I enjoy these personal opinion topics. This one came to my mind because lately, the “horror” movies that have been released REALLY SUCK, in my opinion. I mean, the topic already posted deals with the Blair Witch Project, and I thought that movie was a pile of garbage. The same with The Haunting. Also, movies like “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” only exist for laughs, in my mind. I mean, if I want a good scare, I go for the old ones. My favorites are:
Stephen King’s IT (mini-series): Reading the book and seeing Tim Curry in this mini-series honestly freaked me out.
The Exorcist: Highly regarded as the best of all time. I don’t know if I entirely agree with that, but it was pretty damn good.
The Shining: It wasn’t a particularly “scary to the bone” movie, but the concept and the action building of both the movie and the book were well done.
The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Silence of the Lambs. I still can’t sleep when I think of that movie. Something about those psycho killer ones really get to me coz I know it can happen. Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster just doesn’t do it for me.
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good
things.” --Edgar Degas
The slasher/blood & guts movies don’t do it for me either. I’d vote for the Exorcist too. I like suspense. I highly recommend the original “The Thing.” The original King Kong. Ghost stories: The Uninvited (an oldie), the original The Haunting, and of course The Sixth Sense. A recent movie I liked was A Stirring of Echoes - similar theme as Sixth Sense, but it was a murder mystery and scarier.
King Kong, horror? Well, I guess.
I always thought of King Kong as the first good special effects movie.
Bride of Frankenstein. The Omen.
I’d need the Universal Studios list to really compete this.
Manos: The Hand Of Fate" scares the hell out of everybody (who has taste).
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The Exorcist still scares the shit out of me. For a classic, Night of the Living Dead is great. Not that scary, but a well made film, revolutionary for its time.
An American Werewolf In London. Especially the scene where the undead friend visits him the second time (in the apartment). The Paris sequal was stupid.
I can think of any off the top of my head, but I’ll have to agree with everyone so far that the blood/guts movies are NOT scary. I’d much rather a thriller were you can’t wait to find out what happens next.
I always liked “The Prince of Darkness”. I am not exactly sure why, but it just seemed like a good horror flick.
I also enjoy the “Halloween” movies (especially the first and last, and not so much the middle ones) mainly because the villian lacks super-powers (well, besides being effectively impossible to kill and very strong). No teleportation, invisibility, telekinesis, etc. It makes the movie more enjoyable because it gives the victims a plausable means of escape (so there is in effect tension at wondering if any particular person will make it). After all, if you are running away from the villian and you round a corner and he is suddenly there (like in many movies) … well, what chance did you really ever have, but if the villian must chase you like in Halloween! Ahh, now that is something.
Speaking of “Scream”. It was on TV recently and I had, amazingly, nothing better to do so I watched it. I thought it was especially funny that the first girl (in the garage) managed to basically kick the crap out of the psycho kid. Heck, she shouldn’t have tried to run, she should have stuck around and continued pounding on him (she struck him with a fridge door, two beer bottles and flipped him)! I enjoyed the ending where the two villians were bleeding to death. Umm … guys, next time kill the victim THEN stab each other (while I watched this I could actually imagine Tom Servo or Crow stating this … cracked me up).
