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

perfectly colorful too!

true - pretty sure i got some great home decor ideas from argento movies

okay, eye makeup and lingerie -- argento movies are like the "marie antoinette" of horror -- good soundtracks and clothes

― sarahell, Monday, May 21, 2012 1:00 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

perfectly colorful too!

― game of crones (La Lechera), Monday, May 21, 2012 1:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sarahell's apartment:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WpmVnJ42314/TJaEJLavsBI/AAAAAAAACGo/Br5wJUhBX0I/s1600/suspiria_dragon04.JPG

Geez, we should all be so fortunate! The house in Psychomania remains one of the homes of my dreams, but Argento Homes TM is perfectly compatible with my preferences in home decor.

"You know who invented the Internet? Al GORE!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7098/7242643922_b4cb3de7b4_o.jpg

45. PULSE [aka 回路]
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2001
(375 points, 13 votes, 1 first-place vote)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse is the one great horror film I've seen in the last ten years. (no blood that I can recall, but totally unnerving)
― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 4, 2010 12:03 PM (2 years ago)

Pulse blew me away. I am all about glacially paced post apocalpytica, and with ghosts.
― toastmodernist, Tuesday, February 2, 2010 2:07 PM (2 years ago)

ok now that i am temp not posting from iphone, i wanted to expand on my sleepaway camp is dark as it gets theme. heres a post from a thread about most important endings that kind of sums it up for me:

it also works because the ending is so, so dark that it makes you kind of go back over the rest of the movie and realize that it is just as dark, hidden under the tropes of a teen slasher camp movie. i mean, the whole movie is about children killing other children, adults joking around about wanting to sleep with children, and killing adults trying to sleep with children, but its done in this bizarre low budget campy almost silly tone.

which also ties into the whole "never get greenlit in a million years" thing stevie quoted.

pulse is great, and i should have probably voted for it

agree w all this, but don't see it as a fault. looks great + sounds great = good enough for me.

oh, i don't see it as a fault either! it's just that there were at least 50 other horror movies that did more for me, so i didn't vote for any argento.

agree w all this, but don't see it as a fault. looks great + sounds great = good enough for me.

yea, that's why remaking suspiria seems like such a dead end to me. the plot barely makes sense and its positive qualities (music, set design, use of color, etc. ) are all very tied to the people working on that production and time in which it was made. odds are we get something that looks like a teal & orange razor commercial.

but I guess every horror movie needs a remake or twelve now. I should stop getting worked up about it already.

and one of those 50+ movies that did more for me was The Brood. In their colorful puffy jackets, they reminded me of evil teletubbies, which made it even more awesome!

Of the (relatively, for an old guy) newer films I don't know, Pulse is the first one that's really caught my attention; just watched the trailer and it looks fantastic.

"Gets rid of RING around the collar ... by getting rid of your COLLARBONE!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7095/7242856284_8cb5055658_o.jpg

44. RINGU [aka リング]
Hideo Nakata, Japan, 1998
(382 points, 12 votes)

The Ring

the scene in Pulse of the girl approaching in that uncannily slow/off way was probably one of the last scenes to effectively freak me out

The fuck is Jaws doing that low?

Eyes Without a Face total precursor to Human Centipede.

still haven't seen any of the japanese ringu/ju-on films. which ones are worth it?

None of them, unless you like shadowy figures lurking in the shadows and cursed inanimate objects.

"This is it, Freddy! Your big break in THIS COUNTDOWN! Welcome to SLOT 43, BITCH!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7228/7242856552_c17ee9c640_o.jpg

43. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
Wes Craven, USA, 1984
(384 points, 16 votes, 1 first-place vote)

I saw nightmare on elm street in the theaters in 1984 and yeah, it was pretty scary. particularly the early moments when you're not sure whether the characters are awake or dreaming. the classroom scene was memorably disorienting and, yes, surreal. years of sequels, copycats, and the cultural ubiquity of freddy have dulled the impact but at the time it was pretty freaky. the thought that you couldn't escape the killer, shoot him, call the cops, whatever, the lack of control or agency contributed to the freakishness of it. trying to stay awake to stay alive? that grounded the horror in an inevitable biological process, similar to how rosemary's baby derived its horror from an impending birth. I'd say ANOES and the evil dead were the only films I saw that year that really scared me. ANOES gets a bit formulaic in the last act but it was a pretty innovative concept, and the idea that it wasn't scary at the time is a laughable one.
I saw it again in the past 5 years or so and was surprised by how brutal the freddy character is, before he became a silly icon. freddy isn't treated like a punchline machine, he's a nasty unpleasant child murderer and he acts like one.
― (e_3) (Edward III), Wednesday, July 14, 2010 8:48 PM (1 year ago)

surprise nightmare on elm street movies

Two more to reveal today, but it's going to have to wait a couple hours.

nice screen cap there

Pulse!

still haven't seen any of the japanese ringu/ju-on films. which ones are worth it?

I didn't vote for any of them, but I generally appreciate the sensibilities on display. If you are curious, I would prob suggest just starting w/ the first of either & going from there. Both series are remarkably consistent (some might say one-trick).

don't want to derail, but can anyone recommend some good books/essays/articles on J-horror? I've read a few things on the animistic influences, and on some of the folk origins of the female ghost, but I'm also kinda interested in the J-horror (and sometimes Japanese horror comic) take on the Internet, digital media, video, people disappearing (often into media or through media), etc. Japanese horror tends to approach these ideas in much more interesting (and hard to read) ways than American horror does

Ringu screencap is all time. As discussed on the nominations thread, Ringu didn't do much for me, but that screencap is chilling.

