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

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.

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.

nicely put

christ finally an actual out-and-out horror movie

just watched the hostel trailer and yeah, that was prob a good way to cash in the saw momentum, but its far from representative. all of the eli roth stuff shares a smart heart that doesnt come across in the marketing campaigns tbh, cabin fever is also an underrated gem.

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)

OTM ... also, he wrote this (from the season of the witch piece o' shit):

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

wait cabin fever didnt place either right? bah

I don't really care for Halloween personally, but I knew it was coming and I sort of get why people like it, it just doesn't do anything for me.

halloween is totally solid, more compelling to me than F13 or NOES

I'll admit that I didn't pick any Eli Roth movies because mostly I hate how good he looks covered in fake blood.

dont watch the horseshit remake tho, and i say that as a guy that will rep for the remakes for both the hills have eyes and last house on the left. which makes me realize that neither of those originals seem to have made the cut either?!

xpost hahaha eric

Thanks to all who remembered to vote for Night of the Hunter and Vampyr.

Here's a film we can enter into the not-horror sweepstakes. But I guarantee it's one of the scariest and most horrifying you'll ever see:

http://www.friendsofhercules.org/images/songofnorwaysmwrrr.gif

i mean, john carpenter is probably just as responsible for a generation of candy-ravers on account of the "silver shamrock" song as kubrick is responsible for furries b/c of That Scene in the shining!

Anyone ever seen Foster's Release, the babysitter in peril short that allegedly inspired Halloween?

halloween is totally solid, more compelling to me than F13 or NOES

definitely agree

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.

― I want L'interieur chicken, not Hausu chicken (jjjusten), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 2:47 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

I can get behind this, I suppose - not as self-righteous as Funny Games, as pretentious as Martyrs or as fanboyish as Cabin in the Woods. I like both Hostels (esp. a lot more than the likes of Saw movies, The TCM remake & a lot of mainstream American torture-spectacles of the time). Cabin Fever has its merits as well, tho I couldn't quite make room for any Eli Roth flicks in my top 50.

halloween was one of my canon cuts, deep respect for it tho and if it's the only late 70s/early 80s slasher flick that places I'm ok w/ that

also soundtrack is one of the GOAT, the contributions the soundtracks make to this and assault on precinct 13 are immeasurable

Love this quote form Eli Roth's IMDB page:

Eli Roth began shooting Super 8 films at the age of eight, after watching Ridley Scott's Alien and vomiting, and deciding he wanted to be a producer/director.

<3 the well-chosen minimalistic elements of Halloween - the soundtrack obv & the inside-out Shatner mask.

I love Halloween. I know it's corny (e.g., the way Donald Pleasance portentously says "evil") and has various other flaws big and small, but beyond just how scary it is, I also love it as a period piece--it conjures up the late '70s as immediately for me as Saturday Night Fever or anything else.

cheap shock windowpane-breaking jump in Halloween really soured me on it

Just that?

I love the sneaks they used to make it look like Illinois in So Cal. They brought in some leaves and then desaturated the print to make the trees and leaves more brown. Clever.

Also: "(Don't Fear) the Reaper"!

so eric, counting down to 11 today and then rolling out the top ten tomorrow i assume

i am now actively rooting for eraserhead just so it doesnt make the top ten fyi

Yes x 3 on B.O.C.

I think half the girls I had crushes on high school were good-girl Lauries, and the other half were bad-girl Annies. I do not, regretfully, remember anybody in my school the equal of P.J. Soles.

I did have Halloween in the middle of my ballot, but honestly I've seen it and its many imitators and progeny SO many times now that it's hard to either recall its initial impact on me or find anything worth re-seeing in it. That said, I can't begrudge it its original effect, or its importance in the canon or the industry.

(That said, the closing shot of the beginning, before the titles, bugs the ever-loving shit out of me. Michael's parents discover him and take the mask off, SHOCK IT'S A CHILD OMG, and then . . . everyone in the scene freezes, "Police Squad!"-style, but instead of it being a freeze-frame or a fade, Carpenter does this big crane-up/pull-back, and everyone is standing there like they're playing freeze tag.)

dont watch the horseshit remake tho,

Hmmmmm . . . Carpenter's Halloween > Zombie's Halloween II > Zombie's Halloween > Rick Rosenthal's Halloween II

between halloween, carrie, and rock n roll high school, preteen me found PJ soles to be a very fascinating concept

^^ Don't forget Stripes

didnt she start in pr0n?

Phil D. otm - RZ's sequel is better than his remake of the first, prob mostly b/c he didn't feel as indebted to the source material. That said, I think the first remake was respectfully done, even if the end result didn't end up standing on its own all that well. It was certainly nowhere near as effective a genre-throwback as The Devil's Rejects, at least.

bite your tongue!

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