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Since Halloween is only three days away, I thought I would start a new topic -- what are your favorite horror films? I'll start:

Halloween (1978)

Halloween II (1981)

Even though these movies were made three years apart, I think of them as one movie since the events of both films take place on the same night (Halloween 1978) and the films are so similar in terms of their look, feel and mood.

Halloween and Halloween II tell the story of Laurie Strode, an intelligent high school student who is stalked and attacked by a masked mental hospital escapee by the name of the Michael Myers. I love these movies for a variety of reasons. They are genuinely scary and contain two of the greatest "chase" sequences found in any horror movie anywhere. They spend considerable time and effort fleshing out the different characters and making them more than just tallies in a body count -- rare for horror movies of this kind. I also like how they try to convey the odd, eerie flavor of Halloween night itself. And, they gave us Jamie Lee Curtis -- still today the greatest of the late-70s/early-80s scream queens.

Halloween would go on to spawn six direct sequels (II, 4, 5, 6, H2O and Resurrection), a non-continuity sequel (III) and a terrible 2007 remake. Interestingly, when Jamie Lee Curtis returned to the part of Laurie in 1998's Halloween: H2O, the powers-that-be more-or-less ignored the continuity created by sequels 4, 5 and 6 and instead acted like they hadn't happened. So, if you're a hardcore Halloween fan, there are literally two different continuities in the series -- continuity 1 (the original, II, 4, 5 and 6) and continuity 2 (the original, II, H2O and Resurrection).

I have more choices but I'll let others chime in!

Ok, I keep goofing up because I don't completely understand how to navigate this site! ( I just printed the page on how to post.) Anyway, I like this thread as it is Halloween and I have been trying to get in the "spirit" for a couple of weeks now by watching some spooky movies. The ones that I own and will watch at this time of year are: Rosemary's Baby, The Blair Witch Project, The Others, and The Village. I really like "spooky" films, but not the gory ones. I think I need to go...Trick-or-Treaters! :D

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Happy Halloween!

The New York Times ran a small review yesterday of the new Mario Bava DVD box set. Bava was an Italian filmmaker best know today for horror films like Twitch of the Death Nerve (which is considered the launchpad for the late-70s/early-80s slasher craze) and Lisa and the Devil. Both films are contained on the box set.

I've never seen Twitch Of the Death Nerve but I have seen Lisa and the Devil and I would wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer's comments that the film is "exceedingly strange" and "follows a dream logic". Starring Elke Sommer and Telly Savalas (in his early-70s Euro-horror pre-Kojak days), Lisa and the Devil is like watching a filmed version of a dream where you're trying to escape from someone or somewhere and you can't. Beyond weird but fascinating. And Savalas is a riot as you know who . . .

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:D

Ok, I keep goofing up because I don't completely understand how to navigate this site! ( I just printed the page on how to post.)
If you post using the button "REPLY (note quote mark :FIREdevil: ) directly below a post, that post (with date, time and author) will automatically appear. You can delete any or all of it. If you have no desire to repeat something, use the ADD REPLY button at the foot of the page. FAST REPLY is the easiest, in my experience.

I've removed your all-quote posts.

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Anthony_NYC writes:

This discussion has set me wondering: How does one distinguish a horror movie from a thriller? When I was a kid, everything terrified me, even Popeye cartoons (Bluto!); but now, the movies that get to me probably all fall into the thriller genre (most recently, for instance, "Zodiac" really gave me the creeps); ghosts and ghouls just don't do anything for me.
That’s a very good question, Anthony_NYC. I think with pictures like ‘Zodiac’ (and ‘Jaws’) the distinction is blurred. You could argue that ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ is a horror movie. Throwing a couple of thoughts out at random:

In a classic-style horror movie, there is usually an element of the supernatural involved – zombies, vampires, the devil, monsters, etc. That’s still true, but new style horror films, like ‘Hostel,’ are based in naturalistic – well, sort of – situations and everything just gets really, really horrible.

(The original ‘Halloween’ has no monsters or ghosts, but still there’s no accounting for how Michael Myers survives and escapes, and no explanation for him – he’s just evil, as Donald Pleasence says.)

There’s a strong element of fantasy in horror films. Thrillers tend to be more solidly based in realistic situations – no ghosts, etc. – and they aren’t as graphic.

