Horror

[Avaitor]

I've wanted to make this for a while, but discuss the genre, favorites, what makes a good one, and whatnot.

I'll add more later, but I want to hear some of your opinions first on these types of film.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Mostly anything that isn't a Halloween ripoff or a pointless gorefest is something I can sit through, but the best stuff is mostly in the thriller/paranoia vein like Hitchcock's stuff or with an original slant on classic ideas like Raimi's stuff.

It's too bad the genre is totally awful now, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Really, just like with any other genre, I like the films that are well-done respective in this genre in regards to what makes them truly scary, which in this case is the atmosphere. Let me just say that aside from some cheese value to be had, all slasher films aside from the first 2 Halloween movies are pretty much garbage, IMO. That doesn't mean that I don't have some fun watching some good old action from Freddy from the Nightmare on Elm Street films, but those are the types of films that I watch with my friends knowing that they are bad (even the original hasn't aged well at all), but my friends and I still enjoy watching them just to point out how hilarious some of those films can be with various problems, such as overacting or some of the death scenes being so bizarre that its nearly just impossible to take it seriously.

Anyways, my favorite types of horror movies are the ones that are very creepy due to a brilliantly-executed atmosphere rather than just simple jump scares. Some of my favorite horror movies that fit the bill are The Shining (my personal favorite horror film of all-time), The Omen (2nd favorite), Alien, and John Carpenter's The Thing; the last 2 are especially great for combining both sci-fi and horror, with the first Alien film being the only one in the series to also be a horror film in many ways, and as far as John Carpenter's take on The Thing goes, I'll be honest and say that the original film, while a classic, wasn't the least bit scary. In John Carpenter's remake, its true that it has a lot of gore (but you have to admit whether you love or hate gore, that the effects done in the movie are simply brilliant, and have aged surprisingly well), but that's not what makes it a good horror film as much as it is the overall execution of the idea of not knowing who can be trusted and who cannot besides yourself.

[Avaitor]

You know I enjoy all of those greatly. Psycho, The Birds, and the Evil Dead trilogy too, but like those need anymore discussion.

One movie I feel deserves some mention is The Beyond. There is some great visual work in there, as well as some truly terrifying scenes. Brutal shit.

[Foggle]

There is absolutely nothing scary about any of the Evil Dead movies, barring perhaps the tree rape scene. (srsly, wtf was that? )

[Angus]

I find realistic horror to be scarier. Once something like the demon in Jeepers Creepers sprouts wings, I can't care about getting scared anymore.

Or if it's fantasy horror, something like the Moffat episodes (statues, library) in Doctor Who are a nice thrill.

[No-Personality]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.............. My area of expertise. In life, guys- I'm not kidding. You name something and I suck at, or don't know or care about, it. But I am a walking, talking Encyclopedia of Horror Cinema (at least from the late 60's to the late 1990's).

So, maybe I'll just talk about how that time period really got my gears churning. Classic horror for me is a style that's hard to get into. I told Goliath on UD that horror is a genre that combines every other genre in one. And that was totally true for the first 50 years in horror (1910's to the mid 1960's). But the late 60's added an element in mainstream culture that changed cinema itself forever, as a matter of fact, as much as horror. But it really revitalized horror. George Romero's Night of the Living Dead changed the grindhouse (low budget) half of horror and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby changed the Hollywood half. Then, of course there's Europe. Trends in European horror were split between Hammer studios and Italy's Mario Bava. Bava's Bay of Blood and a little Spanish zombie film called Tombs of the Blind Dead are the ones who kickstarted the European horror revolution of the 70's (though I'm sure Tombs owed Romero's Living Dead for the inspiration). Oh, there was also Amicus and I don't know very much about them. Except that I suspect they might be to blame for the Dr. Phibes trend (most of its' rip-offs starred the villain of those films, Vincent Price). Them or AIP who were involved in the grindhouse movement of the early 70's.

