nonsense in the horror fandom crackhouse. but i dunno if i want a horror movie to not "disturb" me on some level.

I dunno, I'd say extreme horror has produced more interesting films than the dozens of post-scream ironic bullshit outings

Shit I just realized I forgot to nom "don't torture a duckling" goddamnit

Oh and also, another Netflix streaming recommendation - despite looking like it is going to be crap due to the box art, you should all really give "dead end" a shot

twas always thus in the lifetimes of just about everbody posting in this thread. except maybe the good doctor.

― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Thursday, April 19, 2012 7:17 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is that true? maybe i've just been sheltered. seemed to me that this sort of thing went mainstream in the late 90s, when the DVD boom took off, boosted by the increasing access to internet fan communities and later by torrent-based downloading. before that, interest in the really hard stuff seemed the province of a pretty small cult w/in horror fandom. your local "video store" (lol, remember?) might have had the faces of death movies, some herschell gordon lewis titles andi spit on your grave, maybe a bootleg of cannibal holocaust or something, but it's not like most horror fans were even aware of the sleazier european grindhouse fare, 70s porn roughies, or way-out asian extremes. easy access to such stuff and to an online culture dedicated to sickness for its own sake really changed horror fandom, imo, and we've only been seeing the effects for a decade or so. i do like disturbing stuff, but i don't like the culture dedicated disturbing stuff. like i said, it's made me wary of certain films, perhaps unfairly.

i think its true, i knew about faces of death and extreme horror films by hanging out with metal kids and their older brothers, and this was in a small east texas town in the mid90s. before the internet, mail order was huge for people looking.

I dunno, I'd say extreme horror has produced more interesting films than the dozens of post-scream ironic bullshit outings

― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Thursday, April 19, 2012 8:13 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i i i have to admit that this is true. the way international horror exploded in the late 90s and early 00s, the fact that every curious fan now has instant access to the whole history of the genre, these are undeniably good things. hell, at good third of the movies i'm considering for my ballot were basically unknown in america until the era of netflix and torrents. i don't know how many of them will actually make it, but still. though they wouldn't ruffle the feathers of the toe tag crowd, a lot of people would probably describe films like audition and trouble every day as "disturbing" and "extreme", and there's a good chance that i'll vote for both. if i hadn't forgotten to nominate baise-moi, i'd likely be voting for for that, too.

i guess i'm just letting my distaste for so-called "torture porn" turn me into a prudish crank. over the last few years, i've often found myself angry about having subjected myself to films that other fans seem to love. i'm still pissed about funny games, eden lake and martyrs. just in the last few weeks, i've watched a bunch of seriously nasty shit out of a sense of obligation to "keep up" with the genre, including a serbian film, kidnapped (which i'd been looking forward to) and the human centipede 2. a decade of nihilistic torment-wallowing has left me with a chip on my shoulder, i guess. maybe the lesson is that i should avoid things i'm almost certain i'll hate.

"maybe" he says...

I can see yr beef w/ A Serbian Film and torture porn but what did Martyrs ever do to you???

bugged me. i don't wanna get into it cuz maybe i was in a mood or something. i will grant that it's an interesting and unusual film and that the editing in the first half made it quite a ride.

more and more i feel like ebert's original straw dogs review (written when he was a good deal younger than i am now). i know it's nagl, but i can't help it.

i will also grant that in retrospect it could be read as extremely misogynistic

that's part of it, yeah. though i know that horror films are fictional, i find the experience of watching helpless women brutalized at length a genuinely horrible experience. the more i'm encouraged to sympathize, the greater my distress and anger, especially if things end on a hopeless note. this makes me a very bad audience for certain films.

there are exceptions. though it wasn't perfect, i did like lucky mckee's recent the woman, and it pushed a lot of the buttons that ordinarily repel me.