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

But first ...

"Ever been whipped with a switch by Lillian ... well, you know the DRILL!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7078/7257582830_b7bf51fafb_o.jpg

19. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
Charles Laughton, USA, 1955
(610 points, 17 votes)

christopher nolan to remake "night of the hunter" with vince vaughan

some of you all are seriously fucking up the results a small group of friends and I came up with for the open-ended debate (inspired by a separate online discussion) on what film was the most universally beloved amongst film fans of all stripes, be it auteurist, buffdom, histiorian, critical, whatever...
Passion of Joan of Arc got some soft support, Sunrise (my personal guess) nearly came out on top, but in the end we had settled on Night of the Hunter. Now I have to open the question back up among my chums.
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, January 1, 2004 7:22 PM (8 years ago)

nice going assholes!
― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, January 1, 2004 7:33 PM (8 years ago)

ohhhh yeahhhh

wait jjj, how long have you had that display name, because lol

Real Poltergeist house still standin' strong: http://g.co/maps/mkp9m

Only 30 miles from the E.T. house! http://g.co/maps/6c3ge

really liked poltergeist, even on subsequent viewings after its initial release. but the last time I checked in around 10 years ago, it seemed dated and not very compelling at all.

loooooooooove night of the hunter

love night of the hunter, don't consider it a horror movie, so didn't vote for it <- we need some kind of shorthand for this

i don't know what it is exactly

Once again, a film so ahead of its time it basically destroyed the director's career.

Citizen Kane, Peeping Tom, Night of the Hunter ...

this my 3rd post with this displayname, so you arent asleep at the wheel

I was genuinely shocked to see Shelley Winters dead at the bottom of the lake in a movie from 1955.

n/a OTM about Night of the Hunter. I like it, it's a solid film, but I didn't vote for it and this placing seems ridiculous

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!!