It is so rare to find another fan of The Wickerman! I really enjoy this film but most people I run into hate it! Glad to add one more to the list!
Born O.K. the first time…
If you are born again, do you have two belly buttons?
The original, silent version of “Nosferatu” still freaks me out every time I see it. Maybe it’s because I first saw it when I was about seven. Maybe it’s the weirdness of the silent film acting and the otherwordly look of everything (not to mention that creepy rat-toothed vampire). But it’s amazing to me how that film can still make me shudder.
While the majority of the movie seemed pretty lame, the scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the girl in the freezer got my nerves jumping.
Well, shut my mouth. It’s also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.
I like to watch horror movies, but most of them have no lasting impact. The only exception has been “Angelheart” - for some reason I still find this movie deeply disturbing…
I know it’s all a bunch of cheesy gore, but “A Nightmare on Elmstreet” scared the living hell out of me. I was about 11 or 12 when I saw it, and couldn’t sleep for a week.
Fail Safe
Not a drop of blood anywhere. No scary music. (In fact, no music of any kind, IIRC.) Just an incredibly believable and frightening story.
I think it is the perfect movie to watch with yer friends this coming Y2K Eve, just before the power goes out…
Don’t say I didn’t warn you…
It was a tv movie,Trilogy of Terror. One of the 3 starred Karen Black,who received a small native with a chain on. If the chain fell off,it came to life. Well. It scared me,and I was in my 20’s. The final scene with the oven was great. Anyone else see this?
The scariest TV movie I’ve ever seen is by far Stephen King’s “It”. Pennywise the clown almost made me wet my drawers.
I’m with Tengu on this one. “Night of the Living Dead” is one of those rare movies that screens better on a TV set than it does on the big screen. Watching this movie, all by yourself, late at night, is a truely terrifying experience.
I think the realistic TV news reports in it (useing parts of Penn. the same way Orson Welles used parts of NJ in “War of the Worlds”) added a sense of realism and immediacy to the film that has only recently been rediscovered by the makers of the Blair Witch Project.
The exorcist is very scarey, if you relate the fact that when it came out, many people killed themselves because they thought they had the demon (they were on acid, but we won’t worry about that).
But Cujo is now the scariest! The ‘really could happen’ stories always scare me.
We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful–Oscar Wilde
Midnight showing of Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein in 3-D. I saw it twice, once straight, once stoned. Oh, the humanity! Straight, the movie was terrifying. Stoned, it was hilarious.
OH yeah, one movie that isn’t supposed to be scary, but is… is
In the Company of Men.
It’s scary to think what a human being is capable of.
We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful–Oscar Wilde
Scariest is an awfully slippery concept but I would go with John Carpenter’s remake of “The Thing”.
Most gore is more measurable. There “Braindead”, known in the USA as “Alive Dead” is a clear winner, provided that you see the unrated director’s cut. During the lanwmower scene alone, artificial blood was pumped at the rate of 5 gallons per second and it is a very long scene. “Braindead” though is really more of a comedy.
The most disturbing movie I have ever seen is the unrated director’s cut of “Castle Freak”.
This is only movie that really still haunts me.
The Shining
How about Pink Falmingos by the great John Waters. The final scene where Divine eats dog poop for real should scare everyone!
Roman Polanski’s REPULSION. That first shot of the hallucination in the mirror is a great “jump” scene. And when Catherine Deneuve suddenly STOPS laughing at her friend’s story…and when she tries to brush the ray of sunlight off the chair-seat.
Uke
I would be interested in seeing a cite of these “many people”.
I laughed all the way through the Exorcist. However, the Exorcist III pretty much creeped me out.
>^,^<
KITTEN
Please tell your pants it’s not polite to point.
“Alien” & “Halloween” for the creepy gonna-get-you feelings they produce. “Aliens” for pure stinky-sweat edge-of-the seat terror.
I have to admit that I haven’t been actually scared by a movie since “The Crying Game” but, two horror movies that I thought were actually well done are “Night of the Living Dead” and “In the Mouth of Madness” Both are absolutely fantastic. Wait, I take that back, Event Horizon actually scared the living shit out of me for about a week. I’ve watched it twice since then and I have no idea why. Oh well, se la vi.
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
Kyoko Baby,
Shane
Nightmare on Elm Street scared me, but I watched it at about age 12, alone, at 11:45. Still, good theme, and you can’t go wrong with Wes Craven.
Suspiria is good, although I felt the end was a bit of a let-down.
Candyman scares the crap out of a lot of people.
Alien is pretty damn powerful stuff.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is nauseating, and it’s actually a fairly bloodless movie. I love it, though.
Interesting TCM side-note: One of the only scenes with blood occurs at the dinner table, when Leatherface slices the girl’s finger so that Grandpa can have a drink. The guy who played Leatherface said on the DVD commentary that the prop knife’s blood tube kept getting clogged, so he threw it away, took the tape off the knife’s edge, and really cut the actress’s finger. No one even knew cuz she was supposed to be screaming and ranting.
Blair Witch Project. I know, a lot of you will disagree, but if you don’t nitpick and just buy into what’s happening, it’s freaky as hell.
The Thing is great, as are Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist. I feel compelled to state, though, that Zombie (alternately released as Zombi 2) has better makeup effects than any other zombie flick I’ve seen. And some would suggest The Omen as a good religious-fright film over The Exorcist.
Dead Alive/Braindead is indeed the goriest horror film ever, and I doubt we’ll live to see one gorier.
Carrie is a pretty good flick, although I wish they’d just remade it with a bigger budget instead of making a sequel. In the book, Carrie burns down half the town as she walks home, ripping up gas pumps as she goes. That’d look soooo cool.
Scream is a decent slasher flick; the opening of Scream (the Drew Barrymore scene) is just superb. If you want scares based on surprises, it’s a good pick.
That little Zuni fetish doll from the end of Trilogy of Terror scared the crap out of me too; I remember standing next to the TV, flipping the channel away from the movie (this was before remote controls; ask your parents!), then flipping back as soon as I could stand it. The story it’s based on, Prey by Richard Matheson, is great, too.
Most Stephen King films are pretty bad, but Carrie and The Dead Zone are good. The Dead Zone is hard to call a horror movie, but it’s a good film in general.
Evil Dead was supposed to be a horror film, but it wound up being so ridiculous it was actually a comedy; the followups, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, were made funny on purpose. All three are worth a look.
One thing in closing: I actually had a Blair Witch-related nightmare before I even saw the movie, probably as a result of perusing the website a little too often. Nothing scary actually happened, but I remember that nasty chest-tightening feeling that something awful was going to happen at any moment. Really strange thing: it was in black and white. I normally dream in vibrant color. Odd, eh?