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

watched May last night, good stuff. omg @ blind kids crawling around on glass, easily the best scene in the movie

Tera and I tried to watch Possession. It was late and we both sleepy, but I had sort of hype the movie due to this thread. We made it half way through and had to turn it off. Maybe we'll try to watch again when we are more awake, but it was maybe one of the scariest movies I've seen. Not sure why it terrified us so much but surprised it didn't place higher.

I chalk it up to the movie feeling as unhinged as the characters are. For a film where the mise en scene is so often really matter-of-fact and prosaic (even the completely batshit moments are framed like scenes from a straight dramatic film), you never feel like you're observing a world that's at all sane or predictable. You're never allowed to get your footing.

watched May last night, good stuff. omg @ blind kids crawling around on glass, easily the best scene in the movie

yeah great movie - the leg shaving sight gag is also a stand out scene

Possession was too heavy for me. The film drained me, what we saw of it. After we turned it off I regained my energy and we watched something else. I'd like to return to watching it, want to see how it ends.

I am watching Paranormal Activity 3 right now. In a mostly dark basement. By myself. This is not among the smartest decisions I've ever made.

Pulse last week, It last night. The first felt like a bridge between Videodrome and Ringu/The Ring. Many nice images, and I give it credit for eschewing gore and easy shock for atmospherics; in the end, though, the build-up drew me in and the last half-hour or so lost me. It's resolution was completely preposterous, there was a lot of bad acting (especially Harry Anderson), and the occasional Big Chill detours made me wince. But Pennywise was great; it did scare me.

It seem obvious too, as I watched It, that King was trying for his own Nightmare on Elm Street (film '84, book '86).

"seemed"

tbf there's no way they could have filmed the actual climax of "it" without being arrested for sex crimes so

Haven't read the book, so I don't know how it really ends. Surely they could have come up with a better substitute, though--not just in terms of what the physical manifestation of "It" turned out to be, but also the idea that all they had to do all along was gather round and start hitting it really hard.

SPOILER ALERT young teen gangbang. Seriously.

actual climax involving literal climaxes

They have to go back and do it again when they're adults though - cant remember if that actually involves "doing it" again.

Grauschleier filling the gaps of his horror knowledge, part 1: The Brood, starting now.

Lucky you.

I watched most of BURN WITCH BURN on Friday and it was great. The academic department internal squabbling made me lol too.

going to see Poltergeist this afternoon at the Alamo Drafthouse, don't think I've ever watched it all the way from beginning to end

That was actually quite great. Iconic scenes in the kitchen (again: what a great screencap upthread) and the school. Toddlers in snow suits will never look the same from now on. Nice use of deep-saturated 70s-yellow in the set design, at least in the beginning.
Also some interesting conceptual linkage to Possession.

the brood/possession would make for a doozy of a marital strife dbl feature

http://s10.postimage.org/r5t6drm7t/178_51_broodytyme_04.gif

man that little thing is so GROSS!
<3

the brood/possession would make for a doozy of a marital strife dbl feature

I believe both were made in the wake of the dissolution of the respective directors' marriages.

yeah, and a messy custody dispute in cronenberg's case as well

Halfway through trouble every day and really hoping someone still awake can promise me that this gets less boring. Also another great reason to want to punch Vincent Gallo in the face.

Let that keep you going.

I liked trouble every day! it wasn't really scary but had nice soft focus and a great score.

Ok the next time one of you assholes gets on me abt torture porn, I am using this piece of shit movie as a defense.

Cleansing my palate (hopefully) with Amer

Halfway through trouble every day and really hoping someone still awake can promise me that this gets less boring. Also another great reason to want to punch Vincent Gallo in the face.

awww. i think i've been its primary defender around here, so sorry you didn't like it. nice photography, moody music & atmosphere, and some interesting ideas. it hit me right, what can i say? sure, vincent gallo was/is an annoying dork, but that didn't bother me much for whatever reason.

wouldn't be surprised if you didn't like amer, either. it's not unpretentious...

20 minutes in and my main problem with amer is that I didn't see it in time to give it a shitload of points in the horror poll. Blown away so far, this is incredible.

cool! nice bounceback from trouble every day anyway.

I voted for trouble every day but wouldn't recommend it without reservation - it's slow, it's arty, it involves looking at vincent gallo for long stretches of time - not for everyone obv, but worth checking out.

I like the lack of exposition, how the movie doesn't connect all the dots for you. and even tho I'm not a huge gallo fan, his performance works here, maybe for similar reasons as walken's in the dead zone? there's a natural freakishness that lends itself to the outlandish happenings. same goes for dalle I guess. when TED first came out I remember being struck by the combination of high-art cinematography and bloodsoaked grindhouse splatter. there have been a number of folks in france since who made careers out of that trick.

few who've handled the "high-art" end of that equation anywhere near as well as denis does in trouble every day, though.

agree that gallo was well-cast despite his oddity and deficiencies as a performer. and walken in the dead zone is a very apt comparison. they're both weirdly empty and inert characters, and creepy besides.

i also like that it's an entire film seemingly spun out from the mundane observation that "people who are kissing look like they're eating one other"

Watching "Repulsion" for the first time now, btw.