The most important films of the early-to-mid 70's war years are Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, and Bob Clark's Deathdream (aka- Dead of Night, or The Night Andy Came Home). The first 3 films are survivalist variations on what would later become the slasher subgenre / formula, and the 3rd is a highly personal and tragic zombie film about the victims of the Vietnam war. The mid-70's is noteworthy because of the invention of the body-horror subgenre - monster films where the monsters were mutated humans. Ensatsu-ken mentioned The Thing remake but that film wouldn't exist without 2 revolutionary directors: Larry Cohen - It's Alive and God Told Me To (which deal with the horrors of the changing times on American parents and families) - and David Cronenberg - They Came from Within / Shivers, Rabid, and The Brood. Romero's The Crazies, a plague film that probably inspired Rabid to some degree, also shares some of those central themes.

The mid-to-late 70's were all about slasher killers, sci-fi monsters, and occult supernatural horror. Bava and Dario Argento were almost competing directors of giallo thrillers until Argento buried Bava forever with the magnificent horror-mystery Deep Red, then later with the definitive film about witches, Suspiria. Both films which inspired John Carpenter on the making of Halloween, as did Bob Clark's essential Black Christmas. Hollywood films about the occult trickled down over the years with The Exorcist, The Omen, and Brian DePalma's Carrie. While religious themed horror was also big, though not always in the form of a film about "the devil"- The Legend of Hell House, Don't Look Now, Romero's Martin, Salem's Lot, and Alice, Sweet Alice. Then, the 50's drive-in creature feature era was reinvented by Alien, Joe Dante's Piranha, Jeff Lieberman's Squirm and Blue Sunshine (another entry in the body-horror sweepstakes), Don Coscarelli's wild Phantasm, and the transformation from a zombie trickle of the early 70's in Europe (Spanish Night of the Living Dead riffs, Tombs again, and 1973's Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, aka- The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) into a full-blown international phenomenon with Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which inspired Lucio Fulci's rip-offs Zombie and Avaitor's mention, The Beyond.

Desensitized mentioned Halloween rip-offs. The early 80's were sadly populated with a lot of them. Friday the 13th being the most unapologetic and - in my not-so-humble opinion - the best. Its' competition (several of them revolving around holidays and various gimmicks, some of which give off traces of Carrie and Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well): Prom Night, The Burning, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me, Terror Train, Slumber Party Massacre, Hell Night, Sleepaway Camp, Motel Hell, Final Exam, and Graduation Day. To name a few. Perhaps all of which (including Friday) were outdone by Jeff Lieberman's little woodsy survival film, Just Before Dawn, released in 1981 (the year of what I like to call mongoloid horror) and Argento's Tenebre (which at least kicked the asses of Eyes of Laura Mars and Maniac). Meanwhile, the grindhouse era was being kept alive with the odious Maniac, The Prowler, Pieces, The New York Ripper, and the theatrical release of 70's-made I Spit on Your Grave (a worthless rip-off of Craven's superior in-every-way Last House on the Left).

At the same time, ghost horror and zombies / Italian splatter films were all the rage. The former went the way of the occult in the late 70's with boring The Amityville Horror but was reborn in the 80's. In both good - Carpenter's The Fog, Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist - and bad forms - Universal's Ghost Story, both of which frighteningly enough starred John Houseman, who was also in the dark Christmas ghost comedy, Scrooged, at the end of the decade. So we know that ghosts stayed constant throughout most of the decade. Zombies appeared in North America only intermittently, most notably in Romero's Creepshow and Aviator's mention, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (and for one awesome scene in The Fog, unless you count the entire brigade of ghost pirates as zombies). Fulci continued to wear this subgenre out / stretch it to its' breaking point with City of the Living Dead and House by the Cemetery. At the same time, cannibal films were drawing a lot of attention with the likes of Cannibal Holocaust and Make Them Die Slowly (aka- Cannibal Ferox) being banned in nearly every country in the "civilized world" due (most likely) to their real-life animal murder and torture scenes (not to mention what - I hope - they simulated with women, the genitalia mutilations).

