31 Favorite Horror Movies
Okay, it seems one risks hatred and
hostility for revealing their preferences these days, but I've got reasons
for selecting the ones I did. I don't reject all of the movies that
aren't on my list as inferior. There are many that should be on it,
I'm sure. All I know is what I appreciate. I appreciate
the genre as horror fantasy, and I don't do much fantasizing
about people being explicitly tortured and slaughtered by inbred hillbilly
serial-killing families. That's okay in small doses but what I really
regard as enjoyable is atmospheric, somewhat ponderous horror that has a
human heart at it's center--like horrors literary roots--even if it doesn't
all come to a "happy" ending. There is enough relentless bleakness in
the morning news without "escaping" to a dramatization of the very same
dread and loathing that I want to forget. So sorry if Eli Roth isn't a
hero of mine or I haven't seen every Fulci film or like to unwind after a
hard day to Porno Holocaust or whatever. A admiration for torture porn
doesn't make someone a big man, or a true horror fan. as far as I can
see. When I was a kid, horror movies were generally pretty tame
(mostly in heavily-edited television form), so I was goosed by something
other than extreme violence and gore to begin with. I think monsters
are cool and I think fog-enshrouded atmospheric gothic-horror sets are cool.
I like mystery and the supernatural and the things not seen.
The shadows where the imagination fills in the horrible details. Go
figure. I don't bother asking myself why I like these things; it's
pretty much too late for that, anyhow.
1. The Flesh and The Fiends
(1960)
Not what everyone would
consider much of a horror movie, The Flesh and the Fiends is more of a
gothic drama with a slightly broader focus. It is, in fact, the
story of the real-life exploits of William Burke and William Hare, two
Irish immigrants in nineteenth century Scotland who hit upon a grisly
way to get ahead in business. The proprietors of a lodging house
in the West Port slums, the vulgar low-born pair were inspired to take
the body of a tenant, who had died without paying his rent, to the
Edinburgh Medical College where they'd been told Professor Robert Knox
paid good money for corpses without much question. Knox's problem
was that he needed plenty of subjects to dissect to keep medical
students in his class, but only the cadavers of hung criminals were made
available to medical schools in Scotland and they were never enough of
these to go around. Thus was the growth of the morbid enterprise
of the grave-robber. But the slothful Burke and Hare were not the
types to go to more trouble acquiring their stock than they had to.
Rather than square off against the seasoned highly competitive veterans
in the field, the unscrupulous Bills decided to harvest their
merchandise fresh at the source. First they preyed on indigents
and drunkard lodgers under their own roof, then they turned to the
streets of Edinburgh, where their increasing recklessness would
eventually lead to their capture. As for The Flesh and the Fiends,
the movie tells this story as succinctly and respectfully as possible.
Not a single actor is miscast, from Peter Cushing as the cold but
visionary Dr. Knox, to Donald Pleasance as the insidious William Hare,
to Billie Whitlaw as the doomed prostitute Mary, to every minor
character in between, every one seems to fit their role. There are
no real scares, by modern standards, but the setting and basic premise
strike me as symbolic of the very essence of horror: fiendish behavior
(Burke and Hare are preying off of the citizenry not unlike vampires,
hunting the vulnerable by night), the inevitability of death and the
horror of the corpse. Horror originated with these elements as
much as ghosts and the supernatural. It's
just a great film and since it's marketed as a horror movie, I'll choose
it. If there's one thing that separates it from average horror
films, it's that
fact that it was so well made and though-provoking. Basically, I find no fault with it
whatsoever. Mind you, though it's pretty faithful to the original
events, some of it is conjecture and storytelling license.
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
No controversy here.
This Tobe Hooper flick can't lightly be criticized by a horror-fan with
any amount of self-respect. The way it was conceived and the way
it was shot secures it's spot in film history. It's a modern fable
that will probably live forever, or at least as long as Texas is still
around. Hooper captured sheer horror without showing any gore.
The only thing I can offer by way of criticism is the standard one that
most can agree on: Franklin is annoying. In fact, I figure that
everything that happened was pretty much his fault.
3. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1932)
Among the films of the
golden age of horror, this is really the most polished. Paramount,
which produced this first sound adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson
story (there were twelve silent versions that preceded it!), simply had
more money and talent than Universal at the time. It has a clunky
beginning, and, as with all movies of this period, some of the acting
methodology is billowy and antiquated but after all, Fredrick March won
an Oscar for his performance, archaic or not. I'm guessing that it
was the great one-shot transformation and the performance as Mr. Hyde
that amazed people then as now. The make-up by Wally Westmore
presents Hyde as physically regressing to a primitive caveman-like
state, though March still gives him a fairly contemporary persona until
the more advanced transformations when Hyde begins to resemble something
more ghastly than a simple evolutionary throwback. Simple,
superior and iconic, this version of Jekyll and Hyde has yet to be
equaled.
4. Halloween
John Carpenter's big bad
trick-or-treater with uncertain motivation is another spectacularly
simple yet unique idea that flows like nature, without having to explain
it's incongruities. A perfect example of how a low-budget picture
can be superior, Halloween also shows the effectiveness of good scoring
as the ominous, stalking, Carpenter-composed theme works to pull the
viewer along for the journey into terror like a funhouse coaster.
