And this shows how hard it is to judge the merits of something subjective like films. (thats not being snarky, its amazing how two people can watch the same thing but experience and appreciate it in entirely different ways)
I thought ‘The Blair Witch Project’ was creepy in general and genuinely disturbing in places while I didn’t find ‘The Shining’ scary in the least, in fact found the whole thing a bit of a chore to watch.
I didn’t think it was a sucky film at all and it had a very creepy premise and decent execution. It also has one of the best endings ever.
Mentioning ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ reminded me of a very creepy film I saw a few years back. I can’t remember the title and I believe it was one of those “Several stories strung together as released as a single package” deals.
Anyway, a female police officer finds herself trapped in an underground cavern/basement after following some criminals. Its really gory, dead bodies and bloody body parts everywhere with these weird bat like things with what look like chainsaws/hedgetrimmers for mouths that cut their victims open and dismember them alive. I’m fairly sure that their victims end up turned into another one of the bat-monsters.
The whole thing was vaguely Lovecraftian and very, very creepy, anyone know what I’m talking about?
I love love love horror/suspense/thriller movies. It’s my absolute favorite genre, and I wish that the good films weren’t so few and far between.
The movies I can’t watch are ones that are more reality based. The Day After is a great example. Messed me up badly as a young’un. I haven’t seen Schindler’s List, and I don’t think I will, from what I’ve heard of it.
I think I’m going to have to start a “Recommend me a good horror movie” thread…
I don’t remember this myself, but my parents have told me that a very very young dps reality got so freaked out by a certain scene in a certain trash compactor that he had to be taken out to the car where both he and mama missed all the cool stuff.
When I was about 6 I stumbled into my father’s VCR tape collection. He would often set the timer on the VCR to tape movies that ran very late at night on one of the pay cable channels or another. Most times, after perusal, he’d just tape over them, but a few he’d keep, and slowly his collection grew.
Most of them were straight-to-cable celebrations of campiness (though I didn’t have the experience or knowledge to know so then).
Every night I’d sneak and watch another movie . I remember watching Alien and being impressed, and tons of others, but none of them really scared me until one called Terror Train.
I remember little about it except that it took place on a train, and there was a scene where someone was beheaded. I guess up until that point I didn’t know that removing someone’s head was even possible, and it scared me so badly that I stopped watching. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I could even watch another horror movie. Even now it seems silly, but if you brought the movie over tonight, I wouldn’t watch it with you.
The movie that freaked me out more than any other was "What Is It? ", a kind of an “art” film by Crispin Glover. OK, I already knew that Crispin Hellion Glover is as out-there as it gets, but he was presenting this in person at the theatre and I thought it might be cool to go for that reason.
This was months ago and still when I see a snail my stomach flips. I really can’t describe it, maybe I don’t want to, but that one gets my vote.
I don’t think I can ever watch Saving Private Ryan again, at least not the beginning of it. I still haven’t seen The Passion of the Christ, not sure if I ever will if the realistic gore is what it’s hyped up to be.
Another too scary one is Henry: Portrait of a serial killer. That one freaked me right out.
Many, many snails were harmed in the making of the movie, mostly with salt, knives and blunt objects, and I’m not even sure that was the most disturbing part of it. :::shudder:::
Might be worth renting if you have a strong stomach and want to see the wierdest movie possible… and Crispin is not there in person to bring it closer to home.
A really old one here - “The Man with X-Ray Eyes” with Ray Milland. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid and I don’t think I could watch it again even now. It tota;lly freaked me out, especially the bit when you saw his eyes were totally black and then he tore his own eyes out.
Return to Oz freaked the crap out of me as a kid. Though as an Adult, I don’t find the wheelers scary at all. What are they going to do? Bite her to death?
When I was a kid, I saw an animated special on TV called The Devil and Daniel Mouse. It scared the crap out of me. The Devil was just so incredibly phantasmagoric, and the ending, although happy, was so senseless and pat I knew it was a lie. The Devil could have had that mouse any time he wanted.
I got it from the library not too long ago and I’ll be damned if it didn’t scare me again. My kids thought it was ridiculous.
I have no interest in typical horror movies, not because they frighten me, but because they disgust me with no point - gore holds no attractions for me and I just don’t enjoy seeing stuff like that. I walked out in the middle of Jeepers Creepers, simultaneously bored and grossed out - same thing with Nightmare on Elm Street.
But the TV Show Twin Peaks had some of the scariest atmospherics (and a few terrifying scenes) I’ve ever seen. To this day, almost 15 years later, the sound of an owl hooting or the sight of a hanging traffic light swinging in the breeze can creep me out. It’s almost the only video footage I’ve ever had nightmares about - Laura’s mother’s vision of BOB coming toward her relentlessly, striding over the furniture as if it weren’t there.
There was almost no gore, and nothing that couldn’t be shown on television. Although I haven’t cared for most of Lynch’s work, that series showed me just how brilliantly evocative a director could be, simply by the use of music, camera angles (the recurring shot of the ceiling fan at the landing at the top of the stairs in the Palmer house), and so on.
My first Miike film was Happiness of the Katakuris so I was pretty stunned when I watched Ichi. Honestly, I really liked what I saw of Ichi when it came on late one night, but I later found out that I only liked it because I started watching it about 30 minutes in. For no reason what so ever, seeing it from the very beginning made me absolutely hate that film. Even the pacing seemed to be a million times worse from the beginning. You are very much correct in that it is pure shock value and pretty damn close to being a snuff film with little to no redeeming value. Never again shall I watch it.
I heartily recomend Happiness of the Katakuris, though. Nothing shocking at all in that film except for maybe the singing zombies.
The movie “Freaks” creeped me out, I’m ashamed to say.
There is an old Vincent Price horror film wherein every a guy wakes up he has another extremity cut off, for no apparent reason. Yuck. I was little and had nightmares for a long, long time. Trouble sleeping too.
Strangely enough, I watched Independence Day when I was young (maybe first or second grade?) and when they find the aliens and autopsy them freaked me out plenty.
I also find that Asian horror/supernatural thrillers tend to creep me out more than the Hollywood-produced ones, even if they’re remakes of an Asian horror movie (except maybe The Ring. I saw both. They both scared me enough).
I almost walked out on that, but mostly because the two main characters were so fracken stupid.
Creepy guy nearly runs you off the road and then you see him dumping a body into a pipe. Yeah, let’s go look in the pipe instead of going straight to the police.
The only movies that really bothered me were the already-mentioned In the Mouth of Madness, a little-seen movie called Frailty (in which a man is told by God that demons are walking the earth, and he needs to kill them), and Poltergeist, that one because I hate clowns.
