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

(Though I draw the line at emailing them directly.)

honestly, i think the best version of DotD is the unrated american theatrical original that you probably grew up with. moves, contains all the essential business, became a classic for a reason. extended version is a nice companion piece, but the movie was hardly a model of efficiency to begin with (unlike NotLD), so the extension does it no real favors. european version is cool too, but substantially different, reedited and rescored by argento, a curiosity.

One argument for watching Argento's cut is that it lays the emotional and philosophical groundwork that gives one a richer appreciation of watching a zombie wrestle a shark.

(I would never in a million years claim that Zombi 2 is an even remotely good movie, but that particular scene is in the top 100 of film history.)

and "they are going to eat you" is one of the better tag lines for a film

prob of interest to no-one but me, but some stats:

20s: 2
30s: 3
40s: 1
50s: 3
60s: 12
70s: 13
80s: 7
90s: 3
00s: 4
10s: 2

ended up selecting only 1 Val Lewton and 1 Dario Argento (which i'll probably come to regret). also, i have 2 pairs of originals/remakes (both of which are blindingly obvious b/c lol i'm not a horror stan) and several art-house chestnuts (again lol non-horror stan).

Here's how mine broke down:

Celebrating, rather than dreading, difference: 25
Pausing to reflect on murder and the desecration it visits on societies: 10
Chaos theorems: 10
Camp: 15
Featuring buckets: 2
Allegories about repressed homosexuality: 1
Allegories about the terror Gen X faces growing up: 1
Allegories about Marxism (supposedly): 1
Starring Joan Crawford: 2
The loudest film ever made: 1

Holy shit this dawn of the dead transfer is O_O

Celebrating, rather than dreading, difference: 25

lol, this is my favorite theme in horror. why i love stuart gordon's dagon so much. course that's dread leading to acceptance, not quite celebration, cept in my own private rituals, but still...

I think my decade breakdown is:

1940s - 1
1960s - 6
1970s - 25
1980s - 9
1990s - 8
2000s - 1

Handed in my ballot last night, 8mins before my personal deadline at midnight CEST.

From my absolutely-definitely-must-see-before-voting-list posted way above I found the time to cover exactly: 0.
Whis is a pity cause some of them I suppose are candidates for my personal Top20 and I'm sure I will painfully regret the omission in more than one case.

Instead and of all possible stuff lying around I watched The Mephisto Waltz some days ago, oddball satanist/pianist thriller in the wake of Rosemary's Baby, with an incredibly (in a good way) corny Curd Jürgens and an almost equally (but in a bad way) corny Alan Alda.

Added it at the end of my ballot, for laughs, a rather good silvester-orgy scene and the sight of always delightful Jaqueline Bisset.

Breakdown by nationality

US 25
UK 15
Italy 2
1 each from Canada, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Spain, Korea and Australia.

hey eric, can you just confirm that you got the two addendums to my ballot last night?

I ended up cutting some of the more avant-garde stuff from my ballot, sadly. I think my last ten were more for me to rep for some silly things that I have a lot of affection for. Regretting not voting for Street Trash now, too...

considered voting for street trash for its excellent melting sequences but then I remembered that long rape scene set to benny hill music

So as if to sanctify the end of the horror poll, I went into a pawn shop tonight and they had an unopened copy of the 4 disc ultimate edition of dawn of the dead that was unpriced, and when I brought it up to the counter the kid just looked up "dawn of the dead" and charged me 99 cents.

― O_o-O_0-o_O (jjjusten), Tuesday, May 8, 2012 3:47 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

DO NOT WATCH THIS. IT IS CURSED.

I mean, what are you thinking?

http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Friday_the_13th_TV_Series_3.jpg

If these people show up and ask for the movie back, GIVE IT TO THEM.

Instead and of all possible stuff lying around I watched The Mephisto Waltz some days ago, oddball satanist/pianist thriller in the wake of Rosemary's Baby, with an incredibly (in a good way) corny Curd Jürgens and an almost equally (but in a bad way) corny Alan Alda.

hah, just queued this and netflix recommended death bed: the bed that eats

hey eric, can you just confirm that you got the two addendums to my ballot last night?

I did. Thanks.

OK so my complete decade count goes as follows:

'20s: 1
'30s: 5
'40s: 2
'50s: 1
'60s: 9
'70s: 12
'80s: 12
'90s: 4
'00s: 4

Non-American: 21, of which 12 aren't in English

(Three directors got 2 entries, other than that it's all one-offs.)

Pretty sure my full country list would be a tad spoilery, so just gonna say:

UK: 16
US: 12
Non UK/US: 22

I saw Mephisto Waltz some years ago and it was kind of hilarious! I put that in the same category as Race with the Devil only the latter is way better on account of dirt bikes, "mobile home parks" and rituals. Neither of them appeal to me as much as Psychomania.

