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

It occurs to me that it would be helpful to have a ratings system for gore. Like, the gore in The Strangers is maybe a 4 or a 5 (just a little beyond what they're likely to show on a non-CSI-ish broadcast television show). Whereas some scenes I've seen from CSI-ish shows are actually something like an 8 or a 9 (I happened upon a scene from that Dana Delaney medical examiner show where she pulled back the skin on this dead woman's head and used a bone saw to cut the top half of her skull off, uncovering a missing brain in her brainpan. It was seriously gruesome.)

xp to josh

The Gore-meter: what would you give The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? It's amazing how it achieves such intensity without actually showing much--Edwin Neal cutting Franklin's arm is probably the most graphic image in the film in terms of actual blood spilled.

damn, E3, so otm re: martyrs

also this: we often reject the manipulations of films we don't respect, making them a pass/fail proposition., is why i find most negative criticism to be really boring.

thx.. so hard to write about it and avoid spoilers

I guess it is true that there are a lot more movies I respect but don't like than movies I don't respect and like. And I will say, as much as I neither respect, terribly, nor like "Martyrs," it is at least going for something more than butt-stupid movies like "Inside" or "High Tension" or whatever.

Inside is better than martyrs imo, but I voted for both. I always think of the strangers as more akin to funny games than ils/them tho.

funny games doesn't derive its suspense from the anonymity of the invaders, tho. also way more conceptual than ils or the strangers.

After reading the synopses of Inside and Martyrs, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be in a room alone with any of you folks who dig on this kind of movie. Jayzis!

I R delicate flower

stick to gremlins I guess?

The Gore-meter: what would you give The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? It's amazing how it achieves such intensity without actually showing much--Edwin Neal cutting Franklin's arm is probably the most graphic image in the film in terms of actual blood spilled.

Yeah, that's probably, what...a 2 or 3, at most? Obviously the Gore-O-Meter and the Terror-O-Meter are separate concerns. TCM is prolly, like, an 8 on the latter. But then take something like Brain Dead and it's almost flipped. It's arguably one of the goriest films ever (if only in terms of the sheer quantity of gore presented onscreen) and probably would be an 8 or 9 in those terms, but it's so OTT and cartoonish and distinctly unterrifying that I think most people could unflinchingly hang with the gore (with the possible exceptions of things like pus in the custard, which really is pretty effing gross).

tobe harper meant for texas chain saw massacre to be at least a bit humorous. and i, for one, saw the (admittedly sick) humor in the film.

Well, yeah, there's definitely some pitch black humor. Which somehow fails to detract from its terror.

TCM has some very funny moments--my favourite is when the guy conscientiously runs back in to shut out the lights before locking up the gas station.

I think my favorite blackly funny moment is Grandpa's inability to finish off Sally.

man i feel like i saw a totally different strangers

Strangers is engrossing for the first 2/3rds, but the denouement is both a let-down and a betrayal, no less so because of just how great the preceding sequences are.

going in I knew nothing about it, and was totally hooked by the intentional omission of various details and the overall pacing. very intense and well-done.

really loved that movie as a kid but it didn't hold up very well when I watched it again sometime in the 00s

― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Wednesday, 16 May 2012 22:11 (4 days ago)

^ this btw in re: alice sweet alice was totally wrong. I started to watch it last night and got riveted. currently free on hulu. avoid spoilers!

the only bad thing I can say is that at 1hr40mn it has got some pacing problems, but everything else about it delivers. perverse and atmospheric, with brief bursts of shocking violence, it's prolly one of the most innovative stabby mcstabberson films out there. with a pre-fame brooke shields, a great performance by paula sheppard of liquid sky fame, and, of all people, lillian roth in one of her last roles. if you're a fan of low budget 70s horror or giallo it's well worth a watch.

i don't know that the gore-o-meter is a terribly useful indicator in itself. that old saturday night live skit where julia child cuts her finger is far more bloody than psycho or even the texas chainsaw massacre, but since the gore is played for laughs, it's not terribly disturbing. though it probably varies from individual to individual, i think extreme brutality is generally harder to deal with, psychologically, than gore. when splatter exceeds our thresholds, it only becomes a disgusting gross-out. when we're overwhelmed by the anguished intensity and brutality of a film, however, the experience can be very nearly traumatic.

