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

haven't seen it since it was in the theaters, liked it but never really understood the universal love. not really horror either? but I guess who else is going to enjoy it besides horror fans

I loooove Dead Ringers.

"There's something about this one that RAISES one HELL of a headache, but I can't quite PIN it down!"

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78. HELLRAISER
Clive Barker, UK, 1987
(232 points, 10 votes)

b-but being a hideous dark monstah of the ever-evil underworld is an allegory for being gay!!
― mark s, Friday, June 14, 2002 7:00 PM (9 years ago)

"In its original incarnation, Barker's adaptation of his own novella The Hellbound Heart touched upon something genuinely unsettling: not just the pleasure of pain, but also the pain of sex," me, on Slant

cool monsters but hated it otherwise

dead ringers is the cronenberg joint I gave the most points to on my ballot. I found the hallucinatory unease in its final third to be so vexing that I haven't had a desire to rewatch it, but is very effective at what it does!

That's about where it should be. I enjoy the first two Hellraisers (and the first well enough to have voted for it), but I couldn't stir up the energy to argue for either as, like, the cream of the horror crop. They're good at what they do, and what they do is basically a thing that no other horror movies do, so that's maybe noteworthy in and of itself.

barker always seems to put concept before characterization and it never works for me

yeah I can respect Hellraiser - there's enough good ideas in there - but I don't really enjoy it. didn't vote for it. Ed OTM about concept vs. character. Movie practically doesn't even have characters.

the cenobite that shoots CDs was some kind of high point for the series...

Agree -- first two Hellraisers were really something different when they popped up. Kind of a shame Clive Barker didn't go on to become a very interesting filmmaker overall.

I really dig a lot of the imagery in Hellraiser, but I always found it to be fairly dull otherwise. I remember the second one picked up the pace a bit & was sorta awesome, but my critical acumen at age 13 hasn't aged too well, so./.

My memories of Pinhead's backstory as sketched out by I & II are fuzzy to me now, but I remember finding them fascinating and original at the time (ie, long ago).

I'm a sucker for movies about masochism, the nature of pain, and weirdo surrealism, so while watching hellraiser all I could think was, "this is checking all my boxes. why isn't it pushing my buttons?"

the cenobite that shoots CDs was some kind of high point for the series...

Hellraiser III is to the Hellraiser franchise what Michael Keaton's mentally-handicapped third clone was to Multiplicity. And the rest of the Hellraisers are what would have happened if Michael Keaton had just kept cloning his clones.

(I just watched Multiplicity for the first time the other day, so I was also mentally comparing Jeremy Irons' performance in Dead Ringers to Michael Keaton's. I'm sure I'll find some parallel when Human Centipede shows up, as well.)

There are 9 Hellraiser films. NINE. Watching them all would be a Cenobite-level experience in masochism, I suspect.

Andrew Robinson, y'all. Without him Hellraiser would not have worked at all.

Prefer hellraiser 2 to one, but one is def nice to see here. 3 is a terrible abomination.

"You remind me of the BOO! What BOO? BOO with the VOODOO! Who BOO? BOO BOO! BOO what? Remind me of the BOO!"

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77. PAN'S LABYRINTH
Guillermo Del Toro, Spain, 2006
(246 points, 9 votes)

When Tool videos come to life. Or should that be the Brothers Quay?
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, February 23, 2006 6:44 AM (6 years ago)

yes, this film also struck me as being a crudely mechanistic and obvious riff on Spirit of the Beehive
― Ward Fowler (Ward Fowler), Friday, January 5, 2007 9:00 AM (5 years ago)

(2) The audience reaction was quite interesting; I'm not sure if they understood their own feelings. When Mercedes enacted her vengeance on el Capitan, the audience applauded as if it was a Dirty Harry movie; it was cathartic and, for them, necessary. But when they realized that Ofelia was NOT going to live the theater went still. It was the quietest exit I've seen all year.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Saturday, January 13, 2007 4:35 PM (5 years ago)

I can't even figure out how I feel about his movie, but a half hour after watching it last night I had an uncontrollable crying jag–the kind of deep sobs that don't make sounds. I normally like ambiguous endings but this one hurt (not to say I didn't like it). It was kind of like THE PLAGUE DOGS–inability to exist in this certain world coupled with a cruel and sad fantasy of an uncertain nature, just too bittersweet a rescue.
― Abbott (Abbott), Monday, January 15, 2007 4:09 PM (5 years ago)

By my personal estimation it's roughly the 9th-best film in the worst year of commercial cinema since the nickelodeons opened
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, February 6, 2007 1:24 PM (5 years ago)

not a bad movie but blargh

( psst Eric, plz check yr email! )

del toro's appreciation of the horror genre is deep and admirable tho. loved it when he did his top horror movie picks.

