THE VAULT OF ILX Top 100 HORROR Movies Poll Voting Thread (voting closes May 9 *~*~*~*2012*~*~*~*)

Which is a good time to mention a dreadful TV movie that scared me silly in the early '70s: The Devil's Daughter, with Shelly in the Ruth Gordon role.

http://cdn100.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/383/583/548/the-devil-s-daughter-1973-dvd-shelley-winters-rare-d916a.jpg

Abe Vigoda!

Watched Marebito last night on jjjusten's recommendation. It's a low-budget Japanese horror film by Takashi Shimizu, director of both the Japanese and American vesions of Ju-On/The Grudge, and starring Shin'ya Tsukamoto, director of Tetsuo, the Iron Man and its sequels. Pretty great! I don't know that it's a masterpiece, but it reminded me a lot of Kiyoshi Kurosawa films like Cure and Pulse, spliced together with Tsukamoto's punk experimentalism, Shimizu's finely-honed creepiness, and lots of nods to Lovecraftian pulp horror. Dreamlike, strange and quite unpredictable.

http://i2.listal.com/image/1122254/600full-marebito-screenshot.jpg

Holy shit, must see The Devil's Daughter!!

I was pleased that Watcher in the Woods was on there. It was My First Horror Movie!

xxp - The international title, A Stranger from Afar, gives a pretty good idea of the film's themes and tone, plus sounds very much like something Lovecraft or one of his contemporaries might have written.

watched Repulsion (finally) last night. awesome. was this controversial/a big deal when it was released? It seems several steps beyond Psycho, which was just a few years earlier.

I was pleased that Watcher in the Woods was on there. It was My First Horror Movie!.

yeah, I nommed it cuz it was one of my first, too. loved it at the time, though i haven't seen it in forever.

LL, The Pit is on the nomination list and a certain person you live with wasn't even involved in the process.

See, I knew you all would take care of me.

Another film I really want to go to bat for here is Dementia, aka Daughter of Horror. One of the most remarkable films I've ever seen, an hour-long, dialogue-free, first-person Freudian head trip from 1955 that follows a frightened and disturbed young woman down a rabbit hole of her own making. It's similar in many ways to Polanski's Repulsion, dealing as it does with sexual psychosis, and also to the films of David Lynch, especially Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire. It's hard to believe, in fact, that Lynch and Polanski didn't crib heavily from it. The soundtrack is gorgeous, and the stylized, deliberately artificial imagery recalls German expressionist filmmakers like Weine and Murnau. It's scary, brave, campy, arguably feminist and deliriously surreal. Hard to believe that it was made five years before Hitchcock's Psycho. Would make my top 10 list even if this poll wasn't limited to horror films.

Advertising:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_myX5Q4qMDhY/SlTzeTEHitI/AAAAAAAACdY/k3U3APjH1ls/s400/dementiatitle+copy.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDiXNzuPtUA/TEkE80BIVrI/AAAAAAAABnk/Na7VZcPN4zw/s400/dementia-01.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_myX5Q4qMDhY/SlTzeGSEMJI/AAAAAAAACdI/bkrcoD8KkTU/s400/dementia2+copy.jpg

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/dementia/w448/dementia.jpg?1289451447

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_myX5Q4qMDhY/SlX_C1zOw9I/AAAAAAAACd4/DsZSMu9mjA8/s400/Dementia2ffff.jpg

holy crap will watch!

wow great stills

thx

not quite horror but I would recommend Suddenly Last Summer for the atmosphere/sense of terror as well

one of the charms of marebito is that shimizu shot it in 8 days and basically was using it as a palate cleanser between ju-on and the usa grudge, which obv doesnt add merit to the film inherently but does make the result kind of amazing. it def doesnt feel like a speed run film at all.

Re Watcher in the Woods, it was an earlyish scary movie for me, too -- I guess I was 10 or so. Remember it being spooky but not much else about it. The movie that did scare the living hell out of me at that age (or maybe a year earlier?) was the Body Snatchers remake, which is definitely going on my ballot. I think I literally didn't sleep for a few nights afterward. (Actually, the original Body Snatchers might make the ballot, too.)

I still feel the terror when I see Mitch McConnell

http://images.politico.com/global/news/100913_mitch_mcconnell_ap_328.jpg

Dementia / Daughter Of Horror seconded, the DVD I have actually has 2 versions, one with narration and one (the original I think) without.

Weird retro art horror fans, check out Jigoku! It's very strange.

http://nicolasheller.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/jigoku-screenshot-15.jpg
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews24/a%20jigoku%20criterion%20dvd/a%20jogoku%20JIGOKU-19.jpg
http://subwaycinemanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Jigoku1-759562.jpg

http://srv14.movie-list.net/sexmaniac/img/jigoku2.jpg

yeah jigoku is rad. dementia's been on my to-watch list for years.

putting together my ballot is reconfirming my love of downbeat 70s b-movies: let's scare jessica to death, shock waves, shivers, homebodies, lemora, messiah of evil, deathdream, the other. try to creep me out while employing glacial pacing, a burbling electronic score, and lots of film grain, apparently I will love you forever.

in some weird way I consider the evil dead to be part of this tradition except everything's turned up to 11.

one of the charms of marebito is that shimizu shot it in 8 days and basically was using it as a palate cleanser between ju-on and the usa grudge, which obv doesnt add merit to the film inherently but does make the result kind of amazing. it def doesnt feel like a speed run film at all.

