It's Horror Movie Time, Kiddies!

[Gemini Cricket]

A couple of weeks before Halloween, I dust off the horror movies I have on DVD.

Hee hee hee.

Tonight it's Tremors. It's a fun flick. Lots of jump scenes.
AND it has Reba McIntire and Miss Beadle from Little House on the Prairie... that's truly scary!

:D

Name your favs...

:evil:


http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/braddoc310/phpThumbphp.jpg

[CoasterMatt]

DEAD ALIVE!

[Not Afraid]

I cleaned my desk tonight. That was horror.

[BDBopper]

Anyone have Attack of The 50 Foot Bunnies Who Knock Over Cardboard Cut-out Buildings? :D

[flippyshark]

The movie in your avatar, GC, is pretty hard to beat!

Some of my favorite spookfests:

Black Sunday (il maschera del demonio) and any number of other films from Italian master Mario Bava. (Especially; Black Sabbath, Kill Baby Kill, Shock, Twitch of the Death Nerve - all beautiful to look at, though style sometimes trumps sense.)

Flesh For Frankenstein - AKA Andy Warhol's Frankenstein - Okay, it's a campy, ridiculous gorefest, but I keep coming back to it again and again. (I even got to show it in 3D at a little theater in Santa Fe many years ago.) This is the most curious sort of comedy, delivered with a straight face, via a dizzying array of dialects. ("To know death, Otto, you must f**k life in the gall bladder.") The onscreen nudity, gore and sicko absurdia is accompanied by one of the most achingly beautiful musical scores ever, courtesy of never-heard-from since composer Claudio Gizzi. A must double feature with its companion film Blood For Dracula. (Same cast, crew and composer.)

The Wicker Man - Not the 2006 version (please!), but the original. It's a musical (sort of), a mystery (though not an especially tricky one) and a grand march to a pretty much inevitable conclusion, but I relish every second of it. I can't think of any other movie that makes paganism look so interesting, alluring even, though these amiable folk end up being less than trustworthy.

The Henry Farrell Horror Hag Trilogy - Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, What's The Matter With Helen? - The same author lies behind these three titles, which gave Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Olivia De Haviland and other aging stars a chance to chew the scenery with gusto in a series of clever, chilling melodramas. Of these, my nostalgia favorite is "Helen," with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters, an overlooked gem - it threw me into terrified conniptions at age 6, now it's just a fun hoot, though the ending still gives me chills.

The Shining - Kubrick's hypnotic excursion into madness is one I can't take my eyes off of. (I know plenty of folks who can't stand it, though.)

Audition - Takeshi Miike's notorious piece of artful cruelty held me captive, and carried a suprising emotional weight. No mere torture/atrocity show, though it is strong stuff. (By the way, I have given the Hostel/Saw torture porn genre several chances, and I'm just not buying it - I'm not outraged by it or anything, just bored and unimpressed.)

Dance of the Vampires AKA Fearless Vampire Killers - Roman Polanski's imperfect but delightful vampire comedy is gorgeous to look at, fitfully hilarious, and memorably creepy around the edges.

I gotta give The Haunting (Robert Wise version) my most sterling recommendation. While I'm at it - The Innocents (based on Henry James' Turn of the Screw) with Deborah Kerr is similarly worthwhile.

Those are the titles that come to mind at the moment, but I have too many faves in this genre to ever hope for a complete list. These are the ones I'm likely to give a watch over the next couple weeks.

[flippyshark]

Anyone have Attack of The 50 Foot Bunnies Who Knock Over Cardboard Cut-out Buildings? :D

You mean Night of the Lepus? I wish! It is available on DVD, and I'm sorely tempted.

[Morrigoon]

The Dolls is one of them
The Changeling with George C. Scott is another awesome film.

[Snowflake]

Flippyshark said
I gotta give The Haunting (Robert Wise version) my most sterling recommendation. While I'm at it - The Innocents (based on Henry James' Turn of the Screw) with Deborah Kerr is similarly worthwhile.

I'm totally for both of those, as well.

In addition, two Val Lewton classics, Cat People and The Body Snatcher (Boris Karloff is incredibly creepy in this film and the final few minutes are hair raising)

[LSPoorEeyorick]

The original Halloween was my night-of tradition for several years.

My other creepy fave? Sweeney Todd. (I'm like a broken record!)

[Kevy Baby]

We always like to watch Nightmare Before Christmas as our Halloween movie.

The Wicker Man - Not the 2006 version (please!), but the original. It's a musical (sort of), a mystery (though not an especially tricky one) and a grand march to a pretty much inevitable conclusion, but I relish every second of it. I can't think of any other movie that makes paganism look so interesting, alluring even, though these amiable folk end up being less than trustworthy.Not to mention that you gt to see Britt Ekland's boobies!

