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

yr right, shoulda been higher.

if neither of the first 2 hostels makes this countdown, you people are completely fucking insane

Uh.

or is it ... completely fucking intoo sane?

Yeah, seriously. Don't want to see no Hostelry here.

catching up:

Dreamcatcher Poopcatcher - this reminded me that, tho I've not actually seen it, Dreamcatcher has an awesome wiki plot recap:

Henry and Owen go to Duddits home, where he tells them that Mr. Grey is headed for Quabbin Reservoir to seed the water with alien larva. Arriving at the reservoir Owen is ambushed by Curtis' helicopter and mortally injured, but manages to ground Curtis. Henry takes Owens weapon and kills Mr. Greys worm. Duddits confronts Mr. Grey, who finally exits Jonesys body. Duddits then reveals that he himself is an alien and attacks, causing both aliens to explode in a cloud of red dust which briefly resembles a dreamcatcher. Jonesy, now himself again, steps on the final worm that was just about to contaminate the water.

Jacob's Ladder - FOUR first place votes?! - I like this movie OK, but this def surprised me. #1 voters, plz explain. lol Flatliners - def a much worse film, but also an otm comparison point

Carnival of Souls - this is new to me, but I loved it so much that I gave it high placement on my ballot. The imagery is creepy and haunting by design, but also I think enhanced substantially by how cheaply the film was made. The degraded film quality & over-saturation in parts gives the naturally dreamlike feel similar to what Lynch achieves elsewhere - speaking of which, I think Robert Blake's boogeyman in Lost Highway is a pretty obvious homage to creepy smileyman in COS.

Pillbox, your choice of screen grab from Let The Right One In is so brilliant that it's compelling me to wrestle with what I cannot stand about this genre. - genre is subjective, KJB. Just change your POV ;) RE: LTROI - thanks, the fact that I had a hard time deciding on that one speaks to how beautifully filmed the movie is in general. That is one case (& a film I voted for) in which plot and dialog are serviceable enough, but totally secondary to the photography.

haha, I have been awaiting this meltdown with bated breath

have you seen either of them? xxpost

Dreamcatcher is insane. It's like 50% explosive alien diarrhea.

Jacob's Ladder - FOUR first place votes?! - I like this movie OK, but this def surprised me. #1 voters, plz explain.

... some of us already did?

I wasn't making a value judgment, ftr (still trying to avoid those as much as possible until the results are done). But it seems to me that sanity would be the deterrent toward voting for Hostel, not insanity.

Hostel Takeover.

lol eric

I know a lot of folks make the "not-horror" pitch regarding NotH, but enough of it takes place from the children's POV as to be absolutely terrifying, the horror of being defenseless and alone against one of cinema's greatest monsters

I saw most of the first, but switched over because I was bored and it was crappy. And horror is the genre where I can usually sit through even the crappy examples (hence how I sat through both of the bloody Jeepers Creepers films).

xposts to jjj

... some of us already did?

sry DJP, I'll reread.

pillbox, see Dreamcatcher! It is so chock full of quotables!

ok, well as long as you made the effort to give it a shot i cant rail against you on this one, even tho i def disagree xpost to emily

agree with jjj re: the Hostel movies. they'd be too high at this point, but they deserve a spot somewhere in the top 100 imo. unfairly maligned.

i am just kinda shocked because once i saw wolf creek pop up in the low end of this poll i just assumed that hostel/hostel 2 would rank far higher than that. also i will rep a lot harder for hostel 2 than one.

