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

I would make a great extra, I'm nondescript and unmemorable and won't pull focus from the lead. And I take instruction really well.

if dan p can't/won't do the soundtrack, i know that m.eily would do a bang-up job.

You can have this one for free.

can I be script doctor? I always wanted to be a doctor. also recommend that music director djp approve emil.y's soundtrack for use.

hey strongo I don't have savini's number but why buy a burger when you can learn to hunt

http://www.dec.edu/pages/makeupeffects.html

he's in your neck of the world, too

Yeah, I have a friend who went to the Pittsburgh Art Institute to study under Savini, and he's doing effects in Tarantino movies and stuff now, so his programs are presumably the Real Deal.

Obv I can't list everything I've seen but assuming I'm a pretty big horror fan and have seen most of the canonical ones, does anybody have personal recommendations for something I really, REALLY need to see before the deadline?

― second only to popcorn (or something), Thursday, April 26, 2012 3:51 PM (Yesterday)

you've done a lot of good homework already! some last minute recommends:

a tale of two sisters - I stopped repping for this years ago because it went from being an obscure korean film to one of its more well-known exports. it's a super creepy ghost story, but also verrry well-made, great cinematography and set design, top notch acting. it stumbles a bit during the conclusion but its gothy swampy dreamy sumptuousness is something else. streaming on the netflix.

homebodies - a 1974 black comedy about a group of seniors who start bumping off the people who plan to demolish their apartment building. kind of obscure, never on DVD, but it's on youtube. a weird mix of funny, poignant, and chilling.

last house on dead end street - a carnival of souls for the nihilist grindhouse set, as bottom of the barrel production values manage to produce some transcendent eerie effects and memorable, iconic images. the soundtrack of the last 10 minutes is dominated by drug crazed laughter. must've been some hard tonic back in 1973. US DVD is out of print, happy hunting.

polanski's macbeth / the tenant - the first two films in the apartment trilogy are going to suck up most of the polanski love in this poll, but don't overlook these two gems. his macbeth is brutal, gory, and darkly beautiful. the tenant is identity paranoia par excellence and proves there is nothing scarier than roman polanski in a dress.

haxan / vampyr - assuming you've already seen nosferatu, these are other worthwhile silent era treats.

^^^ SPOILER ALERT re: The Tenant

Found this through the Damage contrololz thread. Video is good. Skip to ~ 2:00.

http://movieline.com/2012/04/26/great-moments-in-baseball-the-rings-sadako-throws-first-pitch-at-japanese-game/

looooool

hahahaha

It would have been pretty funny no matter what, but what she does post-pitch made me laugh aloud at my desk.

Ok so putting together my ballot is basically making me feel terrible for doing a shit job in the nominations process, because there is no Jim van Bebber nominated. Fuck me.

xxxp thanks for the recommendations edward. Vampyr will be pretty high on my list and The Tenant prob 3rd in a list of 4 polanski's that might make it but haven't seen any of the others so I'll get looking, unfortunately hampered by access to only the shitty uk versh of netflix tho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNUr__-VZeQ

Mid-polling period slump. I've only gotten two ballots in the last 4 or 5 days, bringing it up to a total of 13 with the early birds. I'd hate for 50 ballots to come in the last day (hint, hint).

I'm gonna be a late bird, as is my lurker.
Give me a day or three and we will get our ballots in, and they will be full of HORROR.

Imma get mine to you in the next day or so. Watching all of these movies I intended to watch just totally isn't gonna happen before the ballots are due.

dude I guess I should get mine over to you then as well, for one very obv reason & also to spare you my portion of the last-minute clusterfuck

In the interest of fairness, I have every intention of extending the voting period an extra few days. But if your ballot is basically set, don't procrastinate.

i'll get my ballot to you in a day or two, eric, not just to spare you the last-minute clusterfuck but also b/c i'm at the "law of diminishing returns" portion of watching/evaluating horror films for this poll.

I'm incredi-busy until the 6th, so if voting is extended that'd be awesome. If not, my ballot will be a bit more rushed and definitely last-minute.

Probably too late to influence voting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic

you'll get mine in the next couple days, eric

also, wanted to pass along a short film that jjj recommended to me the other night. it's called outer space (2000, d. peter tscherkassky), and i don't know whether or not it's the "outer space" mentioned in the nominations list. even if not, it's worth a look. it's made entirely out of a painstakingly rephotographed and reedited chunk of the 1982 film the entity, starring barbara hershey, but it's a distinct and separate work, and quite a trip besides. all i've seen is a low-quality youtube. while it clearly doesn't do the film justice, it does get the idea across. plus it's only 10 minutes long, so no great investment required.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTarJ0Op7W8

If I weren't the moderator of this poll, I'd be stunting hardcore for ^^^ too.

... oops.

there are a few other tubes of it up, none terribly high quality, but maybe a bit better?