^ i don't mean that as another installment in my ongoing rant against "torture porn" and "exploitation aesthetics". horror is a kind of dare. horror movies promise to put us through the wringer, and we expect them to deliver. to that end, intensity and brutality are important spices. a horror film that entirely lacks the ability to disturb its audience might be a good film by whatever measure, but it fails at the most basic level to deliver on the genre's promise.

well w/ the SNL sketch it probably helps that you can almost see the tube coming out of Aykroyd's sleeve.

063. Shaun of the Dead [2004, 301 points, 11 votes]
064. Gremlins [1984, 299 points, 12 votes]
065. Mulholland Drive [2001, 299 points, 9 votes]

y'all can thank me for this section of the poll, lol

I have more films popping up on this than I expected and Threads was WAY TOO LOW

i don't know that the gore-o-meter is a terribly useful indicator in itself. that old saturday night live skit where julia child cuts her finger is far more bloody than psycho or even the texas chainsaw massacre, but since the gore is played for laughs, it's not terribly disturbing.

This is 100% RONG in my opinion; that skit was one of the most horrifying things I remember seeing on television as a child

y'all can thank me for this section of the poll, lol

i voted for 2 of the 3 too - more than 10 people voted for all except mulholland

I think TCM's reputation stems from the emotional violence, I guess, which is so unrelenting that the gore is almost beside the fact (and on that count, i want to say the only really gore is when Leatherface - who, never forget, wears a mask made out of human skin; does that count as gore? - cuts his own leg with his chainsaw at the end).

I've also noted that the gross out factor vis a vis blood is pretty overrated. The most wince inducing moments in movies are often either very minor - like the thumb-slicing in "The Thing," so tiny versus all the surrounds it, but guaranteed to make people squirm - or implied (like gruesome sound effects and implied cutting/slicing/chopping noises). When gore goes over the top, I think comedy is the only logical extreme, a la "Dead Alive," or "Evil Dead 2" or whatever. It's the reason I can't take seriously the latest wave of x-treme experiences, whether "Inside" or "Martyrs" or even "A Serbian Film." They go so far that, yes, they achieve a surreal state, but I bet most of these offerings would be scarier or more intense or better minus their explicitness, which comes across a distraction. Except "A Serbian Film," I guess, which is little more than its explicit over the topness and therefore needs to go there.

Finally got around to watching Opera last night. Hmm. Mixed feelings. It's still shot beautifully, but the plot/characterisation holes/idiocy seemed to be more pronounced than ever, and OOOF that shit metal on the soundtrack really did not work for me. Interesting death scenes, and obviously the pins-on-eyes conceit is classic, but I found myself struggling to care that much.

This is 100% RONG in my opinion; that skit was one of the most horrifying things I remember seeing on television as a child

Similarly, I could watch scary movies pretty easily as a preteen, but one of the things that disturbed me more than anything in a movie was in the shitty Chevy Chase comedy Modern Problems, when he uses his newfound telepathic powers to give a romantic rival a nosebleed that gushes everywhere, soaking tablecloths and filling pitchers.

Y'all are failing to take advatage of the Gore-O-Meter/Terror-O-Meter scales I suggested upthread. At least as essential as the Universal Comedy Scale, imo.

y'all can thank me for this section of the poll, lol

You and me both, brother. Why because they're all great (if, perhaps, not overly-horrific) movies.

yeah, I don't get argento's metal fixation. I love iron maiden, but when he used them on the phenomena soundtrack I was like wth dude.

Re: Opera, I think of it as one of his better attempts outside of the canonical highlights for it's (relative...) coherence. Plus I absolutely dig that [SPOILERS?] totally bonkers tacked-on extratime ending in the Swiss alps. [SPOILERS?]

[ALSO SPOILERS] Haha, I will agree with that - the Alps ending (especially the very very end where she's rolling around in the flowers) is pretty great. [END SPOILERS]

Similarly, I could watch scary movies pretty easily as a preteen, but one of the things that disturbed me more than anything in a movie was in the shitty Chevy Chase comedy Modern Problems, when he uses his newfound telepathic powers to give a romantic rival a nosebleed that gushes everywhere, soaking tablecloths and filling pitchers.

Haha YES omg

I had completely blocked that movie from my memory until you mentioned that scene, which apparently is burned deeply into my memory.