Body horror continued, although it got an action-thriller outfitting with Cronenberg's Scanners and Carpenter's The Thing. Yawn (especially since Aliens kicked both of them in the seat of their pants a few years later). Then it got back on the right track with Cronenberg's masterpieces Videodrome and his superior remake of The Fly. Also with Universal's worthy (if not superior) remake of Val Lewton's Cat People, and Frank Henenlotter's quirky debut, Basket Case. The monster movie took another turn, this time into werewolf territory in 1981 with Wolfen, John Landis's An American Werewolf in London, Joe Dante's The Howling, and Larry Cohen's awful goofball spoof, Full Moon High. Then I believe it remained pretty silent (save for Michael Jackson's Thriller) until 1984's haunting The Company of Wolves and 1985's Silver Bullet. Probably because the seeds of the vampire's epic return were being sewn with 1983's The Hunger. And the goofball spoof, Saturday the 14th, which focused more on monsters and haunted houses than on what was going on in the slasher subgenre. Slashers pretty much crapped out by 1983, but were again reborn in 1984 with a supernatural impetus in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (Ensatsu-ken's mention).

Zombies also experienced a very large resurgence after Thriller with 1984's Night of the Comet, 1985's Re-Animator, The Return of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, and Demons, 1986's Night of the Creeps, 1987's The Video Dead, Zombie High, and Troma's Redneck Zombies, 1988's The Serpent and the Rainbow and Scarecrows, and 1989's Pet Sematary and The Dead Next Door. As well as sequels to Evil Dead, Return, Re-Animator, and Demons. It received stiff competition from the vampire subgenre, which boomed in 1985 with Fright Night, Lifeforce, and the spoof Once Bitten (later spoofs / comedies include 1987's My Best Friend is a Vampire and 1989's Vampire's Kiss), and continued with 1986's Vamp, and 1987's The Lost Boys and Near Dark. Slasher sequels after Nightmare on Elm Street turned supernatural with 1986's Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives and 1987's Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. As well as into the birth of new franchises, 1987's Hellraiser and 1988's Child's Play. Monster films evolved into a huge variety of forms. Starting with the little creatures in 1984's Gremlins, which spawned rip-offs with 1985's Ghoulies, and 1986's Troll and Critters. As the rip-offs got worse (Hobgoblins and Munchies), the monsters got bigger with 1986's Little Shop of Horrors, 1987's Predator, 1988's Pumpkinhead, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Lair of the White Worm, The Blob remake, and 1989's Leviathan. Body horror's final hurrah seemed to be Henenlotter's Brain Damage, although '87 marked the exciting directorial debut of Peter Jackson with Bad Taste.

Horror quantity in the 1990's didn't slow but the fun did drain out of them as the critics (and the Academy Awards) started awarding the ambition of early 90's psychological horror by trying the brand the films as "thrillers" instead. 1990 saw the release of the realistic, groundbreaking Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Misery. Both were praised highly, and Kathy Bates even snagged an Oscar for Best Actress. Most people were surprised, but that was nothing compared to 1991's The Silence of the Lambs winning best picture (which no doubt still stuns the Disney fans who thought Beauty and the Beast was a shoe-in). Following that film's success, Hollywood went horror-mad! Resulting in both modern-day setting realistic-toned films, 1992's Candyman and 1994's Wolf, a shocking celebrity turn-out on HBO's Tales from the Crypt anthology series, and a huge string of classic themed period pieces: 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1994's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Interview with the Vampire, and 1996's Mary Reilly. On the lighter side, monster movies turned to near parody in 1990 with Arachnophobia, Tremors, and the pre-Scream self-referencial classic, There's Nothing Out There. This began to affect the slasher genre too with the likes of Dr. Giggles, The Dentist, and the gory slasher-referencing HBO comedy, Serial Mom. Especially as sequels to Child's Play fizzled out. Although this gave birth to a new and very unlikely franchise- Children of the Corn, which along with sequels to Hellraiser starting with Part III: Hell on Earth, were the product of Disney's horror-brother to Miramax, Dimension Films. Troma continued to make a name for themselves with more audacious direct-to-video acquisitions such as Frostbiter, Bugged!, and Decampitated. Although, at the same time, their sequel to The Toxic Avenger and 1990's excellent Def by Temptation were also earning them critical praise.