― Badu and a sax run hand-in-hand (jjjusten), Thursday, April 19, 2012 10:05 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It does and doesn't, imo. I'm not surprised that it was shot in a hurry, but it never feels rushed or thrown together. It often has a distinctly improvisational feel, like I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Shimizu just told Tsuakamoto to react silently to situations and characters about which he knew little in advance. I love how fragmentary and loosely connected it all is, though nothing feels unfinished or unanswered in the end.

Obviously this is Eric's and Pillbox's call, but my own feeling on stills: atmospheric/moody rather than bloody corpses/exploding heads. I know many would strongly disagree.

― clemenza, Thursday, April 19, 2012 3:45 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know, I think the stills should either be representative or intriguing images, and I imagine there'll be a fair few placers that would need bloody corpses/exploding heads to fulfil the 'representative requirement'.

Also, crap, Dementia is going on my to-watch list.

I want to strongly campaign for 964 Pinocchio but I know next to no one has seen it :'(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SHlSJIw99o

Also am ashamed w/ how many films on this list I haven't even seen (Jigoku, Kwaidan, Onibaba, The Thing, Phantasm, etc...)

more ppl have seen pinocchio 764 than you think, ilxors have repped for it before. don't think rubber's lover was nommed.

Wd also rep for Lord of Illusions but everyone seems to hate that one too

I like 964 Pinocchio and Rubber's Lover quite a bit, but probably not enough to push either into my top 50. Would like to see the former again, as it's been at least 15 years.

Hey, for anyone curious about Dementia but unable to a hold of a proper copy (it's available through Netflix), it can be viewed in criminally low quality on YouTube. Not recommended, but might do in a pinch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMeSo_4aIBU

Stevie D, you must see Kwaidan.... it is available in a beautiful Criterion edition. AND Eric hates it!

I like onibaba more than kwaidan... but I would

surprised ugetsu wasn't nommed tho maybe that's more fantasy than horror? been a long time since I've seen it and don't remember much about it.

Not a big Kwaidan fan. Lovely but rather inert, imo.

According to DVDBeaver the Criterion DVD has fucked-up colors and 20 minutes of missing footage :(

Not enough missing imo. (just kidding. I don't hate that movie. I just think its no ugetsu. Or creepshow.)

Creepshow otm

Yes, inert is a good word.

I LOVE Ugetsu-it is one of my favorite movies-but it never would have occured to me to nominate it in a horror poll.

re Kwaidan:

•A 163 minute version is now available on Region 1 DVD as a part of the Criterion Collection. The (Region 2) Masters of Cinema DVD is the first video release to contain the full 183 minutes of the original Japanese cut of the film.

•Originally a four-episode anthology released in Japan at 183 minutes. The USA version removes the second episode, starring Keiko Kishi and Tatsuya Nakadai, in order to shorten the running time to 125 minutes.

So really, at the time the CC was released I guess they couldn't get their hands on the original material. It was enough that they restored the fourth episode that had been completely excised from the US release.

well Ugetsu is nominally a ghost story, like The Uninvited.

From what I remember, Ugetsu was mildly freakier than Kwaidan.

But I'll stop, since it's bad manners for the poll host to engage in politicking.

A ghost story may or may not be horror, I would say.

I never found Ugetsu horrifying or freaky, maybe in part because I identify with the ghost.

Just previewed the first couple minutes of "Dementia." Wow, that does look amazing. Soprano in the credits music is Marni Nixon!

Not that you can't be horrified while identifying with the source of horror...or even because you identify with the source of horror...
(xpost)

I don't think netflix has Dementia on disc does it? I really don't want to watch it on youtube. I think the half hour, public service film Apaches is about as far as I'm willing to go down that route.

Have been thinking about the relationship of "ghost story" to "horror" ever since I first saw The Devil's Backbone (which I will be seriously voting for, btw). It's in many respects a straight drama, and the ghost is more a figure of sympathetic pity than fear, but I nonetheless consider it one of the best horror movies of the last decade or so. The combination of supernatural elements, gothic atmosphere, creepy suspense and occasional jolts of real terror are enough to convince me that it belongs on my ballot.

The ghost story is one of the most basic and essential "scary story" models, and tbh, I'm inclined to consider almost any at least moderately creepy movie featuring ghosts part of the horror genre.

I don't think netflix has Dementia on disc does it? I really don't want to watch it on youtube. I think the half hour, public service film Apaches is about as far as I'm willing to go down that route.

It had copies of the Kino edition a few years back. Haven't checked recently. And yeah, it's gonna suffer for the low tube quality a lot more than Apaches.

there are plenty of movies with ghosts I wouldn't consider horror, anything from ghost to fanny and alexander

harry potter

etc

Speaking of things that are on youtube in fairly poor quality, I would like to rep once more for The Signalman. It's a 40-minute film, so possibly bearable in this format, but I haven't watched it through myself. Almost certainly my favourite Ghost Story for Christmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmBkK7N3Hhc

I think "fantasy" is a suitable label for non-horror films featuring ghosts