Along similar lines, miliosr's post about Mario Bava made me think about how different eras tend to find different things scary. Watching 'Wolf Creek' (and is that a thriller or a horror film?) recently made me think about how we seem to have a lot of movies,both genre and 'straight' about serial killers. There have been some in the past, of course, but I have the impression that the subject pops up much more frequently now.

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Don't Look Now (1973) starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland is a movie that scares the bajeebers out of me although it isn't really a horror movie. The plot is about John and Laura Baxter, a couple whose young daughter drowned in a horrific and avoidable accident. Now living in Venice the guilt ridden John starts to see images of his daughter in her red raincoat (she was wearing it when she drowns) walking through the streets of a forebidding Venice. He doesn't catch up to her until the end of the movie and when he does it's a head scratching shocker. Sutherland is fantastic is the role of John. Driven by guilt, haunted by images of his lost daughter, he makes John's pain a living overwhelming entity.

Is it after a Daphné du Maurier short story ? I remember reading something like that in one of her books...

I don't like much horror movie styles (perhaps because I'm frightened too easily), unlike my husband who regrets that I don't want to watch "Night of the living dead" or zombie movies with him... And the only Roger Corman movie that I saw was his parodic "The Raven" (with Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson- what a cast !)

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There are Draculas performed everywhere, as carbro notes. The only one I have seen, and it was on film, was Mark Godden's version for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, which was made into a movie called Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, directed by Guy Maddin. It looked pretty good, actually, at least what can be seen of it via Maddin's highly idiosyncratic methods. (I liked the film, I should note.)

Can't think of any others offhand. In modern dance, there's Morris' vampire piece, One Charming Night.

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Don't Look Now (1973) starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland is a movie that scares the bajeebers out of me although it isn't really a horror movie. The plot is about John and Laura Baxter, a couple whose young daughter drowned in a horrific and avoidable accident. Now living in Venice the guilt ridden John starts to see images of his daughter in her red raincoat (she was wearing it when she drowns) walking through the streets of a forebidding Venice. He doesn't catch up to her until the end of the movie and when he does it's a head scratching shocker. Sutherland is fantastic is the role of John. Driven by guilt, haunted by images of his lost daughter, he makes John's pain a living overwhelming entity.

Is it after a Daphné du Maurier short story ? I remember reading something like that in one of her books...

I don't like much horror movie styles (perhaps because I'm frightened too easily), unlike my husband who regrets that I don't want to watch "Night of the living dead" or zombie movies with him... And the only Roger Corman movie that I saw was his parodic "The Raven" (with Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson- what a cast !)

Yes, Estelle, 'Don't Look Now' is based on a du Maurier story, unread by me, although I imagine the movie is an improvement.

Nicholson made several movies with Corman (who’s well known for giving young talent opportunities, also they’re cheap, of course :dunno: ), including his film debut, the original ‘The Little Shop of Horrors.’

There's this novelty item called 'The Terror' with Nicholson that Corman said they made because it was raining and nobody could play tennis. It has to be seen to be believed.

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There are Draculas performed everywhere, as carbro notes. The only one I have seen, and it was on film, was Mark Godden's version for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, which was made into a movie called Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, directed by Guy Maddin. It looked pretty good, actually, at least what can be seen of it via Maddin's highly idiosyncratic methods. (I liked the film, I should note.)

Can't think of any others offhand. In modern dance, there's Morris' vampire piece, One Charming Night.

Some years ago i saw a "Dracula" ballet. It was staged by Laura Alonso, (Mme. Alicia Alonso's rebel daughter, who has her own classical ballet company in Havana, in open opossition to her mother's). It was a very "sui generis" performance, with lots of special effects, including our annoying old friend the smoking machine...

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Horror is not my genre either, but in my younger days, there were three that I found spine-tinglingly frightening. Rosemary's Baby tops the list. Farrow's air of vulnerability is what makes that movie. I'm not sure it could've been as frightening with anyone else in that role. I think, though, that another reason for my reaction to it was that Catholics were banned from seeing it! I was right at the point of questioning everything Catholic, so I simply had to see that movie to find out what the Catholics were trying to hide me from. :devil: Turns out that the end had nothing to do with my shakiness, but the path along the way sure did.

An earlier film that frightened me when I later saw it for the first time at the ripe old age of 16 was 1963's The Haunting with Julie Harris. I thought it was deliciously frightening.