Though good as the occasional 90's horror film was (let's also not forget Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Tales from the Hood, Cube, Cronons- Guillermo del Toro's debut, and Peter Jackson's immortal Dead Alive)- one too many Wishmaster's, Dentist's, and of course- the unwatchable Leprechaun 4: In Space and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, are most likely the catalyst(s) that brought about 1996's genre kick-in-the-ass, Scream. Which, for a few months, was a breath of fresh air in the genre. But sadly, brought about its' own ruining with a series of sequels and rip-offs, none of which were worthy of following in Craven and Williamson's footsteps: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, The Faculty, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Disturbing Behavior, Valentine, Shredder, Lovers Lane, I've Been Waiting for You, Cut, The Clown at Midnight (which astoundingly was able to rope-in none other than The Sound of Music star, Christopher Plummer in a key role!!), etc. It was the 80's reborn- only with a lot less sex and violence. Or, should I say: a lot less made it on the screen? Because I actually hear the original cut of Cherry Falls was loaded with gore. The one true upside was 1998's Bride of Chucky, which not only reinvented an 80's icon, it was also the best film in the series up to that point. What other Part 4 can claim that it bested all 3 films to come previously?

Unfortunately, the combination of Scream-itis that plagued the genre, along with a new breed of stoner-horror that stuck a flag in the genre with 1999's insipid The Blair Witch Project, and a series of utterly boring Hollywood ghost films (The Sixth Sense, Stir of Echoes, What Lies Beneath, The Others, The Ring, Darkness Falls - as well as the silly remakes of The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, and 13 Ghosts; skip them all and just watch Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow instead!), began to quickly erode the genre. Leading to its' basic death in 2003 with the rise of awful remakes (Texas Chainsaw Massacre '03, Dawn of the Dead '04, The Fog '05, The Hills Have Eyes and Black Christmas '06, Halloween '07, It's Alive '08, Friday the 13th and Last House on the Left '09, and Nightmare on Elm Street '10), French horror (a nation I've never bashed or so much as laughed at a joke at their expense before, but which can't do horror: Irreversible, Calvaire, Haute Tension, Ils/Them, Frontier(s), Inside, Baise-moi), and survival / torture horror. The latter of which became the Scream of the new millennium- with one masterpiece, 2002's 28 Days Later, giving birth to a heap of unworthy (and usually downright awful) followers: Wrong Turn, Saw, Wolf Creek, The Devil's Rejects, The Descent, Chaos, Captivity, Splinter, Dead Snow, etc. Though horror is dead now, the new-millennium did provide a few highlights: the debuts of 2 essential filmmakers (Lucky McKee with May and Sick Girl - for Showtime's Masters of Horror series, and Larry Fessenden with Wendigo, The Last Winter, and the excellent Fear Itself episode, "Skin & Bones"), 2000's Canadian masterpiece Ginger Snaps, the surprisingly inventive Final Destination series, 2001's resourceful and spooky Jeepers Creepers, and 2006's effective Hostel (though the sequel is shit).

As of writing this, I am still in need of seeing 1973's The Wicker Man and 2001's Session 9.

[Avaitor]

Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier, but this is a great, well-detailed post.

I was hoping you'd be able to list for us some good modern horror films, but that doesn't seem like the case. The industry looks like it's dying out and has been for years.

I hate horror films like Saw and their ilk, as well as the constant bullshit remakes of old or foreign films, which is all we get nowadays. I'd kill for a solid zombie exploitation or splatterhouse film, but those are so far and few in between now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I actually didn't think that The Blair Witch Project was that bad. Its problem is that its not the least bit original and got insanely over hyped, but there is nothing downright bad about the film either (at least not that I can see).

As for most of the other bad films which you listed, I agree with most of them, but I didn't find The Descent to be that bad, though maybe its because I found all of the characters to be annoying just enough in the right way that I enjoyed seeing them get killed off. I suppose if you go by the fact that you actually want the characters to die in the first place since most of them are downright annoying, then it can be seen as a bad horror film in that regard....but I did still enjoy seeing them get mauled to death.

Personally, I thought Jeepers Creepers and Hostel were horrendous, and both by far are among some of the worst horror films that I have seen from this decade (IMO), but then again I never bothered to watch that many horror films this decade to begin with, so maybe there are even worse ones out there.

You had some great insight into the older horror classics over the different time periods of horror films. I haven't had the opportunity to read all of your post yet, but I do like your retrospective of sorts on the evolution of the genre over the years.