[Gemini Cricket]

Today... it's Psycho! A classic.
:D

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/braddoc310/psycho3.gif

[flippyshark]

I recently bought (and watched) a cheap DVD set that included Psycho's II, III and IV. I was surprised at how nicely 2 held up, 3 has a terrific first half and then slides into a by-the-numbers slasher movie, and 4, well, Olivia Hussey is incredibly hot as Norman Bates' mom, but this movie was by turns squirmy, dull and predictable. (For a made-for-TV movie, it's pretty kinky, though.)

None of them can hope to hold a candle to the real Hitch, of course.

[Chernabog]

Horror is one of my favorite genres. I do not consider the current crop of torture porn movies "horror", and do not enjoy movies like Saw or Hostel. They just go for the gross-out, which simply isn't enjoyable or scary.

My mom loves em also, so when I was a kid she'd plop me down to watch them with her. I told Clive Barker that I first saw Hellraiser at 10 years old with my mom and he was so delighted he signed an autograph for her :P

My favorite horrorshows are:

The Haunting - The Robert Wise 1963 version. The story of one woman's battle with architecture and lesbianism.

Hellraiser. The story of one pincushion's battle with 1980s fashions.

Suspiria. The story of one dancer's battle with witchcraft and fabulous lighting. A Lounge of Tomorrow favorite! (ha, ha, ha)

Halloween. I'm giving it all she's got, captain! Too bad all the sequels sucked.

A Nightmare on Elm Street. Gives a whole new meaning to the word "handjob".

Poltergeist. Mama told me never to pick at scabs. (This movie used to terrify me when I was a kid since I had a giant tree outside my window AND a clown puppet in my room)

Aliens. OK technically this is scifi, but it's a pretty damn scary film, especially in those chestburster scenes. I fell in love with Sigourney Weaver after this film, she is so damn hot!

Night of the Living Dead. This is one of those movies (they're coming to get you Barbara..... look.. there's one now!) that is funny to watch with friends, and really goddamn scary to watch alone late at night. The ending was like.. what the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1970s version with Donald Sutherland). I think, the best ending to any horror movie, ever.

[flippyshark]

Last night, I watched The Mephisto Waltz, a very seventies soft-focus Satanic thriller with Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bissett.

Alan Alda plays a music journalist who once wanted to be a concert pianist. He meets an Aleister Crowley-like piano master played by Curt "Goldfinger" Jurgens, who takes the lad under his wing, but has unmistakably sinister intentions, as well as a spooky but hot daughter played by "Valley of the Dolls" star Barbara Parkins. Bissette is the real star, though, as a woman who just KNOWS there's something wrong with all these people.

The real highlight is the spooky score by Jerry Goldsmith, interpolating Franz Liszt's titular waltz as well as the very familiar "Dies Irae" tune heard in so many movies (most memorably The Shining). Goldsmith outclassed many of the movies he scored, and that is very much the case here.

I can't quite recommend this one unless it has nostalgia value for you, or you find the cast irresistible. It has some nice moments and some creepy atmosphere, but the story plays out very slowly, and ends on a bit of a WTF.

[JWBear]

Horror is one of my favorite genres. I do not consider the current crop of torture porn movies "horror", and do not enjoy movies like Saw or Hostel. They just go for the gross-out, which simply isn't enjoyable or scary.

AMEN!

The Haunting - The Robert Wise 1963 version. The story of one woman's battle with architecture and lesbianism.

LO-effing-L!!!!! :snap: (And, I love this movie!)

[innerSpaceman]

I echo Cherny's sentiments about what's Horror genre and what's not.

That said, I like one of the early "slashers" that, being the first, was not the drek that purportedly followed in its footsteps. Halloween is a classic, and one of the best movies for Halloween.

I didn't see the recent remake, heard it was horrible, did great business ... and so now the same company is remaking Hellraiser. Jesus, aren't remakes supposed to be for the next generation? Um, We Aren't Dead Yet.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was also a great one of this variety, and one of them towards the way end of that over-long series was also good, Wes Craven's New Nightmare. I think 3 was the other good one.

But ghost stories are generally my favorite when it comes to Halloween.

The original The Haunting, the incomparable The Shining, the scared-the-shyt-out-of-me-then, but oh-so-funny-now Poltergeist, and the moody The Others.


And, to clear things up, Alien (not Aliens) is a fantastic horror movie in scifi clothing. David Cronenberg's take on The Fly is another great horror flick with scifi trappings.


I love me some vampire films at this time of year, notably the sly Shadow of the Vampire, Francis Ford Coppola's visionary and hypnotic version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, the uber-cool teen vampire pic, The Lost Boys, and the sexy vampire film The Hunger.