Probably the horror movie that scared me the most (besides the monkey scene in The Wizard of Oz, which my kids loved to mock me for) was one I don't know the name of. Maybe someone here - it'll have to be someone over 50, I fear - will supply it. I saw this film several times as a very young child. All I remember is that people were turning into zombies. Hopefully, I'm not mixing a couple movies up, but I think they went out into the desert somewhere and the ground swallowed them up (yes, quicksand was an ever-present reality in my youthful thoughts!) and then they turned into zombies. You knew it by what looked like an ash stain at the nape of their necks. The most frightening scene, one that supplied me with a couple years of nightmares, in that movie was when the little boy (and girl?) are seated in the back seat of their car and realize that both their parents had that mark! :(:sweatingbullets: For a few weeks after that, every time my parents seemed unreasonably irritable, I'd check the nape of their necks just to be sure.

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Rosemary's Baby tops the list. Farrow's air of vulnerability is what makes that movie. I'm not sure it could've been as frightening with anyone else in that role.

I agree. She looks so very frailwith those huge eyes, and the fact that she’s pregnant just underscores her helplessness.

Probably the horror movie that scared me the most (besides the monkey scene in The Wizard of Oz, which my kids loved to mock me for)

I always thought those monkeys were pretty scary, too!

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Probably the horror movie that scared me the most (besides the monkey scene in The Wizard of Oz, which my kids loved to mock me for)

I always thought those monkeys were pretty scary, too!

after a run in with an ice cream-snatching, roller-skating chimpanzee at age 4 (and no, thats so not a joke) I found the monkeys absolutely terrifying...i think I left the room for that portion of the film several years running.

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So, I saw The Strangers w/ Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman this afternoon.

The Strangers is a "home invasion" horror film in which Tyler and Speedman must fend off three masked assailants at a remote house in the country. The director has stated that he based the film on an incident from his own past where someone knocked on his family's door asking for a person who did not live there. Only later did he and his family discover that empty homes in their neighborhood had been burgularized that night.

I had a glass three-quarters-full/glass one-quarter-empty reaction to this film. I liked that it was a throwback to late-70s/early-80s horror films in its use of lighting and sound (or the absence of it) to create a mood of dread. The film relies much more on suspense than gore, which is a welcome change-of-pace from the current "torture porn" films like the Saw and Hostel series.

That being said, I hated the ending. I just . . . yuck.

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The return to basics in the horror genre continues this weekend (dare I call it a "neo-classical" movement in horror?) with the return of Jason Voorhees in the back-to-basics revamp of Friday the 13th.

The original film (released in 1980) was a huge success and spawned ten (!) sequels. With each sequel, however, the franchise strayed further and further away from its origins (later entries included trips to Hell, Manhattan and Outer Space) and became more and more strained. But the new Friday, which is a revamp and not a sequel, goes back to the source material contained in the first four films -- young adults fighting for their lives at Camp Crystal Lake!

Full review to follow once I've seen it . . .

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Yes, do tell. I saw a neat little British shocker called Severance on DVD recently. It came out a couple of years ago and can be summarized as the office teambuilding weekend from hell. :) Good cast, too.

Hostel I didn't get at all, although it started off well enough. Didn't bother with the second one.

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I find this whole return to old slashers kinda amusing. When I was first taking a film genre course in university I got kinda obsessed with how the cycle of slasher movies that proliferated when I was born--the Halloween clones from Friday the 13th to Terror Train to Prom Night to Happy Birthday to Me (a fave) and My Bloody Valentine. Of course before Halloween was the Canadian Black Christmas. Then the whole genre died off largely cuz it got too unpleasant and gory and misogynistic even for the fans that first liked it--and along came Scream which mocked the genre yet paved the way to a whole new cycle of these films--many (bad) remakes. And I guess we're still somehow in that cycle.

Odd too is even though I'm 28, only 8 years or so from when I did an essay on the early 80s films and enjoyed watching every over the top minute--I now have a lot less tolerance for any gore. So I don't think I'll be rushing out to see Friday the 13th (I never thought the old ones were all that effective for scares, ANYWAY) Maybe I don't relish seeing teenagers sliced up as much as I did when I was a teenager?