[No-Personality]

One movie I feel deserves some mention is The Beyond. There is some great visual work in there, as well as some truly terrifying scenes. Brutal shit.

I have the film on 2 different DVD's and much prefer the PAL version that makes the movie move at a speed where it's eventually 4 minutes shorter than the NTSC version. (No- nothing's cut in the way of gore or dialogue, I checked thoroughly, there is 1 cut and it's just the first shot of the hotel sign at the very beginning, that's it, it only lasts about 3 seconds.) Watching the movie in PAL is really... FUN! I always walk away from that DVD, though it has vastly inferior picture and sound quality to Grindhouse's print of the film, with a greater appreciation of the movie. But, the proper, slower, Grindhouse print isn't fun. Slow, its' intended speed, doesn't work so well with that film. The music plays so much better in the faster version. I wish I could find a YouTube clip but one of my favorite scenes is when Liza comes down the stairs at night to talk with Emily (whom she calls "Emyilee" a couple times).

Here's a great one, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdHN7YMfKWM

(Not in English)

I actually didn't think that The Blair Witch Project was that bad. Its problem is that its not the least bit original and got insanely over hyped, but there is nothing downright bad about the film either (at least not that I can see).

It's a documentary on the word "fuck." That's all that happens. A group of stoners go into the woods and say "fuck" every 10 seconds.

As for most of the other bad films which you listed, I agree with most of them, but I didn't find The Descent to be that bad, though maybe its because I found all of the characters to be annoying just enough in the right way that I enjoyed seeing them get killed off. I suppose if you go by the fact that you actually want the characters to die in the first place since most of them are downright annoying, then it can be seen as a bad horror film in that regard....but I did still enjoy seeing them get mauled to death.

Yeah, I said it was bad because it was cliched and every single person was annoying.

This review rather nailed the film:

"Liongsgate's plan to hose down Britain's arid, post-Hammer horrorscape begins this summer with the release of Neil Marshall's The Descent, a creepfest that may see more feminist deconstruction than the original Alien—contemplation the film's unthinkingly slick surface invites but doesn't merit. Marshall distills the entire day before a cave expedition in the Appalachian Mountains down to a dumb montage of muscle-stretching scenes and faux soundtrack-enhanced boos, condescending to his audience by lingering for more than two seconds on a book being stuffed into a car's glove compartment, meaning this moment will probably come to haunt his characters later on. What follows is a Camille Paglia field day: Juno (Natalie Mendoza)—the anti-Trojan antagonist from Virgil's The Aeneid?—leads Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and her four other friends into an uncharted, labyrinthine cave where horror erupts in all sorts of animal and psychological permutations. One of the girls gets stuck in an especially tight passageway, at which point another greases the girl's defenses with talk of orgasms. Giggles ensue, rocks fall, gaps in the ground are traversed, blood is spotted on the wall, possibly period (pre-Halocene or fresh menstrual?), and the freak show commences.

The darkness inside the cave makes sense but it's politically reductive: Marshall fails to create compelling women distinguishable from one another, an anonymity of personality impacted by the low-light situation. (After a while you expect to see that old Scooby Doo gag where one-too-many sets of eyes light up the frame before a candle or flare reveals a boogeyman in the midst.) These women primarily exist as sheep being led to slaughter—an admittedly chilling and gooey slaughter Sarah and Juno resist fiercely with their wits but one that's needlessly interrupted by Marshall's lame bid for emotional gravitas. Sarah and Juno struggle with survivor's guilt but how Sarah's anxiety manifests itself externally and against Juno begs for more suspension of disbelief than the Darwinian nightmare that's chiefly responsible for crippling their lot. Guys will likely take to this hopeless film, but they could service humanity better by staying home and excavating their girlfriends' G spots."

Personally, I thought Jeepers Creepers and Hostel were horrendous, and both by far are among some of the worst horror films that I have seen from this decade (IMO)

Well, Jeepers was a bit of a throwback to old-fashioned spooky horror mixed with some Clive Barker-esque imagery. I expected worse than you thought it was and I was very pleasently surprised. The opening dialogue was a little troublesome, but I was thoroughly impressed throughout the film. It kept getting better and better as it went along. I haven't seen it in maybe 7 years but I was just as picky then as I am now. Hostel was merely more intelligent than I expected. You can't take it at face value. It's not glorifying torture or the rude and seemingly hateful depictions of sexuality. Rather, it's subversively using them as a way to hold the loathsome victims accountable for their sexist, homophobic, and disrespectful treatment of everyone they come across. Other than the fact that it kind of breaks one of my cardinal rules of new-millennium horror (no crime films in horror drag), the biggest flaw is that it outright rips off Marathon Man.