My fave zombie film is the scary-hysterical The Return of the Living Dead, with apologies to George Romero (whose first two Dead movies are likewise excellent).

For werewolves, I turn to Mike Nichol's Wolf - really much better than any of the old Universal stuff. But Universal still holds the crown when it comes to Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. Those two have never been topped in the man-made monster genre. (But the classic Young Frankenstein is, for other reasons, near the tops of my Halloween faves list.)


I also love the strange psychogical and mayhem suspenser, The Birds. And Halloween wouldn't be Halloween without a screening of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.




Yikes, I'd better get started.

[Not Afraid]

I love me some vampire films at this time of year, notably the sly Shadow of the Vampire, Francis Ford Coppola's visionary and hypnotic version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, the uber-cool teen vampire pic, The Lost Boys, and the sexy vampire film The Hunger.



Vampries Vampires Vampires. I can never get enough Vampire this time of year.

My favorites:

Nosferatu (Kinsky)
Nosteratu (1922 version)
The Hunger
Shadow of the Vampire
Vampyr (1932)
The Horror of Dracula
Dracula (classic)

I also like:
Interview with a Vampire (love the book, hate Cruise, but can deal with it)
Lost Boys (although it hasn't aged well)

[CoasterMatt]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original)
Halloween
I Was A Teenage Werewolf (Michael Landon)
The Blob (Steve McQueen)
Carrie (the original - I LOVE that movie)

[innerSpaceman]

OMG, I forgot to mention Carrie. Um, one of my favorite movies of ALL TIME.


Good one, CoasterMatt.

[mousepod]

hmmm.... lots of good ones already mentioned. I'll add: American Werewolf in London,Don't Look Now,The Last House on the Left,The Woman in White,Prince Of Darkness,The Exorcist III...

[CoasterMatt]

Martin :D

[Gemini Cricket]

I dig zombie movies.
This one's a remake but it's done quite well.
I'm watching it now...

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/braddoc310/dawn_of_the_dead_ver2.jpg

[Chernabog]

Dawn of the Dead, both the original AND the remake, were great movies. One of the few where the remake was good, actually. They were different films with the same premise, of course, but both incredibly enjoyable.

To clear up what was said above "torture porn" and "slasher" movies aren't quite in the same category for me (of course, there are overlaps). I like SOME of what Roger Ebert refers to as the "dead teenager movie", which was inspired by Halloween (the original), an absolute classic. I do not consider Halloween "torture porn", not even close.

And yes, Nightmare on Elm Street 3:The Dream Warriors was the other good one from that series (New Nightmare I didn't buy as much....).

On a funny note, I love how Stephen King considers Walt Disney's Pinocchio a horror movie. I mean, that whole donkey sequence is massively friggin' terrifying (specifically, the Lampwick -> Lampdonkey sequence).

[innerSpaceman]

I was supposed to go out to a friend's scary-movie-watching get-together last night ... but after reading this thread, I ended up get caught up in my lone, much more scary, scary movie watching.

I can't watch anything really scary at home alone. For instance, despite the hysterical battles with architecture and lesbianism, I can't watch The Haunting alone at home late at night.

Instead I watched Shadow of the Vampire and The Others. The latter is creepy, but not downright scary.

Um, except that I kept having this optical illusion happen during the film, which - considering the subject matter the movie foisted on my consciousness - I could only interpret as ghostly.

This white, shiny, sort of square FLASH happened in the small space of air between my head and my arm. Once, then twice. After the third time of this clearly visible silvery-white flash right next to my face, I had to turn the scary movie off.

Yikes.




I live right next to a cemetery. Ghosts don't usually hang out next to where their husks are buried ....




.... but some do.

[Boss Radio]

Herk Harvey's sole masterpiece: Carnival of Souls.

[innerSpaceman]

aka: Paradise Pier

[wendybeth]

I've been playing Resident Evil 4 on the Wii- loads of fun zombie action!

[Gemini Cricket]

:evil:
I usually save this one for Halloween night, but I felt like watching it tonight...

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/braddoc310/ST2889Halloween-Movie-Score-Posters.jpg

[CoasterMatt]

The dishes in the sink are kind of scary...

[Gemini Cricket]

I love how dated Halloween is. The hair, the bad clothes, the dialogue (totally!)...
:D

[JWBear]

We watched The Haunting (1963) tonight. :)

[JWBear]

"No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that."

[Gemini Cricket]

We watched The Haunting (1963) tonight. :)
Despite the efforts of a few dinglecheeses at the cemetery, The Haunting is still one of my all time favorite horror films.
:)

[Capt Jack]

Prince Of Darkness

wow..forgot completely about that. yeah, good one. now I have to go find it


The Thing (original or remake)
The Raven, although it barely counts as "horror"
Young Frankenstein is one I would watch a lot on Halloween as well as Silence of the Lambs

[Gemini Cricket]

Love the hair...