This is so right on, too: "the thought that you couldn't escape the killer, shoot him, call the cops, whatever, the lack of control or agency contributed to the freakishness of it. trying to stay awake to stay alive?" That's what affected me the most when I first saw it.

Also the one fingerknife scraping against the wall when he's walking down the dark alley, and oh god, the hand in the bathtub...

Sorry, that's some bad writing there. Second bit is about Nightmare on Elm Street.

Also: long-armed Freddy in the alley.

A few years back I watched all 7 movies in the franchise (I don't count Freddy vs. Jason or the remake in this group), and I was surprised by the overall quality of the films, even with the increasing silliness of Freddy. Basically, I think they kept on getting lucky with directors with surrealist bents. Part 4: Dream Master and Freddy's Dead are the weakest, but even those have moments. 2: Freddy's Revenge and 5: Dream Child are both underrated.

i'm one of the few who thinks that pulse is a real disappointment relative to cure. the spooky parts work like gangbusters, the photography and color coding are often great, but the incoherent plotting and aggressive "DO YOU SEE?" foregrounding of subtext really get on my nerves.

as i say this, i realize how similar my complaints are to the missing-the-point criticisms typically lobbed at argento, and how much the film's strengths resemble his (stylization, composition, creepiness).

Yes, the bathtub scene! You could make a list of the best bathtub/shower scenes in horror history. Psycho, ANOES, Slither. Arachnophobia? There must be a ton more. (The less we say of the infamous tub scene in Jack Frost, the better.)

I have the biggest, dumbest soft spot for Freddy vs. Jason (did not vote for it, fear not).

Which movie had the kids faces as toppings on a pizza, with Freddy puncturing their faces with his fingerknife? I found that super disturbing and it's always stuck with me. Fun personal fact: I cannot abide by pineapple on pizza because I have somehow connected that scene with that topping. Ugh.

he one fingerknife scraping against the wall

I was thinking about using that one too, actually..

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/5541/noes03.jpg

I watched NMOES years later, after a few sequels came out. It was all too familiar and Freddie striking a pose with the claws was just comical at that point. I think maybe he was in commercials? Some of the deaths in the first nightmare should have scared me but I was at the right point in my life to just roll my eyes and call it crap.

love nightmare on elm street but didn't vote for it. it's become a time capsule and is hard to view as anything but 80s camp, but i love the inventiveness and sense of anarchic fun.

My one big problem with the Nightmare on Elm Street series was always that they represented nightmares about as faithfully as Ghostbusters did ghosts. Which was less of a problem as the series became goofier but it did detract a bit from the initial installment, imo. I still love the first four, though, all of which made my ballot (and if you think that's shameful, you'll be pleased to know that A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is about 10 spots higher on my ballot than the first).

I, on the other hand, was the perfect age to have the bejeezus scared out of me by the first three or so.

xxp

for some reason my memory is that the second NOES is the superior one but I get them mixed up. various scenes from all of them are well-etched into my memory.

and if you think that's shameful, you'll be pleased to know that A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is about 10 spots higher on my ballot than the first

Ha. I have one v. shameful sequel ranking considerably higher than its well-acclaimed and sure to place high original. So high five to you, friend.

OK, I added Pulse to my streaming Netflix queue. Hope I don't regret it.

I won't even pretend that my NOES votes aren't total nostalgia votes, even though I really do still enjoy those first four. The first one was very possibly the first R-rated movie I ever saw, and the fourth was definitely the first I ever saw in the theater (thanks, my friend's awesome mom).

Several deaths in the series always creeped me out: the girl who turned into an insect Cronenberg-style, the kid whose veins become puppet strings, the anorexic girl who is force-fed flesh. But the deaths in the original are so iconic: Tina on the ceiling, Depp sucked into the bed, etc.

for some reason my memory is that the second NOES is the superior one but I get them mixed up. various scenes from all of them are well-etched into my memory.

The second is the only one that doesn't really have much to do with the others. And the people involved in its creation have come around to totally owning up to its (fairly obvious, once you see it as an adult) homoerotic undertones.

I made a similar point on another thread--that all the remakes and the turn towards camp undermined how genuinely creepy the original was. (Don't think I saw anything past the first sequel.)

I had Pulse 6th, Ringu 38th.

Only saw the first NoES and was underwhelmed.

There's a great 4-hour(!!) documentary called Never Sleep Again about the whole series, really exhaustive & honest as well as making you appreciate the heck out of the series in general. Apparently the creators are giving the same treatment to F13 soon.

I will mention that Ronee Blakely is unbelievably bad...voted for it anyway.

If you are curious, I would prob suggest just starting w/ the first of either & going from there. Both series are remarkably consistent (some might say one-trick).

thanks! will do

the kid whose veins become puppet strings

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Based on my reaction to this discussion, I should have placed this movie a lot higher than I did.

also have a big, dumb soft spot for jason vs. freddy (and jason goes to hell for that matter)

^ this scene was in #3, no? It didn't quite make my ballot, but Dream Warriors is one of the only horror sequels to give the original a run for its money imo.

xp

Jason vs Freddy is great fun

vein-puppet is in #3 yes