This review puts a lot into perspective:

http://slantmagazine.com/film/review/hostel/1903

but then again I never bothered to watch that many horror films this decade to begin with, so maybe there are even worse ones out there.

Oh... you have no idea. Horror's been swimming in the sewers since at least late 1998.

You had some great insight into the older horror classics over the different time periods of horror films. I haven't had the opportunity to read all of your post yet, but I do like your retrospective of sorts on the evolution of the genre over the years.

Thanks.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Eh, I've seen plenty of my share of other horror movies (and a bunch of movies in general) throwing the word "fuck" out in every other sentence, so I honestly didn't take too much notice to its overuse in The Blair Witch Project. I just thought that the movie was kind of entertaining to watch through once as it tried to set up the story so that the viewer never once really saw anything out of the ordinary but instead it tried to give the hint of weird things going on by strange noises and just one guy disappearing. I thought it was pretty ambitious to try and make a movie scary on atmosphere alone, rather than actually showing weird things happening directly on-screen. I'm not saying that the movie really succeeds at that, but at the same time I don't think it utterly failed at building up an atmosphere either, but whether its good or bad is pretty subjective to the viewer, as the movie got a ton of mixed reviews of people either liking or downright loathing it. At any rate, to me its just a movie, and its not really scary but I was entertained to watch through it once, so personally I've seen plenty of better and also plenty of worse films in that regard.

As for Jeepers Creepers, my problem was that the characters acted way too incompetent with many of their actions throughout the film. I could go into detail about it but that would require me to retrace the entire movie and I don't really feel like thinking about it too much. I don't mind a throwback to the classic style of horror flicks, and it is a trope of classic films for the main characters to somewhat be lacking in common sense, but at the same time I at least found that I kind of cared to see if the characters in the older horror flicks lived or died, whereas by the end of JK I kind of just wanted to the characters to die since a lot of the trouble that they got into seemed to be because of their own idiotic mistakes. But, that's just my personal opinion.

As for Hostel, I wasn't expecting a particularly good or bad film, and in this case I at least got the sense that you weren't really supposed to sympathize with the main characters too much, but I just found that the "villains" of the film in this case acted completely incompetent, that its no surprise that the one character managed to get away after finding out what was going on in that town. Not only that, but a lot of the circumstances that let him get away and get his revenge just felt way too convenient, IMO. For me that kind of kills any potential horror that a horror film can have for me, and I really couldn't stand watching the film from that point.

That's all just my opinion, of course. I can respect your opinion completely if you view it differently. And like I said, I really liked your input on the older decades of horror films. I agree with a lot of what you had to say in that regard, and to be fair since I haven't seen that many horror films from this decade I really have to take your word for it that the genre is complete garbage in this modern generation of films. Its a shame, because the horror genre really used to be one of the most interesting genres in film, IMO (well, it still kind of is when thinking about the classic age of horror films). To me, it hit a drought of sorts within its genre in the late 80's to early 90's, and then and overrated film like Scream came out and just because it was somehow lucky enough to become a hit it spawned a bunch of other films that followed in its footsteps, and to me it just completely downgraded the genre into a pile of shit, which is why I lost interest in newer horror films and stopped watching most of them this decade. I still have a ton of appreciation for the films that are the highlight of the genre, though.

My personal favorite horror film is The Shining, and in this case I'm guessing that it may have more to do with Kubrick than Stephen King, since I'm honestly not much of a fan of Stephen King's work in horror, and I haven't read the book for The Shining, but the film just really stood out to me.