Caligari and Eyes Without a Face are on the Cinematheque's summer schedule here.

Watched The Gate (1987, Tibor Takacs) last night and totally loved it. Why isn't this movie better known? Total echt-80s YA horror with wonderful stop motion creatures and a great best friend character (who has a Venom denim on in his first scene but then a Killer Dwarfs denim for the remainder of the movie).

About as scary as Troll 2 if memory serves.

Never seen. Think it will always have a tiny spot in history for being the movie that topped the American box office the week Ishtar was released.

I would compare it to Troll 1 for scariness, but yeah, not scary except for a few moments. But the creatures are leagues, leagues better than Troll 1.

The Gate is definitely good fun, very YA, wouldn't have made my ballot but I do feel sorry for it being neglected by *everyone*.

Part of it is that I really, really miss stop motion creature effects and I didn't even know there were gonna be any in this. Made me v happy.

Saw Caligari with live accompaniment this afternoon, probably the first time since university. I can't remember if it made the Top 100 or not (and won't try loading the whole thread). I love the Caligari-to-Hitler subtext, and obviously it influenced countless horror films that followed. I think I prefer looking at stills from it to actually watching it, though. About 20% of the print I saw was tinted garish blue for reasons I didn't quite understand. Surprised Tim Burton hasn't remade it, with Depp as Cesare and, I don't know, Danny DeVito as Caligari. (The film was introduced by this guy, a magician, who was in a film class of mine 30 years ago. We filmed a script of his that depicted the Last Supper as a celebrity roast--it made me cringe at the time. I was nostalgic and wanted to say hi after the film anyway, but he'd cleared out.)

Don't give Burton "ideas."

Last night Thnig and I watched THE SPELL (1977), featuring the lovely Lee Grant and a young dull Helen Hunt. Perfect combo of Carrie and Season of the Witch, the home interiors are AMAZING (esp the kitchen) and it's also v short and all right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmPuzCcWlN0&feature=related

i watched the wicker man the other day, on a big screen in high def. fucking amazing, and i've been a fan for decades. i kvetched some in this thread, saying that it had become overpraised, that it really only deserved the acclaim of other cult items, to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack, surprising the unaware. that was bullshit. it's brilliant.

a bit surprised, though, by how quick other posters are to condemn sgt. howie. he's an unlikeable anti-hero, a priggish fool, but i don't wish death upon him or see him as any worse than the cultists he investigates. howie's fate is monstrous, and the real villains of the piece are clearly lord summerisle and his followers. i love the fact that the film never really takes sides, though, either personally or spiritually.

If anyone's on Letterboxd, I've put this list up there and may do the same for the comedy/action polls:

http://letterboxd.com/ephender/list/ilxs-top-100-horror-films-poll/

Nice, thanks for that.

I watched The Seventh Victim recently, and absolutely love it. The male section of the dénouement made me laugh a bit for having such surety in values alien to me, but the Donne aspect was kind of devastating.

Also watched Near Dark. It is rubbish.

023. Possession [1981, 565 points, 17 votes, 2 first-place votes]
024. Carnival Of Souls [1962, 560 points, 20 votes, 1 first-place vote]
033. Freaks [1932, 475 points, 18 votes]
036. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920, 467 points, 18 votes]
046. Eyes Without A Face [Les yeux sans visage] [1960, 371 points, 16 votes]
060. Vampyr [1932, 314 points, 8 votes]
061. M [1931, 312 points, 9 votes, 1 first-place vote]
074. Threads [1984, 251 points, 6 votes]
080. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht [1979, 226 points, 8 votes]
088. The Seventh Victim [1943, 206 points, 6 votes, 1 first-place vote]
092. Onibaba [1964, 191 points, 7 votes]

So I'm sitting down to watch a few: Eyes Without a Face is just about perfect in terms of duration, measured performance, plot, the ending was a bit too cute but effective; Carnival of Souls was all about that score: the organ as an instrument of god as well as the devil and communicate the sheer dread; Threads isn't horror (i know i know yawn), more horrifying: anyhow the assembling of destruction via effects/photographs/staged crumbling landscape with that old 80s computer for narration of effects (the only electrical appliance that seemed to work in the end?) gripped, but I'm not sure about the dramatic strands -- they didn't work for me, apart from Ruth's daughter and her underdeveloped use of language. You had to laugh at the Industry? What Industry shouting off at the demonstration. In the end I thought Watkins' film was better at covering the same ground while also thinking this was amazing in its own right.

if that's your to-watch list, it is a pretty awesome group of films