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

xpost way to circumvent all the material I'm stealing!

i dont think that the cabin in the woods head scratching has anything to do with real horror fans or whatever, it just seems a little slight in a lot of ways, and also (and im saying this even w/my weird recent only rule) way too recent to have really gotten a handle on yet.

I would be surprised if Friday the 13th places very highly.

i wouldn't ... for better or worse, it's canonical at this point. then again, so is Korn's first album so YMMV.

Well, to be precise, TCITW was actually filmed something like two or three years ago, right?

i know i always underrate it but i would be surprised to see exorcist in the top ten

I don't really like it, but I know folks around here that REAAAALLLY like it.

I know F13th is canon but people don't seem to stan for it much and it's really a pretty shitty film.

F13 is canonical but also not a very good film

the exorcist is like the godfather in that there's usually a lot of consensus around it being GOAT

unless horror ilxors are feeling particularly challopsy I'd expect to see it in the top 10

lol xpost

in fact I'm gonna make my top 10 prediction list right now (won't post it till after tho)

xpost to cryptkeeper video

videad sassoon cRIPt

you know how jjjusten is about pontypool? that's gonna be me if black swan places

reading contemporaneous reports of people watching the exorcist when it first came out is like reading contemporaneous reports of when people first saw, e.g., birth of a nation or phantom of the opera ... it's a glimpse into a very different time with different mindsets. nowadays certain scenes from the exorcist are more noteworthy for being unintentionally comical (though Richard Pryor realized its comic potential right from the start, apparently) than for being scary.

Pryor's bit is better than the movie imho

i mean, people in 1973 (or whenever it came out) were really scared shitless by the thing!

ha theres no chance of that is there? re black swan placing

I wouldn't think F13 would even make the list! Just re-watched it and boy that's an unimpressive little film.

Cabin in the Woods is a very fine satire, and catnip for horror fans casual or serious. The lab half is smart and fun. The zombie half is forgettable and limp. None of it is scary, but surely we agree on that (and with no complaints). Overall, I can't imagine we'll be talking about it in 5 years.

(i voted for black swan)

i think to be fair part of the problem w/me seeing the greatness of the exorcist was that growing up in a godless heathen household it just wasnt really scary because posession seemed way less likely than getting eaten by a werewolf or w/e. obv thats not a general rule, but for me, frankly, the omen was way better

ha theres no chance of that is there? re black swan placing

I would've said the same about a movie that came out a month ago but forget it jake it's chinatown

I honestly hope Friday the 13th fails to place. That thing is coasting on little more than name recognition, and even that's a little baffling. It's the only one of the big '80s franchises without a single installment I'd rep for.

you know how jjjusten is about pontypool? that's gonna be me if black swan places

Black Swan will have a shot at my ballot in the Unintentional Comedy poll.

i'd be surprised if F13 makes the countdown, unless people around here are a lot more nostalgically fond of it than i realized. exorcist i figure will definitely make top 20, but i'm not convinced that it'll be top 10.

considered voting for black swan, but nah

i though black swan was supposed to be funny, though, so maybe i didn't really "get it"

only one for me (wolf creek) but a couple that might have made a top 100.

guys the crypt keeper has a christmas album and there is a rap song

I was raised catholic so I am the exorcist's built-in audience, but I have to imagine that no matter what yr upbringing, a 12 year old girl stabbing herself in the crotch until bloody is a pretty shocking image for most

i will totally rep for the first friday the 13th! i think the weariness from endless sequels watered it down but its def among the better mainstream slasher films

can someone please add WARNING: EXORCIST CROTCH SPOILERS to thread title? thnx.

also youve got to hand a lot of credit to that and carrie for permanently establishing the double ending gotcha moment xpost

friday the 13th is kinda gack and im on record as not entirely hating some of the late halloween sequels

i was raised Catholic ... and my parents were pretty hardcore religious, too ... but even so the whole "this is why the exorcist is really scary to Catholics!" had to be explained to me. then again, i've always had a sick sense of humor (though a 12 year-old stabbing herself in her crotch was admittedly shocking) and when i 1st watched it as a teenager my honest reaction was "lol 12 year old cussing up a storm and spitting green pea soup COMEDY GOLD".

i think to be fair part of the problem w/me seeing the greatness of the exorcist was that growing up in a godless heathen household it just wasnt really scary because posession seemed way less likely than getting eaten by a werewolf or w/e.

