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I always watch Halloween and The Exorcist.
This year, I have a few previously unseen films I’ve been saving: Dead and Breakfast, Wrong Turn, The Innocents, and Dominion (Paul Schrader’s Exorcist prequel; those of you who follow these things know that the studio wasn’t happy with Schrader’s cut, so they fired him and brought in Renny Harlin to reshoot the film, whch turned into Exorcist: The Beginning—a CGI-filled yawner).
If I have time, I’ll sneak in viewings of The Omen and maybe Ghost Story and Candyman.
You?
Just watched the first episode os Masters of Horror on Showtime. Quite good.
Making time for The Exorcist and Evil Dead II. Also: Willard.
Oh. And I should add that it’s at times like these that I really miss Michele Catalano.
When is the original Willard going to be available on DVD? The remake is pretty enjoyable. But I miss Ernest Borgnine.
Dunno. But I still have an old threadbare VHS copy that’s testing it’s limits tomorrow night.
The scariest movie ever is A Stranger in the House with Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder.
My mom and I watched it when I was in high school and then had a nice bonding moment looking in the dictionary to find out the meaning of the word ‘fellatio’.
It really is scary.
Exorcist III and The Wicker Man are definite choices here for me – plus The Legend of Hell House.
And, if I could find it, the Louis Jordan version of Dracula that aired on PBS way back when – a purist’s delight!
Black Christmas! (aka A Stranger in the House), w/ Keir Dullea. I watch that one around Xmas time.
Coincidentally, I recall that Jordan’s Dracula was counter-programmed against Devil Dog – Hound of Hell – there has got to be some sort of award for the perfect awfulness of that one. I can stil remember how the German Shepherd they cast in the title role constantly wagged its tail and lolled its tongue in adorable “good doggie” fashion that completely killed the whole “suspension of disbelief” thing.
[Sigh] Yes, I’m a prisoner of popular culture…
I’ll probably just zombie it up, maybe throw “Jaws” into the queue, too.
I need to get “The Exorcist,” but finances don’t permit it at the moment.
I’ve spent the week watching the Hitchcock festival on Turner Classic. You gotta love the old stuff.
I watched Land of the Dead the other night (against your advice, Allah). I didn’t find the politics so grating as the plot and cast. Romero finally got the money to make the movie he wanted, and it turns out he should have stuck to shooting locally in Pittsburgh malls.
People who look to zombie flicks for confirmation of political beliefs? Absolute geniuses. I guess when Romero equated “consumer culture” to shambling zombies in “Dawn” and the idiot freaks ate it up he felt empowered.
You didn’t find the hamfisted allegory grating? Or his retarded sympathy for the zombies?
Geez – I forgot Jacques Tourneur’s Curse of the Demon! That one was a treasure, and the only major motion picture adaption of an M.R. James story of which I’m aware. When is Monty James going to get the cinematic treatment he deserves? And don’t even get me started on Algernon Blackwood…
I didn’t find them sympathetic. I was more bothered that, in all those volleys of gunfire aimed at the zombie horde, the bald king zombie didn’t catch one in the melon.
It begged credulity. And the main character? I kept wishing he’d buy it, too. Couldn’t have been what Romero was after.
Open Water
Team America
I really liked Open Water. But I never considered Jaws or Open Water or movies like that “horror.”
I want dat ol’ Debil involved.
Romero is on record as saying that the opening scene in Land—in which an armored transport attacks the defenseless Other (i.e., the cannibalistic undead)—was inspired by Iraq. And you don’t need to vote Green to understand whose side we’re supposed to be on when the zombies finally break into Fiddler’s Green and slaughter the idle rich.
Remember, this is a guy whose conceives the moral of NotLD as being “we’re no better than they are.” LotD is the logical evolution of that attiude—from moral equivalence to outright sympathy for the enemy.
A parable for our times, JG.
Monsters, Inc.
Hey – blame it on the three-year-old.
Don’t get me wrong, Allah. I know it was there (Dennis Hopper, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists”)—it’s just that the movie was so unremarkable that the political parable didn’t work, because I didn’t care enough about the zombies or the rebel alliance.
Funny thing is, though, I like the first three very much—regardless of the puerile Hippie politics.
The success of the first three depended in part on our ability to sympathize with their protagonists. “Dawn” and “Night” scored big in that regard; “Day” less so, although it still has its charms. In “Land,” the characters are complete ciphers, especially the ultra-bland lead guy. Leguizamo is the only one with a pulse, and it’s a faint one.