(And, yes, it's the same Outer Space as was nominated, because I was the one who nominated it.)

cool, didn't know. this one's a bit better (and bigger), but still pretty cruddy:

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

My ballot is submitted.

Fairly off topic, mentioning The Entity reminds me of this Thurston Moore song that samples it extensively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C33Z4Cx5Adg

Oh, man, I'd forgotten about Outer Space. I was super into that when I first saw it. I don't know how seriously I'd take it as a horror film nomination, though (similar to my half-serious nomination for Hopital Brut inasmuch as they're more senses-battering experimental films than horror per se).

I would, however, like to suggest a very last moment write-in candidate which I'm surprised no one nominated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S03Aw5HULU

NAKED BLOOD (aka "Splatter: Naked Blood", originally Nekeddo burâddo: Megyaku) - 1996, d. Hisayu Sato

I'd intended to rep this film early on, but kept putting it off. Now it's probably too late to change anyone's mind, especially as it's not the easiest thing to get a hold of - or endure. Still, it's one of my favorite horror films of the last couple decades, and this seems as good a place as any to discuss it. Basically, Naked Blood tells the simple story of a gifted but profoundly alienated young man who invents a drug (called "myson" or perhaps "my son") that causes people to experience pain as pleasure. His fond but distant mother is a medical researcher, and he tests his new drug on her hapless patients, with predictably gruesome results.

Naked Blood earned some cult notoriety in its day due to the grisly "self pleasurings" that result from the drug's application, but it's anything but a grim & gritty torture show. Though the idea of self-mutilation is ghastly and the gore is plentiful, what we see on screen is often more campy than stomach-churning (keep an eye out for the one truly unforgettable exception to this rule). More troubling to some may be the fact that, since the patients are all attractive young women and the "protagonist" spies on them voyeuristically in order to track the progress of his experiment, the result is at least arguably misogynist.

Moral reservations aside, this is a far stranger and more challenging film than its cartoonish American title might suggest. It combines a careful and understated look at the point where depressive disassociation slides over into something like psychosis - a common theme in Japanese horror and drama - with absurdist art-experimentation realized on a shoestring budget. Though it definitely delivers the "splatter" its American title promises, it's ultimately more concerned with symbolic transcendence and the possibility of love in a seemingly loveless world than with gore for gore's sake. Plus telepathic cactii. Bizarre, anguished and even moving, it deserves a much wider audience.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gdLoL6h5MFM/S1ucQdbu3jI/AAAAAAAAAJU/kjG3xBxjnmU/s1600/snapshot20100124014855.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gdLoL6h5MFM/S1ucR7ueFHI/AAAAAAAAAJc/Y01NUS5Pu_Y/s1600/snapshot20100124014922.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gdLoL6h5MFM/S1ucTHTSo1I/AAAAAAAAAJk/lYBw5RoMZFI/s1600/snapshot20100124014952.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gdLoL6h5MFM/S1ucnd6jchI/AAAAAAAAAKk/xkkSdm5S-hc/s1600/snapshot20100124015315.jpg

xp yeah, i feel like a dummy for never even considering meshes of the afternoon. it's not as aggressively horrorific as outer space, but seems at least as worthy a candidate as lot of other stuff that got nominated. amer seems to borrow more than a little from it.

OK, 15 ballots now.

Weird anomaly: Two films are currently tied for the most votes overall. One of the two is ranked #2 overall, whereas the other one is all the way down at #25. Token votes anyone?

Also, only one movie has more than one #1 vote. It has three.

HMMM. Interesting. I had no idea Wishmaster was so well-regarded.

lol

i will probably cast the lone vote for wishmaster 2 though

Hey guys, I just watched Outer Space at work with the sound off. I think I remembered to breathe (?) because I didn't pass out. This is going p high on my list. The sound track will determine how high, but I could never see it w/the sound on and be v happy with what just happened to me.

The sound is more than half the terror imo.

Guys, if people are voting Maya Deren, then I'm on board. There's a lot of experimental film out there that's unsettling that maybe could be considered horror but probably isn't, but Meshes of the Afternoon has enough elements of horror that I will vote for it comfortably.

If you haven't seen Meshes, do! (and then vote for it)

I'm looking forward to watching Outer Space again, with sound.

There was a Tscherkassky season on Mubi in Europe recently. The films are probably still there if anyone has access.

I will probably vote for Meshes, now that I've remembered it long after the nomination period has ended.

i just sent in my ballot -- i'll defend everything on my list, but i don't expect about 40%-50% of them to show up in the final tally.

watched Frankenheimer's Seconds last night, will be placing it pretty high i think. ticks a lot of my boxes.

really not a horror film unless '60s orgies give you the willies.

well i'd better not vote for it then. remind me which of the films nominated for Top 100 horror films aren't actually horror films then otherwise this is gonna be one big waste of time for everyone.

those scenes in cali are p horrifying, at least in part b/c the movie would be a lot better w/o them

no way, it wouldn't be half as interesting w/out them.