[gunswordfist]

Really, just like with any other genre, I like the films that are well-done respective in this genre in regards to what makes them truly scary, which in this case is the atmosphere. Let me just say that aside from some cheese value to be had, all slasher films aside from the first 2 Halloween movies are pretty much garbage, IMO. That doesn't mean that I don't have some fun watching some good old action from Freddy from the Nightmare on Elm Street films, but those are the types of films that I watch with my friends knowing that they are bad (even the original hasn't aged well at all), but my friends and I still enjoy watching them just to point out how hilarious some of those films can be with various problems, such as overacting or some of the death scenes being so bizarre that its nearly just impossible to take it seriously.

Anyways, my favorite types of horror movies are the ones that are very creepy due to a brilliantly-executed atmosphere rather than just simple jump scares. Some of my favorite horror movies that fit the bill are The Shining (my personal favorite horror film of all-time), The Omen (2nd favorite), Alien, and John Carpenter's The Thing; the last 2 are especially great for combining both sci-fi and horror, with the first Alien film being the only one in the series to also be a horror film in many ways, and as far as John Carpenter's take on The Thing goes, I'll be honest and say that the original film, while a classic, wasn't the least bit scary. In John Carpenter's remake, its true that it has a lot of gore (but you have to admit whether you love or hate gore, that the effects done in the movie are simply brilliant, and have aged surprisingly well), but that's not what makes it a good horror film as much as it is the overall execution of the idea of not knowing who can be trusted and who cannot besides yourself.

Good job mentioning John Carpenter's The Thing. That is of course my favorite horror movie and probably the movie I've rewatched the most. Yes, maybe even more than The Lion King.

Anyway, it's the only movie that I think is scary. I mostly like oher horror movies because I find the situations to be interesting but I never expect them to be scary and I'm fine with that. The Thing is scary for  reason you already mentioned. Not knowing who you can trust is pretty much the scariest thing that could happen to anyone. Having a monster that can kill you and make you come back as a monster that does just that to others makes it even worse. Also the thought of being a Thing and not even knowing it is scary to me, as corny as it sounds.

Besides the horror elements, The Thing has a lot that makes it entertaining. Like you said, the makeup effects/gore is great. I don't watch movies just because of the gore but The Thing does it so well. The operating table scene is a classic example. Also the dry hmor is great in the movie. Kurt Russell cussing out his computer and the all too hilarious ending of the couch scene are proof of that.

[gunswordfist]

You know I enjoy all of those greatly. Psycho, The Birds, and the Evil Dead trilogy too, but like those need anymore discussion.

One movie I feel deserves some mention is The Beyond. There is some great visual work in there, as well as some truly terrifying scenes. Brutal shit.

Ordering from my library now.

Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier, but this is a great, well-detailed post.

I was hoping you'd be able to list for us some good modern horror films, but that doesn't seem like the case. The industry looks like it's dying out and has been for years.

I hate horror films like Saw and their ilk, as well as the constant bullshit remakes of old or foreign films, which is all we get nowadays. I'd kill for a solid zombie exploitation or splatterhouse film, but those are so far and few in between now.

I really like the first Saw. I even thought the foot sawing off scene was a good shock inducing scene. Now the sequels and that Hostel shit is another story

[Aurora]

That doesn't mean that I don't have some fun watching some good old action from Freddy from the Nightmare on Elm Street films, but those are the types of films that I watch with my friends knowing that they are bad (even the original hasn't aged well at all), but my friends and I still enjoy watching them just to point out how hilarious some of those films can be with various problems, such as overacting or some of the death scenes being so bizarre that its nearly just impossible to take it seriously.

Say what you will about the Elm Street sequels, and I would agree majority of them are crap. Except, Dream Warriors...that one rocked! 8)

But, the original is a classic. Prue, and simple. The second best slasher ever behind the original Halloween.

Halloween 2...pfft.....it's ok. The brother/sister angle was contrived, and it loses much of the tone of the original. I feel Halloween 4 was a better made film than 2. Yes, H4 has it's silly scenes, and logic but I felt the Myers in that particular installment was much closer to being "THE SHAPE" like the original Myers. That, and H4 had more likable characters while, most of the ones in H2 were more cannon fodder if anything.

Friday the 13th is also a slasher series I like. None of them are good films, but their entertaining as hell! 

[Angus]

Anyone excited about Scream 4? It seems like Courteney Cox and David Arquette separating in real life would trump whatever horror they'd be acting in that one.