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

That's so craven.

The idea of watching someone w/ a Monkee's haircut running around flapping his arms crosseyed and yelling "DERP DERP DERP!" for half an hour just does not rly appeal to me I guess.

Stay clear of Two Thousand Maniacs, SD...

But at least the ott blood and gore would compensate for the stupidity of the characters though

Slippery slope imo.

i've thought about voting for the Nicolas Cage version of the wicker man -- oh wait, this isn't the comedy poll!

(joke)

feel a distinct disconnect w/ anyone who can't find some level of amusement in 80s Stephen King mugging it up as a yokel in a Romero directed EC Comics tribute.

Is the symbolism that the two fingers are the twin towers?

Also wondering about this.

Somehow think the disconnect begins and ends with anyone who can't find some level of amusement with EC Comics full stop.

The "Jordy" segment is no doubt intended to be something like a Jack Davis tribute, all funky and sweaty and messy and gangly.

That's why I said light campaigning. Just making sure we are all on the same page here. Proceed.

I can't watch the moss part b/c it grosses me out way too much. Just too horrible.

Is the symbolism that the two fingers are the twin towers?

yeah. i said it was a stretch...

King's performance as "Hoagie Man" in Romero's Knightriders is his true shining moment imo.

http://www.discordia19.com/storage/king_cameo1.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1327683865672

His cameo as a racist truck driver in Creepshow 2 isn't bad either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65GQg06SX90

tbf he was sky-high on coke and pills pretty much continuously from 1980-1985

That's so craven.

HAHAHAHAHA! A+++

anyway, about extreme horror and "torture porn" or w/e, in response to jjj:

the slasher film has never been my favorite genre. essence of the genre = crazy monsterish guy watches girls get naked while breathing heavy, then plunges knives into them. not my thing, unless there are strong fantasy elements to offset the stalk and slash, as in say nightmare on elm street. the giallo is similarly troubling, perhaps more so because the misogyny is often more explicit, plus rapeyness, implied or otherwise. i like mario bava and dario argento because they made absolutely amazing, bizarre and dreamlike films, but have few other italian horror favorites. and i find the texas chainsaw massacre actively unpleasant. it's a great & important movie in lots of ways, but the constant, desperate shrieking & terrified helplessness get to me. much prefer the sequel's comic surrealism.

on a broader level, i have little time for "gritty", "realistic" and brutally sadistic nihilism as art or entertainment. i feel that it has nothing useful to say about life, and whatever sensibility it might appeal to just isn't mine. moreover, whatever "boundary" it might seem to be pushing at has long ago been thoroughly transgressed. the room beyond is just another room, anyone anyone can enter any time they wish, and its ugliness isn't inviting. i like both straw dogs and taxi driver, but that's about as far down that particular path as i care to go.

i've been watching horror movies nearly all my life, the gorier the better, but i think my interest in the genre is fundamentally an outgrowth of my childhood love of fantasy and science-fiction literature. i watch horror to see impossible, undreamt things, the imagination unleashed. horror, as a cinematic genre, is a much freer than fantasy and sci-fi, which are bound by tiresome action melodrama expectations. i like that sense of possibility. any crazy thing anyone can think of can be made into a horror movie of some sort, and probably will be. i like the suspense, the desperation, the titillation, the darkness and the gore, but they aren't enough on their own to seduce me. i need some visionary quality, something from another world.

re: la lechera

the wicker man is great, but come on, it's a lock

xpost Def going to be interested to see your ballot imo.

the primary reason i disliked deadgirl, by the way, is that it uses the "zombie movie" trappings to make a story about rape and sexual slavery semi-palatable. in essence, it's about two boys who find a sex slave and continue to use her as a sex slave. the film would work just as well - it would mean the same thing and function in the same way - if the girl were not a zombie. i don't deny that it has something valid to say, but the brutality and explicitness of the presentation repelled me. that said, the ending was pretty great and i did like they mysterious anubis-dog.

with contenderizer on this. I don't feel the need to critically lambast stuff I have no interest in watching and when I read the plot summaries of something like Martyrs for ex it just seems like something I don't want to experience. which is not a value judgment on it as a film or not, really.

For me, it's not so much a moral problem as a question of largely replacing suspense with disgust. It's not a new phenomenon, and it's as valid an approach as any other, but i tend to find films like Deadgirl dull.

I'm sure I've issued this caveat already on here somewhere, but I am not trying to talk anyone into watching or liking any of these movies - I just bristle when there seems to be more of a surface reading of the more extreme stuff simply because it's extreme. For example (not picking on you contenderizer) describing deadgirl as being about rape and sexual slavery, when there is a lot more going on there. And similarly, claiming that it could have been done w/o the living dead girl is a similar misreading of theme to me, because it radically changes everything about the motivations and decision making of the 2 main characters.

This probably isn't the thread for it, and lol at me for asking this about a movie I have no intention of seeing, but what else is there to Deadgirl besides rape and sexual slavery mixed in with zombies?