Another film it would be pretentious and ignoble to criticize. If
anything bad can be said about this picture is that the bad sequels that
have sprung from it are in geometric territory, with a worthless remake
threatening to make the Michael Meyers character a black-hole of
un-coolness. Pfft!
5. The Evil Dead 2
The Evil Dead 2 is the
ultimate refinement of a student-film Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell had
been working on for years. Over those years it developed into
something that coined the term "splatstick". For all the talk
about directors that evoke a dreamlike atmosphere Sam Raimi would have
to be the virtual King with his magic little woodland playhouse of
horror. But unfortunately, it has the reputation with some of
being one big gag rather than a masterpiece of cinema. The Evil
Dead and Army of Darkness are fine, of course, though not as dreamlike.
This is the summit of the concept, as far as I'm concerned.
6. Alien
The mystery of the alien's
form makes it an ideal horror-movie bogeyman. Cleverly crafted,
with a frightening sense of plausibility throughout, this film is the
classic portrayal of claustrophobia and alien menace. The first
sequel has it's charms but the franchise hasn't broken any significant
boundaries since and the endlessly-imitated, much-lampooned alien
monster is now paired off with it's conceptual inferior The Predator,
like the Frankenstein's Monster in a cash-in monster-mash flick.
7. The Haunting (1963)
Robert Wise's adaptation of
the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House stays close enough
to the source material to make it the definitive film version of the
story. It's warmer and more engaging than the looser adaptation
The Legend of Hell House and it's artistic greatness is all the more
colossal in comparison to the embarrassingly unsubtle and misguided
remake lensed a number of years back (handy household tip: use the DVD
as a drink coaster!). The story involves a small group of people
spending the night in a notorious haunted mansion, Hill House, in the
interest of psychic research. One of them, a troubled outcast
named Eleanor, finds herself increasingly under the spell of the houses
unseen ghostly occupants--or is she only going mad? The book
leaves this point a little more ambiguous, whereas in Wise's film the
unnatural events are clearly not the simple products of imagination and
chicanery. The story is viewed from the standpoint of the neurotic
Eleanor, whose tormented stream of consciousness weaves the movie
together. Masterfully shot and emotionally engrossing, this is a
prime example of the subliminal art of horror prior to the genres plunge
into exploitation scares.
8. Frankenstein: The True
Story
9. The Black Cat (1934)
10. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
11. Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
12. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
13. Return of the Living Dead
14. Re-Animator
15. Black Sunday
16. Curse of the Crying Woman
17. Curse of Frankenstein
18. Masque of the Red Death
19. Spider Baby
20. The Thing
21. House on Haunted Hill (1999)
22.Planet Terror
23. Zombie
24. Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
25. Fall of the House of Usher
26. Rosemary's Baby
27. Bride of Frankenstein
28. The Shining
29. Fright Night
30. Bram Stoker's Dracula
Coppola's grandiose
experiment is achingly flawed in many respects, otherwise it would have
certainly been at the top of this list. Few horror movies are as
lavish and painstakingly detailed but this version wants to so overarch
every previous film version artistically that it ends up being too showy
while at the same time exhibiting many ugly seams. Let's face it,
Dracula's ass-wig was a bad move visually, practically begging for a Mel
Brooks send-up. And dazzling the eye with every shot may have
distracted audiences from it's sagging center but doesn't impress genre
critics who are looking for actual horror in their movie.
Coppola's decision to make Dracula's character more a lover than a fiend
blunts the monster's potential for menace and Mina's willing seduction
works against any real sympathy for her character. The miscast
Winona Ryder doesn't help matters any, as she always sounds like she's
concentrating on her accent rather than her acting. And not that
Dracula movies are known for the great acting of the secondary
characters, but Keanu Reeves performance of the pivotal character of
Jonathan Harker is practically the emblem for laughably miscast actors
in the history of film. Not a distinction this top-heavy film
really needed. All of these seemingly avoidable glitches drags the
film down to the point that the ending credits come as something of a
relief even to one who finds the enthusiastic visuals so beguiling.
31. The Faceless Monster
Bad
horror movies are prominent on the site, but I mostly write about films of a
bygone era. An age of drive-in theaters and horror-hosted "late movie"
television broadcasts like Shock Theater. And I write about movies
that I found deeply terrifying as a kid even while I marvel at their
monumental ineptitude today. The point was to make the reviews
intriguing to visitors who haven't seen the movies while making them amusing
to the few people that have. And then I wrote a couple of the
pretentious articles about horror, just to see what it would be like.
Hopefully, someone out there is using some of my horror wallpapers, too.
If anyone gets any enjoyment whatsoever from this frivolous exercise in
sheer self-indulgence called The Castle Monster, I'm delighted beyond the
words to express it. Comments, questions and rants can be directed at
me through the
Castle
Monster Message Board. Thanks Much!
Regards,
The Castle Monster
Generally
speaking, all material on The Castle Monster was written,
illustrated, sculpted, 'shopped, or otherwise developed by Steve Ring ©
Not that I'm bragging...
