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

ghosts have a versatility that none of the others do, but although it isnt on the list, theres a lot that can be done w/zombies

The Descent worked beautifully in its first half, when it was dealing with concrete and realistic terror. And then it fell apart once it introduced the moleman heebie-jeebers.

Totally agree. I was really annoyed when the silly monsters showed up.

I don't really find any horror trope intrinsically scary, it's more about how it's depicted

and re jjj: david lynch has not only made some horror movies, he's a horror filmmaker. he's completely dedicated to the genre, just as much so as hooper, romero or craven. not only that, he's the greatest working horror filmmaker we've got. i only voted for a few DL films in this poll, and only the most explicitly horrific (i.e., not blue velvet), but i can't see why anyone would claim that he's not making "real" horror films. his movies are more genuinely terrifying than 99% of what gets covered in fangoria.

yeah xxxp stabby man horror is the worst (unless done Argento or De Palma style). Halloween is probably going to place way too highly on this list imho

If you need the terror to be corporeal, avoid Val Lewton.

I find zero (0) of those canonical superstars intrinsically scary. Except maybe possessions, but that's because it manifests itself with the physical reality of a medical problem. Ghosts can be scary, too, but again, that's when they play up the natural "something's in the house" fear, a la Paranormal Activity.

it's more about how it's depicted

Agree--my favourites are all over the spectrum.

Oh god, I'm tempted to go through my list and statistically analyse the 'big bad' of them all, just to see if what I think my preferences are actually hold true...

i wonder when polanski's /the tenant/ will show up.

not to get armchair analytical about it, but i kind of wonder if zombies are so great b/c they tap into a primal fear of an inverted pecking order coupled with a dead/not dead uncanniness. which reminds me to write my zombie dinosaur pilot.

THEY WILL EAT YOU

i'm just specifically interested in the otherworldly, in horror-as-fantasy, and i'm always disappointed when what seems fantastical is revealed only to be delusional imaginings.

okay, that's not always true. if the delusion is maintained and not "explained", i love delusional POV

i dont want to go down the lynch rabbithole again, and in case i havent made it clear i am a HUGE lynch fan, but this

he's a horror filmmaker. he's completely dedicated to the genre, just as much so as hooper, romero or craven. not only that, he's the greatest working horror filmmaker we've got.

is just fucking madness.

he's completely dedicated to the genre

yeah this is kinda pushing it

I always figured potency of zombies was simply the primordial fear of being eaten by a ravenous pack. If that well-dressed living room group at the end or Rosemary's Baby turned on Rosemary and started mobbing her, it'd look no different than those no-make-up zombies pressing in at the end of Night of the Living Dead.

also i want to say that i am willing to make a strong argument for stabby man horror, at least in the modern era. i am normally about ten times more interested in the semi to non supernatural than not.

"Steven Spielberg's first movie proved no PIT STOP! He was in it for the LONG HAUL!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7231/7211433350_13ab25ac47_o.jpg

81. DUEL
Steven Spielberg, USA, 1971
(224 points, 8 votes)

is DUEL steven spielberg's best film?

does anyone else think this? i just saw it for the first time tonight and was pretty blown away. the concept sounds ridiculous (a horror movie that takes place entirely in broad daylight on a highway), but it totally works. the shot of the truck in the tunnel when its demonic-looking lights suddenly come on is one of the scariest things i've ever seen in a movie. there's no explicit suggestion that the truck is supernatural, which makes that moment all the more unnerving.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, June 20, 2005 4:37 AM (6 years ago)

It always cracks me up that the most intelligent movies of Spielberg's career were his first.
― miccio (miccio), Monday, June 20, 2005 6:13 AM (6 years ago)

"Duel" was a promising, good, disposable B-movie.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, June 21, 2005 11:08 AM (6 years ago)

my list seems pretty equal in its human lunatics, monsters, unexplained supernatural phenomenon, technological mishaps, appearances by the devil, unreliable pov, and who-the-hell-knows craziness.

i wonder when polanski's /the tenant/ will show up.

Not until the final day of the rollout, if there's any justice in this world.

never bothered with Duel

zombies appeal to us on multiple levels - body horror, direct manifestation/confrontation of our own mortality, revulsion of rot and decay, fear of being consumed

duel is pretty great but im still surprised.

yeah theres a reason that the zombie trope has never really died in the last 40+ years, theres just a lot more you can hang on zombie movies than say werewolf movies. i cant remember the name of it for the life of me, but there was a very strange sad movie out in the last few years that basically centered around a couple where one of them was becoming zombified over the course of the film, and it was pretty devestating. probably french or belgian, lemme look through my watched queue

70s TV movies are almost their own subgenre, and if they are going to be repped at all in this poll duel is a good candidate. either that or killdozer.

of course I'm going to give emily + eric a ration of shit if salem's lot places :)

the ghost to my mind is the scariest of the classic supernatural beasties. the ghost is scary because it is the unknown. the ghost isn't the guy in the sheet or the transparent lady, it's the sense of malevolent presence, the nameless terror that seized you in the dark when you were a kid, the shape glimpsed in peripheral vision that vanishes when you turn to face it, the fluid border of reality where that shadow might be a shrieking face or maybe just a chair. that, to me, is scary, is what horror movies are all about. doesn't matter whether you want the terrifying unknown to collapse back down into what seems "rationally possible" or whether you want it to open onto fantastical impossibilities (i want the latter). the essence of terror, to me, is what cannot yet be identified or fully perceived. therefore, the ghost.

i have more of a director fetish than a particular horror trope fetish. except maybe that i like a bit of humor (intentional or otherwise) to leaven the mood a bit.