Also, poor Nell Carter in a super thankless role

This is 100% RONG in my opinion; that skit was one of the most horrifying things I remember seeing on television as a child

yeah, lol, i originally had a note in there about how the blood-spurting julia child bit "freaked me out as a kid", but cut it because it seemed like a distracting aside. guess i should have left it in. of course the response to these things varies from person to person, and kids can be pretty sensitive in general.

agree that the depiction of small, ordinary injuries (even something as benign as a hypodermic needle breaking the skin) can be more wince-inducing that ott displays of gore, severed limbs or whatever. i thought that the black swan did a good job exploiting the horror of everyday mutilation.

My window for childhood squeamishness was relatively small but profound. I somehow went from being absolutely terrified of the very idea of Jaws 3 playing on a TV in the same room as me to thinking A Nightmare On Elm Street was the greatest thing ever within a year.

martyrs made me queasy, but i passed out watching the episode of nip/tuck where the patient becomes conscious while under the knife and you hear her thoughts, as well as to a video of a cancerous foot in health class.

Exactly. I mean, I grew up with two physician parents, and whenever I showed them something from, say, "Return of the Living Dead," they'd basically just roll their eyes and point out how fake it looked. So gore has never bugged me. Discomfort, on the other hand, has. Discomfort is more indentifiable than FX. Ergo, "Hostel," with the girl's eye hanging out - it wasn't the sight of it that made me uncomfortable, it was this poor character being put through an incredible degree of pain and agony.

In the course of these bazillion horror threads, I think I've managed to never play the "this is/isn't horror" game. But after watching The Vanishing last night, I'm really having a hard time classifying that as anything besides a mild thriller.

I can't think of the last time I saw gore on its own that made me go, "urgh, enough". It's almost always the psychological/empathetic component that gets to me. Like the description of that Elisha Cuthbert movie upthread. I can imagine that the depiction isn't that awful on its own, but the idea of someone being forcefed pureed body parts makes me want to die a little. Ditto the whole eye thing in Hostel and the entire concept of Human Centipede and lots of other "torture porn"-y (I will be sure to use the scare quotes itt so as not to offend) stuff that I don't really have much desire to see mainly for the mental images they conjure up. And I openly acknowledge that what's shown onscreen probably isn't a tenth as awful as I imagine it to be. Which, in a weird way, is almost the biggest problem: it's unlikely that these extreme ideas are as horrifying on the screen as they've been built up to be in my imagination. But that should be taken as my own personal cross to bear rather than a blanket condemnation or dismissal of stuff I haven't seen.

One of the only horror movies I've actively avoiding seeing is this Korean torture porn flick called "The Butcher," wherein cameras are apparently strapped to the heads of victims for POV torture. Apparently gruesome cutting/slicing sounds abound, plus screaming.

so independently of this poll my 11yo son has been nagging me to watch some horror films. he's a little sensitive to this stuff so I started him out with some training wheels. the sixth sense he liked a lot. yesterday we watched carnival of souls, and at one point I realized he was audibly panting next to me on the couch. I'm like "are you alright?" and he's like "it's so suspenseful!" he loved it so I guess apple/tree etc. he wants to see phase iv and the host next. on the fence about showing him ringu, he might jump out the window.

also while picking through my DVDs I realized psycho is rated R? guess it must've gotten rated during some rerelease but it seems odd when it used to run uncut on TV back in the day. prolly won't show him that, as I don't need to be sitting in the bathroom while he showers for the next 2 years.

Looking through my ballot, I don't see much that I'd let a wary 11-year-old watch, besides maybe Gremlins and The Tingler (hopefully not a ballot spoiler, as I doubt it's gonna show up at this point). If you watch the latter, though, good luck explaining the scene where Vincent Price drops acid.

(I watched an awful lot of inappropriate stuff by 11, though. Including, like, Hellraiser and several Elm Streets. So I may be playing it a bit safe in my attempts to recommend less visceral stuff.)

xpost Recall one of the most controversial elements of "Psycho" at the time was the flushing toilet, I believe a movie first!

hey, i saw shining, tcm, first nightmare on elm street, freaks, silence of the lambs, halloween, etc etc all before or by age 12, and i turned out...yeah, well.

Did any of them ever give you nightmares and stuff? I watched a hella lot of horror as a kid, but none of it did for me in their respective horrors what "Jaws" did for me (and everyone else) and getting in the water.