My fave scene in “Land” is where Osama bin Leguizamo and George W. Hopper—two sides of the same coin, really—are incinerated by flaming oil. As burning money cascades down around them.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for subtlety.
That’s why I liked Shaun of the Dead – it’s the zombies who are the ciphers, and the human cast, in all their rich complexity, provide the real substance of the film. Plus, you gotta admit the bit where they beat the bar owner with pool cues to a disco beat was priceless.
Really liked that flick. That’s why I’m holding out high hopes for Dead and Breakfast.
I’m resigned that the remake of Amityville Horror I ordered on PPV is going to suck. But that’s okay. I’m hammered anyway.
“House on Haunted Hill” (the original) and “The Haunting.” I’m an old fart and therefore reserve to right to wax nostalgic over the first films that made me pee my pants. . .
. . . and while I’m at it, screw CGI. Give me cheap, understated yet fully realized fear of the numinous any day.
Romero’s a cock-knocker with idiotic glasses. LOTD put me to sleep. The DVD commentary included Romero musing about how he and Dennis Hopper felt that the 60s “didn’t turn out as they had hoped,” to which I shouted, That’s because you people were in charge, and you’re all assholes! A movie that already sucked descended even further into the Morass Of Suckitude once I discovered that the director actually thought it Meant Something. Moron.
So far I’ve accidentally caught The Omen, The Shining, Nightmare on Elm Street. I’m sure there will be others.
The Thing That Wouldn’t Die
Disc Four of the Outer Limits first season.
Although…. I’d like to plan on being the man in this photo for Halloween….
http://www.slower.net//entries/002098.php
.
you and numinous, i swear.
Geez, Vladimir – can’t you post some type of warning or something? I’m experiencing some type of post-traumatic stress from that photo.
I know, maggie. Hopeless, ain’t I?
yep, but we love you anyway. anyhoo, no scary movies here. i have enough trouble sleeping.
In the last week I’ve watched the original Amityville Horror, The Thing, The Exorcist Beginning, Deadbirds (what I saw was pretty good, but the DVD from the rental place was fucked up), Dragonfly (girlfriend’s choice) and the original Poltergeist (this house is clean!).
I want to get The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but I couldn’t find it at the video place. I’m also planning on watching the original Exorcist (girlfriend hasn’t seen it), the Shining and maybe a Dracula movie. Haven’t decided which one.
Amityville Horror remake did suck. Hard. Funnily hard. Pretty damn laugh out-loud funnily hard. So, it’s not without entertainment value.
And I just watched Butternuts, no, Squashfingers, no, what’s it called? Peanutbutter? Fingerhut? Shit, um…aha–Seabiscuit. That’s it. Scared the hell out of me.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
And (as I type this) Kakuren: Hide and Seek. Anime. Amazing.
It’s on at 4 AM EST on Cartoon Network.
Okay, want to deconstruct the politics of horror,try,<ahref=”http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068837/” target=”_blank”>The Legend of Boggy Creek</a>.” If its creepy, Arkansas swamp creature of the early ‘70’s doesn’t scare you, how about the fact that most of the locals played themselves?–
I guarantee you, it still scares the <i>hell out</i> of Ned Beatty.
Okay, want to deconstruct the politics of horror, try, <i>The Legend of Boggy Creek. If its creepy, Arkansas swamp creature of the early ‘70’s doesn’t scare you, how about the fact that most of the locals played themselves?–
I guarantee you, it still scares the hell out of Ned Beatty.
Guaranteed to chill you to the bone:
Steel Magnolias
Thelma & Louise
The Banger Sisters
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Christ, Roscoe! You just gave me the heebie-jeebies.
I grew up with parents who looooved the old Universal Dracula and Frankenstein pictures, plus a whole host of B-movie horror films that they had on VHS. They let me watch that stuff when I was practically a toddler, and I’ve been told that none of it scared me in the least.
What finally gave me the serious jibblies was apparently–and I freely open myself to your scorn–the Banshee in Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People. That scared the potatoes out of me. Carl Jung would be proud.
Well, unless I want five kids sleeping in my room tonight – no horror movies here. We watched the Exorcist 3 last night.
My favorite movie is on today at 1pm Eastern.
Giants v Redskins.
No matter how many times I watch it it still sends shivers up my spine.
Halloween – traditional (sort of the It’s a Wonderful Life of Halloween)
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things – early 70’s b-zombie classic “I peed my pants…..”