Exciting new theory: truck in Duel was a zombie. Kept on coming, wouldn't die. No? OK, fine.

though if i had to pick a horror beastie, i'm probably most partial to (pre-Twilight) vampires b/c they be so bad-ass.

yeah looking at my list it seems director (or total conception) trumps idea/subgenre/theme for me.

High-five to the other 7 people who voted for Duel!

maybe this is a thread/poll of its own, but which of the following canonical supernatural spookshow shit is the scariest to each of you?

As I feel I've probably repeated ad nauseum in various horror threads, I think my number one horror trope is when the bindings of the sane world are loosened, be it a shared reality breaking down across the board or the more subjective tableau of watching a protagonist's sanity crumble (or a protagonist who thinks his/her sanity is crumbling). Off-kilter ambiguity that makes the viewer question the nature of the reality being presented will get me just about every time.

also, a childhood filled with The Count from Sesame Street and Count Chocula might've also inured me to the charms of the undead.

xpost

This is a lot of the reason why Lovecraft might be my favorite horror author.

I'm not sure a truly scary vampire film exists. Would love to hear what I'm forgetting, though.

Ditto Jeepers Creepers. Really great while they were being harassed on the road, Duel-style. Turns to poop after monster reveal. xpost

^^^ oh man, this. First half so good, second half so bad.

thinking about what is likely to place in the top 10, it's going to be a pretty even mix of monsters, ghosts, demonic possession, and stabby mcstabbersons

i have more of a director fetish than a particular horror trope fetish. except maybe that i like a bit of humor (intentional or otherwise) to leaven the mood a bit.

^^^cosign

though it's plenty scary, i think of duel as a suspense thriller, not really as a horror movie. would say similar of picnic at hanging rock: it's an occult-tinged mystery that only briefly pushes into "scary movie" territory. not that anybody else is wrong to see them as proper horror films, just that i excluded them not for not meeting my personal criteria. love them both, fwiw. would vote for the former in a thriller poll, and the latter in mystery and maybe even fantasy (though it's pushing that boundary even harder than it is horror).

near dark is great and i regret not voting for it.

stabby mcstabbersons

LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lBRf0UgjFc

xp - don't underestimate the alluring power of rituals and cults...

insanity and utter nihilism are the scariest things in the world to me, nothing supernatural ever comes close, although i do love the atmosphere of supernatural horror, and when supernatural stuff gets really weird and abstract, e.g. david lynch, it explores the psychological at least as much as the otherworldly. just throwin in my two cents.

great job with the poll, i didn't vote, but following the results is really fun.

I'm not sure a truly scary vampire film exists. Would love to hear what I'm forgetting, though.

let's scare jessica to death, nosferatu, near dark, and - I know I'm in the minority on this - 30 days of night

salem's lot, duh

maybe my claim that lynch is a specifically-dedicated horror filmaker strikes some as strange, but i think of eraserhead, fire walk with me, lost highway, mulholland dr. ("drive" or "dream"?), and inland empire as full-blooded horror movies. the only other film he's made from his own screenplay is blue velvet, one of the scariest, funniest and strangest thrillers ever made. the films he's made from other people's stories are generally less horrific, but with the exception of the straight story, they've all got their moments. he even injected surreal, atavistic horror shit into dune.

and having rewatched it a couple years ago, I was surprised to see how well fright night stood the test of time

xp

best i can figure out, i tend to like expressionist-/atmospheric-style horror films than more "realist" stuff. kinda ties into my tastes in general, made my poll a bit heavier on stuff that many might classify as "suspense" instead of "horror," and since this is a stylistic choice on the part of the director it ties into my director fetish.

"When Werner Herzog talked of CHAOS, HOSTILITY and MURDER, he was really just reading aloud from my MASQUERADE BALL Evite!"

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80. NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT
Werner Herzog, West Germany, 1979
(226 points, 8 votes)

Based on what little I've seen, it seems to consist of Nosferatu just casually shooting the shit with people and hanging out.
― Darin, Wednesday, June 16, 2010 5:36 PM (1 year ago)

I've soured a bit on Herzog after reading the essay in Granta on the making of Nosferatu. Something like 16,000 rats died miserable deaths in order to get a couple of shots.
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Sunday, August 14, 2005 6:52 PM (6 years ago)

I cut duel at the last minute. Glad to see it place.