I don't think I voted for other of the Hostel movies (nb: nope), but I can see why people would and I think they're both much, much better than their reputations, particularly the second one.

the stepfather is a horror film too, and not just because we see the knives and the blood

the bad seed's a horror film too

all 3 are about the infection of a family with a hostile, destructive force that presents itself as innocence

xp re: NotH obv

I mean, the main reason why I'd be majorly aggrieved by them showing up is that we're in the top 20 now. If enough people had liked them to be at 90 or something I'd easily get over it, y'know.

hmm, night of the hunter was #1 on my ballot -- yet the visual doesn't have any indication that it got a #1 vote.

haven't been able to bring myself to watch Hostel so I didn't vote for it, altho I fully expected it to place based on its rep. That it hasn't - while much artier/less nominally horror films have - kinda says a lot about the voting blocs involved here

Also surprised to see High Tension apparently not placing at all. Not that I'd vote for it myself, but I figured others would.

I think a useful shorthand for "x is not horror" would be a low droning or buzzing sound imbedded in an invisible post

I don't enjoy watching people get tortured, fake or otherwise, so I can't even imagine watching Hostel. I mean, I've never even watched Marathon Man.

hmm, night of the hunter was #1 on my ballot -- yet the visual doesn't have any indication that it got a #1 vote.

Sorry; forgot to highlight it on my .xls

1 first-place vote on NOTH.

Before Poltergeist, was there another horror movie that found scares in the suburbs and domesticity?

Invaders from Mars. (more exurbs I think)

Has a horror villain ever been dispatched by a superficial wound from an old biddy with a shotgun? then led away by the police... insufficiently apocalyptic.

I always marvel at how there's always a part of the same guy in almost every role Mitchum plays. Yet he can be the scariest dude on screen in something like NOTH or an almost loveable shlump in the Friends Of Eddie Coyle. Fkn Mitchum, man. Love that guy.

it's all good, Eric ... i was more afraid that my ballot didn't make it to you on time (and my comments here had been so much pointless pissing in the wind) than any indictment of you!

so if mitchum had a spectacular death scene NotH would be horror? bodes well for oliver! placing due to reed's bill sikes

love the scenes w/ Julian Beck as the preacher in Poltergeist 2. The rest of it is pretty iffy, though, esp. the boilerplate Native American stuff, which tbh kinda reminds me of the opening sequence of this Nelson video (1:00+)

HR Geiger tequila worm sequence is pretty dope too.

Has a horror villain ever been dispatched by a superficial wound from an old biddy with a shotgun? then led away by the police... insufficiently apocalyptic.

well, bette davis did crush the skulls of the bad guys in hush ... hush, sweet charlotte with a big-ass stone urn. so that may count?!?

i liked Cabin Fever but Hostel was real whatever imo, i have no problem with gore for gore's sake but i never felt an ounce of shock or surprise or investment in whether anyone lived or died

speaking of which, i think that neither of Aldrich's psychobiddy twin films will appear at this point ... so feh to yous philistines!!

thx for the spoiler, philth

Am I right in understanding that the trailer for Hostel is very misleading? Because thaving seen the trailer, i am very comfortable with never watching it.

like anyone here who hasn't already seen hush ... hush is gonna actually watch it!!

yeah ME, I've been busy

some here haven't seen Peeping Tom which is generally thought more essential, y'know

Hostel 2 is OK, because it has an element of ridiculous Hammer horror grand guignol to it that tempers the sadism and stupidity of the whole enterprise.

Watching Night of the Creeps right now. What a weird, oft overlooked movie.

good soundtrack too!

i can make a pretty impassioned argument for the hostel movies doing all that deconstruction of horror stuff that people claim for lots of other movies but ive said it all before i suppose so i dont want to broken record this thread. i dont really remember the trailer at all so let me go watch it and get back to you on that.

u genuinely blowin' my gasket now, morbz ... i would've thought that you of all people would've seen hush ... hush at this point!

catching up late, but...

#25) LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - a movie that i enjoyed and appreciate but don't have particularly strong feelings about. great photography and performances, nicely frigid tone throughout, but it just didn't move me much.

#24) CARNIVAL OF SOULS - i really need to see this again and probably should have made time for a rewatch before voting. though it sounds exactly like the sort of thing i'd love (stylish incoherence, doomy atmosphere, weird girlhero, evocative locations & lighting), i found it rather dull. then again, it was ages ago, and maybe i wasn't ready, wasn't paying full attention, was too hi, i dunno...