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/braddoc310/pj_soles_nancy_loomis_jamie_lee_cur.jpg

[innerSpaceman]

I'm watching both DVD versions of The Shining simultaneously on different monitors. It's undeniably odd.


<<<< (not at this part yet)



The earlier version is indeed the original camera negative, simply a bigger and "more" picture of the image that was shown on screen. There's a significant space of "extra" image at the top and bottom, and even more image on the sides (a lot more on the right than the left, for some reason).

The color timing on the new DVD is simply more beautiful, but I can't say how accurate.

Nor can I say which is the "real" version of The Shining.


Even if it's true that Kubrick filmed the movie so that it couldn't be pan&scanned for TV, did he compose the shots for the widescreen frame? The TV frame? Both??


The widescreen matting is much more pleasant ... but now that I know it's simply a matte covering over the existing image, I have a harder time accepting it as the "real" film. Are most films like this ... with a larger negative image that's simply matted into the widescreen and 'scope aspect ratios shown theatrically?


I don't suppose there's any way to confirm that Kubrick intended audiences to see the widescreen compositions, but I assume he had enough clout that the release version is his director's cut in every way.


It's tough to suddenly think of the some of the picture "missing" from The Shining, but it's nice to finally have the theatrical version of the film on DVD.

[flippyshark]

According to editor Gordon Stainforth's comments (http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/index.html#slot1) here at the Kubrick FAQ (scroll down just a little, it's the first question) the film was intended to be screened in theaters in the 1.85:1 ratio, which I presume is what you see on the widescreen DVD (which I'm burning to get, but I haven't got HD TV yet, so it makes little sense to buy it right now). Kubrick seems to have preferred the "fullscreen" ratio for video releases in his lifetime, though who knows what he would think by now. This FAQ kept me up for hours when I first stumbled on it, so beware.

[Gemini Cricket]

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/braddoc310/poltergeist.gif

Poltergeist was last night.
:)

One of my favorite horror films.

[CoasterMatt]

Poltergeist is also a really fun rollercoaster at Fiesta Texas...

[innerSpaceman]

Poltergeist scared the absolute crap out me when I first saw it in a preview (with some extra footage never seen again.)

Oddly, there was a Kubrick connection. It was screening as a preview after 2001: A Space Odyssey. We got high in the bathroom and, to this day, are sure the drugs were spiked with something ... because we have never had a high like this. (and we know high)



Anyways, 2001 was awesome and Poltergeist was frightacular.

I saw it like 15 times that first summer. It's also got a whole lot of comedy gold, so it's become an enduring classic to me.

[Isaac]

:eek:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v686/zapppop/spiceworlddvd.jpg

[innerSpaceman]

Wow thanks for that site, flippyshark.

Of course, on the question I have, there's conflicting information ... which leads to the regrettable conclusion that both versions of The Shining are authentic.

It seems Kubrick may have composed the shots for full drame while he shot them.

It seems to have been Kubrick's preference for his films to be shown in the 4:3 or "full frame" aspect ratio, because, according to his long-standing personal assistant Leon Vitali, that was the way he composed them through the camera viewfinder and if it were technically still possible to do so, he would have liked them to be shown full frame in cinemas as well. As Vitali said in a recent interview: "...when he composed a picture through the camera, he was setting up for what he saw through the camera - the full picture. That was very important to him. It really was. It was an instinct that never ever left him. [...] He did not like 1.85:1. You lose 27% of the picture, Stanley was a purist. This was one of the ways it was manifested."

On the other hand, the film was edited with compositions at 1:85:1.

According to Gordon Stainforth, assistant editor on the film:
Although The Shining was shot with the full academy aperture, it was designed and composed entirely for the 1.85:1 ratio, and that is the only way it should be projected in the theatre.

All the Steenbecks in the cutting rooms accordingly had their screens marked, or even masked off, with the 1.85:1 ratio. The 6-plate Steenbeck in Stanley and Ray's main cutting room was masked off with black masking tape, because you cannot cut a movie properly unless you can see the frame exactly as it will appear in the cinema.

And yet Kubrick's assistant, Vitali, and his Estate, seem to believe Kubrick wanted the films released in 1.33:1, even though Kubrick never publicly said so.

I'm glad someone else finally had the clout to release The Shining in its theatrical aspect ratio. The color timing is certainly superior to the earlier release ... so I'm gonna come down on the side of the widescreen being the "real" version of the film. Truthfully, though, they are both real. Bah.

[lashbear]

I love the classics, most of which are mentioned above.

My two recent faves at the moment are:
Dark Ride (http://www.darkride.com)
and
Dead Silence (http://www.deadsilencemovie.net/)