An American Werewolf in London – best werewolf movie ever
Frankenstein – 74 years later and Karloff still owns this shit
Dracula – the Langella version…too bad they dropped the Transylvania stuff but overall it is the best big screen version
I’m watching football. Have you seen the Jets? They brought Vinnie back from the dead. He does still look like a zombie.
I’ve been showing White Noise to people a lot lately. Not a quintessential Halloween flick by any means, but it scares the hell out of them anyway. Happy Halloween, Jeff!
This morning I’m going to watch Ernest Angley and Benny Hinn.
Open Water? Are you kidding me?
Isn’t that an eco-nihilist allegory for the WoT?
I thought it was one of the few really evil movies I’ve ever seen (yet to see TotW
). That and The Constant Gardener. For pretty much the same reason, if you know what I mean.
How typical of the mindless, goose-stepping neoKKKon hordes that infest this site, to parade around their liveism against noble Undead Americans–EACH OF WHOM ARE EVERY BIT AS MUCH A CITIZEN AS YOU–just because they have BROWN rotting skin. I don’t approve of demonic possession or cannibalism–and I think it may even be wise to hold round-table discussions with experts and academics from the Zombie community, in order to get to the Root Causes of how American foreign and domestic policy work in tandem with our shameful liveism to lead to these acts–but before you point fingers, Let Us Not Forget the dominance of right-wing talk radio and Wal-Mart in our own culture.
FUCKERS
Me: The Warriors; Batman Begins; Ong-Bak; Hitchhiker’s Guide
All I wanted from Romero in “Land” was a shot or two at his own side. The rest of it would have been fine if only he had thrown us a wink and a nod to let us know that he recognized the left’s excesses, too.
It would have been so easy. Just throw in some young, earnest, Feministe-y character for comic relief; occasionally show her agitating outside Fiddler’s Green with a bullhorn on behalf of “equal rights for the undead.” A cheap laugh, admittedly, but a satisfying one. And naturally, she wouldn’t have been spared when the zombies finally descended upon the residents at the end.
Would have made the little terrorism allegory a lot more accurate, too.
I did watch SAW 2
And regret it.
The horror that is Redskins v. Giants.
Shaun of the Dead.
Silence of the Lambs
Going to see Scanners sometime tomorrow, and maybe something else by Cronenberg…
I dunno, maybe Hellraiser again?
Hmmm, looks like most all of my faves have already been covered but speaking of Cronenberg, maybe I’ll slap Videodrome in the player.
And when that taps out, bring on Burnt Offerings…
Somebody mentioned American Werewolf in London upthread, which is a great werewolf flick. I’d add the Howling to the mix, for those of you haven’t seen that one. Also, Brotherhood of the Wolf and Dog Soldiers are worth checking out.
I also highly recommend The Sentinnel and Don’t Look Now as creepy Halloween night flicks.
Watched Wrong Turn last night. In my estimation, a very underrated “on the run from psycho” movie. And I still like the original Friday the 13th.
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, with the best punchline in any horror movie… “See Volume Two?!”
Return of the Living Dead: “Send more police!”
City of the Walking Dead: Cheeziest Italian Zombie Flick ever, with the Zombie horde eating the June Taylor Dancers…
Psycho. Honestly, I’ve read the comments, and you’re all generally fooling yourselves. Ok, maybe The Shining.
TW: Local, as in, the most horrifying things are local, not global.
Psycho is not scary. Hitchcock’s most overrated. The Shining is good, though.
I usually watch Cronenberg at Halloween, so we went to see A History of Violence yesterday. Not a horror movie, but it did have that constant, nagging feeling of dread that Cronenberg is so good at creating.
Faghh,
Couldn’t find Scanners, will just have to substitute Evil Dead II instead, which I really don’t mind (Call’s got some good taste).
I didn’t plan on watching it, but ended up seeing a special (I think on the Histroy Channel) on the plague in the 14th century. Amazing how a poorly done special can still scare the shit out of you simply based on fact.
This week:
Fright Night
Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
House of Wax (the new one, not bad)
Land of the Dead (sucked)
Dawn of the Dead
Evil Dead 2
Sixth Sense
Nightmare on Elm Street
Scream
Shaun of the Dead
Sleepy Hollow
Vampire’s Kiss
And to top it all off… Ghost.
Um, special mention for The Haunting? Most unintentionally hilarious fright-fest of all time, for my money.