#23) POSSESSION - surprised that so many haven't seen but are now enthused by the prospect of this. it's sui generis amazing, and i bet if we re-ran this poll in a year, it'd place a lot higher (not that we should do such a thing). i have to confess, though, that as much as i love possession, it was only #23 on my own ballot. i was initially certain that it had to be in my top ten, but circa 1916 is right: it's so aggressively unhinged and emotionally disturbing that it's hard to fully embrace. still, i wound up thoughtlessly pushing it way too far down the list and now feel bad about slighting it. would have loved to see it break the top 20.

#22) JACOB'S LADDER - not a top 50 pick for me, but i did consider it and have no gripe with its placement here. the ending is a bit of a disappointment, and i wasn't as emotionally moved by the story as some here, but it's an incredibly inventive and effective scary movie, one of the few that's really unnerved me as an adult.

#21) BRAINDEAD - will always be dead alive to me, and it's one of my all-time favorite gore movies. never really scary, but deeply disgusting and funny as hell. the orgy of carnage that it builds towards is so long and overwhelming as to become weirdly psychedelic after a while, a kaleidoscope of whirling blades, ribboned flesh and exploding intestines. didn't vote for it, mostly for strategic reasons, as i figured it'd do fine without me, but i love it to death and have often delighted in springing it on the stoned and unwary. the difference between this and shaun of the dead is one of sensibility. SotD has a sitcom sensibility, clever and ironic, with a distanced affection for the horror genre. dead alive, otoh, is completely the product of splatter movie fan culture. it's anarchic, fucked up and fully committed to the genre.

#20) POLTERGEIST - great movie. a lot of hardcore genre fans seem to hate it for being too soft, too slick, to spielberg or whatever, but i think it's one of the best movies about suburban america in the late 70s/early 80s. i'm just gonna "pretend" that it's more speilberg's movie than hooper's, and say that spielberg really understood that environment and culture, and it shows. plus it's scary as hell, and does a great job of locating horror in everyday things (the TV, the tree outside the window, toys, the closet, fridge food, the swimming pool, the bathroom mirror).

#19) NIGHT OF THE HUNTER - my #2. suppose it's arguably "not a horror movie", but i don't care. creepy and hauntingly weird enough to pass my test.

Am I right in understanding that the trailer for Hostel is very misleading? Because thaving seen the trailer, i am very comfortable with never watching it.

― oh jeez. I can feel myself quicken. (Austerity Ponies), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 2:44 PM (1 minute ago)

it got marketed to look like 90 minutes of ppl getting cut into chunks, but in truth there are two or three very intense setpieces, while most of the movie is actually a suspenseful how-will-they-escape type deal. a couple of the characters run around horribly disfigured for a while but the movie's played broadly enough that it never feels overwhelming, if you've seen a tarantino movie you've prolly seen violence as intense.

then again martyrs was in my top 10 so maybe I'm not the best judge here

"Trick or STABBY HORROR!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7236/7256881004_867c510e6b_o.jpg

18. HALLOWEEN
John Carpenter, USA, 1978
(662 points, 21 votes)

i think he invented techno with the halloween soundtrack. okay, maybe not, but listen to it some time. he was some sort of pioneer with that thing.
― scott seward, Thursday, May 1, 2003 2:11 PM (9 years ago)

The way he shoots the suburban streets in Halloween makes them seem so desolate and menacing.
― PVC (peeveecee), Thursday, May 1, 2003 2:27 PM (9 years ago)

Halloween (easily one of his least inspired and atypically cold)
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Friday, May 2, 2003 4:34 PM (9 years ago)

Just all around awesome.

hostel didn't do much for me, but the sequel is pretty damn good. never considered voting for it, but i did enjoy watching it.

and josh in chicago otm, re: night of the creeps. silly, but a hell of a lot of fun.