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

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

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).

Not a horror movie per se, but Martha Marcy May Marlene is the most recent example of this that I can think of. And I think it was very effective.

the shining does both extremely well. the terror-building scenes, like danny riding his big wheel down the halls, are incredibly suspenseful, and the shock-horror scenes, like the reveal of the drowned woman, are genuinely disturbing. alien is another gold-star example.

audition

would maybe be interesting sometime to compile a list of the horror and suspense films that pull off both (or all three) of these aspects

although I suppose the results would prob end up basically being what are generally agreed to be the best horror/suspense films (not including certain torture porn favs)

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

― Chris S, Wednesday, May 16, 2012 8:22 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol I would use these same two films as representative cases of tension being masterfully built up, sustained, and then pushed to a fever pitch.. only to fumble the landing with an anticlimactic thud when the REVELATORY CONCLUSION emerges. Admittedly & esp in the case of The Wicker Man, this could well have to do w/ knowing about the ending years in advance of actually seeing the film. With Rosemary's Baby, though, while my knee-jerk lolsatan tendencies def play a part in my opinion of the ending, honestly just think it was sort of a cop-out to hinge Mia Farrow's brilliant and sustained unraveling on some comparatively garden-variety supernatural eeeeeevil.

it's polanski, evil always wins

cant imagine how anyone can see the final scene in rosemary's baby as a flop. reveal or no reveal, i will always appreciate a climax that's both knowingly funny and genuinely unnerving, without tipping too far in either direction.

See, tho, I'd much prefer such evil in the form of madness, alienation & cognitive dissonance, which would explain why I love the endings of the other films in the apartment trilogy SO MUCH MORE than RB.

xp

Ooh, been out tonight. Looks like 3 of my 50 have placed so far.

I must say that my take on the Exorcist has always been 'oh, maybe if I was actually religious it would scare me more'. I suppose that they make such a big deal of the Christian aspects of the story it gets away from the simple devil/demon/unknowable evil aspect and more into the whole 'is my faith enough' plotline. Don't have that problem with The Omen at all, but then I mainly just like that for the "it's all for you, Damien" scene. Did not vote for either, and not even in an intentional omission way - I just didn't even consider them for best horrors even for a second.

And I do agree that the ending of Rosemary's Baby is sort of disappointing. However, once you've seen it once and then watch the film again, it's fine, as you're no longer hoping for ambiguity, and you can revel in the silly/scary elements. But when I first saw it I really wanted it not to resolve whether she was mad or if there was a plot against her.

heh considering some of the amoral crap i voted for putting two polanski films on my ballot was the only thing that gave me a moment's pause

Late to the game since I was out this evening, jesus christ get one life you shut-ins, but anyway: But my question in these situations is always, "Who says this person is any more of an expert with unexplainable stuff than, say, John Edwards or the Ghost Hunters douchebags? Who says they have any real grasp on or control over this completely bugfuck situation?"

"Poltergeist" does lampshade this with the dude telling Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams about the toy car they filmed moving like six inches over a period of several hours, after which they open the door to the crazy carnival in the kids' room.

Also, Stephen King's hierarchy in Danse Macabre was terror > horror > gross-out.

to me essentialist evil still translates as 'evil' as revealed through selfish actions or corrupted conditions... spiritual/supernatural evil still works for me (this is due to having a liberal pastor father who never emphasized evil as this detatched thing but always explained it in terms of relations and cause and effect. so moral language never really bothered me, and its presense as a current or atmosphere or tendency in aesthetics or literature still signifies something real to me. supernatural and psychological horror is much more disturbing to me than base fear-of-death horror)

the Rosemary's Baby reveal works for me in part I think because it still mantains its sense of terror/mystery - despite finally knowing what's happening, you still see very little, there's just this disturbing music and Mia's horrified reaction... "what have you done to his EYES?"

re: Alice Sweet Alice, yeah I considered that reading... what made me go with mine was Alice and the killer's penchant for wearing the same costume around and the killer happening to take out everyone that Alice had a grudge against (and then there was Alice's collecting all those trinkets related to the events as well). it's very subtle, kind of left open, which is what I like about it. the possibility is there, but you can't be certain of it

― Chris S, Wednesday, May 16, 2012 6:15 PM (3 hours ago)

that is a really interesting reading, I'd prolly buy into it more if the movie more explicitly alluded to a supernatural element, as it is it takes pains to connect the dots to implicate the killer in a whodunit way. also I'm assuming only one of us was a big enough nerd to read the novelization.

that said I really need to watch it again.

I think what I was getting at with the "unexpert experts" thing is less the idea of them being overtly exposed as chumps and more about showing them to be seemingly competent and effectual but also ambiguously hinting that they may fundamentally misunderstand the supernatural phenomenon they've "fixed". The presence in The Exorcist (never specifically named or identified in the original film) may have died with Father Karras. Or it might not have. And all of the priests' work at battling the presence may have had little more effect than to convince it to move to a different body. I think the possibility of their basic ineffectiveness (along with the ineffectiveness of everyone consulted about Regan's problem) is a totally valid read on the film based on what we're shown.

