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

The Shining totally mentally scarred me as a young'un, dunno why it didn't occur to me to vote for it. I'm sure it'll do fine, regardless.

i'm sure i've told this story before, but after the first time me and my sister watched the shining (ages 10 and 8, respectively), i wrote red rum with my mom's lipstick on the bathroom door so she'd see it in the mirror when she came out

my mother was not pleased

actually i think she secretly kinda was but then we're a sick family

I'm comfortable predicting a top ten showing for The Shining, but these results could be all kinds of wacked out. The top five is totally up in the air at this point, from where I'm standing.

― Bob Bop Perano (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 6:47 PM (13 minutes ago)

if you look at the nom list, it's really not that mystical, a couple of them will be the ones that place in every ilx poll whether you want them to or not

kinda feel like every movie about satan should end with our heroes succeeding and then satan going "oh lol wait i'm satan" and destroying them all

Seriously. There's way too much "winning" in those types of movies.

rosemary's baby

The Omen

SPOILERS: Satan becomes president iirc

xxxxpost

Yeah, I mean...The Exorcist will probably show up in the top ten, but it could just as easily show up at 10 as it could at 1. And a third of the top ten could be total outliers. I mean, my top five has some popular choices and some stuff I think is kinda left-field that could show up around 50 or, if there's enough support, could wind up in the top 10. Who knows at this point?

besides any religious/squeamish objections to horror films, i think that another reason why my parents didn't let us watch horror movies was b/c they thought we'd pull stunts like writing REDRUM with lipstick or worse. and that fear was credible b/c when i was 4 i went through a phase where i defaced paintings and photos around the house and scribbled out entire pages in books.

the beyond

I'd like to see a spoiler-free list of horror movies with nihilistic endings.

ed i hate to break it to you but in rosemary's baby 2 she bludgeons the baby to death with a copy of http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MQONc0LFdyk/T1hzmV2wnOI/AAAAAAAAAKU/4OIg0qf9T_A/s1600/book_spock.jpg

Rosemary's Baby 3: Rosemary's Baby's Baby is really boring. I mean, cool twist and everything, but it was just a nice baby.

I'd like to see a spoiler-free list of horror movies with nihilistic endings.

― Bob Bop Perano (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 11:10 PM (1 minute ago)

i would give you this but we have been asked to keep our ballots secret until the results are all posted

kinda feel like every movie about satan should end with our heroes succeeding and then satan going "oh lol wait i'm satan" and destroying them all

Seriously. There's way too much "winning" in those types of movies.

well, considering that satan's great monster-power lies in his ability to convince people to go ahead and do things they already wanted to do anyway, i'm not surprised that he's so easily defeated. satan vs. hulk, for instance....

satan: "now hulk, isn't there someone here you feel like smashing?"
hulk: "HULK SMASH!"

almost every horror movie has a nihilistic ending if you assume the survivors will ne emotionally fubar forever

haha and even being strict about that nihilism that describes 36/50 from my ballot

xpost

I always imagine really efficacious group therapy sessions taking place after horror movies.

my favorite horror movies are those in which evil triumphs and it turns out that it's not such a bad thing after all

^ these are very rare

Yeah, it looks like about 1/3 of the films on my ballot end unambiguously nihilistically.

Can you name some of those, contenderizer? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

generally if a horror movie makes me feel good at any point about anything i probably dont like it

Can you name some of those, contenderizer? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Wicker Man

unless you've been rooting for the douchebag protagonist the whole film

Through the Looking Glass, xp, but I think that ending's dark in a way no sane person can get behind SPOILERS - a woman giving into demonic influence as symbol as her embracing cycle of sexual abuse (70s porn and midnight movies really go places that still blow my mind sometimes)

as satisfying as it is to fantasize about frying a sexually-repressed busybody who's hellbent on imposing his oppressive beliefs on folks (esp given the destruction wreaked by Sergeant Howie's American counterparts), IRL it is quite horrifying -- even especially when the deed is perpetrated by neo-pagans.

that's no way to talk about dr. morbius, tad.

IRL...?

the movie is ridiculous. the ending is the punchline to a very funny joke.

xp

Can you name some of those, contenderizer? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

stuart gordon's dagon is my go2 example, but daughters of darkness is somewhat similar. hadn't considered wicker man, which sort of fits, cuz i'd been thinking about cases where good ultimately embraces and is transformed by evil.

Twin Peaks sorta fits that definition, although it's arguably still a pretty bad thing.

yeah I don't think the black lodge/Bob are portrayed positively. Lord Summerisle and co are depicted as a functional, free-spirited, happy community

The ending of Night of the Living Dead is as nihilistic as it gets.

I can think of lots of instances wherein some aspect of nature/supernature triumphs at the protagonist's/mankind's expense and it could be viewed as less an act of aggression and more as just, like, survival of the fittest. I still argue that The Thing can totally be viewed as a film about an alien trying to survive and get offworld in the only way it knows how while dickhole humans do everything they can to prevent that happening. Fitting that it came out around the same time as ET.

The Thing can totally be viewed as a film about an alien trying to survive and get offworld in the only way it knows how while dickhole humans do everything they can to prevent that happening.

Carpenter made this movie. It was called Starman.

I think Blair Witch > Paranormal Activity, but Josh is right, PA is scarier. We've all woken up to strange sounds, but only the chosen few have been lost in the woods for days. xxxxxp

Weren't there ads even touting The Thing as the anti-ET? (Tho maybe that was Xtro.)

I think Blair Witch > Paranormal Activity, but Josh is right, PA is scarier. We've all woken up to strange sounds, but only the chosen few have been lost in the woods for days. xxxxxp

PA understands that staring at an image in which nothing is happening - when you know that something unforeseeable (but presumably terrifying) eventually has to happen - is extremely unnerving. throw in the very effective suggestion that this is YOU in YOUR ROOM maybe THIS VERY NIGHT, and you get the simplest and most effective form of jack-in-the-box horror i've ever seen. i'm only surprised that the basic device hasn't been more heavily exploited in the past.

diff between terror and horror (that being terror). terror is a much more interesting experience imo

terror being the the anticipation/mystery/sublime, horror being the result of actually seing the object or event and becoming stunned/revolted

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

yeah, stephen king broke it down that way in some essay i read about a thousand years ago. i think he positioned "shock" as the third element of scariness: the moment of surprise when something suddenly breaks the suspense of terror.

like shock is the break point between the A of terror and the B of horror

I could honestly go with a movie built on just pure suspense/atmosphere without a big reveal ever presenting itself I think (or at least the reveal remains mysterious). tension and mystery is so much more enjoyable than the punchline or explanation

I think SK talked about that in Danse Macabre. You really could divide up films into Horror films & Terror films. Blockbuster shoulda been all over that.

i kinda go back and forth on this but i think ultimately my faves are a mix of the two

this is prob why I love Rosemary's Baby and Wicker Man so much - both the build up/terror AND revelation/horror were masterfully pulled off

xp - yeah, or a mix of the three, cuz i like jump scares too

yeah, often it's just pure horror, or nice sense of suspense with an anticlimactic punchline. rare to see films pull off both