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

Yay, another one of my votes! Great atmosphere, great shots, just great.

I have objective reasons for voting for The Birds, but this movie also terrified me as a child. The gathering of the birds was scary, but the tension in the house and the sense that the adults are getting weird--oh my god the adults don't know what to do--is what put it over the top for me.

Great lead actresses!

This thread thread isn't even REMOTELY pacing the comedy results thread. So I hereby vow to not reveal any new title until at least 100 posts have passed.

Oh, lovely. I didn't vote for The Haunting but it's a great movie (and the book is a delight).

I do not encourage people to comment.

anyone seen the trailer for The Birds? one of the best i've ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZjaVdJt59U

The Haunting gets extra bonus points for having not one but TWO female leads, both of whom are genuinely weird in their own unique and wonderful way.

Ah, crap, these are coming fast!

Peeping Tom: Always felt to me like a movie for students. Fascinating, but leaves me cold every time.

Birds: I actually think the FX hold up pretty damn well. And daaaaaaaamn that's a helluva ending.

The Haunting: Two moments in the movie (you know the two) I was genuinely scared, and that's so incredibly freakin rare.

Ah, crap, these are coming fast!

They were.

http://www.brandonconnell.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/694850_427046352.jpg

As I dance around in that quote, the bird attacks of The Birds get Jessica Tandy to accept Tippi Hedren.

I don't remember The Haunting very well.

Peeping Tom was my #1.

it didnt look like england at all.
― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, February 2, 2005

so, pretty? ;)

btw Ghoulardi, your recurring obnoxious sign is NSFW.

the thnig otm re: peeping tom. it's a great looking movie and creepy as hell, but i've never found it terribly involving. the best i can do is to appreciate it from a distance.

The father/son stuff in Peeping Tom is so disturbing, and comes from so out of left field at first, it makes me want a shower.

I know it makes me an apostate but I consider The Birds pretty minor Hitchcock.

from a distance? perhaps we should come in for a closeup...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5pcCnjGT5sE/TGCHs_OSLjI/AAAAAAAAAEE/0pU75kjDEGE/s1600/rialto-british-noir-film-festival2010_peeping-tom_ban.jpg

So often in horror movies, people do stupid things and get killed. So it's always great when you have characters who do everything right & STILL get fucked. (Best example: Ben in Night of the Living Dead.) But I think Birds has some of that, too. Especially when all the kids leave the school, so quietly and orderly but it doesn't matter -- they get the shit pecked out of them. Plus, there's just not enough movie scenes with small children being swarmed by killer birds.

I think that Peeping Tom still qualifies as a spoiler.

peeping tom is so good, that's my "should have been higher!" pick so far

btw The Birds plays sooooooo much better in a theater than on TV.

and not just bcz WPIX in NY would always cut the farmer's corpse.

Series of still shots of Tippi's face following the gas fire's path toward the station always gets big laughs in the theater.

that peeping tom still comes from quite early on in the move iirc.

Good choice of #1, Morbs!

Peeping Tom: Always felt to me like a movie for students. Fascinating, but leaves me cold every time.

Does not leave me cold at all. The central conceit is just perfect, as far as I'm concerned, and the artistry of design and direction isn't just there to be deferred to as a technical meisterwork, but adds up to the awkwardness, the chills (hmm, okay, maybe it is cold, but in a GOOD way), the menace, the horror it's all there, it's all eating at me.

I love Anna Massey's jumper in that Peeping Tom still.
Since I voted for it I should probably say something more intelligent, but I can't help feeling every film studies course ever got there before me.

I find 'coldness' charge at PT as mystifying as when it's thrown at Hitchcock.

Powell provided the voice of the father btw. It was an intensely personal film for him I'd say.

I love the lack of explanation in The Birds. So spooky. So is The Haunting.

Powell was way ahead of his time with meta-horror-movie shenanigans, implicating the viewer, etc., etc. Eat your heart out, Kevin Williamson.

Eat your heart out, Kevin Williamson Michael Haneke.

Murnau's Nosferatu was my #29.

Scorsese:

"I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates... From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films."

Yeah, Peeping Tom was so ahead of its time it destroyed the career of one of the most beloved filmmakers or all time. That says something. It blew minds.

Yep, was gonna mention that thing too, Josh. I think when I first saw Peeping Tom I'd only seen A Matter of Life and Death, and it totally blew my mind that the same dude could have made them (I love both, of course, and they are both aesthetically awesome, but... so so different in tone).

* I'd only seen A Matter of Life and Death out of the P&P films. It wasn't the only film I had ever seen.

Peeping Tom is shooting ot the top of my must-see list. I knew not of this film. V excited.

well, PT was entirely Powell's and Leo Marks' vision, as opposed to an Archers collaboration.

interesting bio for a screenwriter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Marks

True, true, Morbius. But still a shock move.

And shit, yeah, Leo Marks sounds pretty awesome. Love cryptographers (though I don't love the story that encouraged him - probably the only Poe I actively dislike).

"I'm SCREAMING of a FRIGHT Christmas, where treetops and children both glisten ... WITH BLOOD!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7242/7248901056_8b435bc5bb_o.jpg

38. BLACK CHRISTMAS
Bob Clark, Canada, 1974
(437 points, 14 votes, 1 first-place vote)

bob clark's filmography is totally bizarro, dude made black christmas, porky's, and a christmas story
― it made me wish batman had written an article on mfas (Edward III), Wednesday, February 16, 2011 3:43 PM (1 year ago)

i think he got broken somewhere along the way, because man, so good right out of the gate
― O_o-O_0-o_O (jjjusten), Wednesday, February 16, 2011 3:46 PM (1 year ago)

but really, BLACK CHRISTMAS is all about the phone calls, which are really just the "Double Dog Dare" script from CHRISTMAS STORY pitched up a bit
― Dr. Alicia D. Titsovich (sexyDancer), Thursday, January 18, 2007 12:02 PM (5 years ago)

Yes yes yes yes yes!

#23 on my ballot. One of the few slashers that remains genuinely scary. From the phone calls to the poor girl in the attic to that eyeball.

Whoa, #23 on mine, too!

I was kind of disappointed in Black Christmas when I first saw it, was maybe the first inkling that slasher flicks are not my preferred mode - unless they do something REALLY special or are exceptionally beautifully shot - but I've seen it on telly a few more times since and I definitely like it a lot more now. Didn't quite make my ballot, though.

This is literally the only "slasher" film I ever enjoyed watching.

I love that, in the midst of all the shit going down in this movie, he slows the pace down for a fairly technical "tracking the telephone call" scene.

poor Andrea Martin

Like he doesn't just handwave it away, he shows a character in the midst of giant telephone switching equipment following connections and stuff. I bet David Fincher loves this movie.

I never expected these results to so heavily consist of movies I've never seen. Y'all are giving me one helluva 'must watch' list.

Now Bob Clark, that is one weird career.

This btw is the movie that I forgot and then panicked after submitting my ballot. Thanks again for letting me fix that Eric. My highest ranking non-post 2000 film.

I posted the trailer for Clark's Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things on the other thread; here's a still.

http://technicolordreams70.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/cspwdt7.jpg

Like he doesn't just handwave it away, he shows a character in the midst of giant telephone switching equipment following connections and stuff.

That sounds right up my alley. It makes me crazy when movies/tv don't adhere to an internal logic that at least makes sense within that fictional world. How did that subhuman psychopath manage the skill to make all the power go out, y'know?