Awesome seeing The Seventh Victim place.

yeah xxp, I haven't read the novelization either - I'd be interested to see if it gives any more explanations there. I've tried finding explanations online and get no clear answers

happy to see a lot of my recent vintage picks just barely make the poll (Pontypool, PA and Wolf Creek), especially because my insanely high ranking for Pontypool helped it get into the top 100.

You soulless horrible monster

it's such an awesome movie, i love it

just to be clear, I am a big enough nerd to have read the novelization of alice sweet alice

"Be kind! Re-DIE-nd!"

just sayin..

"it was sort of a cop-out to hinge Mia Farrow's brilliant and sustained unraveling on some comparatively garden-variety supernatural eeeeeevil."

halloo, IRA LEVIN.

Satan is real, u heathens

"it was sort of a cop-out to hinge Mia Farrow's brilliant and sustained unraveling on some comparatively garden-variety supernatural eeeeeevil.

yeah, i don't agree with this at all. i find the ending of rosemary's baby a letdown not because it collapses the ambiguity, but because having done that and intimated the awful unknown, it retreats to the dull quotidian. the film only permits us a glimpse of the beyond and shies away before we can drink our fill. farrow's closing shriek bubbles the horror back up to marvelous effect, but the first time i saw it, i couldn't help but feel a little ripped off.

4/15 today - Phantasm, May, Wolf Creek, Witchfinder General

Need to see Blood on Satan's Claw & The Seventh Victim

Also, Stephen King's hierarchy in Danse Macabre was terror > horror > gross-out.

cool, thanks phil. it's been ages, so i'm not surprised that i remembered it incorrectly. according to google, i didn't get much of it right.

apparently king treated "terror" as most do, as dreadful anticipation. otoh, his "horror" is analogous to what i called "shock": not after-the-fact disturbance, but rather the climax-point at which suspense is violently ruptured. his gross-out third element is "revulsion", which seems like an extreme and rather debased form of the traditional definition of "horror".

prefer my terror/SHOCK!/horror breakdown, but then i would

I had no idea this was happening.

Wolf Creek is one of my favourites of recent years because it 1.) took it really seriously and, perhaps as a consequence it 2.) understood the sheer horror of hopelessness. a lot of films twist into that or throw an ending in that speaks to that hopeless quality that is truly terrifying, but I've not seen it as well done recently as it was here, when the girl has the knife and thinks she's got a shot but then he swings and her fingers fall off. There's a real feeling of "this is it, fuck..."

i'm not a horror guy so i didn't feel remotely qualified to vote in this, but i think the climax of 'rosemary's baby' is incredible. i like that you can read it either way -- either rosemary has given birth to the son of satan, or she's fallen -- inextricably, forever -- into the hands of a bunch of maniacs. either way, it's pretty horrifying.

"the dull quotidian"

That's where you find the most insidious evil! A bunch of elderly well-to-do Upper West Siders.

Ditto--incredible. I don't think there's anything Polanski could have shown in terms of actually seeing the baby that would match the look of "unspeakable" (Rosemary's word) terror we see on Mia Farrow's face. I love everything about that scene from the moment she sets foot in Roman and Minnie's apartment--the way people are arranged around the room as the camera hops from one to another ("And his feet!"), the jokes (Laura-Louise sticking her tongue out is sublime), Rosemary's contemptuous reaction to Guy, etc.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUwfkgXncHg/TgEA9kY0a1I/AAAAAAAAAVE/4UUknoNeY_Q/s1600/Rosemarys_Baby.jpg

i find the ending of rosemary's baby a letdown not because it collapses the ambiguity, but because having done that and intimated the awful unknown, it retreats to the dull quotidian.

I find its retreat to the quotidian genius. It's sort of like the end of "Some Like It Hot:" "Nobody's perfect!" After all this horror and torment, she holds the baby and, well, yeah, it might be the spawn of Satan, but it's her spawn of Satan, dammit!

Or: "You're trying to get me to be his mother."
"Aren't you his mother?"

Perfect.

or we'll kill ya milk or no milk

Yeah, I agree with the quotidian-defenders on that count. While I may prefer an ambiguous line, if you're going to break through the ambiguity then banality of evil is much scarier to me than spooky superpowered evil.

i like that you can read it either way -- either rosemary has given birth to the son of satan, or she's fallen -- inextricably, forever -- into the hands of a bunch of maniacs.

I don't think there's anything Polanski could have shown in terms of actually seeing the baby that would match the look of "unspeakable" (Rosemary's word) terror we see on Mia Farrow's face.

come on, it's p unambiguous, you see his devil eyes.

I always appreciated the "well...ok" ending of RB because it shows how surprisingly at peace she is with the idea of her life not going exactly as she planned. She just acquiesces and life goes on. Maybe.