I grew up the same way, jjj, but I always counter the position you've taken by asking, "What makes you (or the characters in the film) so sure that the 'possession' was caused by anything as easily-definable as a demon or that there was any theological solution to the problem?". It's a question that I think the film leaves open to interpretation (assuming you ignore the additional backstory supplied by subsequent installments).

The OG F13 killed an actual snake on screen. Can Val Lewton say that?

huh deric thats actually kind of an interesting question

I'll give F13 credit for the double-shock ending. And, oh, how well that has served us.

also, i saw the Richard Pryor Exorcist/SNL skit long before i'd actually seen the exorcist (lol my parents having less trouble having less problems w/ a teenaged me watching/listening to Richard Pryor even at his raunchiest than they had w/ me watching stuff like the exorcist or top secret! or playing dungeons and dragons, but that's another topic). so that probably irrevocably predisposed me to seeing the comedy in the exorcist.

I agree that as a non-Catholic the "horror" element of the Exorcist totally eludes me. like OMG the devil can levitate a bed. stop the presses.

I wasn't a huge stan for black swan, but I think it would be fair play for a horror poll - it certainly has enough hat-tips to Repulsion to reveal that Aranofksy was totally going for the Polanski model of woman-in-distress.

never cared for the exorcist honestly and i could only be more catholic if i was wearing a pope hat.

I think the extremity of the exorcist leads ppl to be either really into it or totally out of it. if you think the proceedings are goofy I guess you're just going to check out? what lends the craziness of the final sequence its power is the patient buildup, that 70s verite style contrasted with totally outlandish happenings. there's a great use of sound design - a lot of sudden cutting between loud jarring scenes and complete silence. and some of my favorite moments from it are the early ones - the mysterious prologue in iraq, karras' dream, his first meeting with regan etc. and all the scenes between karras and the detective are golden.

also the stories about friedkin making the exorcist are kinda hilar, like him slapping an actual priest to get him to cry onscreen which scandalized the catholic crew.

i was more disturbed by the discovery that high-ranking Catholic clergy during the late 20th century still took the concepts of demon possession and exorcisms of same seriously than by what i saw on the screen while watching the exorcist. it was as if they also disclosed that they still believed in witch-burning or torturing heretics.

I don't understand most of the religeous references in supernatural j-horror (and they're in there), but that hasn't stopped these movies from freaking me out.

Yeah Friedkin's kind of a maniac and the movie seems genuinely unhinged, which I think is more what's scary about it than anything theological. It's incoherent and objectively ridiculous, but the whole thing feels out of control.

I agree that as a non-Catholic the "horror" element of the Exorcist totally eludes me. like OMG the devil can levitate a bed. stop the presses.

i think it's that more that unknown forces can force you out of your own body, replacing you with some kind of hideous monster

also think the horror is more about the torture of an innocent girl and the helplessness of her family to stop it - the possession functions in part as a metaphor for debilitating illness, there's a reason there are so many sequences of medical procedures in the film

see, now I would say almost the exact opposite. I find the 'big, scary evil ol' Satan' thing to be one of the least-engaging horror tropes.

maybe i should watch it again. it's been eons.

it's body horror as much as any early cronenberg flick

xxp - in saying that, though, I'm not referring so much to The Exorcist as I am to something like The Omen, or the concluding sequences of Rosemary's Baby.

also think the horror is more about the torture of an innocent girl and the helplessness of her family to stop it - the possession functions in part as a metaphor for debilitating illness, there's a reason there are so many sequences of medical procedures in the film

that's an interesting point. to the extent that regan is the "monster", we're not supposed to be afraid of her, but rather afraid for her. she's an innocent little girl caught in this terrible situation from which the people who care for her cannot protect her. we're supposed to empathize with their torment in this failure, not just be freaked the fuck out by scary devil powers. but that too.

Dude, do you ever get tired of restating what people have just said?

prior to seeing it, I remember the Exorcist being built up as this unbelievably terrifying thing - I knew that it involved the devil posessing a teenage girl, but I figured there was more to it than that, that it was like an epidemic, or a sign of the apocalypse, or the Devil was using her to murder people or something. And then I saw it and all she does is hurt herself, vomit guacamole, and make a priest throw himself out a window. I was like "that's IT?!? lol catholics"

xp