Its a pretty interesting meditation on teen socialization and sexuality actually.

And beyond that also how we form morality in a situation outside definition and standardized exemplars of behavior. Also how we define what it is to be human and what the line between person and object truly is.

Ugh, can we not use the word "meditation?"

Yeah, it's kinda like war film : killing :: Deadgirl : sex. I got it, I just didn't particularly want it.

This is grossly unfair but if I want to watch a meditation on what it means to be human, I would watch about a bazillion slavery movies before watching Deadgirl, since slavery is a direct antecedent of my family history.

for me it's trollhunter

Yeah sorry I used meditation, I regretted it right afterwards but some guy was yapping at me while I typed so

tell GZeus we said hi

ahahaha

I'm Norwegian, and zombies are a direct antecedent of my family history.

This is grossly unfair but if I want to watch a meditation on what it means to be human, I would watch about a bazillion slavery movies before watching Deadgirl, since slavery is a direct antecedent of my family history.

I was thinking when I wrote up my ballot about whether I wanted to include Irreversible or not. I decided against it tho bc horrific movies are not the same as horror movies, and some horrific movies (movies about eg slavery, the holocaust, rape, etc) are worse and more difficult for me to watch than any horror movie. (Quoted DJP for tangental reasons - your comment about slavery just reminded me of this question I had.)

Also, I kinda feel bad bc there are some horror movies that I will probably never watch (Human Centipede, Audition, Martyrs, Deadgirl, etc) not bc I think they're bad movies but bc I'm kinda legit too frightened to subject myself to them? Not that this is similar, but tho I watched 2 Girls 1 Cup when it was the rage, I refused to watch those videos of those Ukrainian teenagers killing that guy. Obv these films are fictional and these other things are "non-fictional" but some images I don't want circulating in my brain. Anyway, I feel bad bc in some ways I suspect those are the best horror movies - the ones that are too scary for me to even watch. But I couldn't vote for any of them.

2 Girls 1 Cup

comedy poll iirc

i'm not really a horror person - but am tempted to submit a ballot just so i can vote for Cemetery Man.
considered putting it on my comedy ballot!

FWIW, Mordy, Deadgirl isn't at all visually extreme (I have similarly-squeamish reservations about the other films you mention, aside from Human Centipede, which I've also heard leaves a lot to the imagination but which I simply have no desire to see anyway). It's the characters' motivations and decisions and actions that encourage fifteen post-viewing showers.

oh man, someday my curiosity is going to overpower my sense and I'm going to watch Audition, and then I will hate myself so very much because I know I shouldn't watch that movie because I'm a gigantic wuss but I also know that one day I will watch it and that will be a sad day full of cringing

Honestly think by this point Audition can't really do as much damage as it would've in stealth mode, before everyone knew it to be one of the new kings of extremity.

(Yes, that is me double daring you.)

I think you are underestimating how much of a wuss I can be

This is what wikipedia plot summaries are for iirc.

but am tempted to submit a ballot just so i can vote for Cemetery Man.

cosign this before it disappears. everyone pls to watch and vote for cemetery man.

idk if this is the best place for this, but i wanted to let ppl know that They Live is playing on TCM 5/5 and Evil Dead II is playing on IFC 5/1

This thread has reignited my examination of why I'm perfectly able to handle pretty much any '70s/'80s/'90s gore but am totally squicked by the very idea of the gore in a lot of more recent movies, particularly wrt "torture porn". Like, reading about the eyeball stuff alone was enough to make me avoid Hostel. I think it might be something to do with the increasing tendency towards leaving less to the imagination (and also towards longer, lingering, loving shots of awful tableaux) plus a jaded, novelty-driven pushing beyond the boundaries of what I'm comfortable with. I used to love watching stuff with Tom Savini explaining his tricks and techniques and showing off all kinds of grotesqueries, but I'd feel a little uneasy seeing the (probably mostly digital) workshops of some of these dudes working today. I dunno. Maybe I'm just getting old.

I know for me, the problem is that if I watch something, my subconscious does its damnedest to convince my body that what I'm seeing is real, almost to the point of triggering anxiety attacks later on when I try to sleep. If the context in which this is presented is fantasy or science fiction, I have enough obvious unreality for me to properly distance myself and control the physiological reaction, but 9 times out of 10 a straight-up slasher flick with tons of gore is going to be nightmare city.

Resident Evil didn't give me any nightmares at all, and neither did Silent Hill, but the remake of Night of the Living Dead ruined my sleep for a week and Nightmare On Elm Street 2 did likewise. My ability to tolerate a film is almost 100% predicated on whether I can rationalize it into something other than "a horror film".

fwiw, hostel & hostel II aren't anywhere near as revolting as they're often made to sound. they have their moments, but are pretty enjoyable, overall. i like audition, too, though the R-rated version is rough enough for me.

HEY DAN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xH2PV_S4QI