I quite liked PL, but I would never have voted for it in this poll. My GDT votes went instead to The Devil's Backbone, which is straight-up one of my favorite movies of the last decade or so (in addition to it being more conventional in terms of horror)

My memories of Pinhead's backstory as sketched out by I & II are fuzzy to me now, but I remember finding them fascinating and original at the time (ie, long ago).

Pinhead has a backstory? I don't recall this being ref'd in I at all tbh

for some reason PL made a much bigger impression on me than the devil's backbone, which I can't remember much from besides an unexploded bomb and thinking it was not a horror movie. still haven't seen cronos.

My reaction to Pan's Labyrinth is visceral. very tangible, and for those who remember what it is like to be a child, emotionally and psychologically on target

I rated devil's backbone higher - dude gets the lonliness, directionlessness, and sometimes terror of being a child

If I recall, Pinhead has a rich & fulfilling backstory (so much so that I've forgotten it), but it must be Hellraiser 2 that dives into it. xpost

bbbut there is a ghost in tdb, so it HAS to be horror, right?

xxp

nooooooooooooooooooo

There are 9 Hellraiser films. NINE. Watching them all would be a Cenobite-level experience in masochism, I suspect.

I have done this. I'm still not sure why.

wait what? NINE hellraiser movies?

From Wikipedia & I'm sure you can attribute this to all the direct-to-video sequels:

When comparing the Hellraiser film series with the other top-grossing horror franchises—A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Saw, Scream, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—and adjusting for the 2008 inflation,[13] Hellraiser is the lowest grossing horror franchise in the United States, at approximately $84 million.

man if pan's lab places and cronos or devils backbone dont i swear you tweemo lotr fuckers

ok enough with the art films guys can you please let the next one be some shrieking grindhouse nightmare

I've watched up through Hellraiser In Space. After that GTFO. In fact, there isn't another franchise I can think of with more rapidly diminishing returns after the first installment.

ha i'm taking no guff about any movie I voted for if Pan's Labyrinth makes the list. That said, I'm excited how many movies are on this I haven't seen.

if I thought Pan's Labyrinth was a snooze should I still check out Cronos and backbone?

devils backbone would have been my GTD if i had been forced to have one but yeah i dont want to be that guy here but this is shaping up to be a dark fantasy poll and not the horror poll i expected

xpost devils backbone is great, and far more horror than PL, i still havent gotten around to seeing cronos

In a horror poll, it's Cronos > Backbone > Pan's, but they're all top-drawer flicks.

just glanced over my list, and while there could some debate as to whether they're "thrillers" or "horror" all of them have somebody dying violently, usually suddenly and disgustingly

backbone is more horror than dark fantasy imo

still have to check out cronos sometime.

77. Pan's Labyrinth
76. Cannibal Holocaust
75. Antropophagus
74. The Others

man i just reread a bunch of my posts from today and apologize, i am not a dick i promise! and i actually liked pans labyrinth, i just get way too wound out about horror stuff because i spend so much time thinking abt/consuming it and so this poll is prob more important to me than it should be.

i would like a good palate cleansing human centipedeish placement moment here soon tho for the good of humanity

phrases that have never been uttered before for good reason vol 1. "good palate cleansing human centipede"

I just checked and something like 3/4 of my ballot is composed of straight-up, unambiguously-horror horror films. I think a lot of the oddball, not-quite-horror films are gonna show up near the bottom of the results, so no fear, jjj.

yo i heard that human feces was good as a palate cleanser

Bring on fear.com!

Yo, I heard that human feces was good as a plate cleaner.

Cronos is the only del Toro I voted, and if Pan's is placing this low I doubt if it'll make the top hunnert. Good movie, tho.

i voted for pan's labyrinth (though it wasn't high on my ballot). more b/c it was a good movie overall than because it was oooooooh scary -- though i kept thinking that that faun thing would snap and commit some really vile act of ultra-violence but never did.