I do still love horror and am fascinated by it--and am kinda repulsed by the recent love of "torture porn" horror--Hostel, the Saw films... It just makes me feel kinda disgusted and saddened--not scared. With a slasher film (the kind I like anyway) part of the enjoyment isn't the gore but the viseral scares you get--like a roller coaster. It's almost catharthic. I don't find that at all with Hostel or Saw (the only two I've seen of that genre). If I wanna see a film examining how depraved and inhumane people can get I'd rather it be a sobering documentary than a film apparantly made for my entertainment (and I know that's a high horse stance to take when I own a copy of He Knows You're Alone)

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Don't Look Now (1973) starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland is a movie that scares the bajeebers out of me although it isn't really a horror movie.
Thanks for the reminder about this one. Christie and Sutherland are truly wonderful. Off-season Venice isn't bad, either, in a major supporting role. All three have remained in my memory for a long, long time. :)

I think "The Comfort of Strangers" which also features Venice at its most forbidding is a really frightening movie although possibly not horror as such. Based on a novel by Ian McEwan and a play by Harold Pinter, neither of which I will read--the movie was enough, although it is a very well made film. Dread may be a better term than horror here.

The one moment in a movie that scared me the most is from "Repulsion". It was when Catherine Deneuve, alone and slowly going insane, feels there is someone else in her apartment. There isn't but when she looks in a mirror on a bedroom closet door and then swings it closed, the reflection of a man appears as it moves.

My wife saw "Psycho" first run when she was in college and learned to take really quick showers in the dorm bathroom for several weeks afterwards.

The first J-Horror movie I watched was "Audition" by Takashi Miike. It is one really messed up movie, full of grotesque body horror and insanely suspenseful. I initially rented it because I thought it was a romantic comedy (strange but true), not having heard of Miike and watched it with a friend who is a total horror buff. Japanese horror movies are extremely scary and often repulsive.

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Well, I saw the reboot of Friday the 13th today!

The best way to judge a movie like this is whether or not your heart is pounding by the end and my heart was POUNDING. Very, very suspensful -- largely because the producers/director/writers stripped away all the camp from the Jason Voorhees character and made him seriously scary. In addition, the reboot had the feel of the first four films -- the lake/woods setting, good-looking but not especially intelligent "teens" (all the actors look like they're in their late-20s/early-30s), alcohol/drug use, ridiculous nudity, sex scenes, foul language and absolutely bone-crunching violence.

I would give it 9 machetes out of ten. My only disappointment was that (SPOILER AHEAD -- stop reading if you don't want to know) the producers couldn't find room for actress Betsy Palmer (the deranged Mrs. Voorhees in the original) in some kind of small role.

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I think "The Comfort of Strangers" which also features Venice at its most forbidding is a really frightening movie although possibly not horror as such.

I’d recommend reading McEwan’s novel, Ed. I must say, regretfully, that the movie seemed to me an extended exercise in Armani product placement – didn’t scare me at all. It could be me, though.

(My nominee for scariest Venice ever is “Don’t Look Now” with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, a movie which I think came up earlier in this thread.)

The one moment in a movie that scared me the most is from "Repulsion". It was when Catherine Deneuve, alone and slowly going insane, feels there is someone else in her apartment. There isn't but when she looks in a mirror on a bedroom closet door and then swings it closed, the reflection of a man appears as it moves.

There are a lot of really spooky effects in "Repulsion." I especially remember those repeated shots of the meal Deneuve's sister prepares for her.

Thanks for reporting back, miliosr.

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Among the gruesome/gory, I loved the Korean film, The Host. All the actors are wonderful, particularly the younger children. And talk about a surprise ending!

From the classic b/w horror movies, two stand out: The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey and beautiful, young Gail Russell; and Dead of Night (1945) with a very young Sally Ann Howes along with the likes of Michael Redgrave, Googie Withers, Miles Malleson (there's an actor who was born to be in horror movies) and many other British character actors. Both genuinely creepy.

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Among the gruesome/gory, I loved the Korean film, The Host. All the actors are wonderful, particularly the younger children. And talk about a surprise ending!

The Host was remarkable. I got dragged to see it, but I wasn't sorry.

From the classic b/w horror movies, two stand out: The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey and beautiful, young Gail Russell; and Dead of Night (1945) with a very young Sally Ann Howes along with the likes of Michael Redgrave, Googie Withers, Miles Malleson (there's an actor who was born to be in horror movies) and many other British character actors. Both genuinely creepy.

Those are both good movies, although I didn’t find either one terribly scary (except for Michael Redgrave in Dead of Night, who really creeped me out, he was superb). Dead of Night is interesting but wildly variable.

Gail Russell was a sad case. It’s too bad, she was most appealing.

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