Noooooooo! I forgot Psychomania! Bums...

I have ten on my list that could be considered non-US, I think. A couple of possible US/other country co-productions in there.

They all feature people with non-US accents and/or inept dubbing, so I'll say they count.

As I've indicated before, I was expected to read a lot of Robin Wood when I did a course on horror films in university. As I remember it, he only valued those films that questioned/undermined/subverted the dominant culture (the nuclear family, patriarchy, Christianity, etc.)...I hate writing this way; I managed to get it out of my system 25 years ago...and hated anything that reinforced/celebrated those things. With that in mind:

Films on my list Wood approved of, or I think he'd approve of: 23
Films he disapproved of, or I think he'd disapprove of: 8
Films that confound/blur his litmus test: 4

I just made those numbers up. I actually did start tabulating, but there was way too much thinking involved so I gave up.

I feel like there should be a separate thread for soundtracks to these movies because so many of them are SO GOOD.

Not the least of which Wicker Man, obvs, but Blood on Satan's Claw, Carrie, Nosferatu...how could I possibly choose?!

Valerie! That soundtrack is awesome.
Also why was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls not on here? Is that not horror enough? I should have written that one in just to have done it.

Haha, I suppose it does have some horror tropes, but I'd consider it melodrama rather than horror, really. But then if it'd been nominated I'd have torn myself apart trying to decide whether to include it.

(Oh, yeah, I should point out my country list was worked out by imdb - I'd take the first country listed if there was more than one, and obviously some non-UK directors would be listed as UK and vice-versa depending on production etc...)

I think i have sixteen or seventeen Italian films on my list.

Vampyros Lesbos, Suspiria and The Wicker Man would be the predictable soundtrack picks from me but there are so many great ones that don't get enough love (Fabio Frizzi's Zombi 2 theme, Morricone's score for Who Saw Her Die?, etc).

I think some of you are going to judge the shit out of my ballot. That's okay, though. I like what I like.

I love the Creepshow soundtrack too, and Carnival of Souls, and The Shining, and I'm listening to Children of the Corn right now and guess what -- it's great.

This seems like an unusual spread:

20s: 4
30s: 6
40s: 1
50s: 2
60s: 5
70s: 8
80s: 5
90s: 4
00s: 15

I think i have sixteen or seventeen Italian films on my list.

I was surprised by how few Italian films I had. I guess I was relatively ruthless about going 'nah, that's a giallo, I'll leave it off my ballot' (aside from when it came to Argento).

I don't know that I would've voted for it, but I definitely would've nominated Martha Marcy May Marlene if I'd seen it in time. It's very close to my ideal with respect to a very specific type of oblique not-quite-horror, wherein very little (or nothing) is shown but much is implied. As I mentioned before, I love the sort of "horror" (scare quotes due to this type of movie hardly ever being marketed as such) that strives to ease the viewer into the same off kilter headspace as the protagonist. The tension of the movie was driven by paranoia and implications of threat, and I wish more horror movies would go that route.

Oh man, Silent House was pretty good! Elizabeth Olsen is making a name for herself in that one role she keeps playing.

And she might as well -- she's really good at it.

i would kill all of you for a copy of the score to the original tcm.

A relatively homogeneous decade split for me, apart from '70s peak and '90s dip:

30s: 8
40s: 5
50s: 5
60s: 6
70s: 14
80s: 6
90s: 1
00s: 5

20s: 2
30s: 1
60s: 6
70s: 12
80s: 14
90s: 3
00s: 10
10s: 2

I won't do a country count because that will be a dead giveaway on a couple, but my list skews heavily American.

yeah i only wound up voting for three 90s films, and two of them were big budget slick mainstream some-might-argue-its-not-horror movies, and the other was an arty foreign thing by a noe hugely successful mainstream director. i dont remember it as a great decade for the genre, even tho its when i was consuming this stuff most rabidly.

I had no idea I supported so many movies in the aughts. This has been a good millenia for horror movies.

More of the stats porn everybody loves: with the exception of '75, every year from '73 to '86 is represented in my top 25. '78-'82 seems to be a hot stretch, with ten of my top 25 falling in that range. There's a five year span ('87-'91) with no representatives in my top 25. Which is funny, because that was probably the time in my life (jr. high-ish) when I was most into horror. Although, yeah, I guess a lot of the stuff from that era was pretty shit.

funniest statlet about my ballot is that my top [number] are from the same year, but nothing else on my ballot is from that decade

the other was an arty foreign thing by a noe

irreversible?

Speaking of which - oh man, I forgot Innocence by Lucile Hadzihalilovic. Sorta horror? Eerie, nonetheless.