I know Halloween is next Saturday, but I thought this brainstorming session could get our 3Ders a jump on the Netflix queue:
5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): Original recipe creepiness. The low-rent nature of the production did nothing to lessen the fear factor. That intro voiceover? the worst part of it.
4. Magic (1978): Before he was Sir Anthony, Hopkins poured a Norman Bates neediness into his lust for Ann-Margret. While using a ventriloquist’s dummy as his diabolical wingman.
3. The Blair Witch Project (1999): Couldn’t see a thing, but it scared the crap out of me anyway. What was that in the corner?
2. The Mummy (1932): My first horror movie. I was seven. It worked then; it works now. Later, of course, I thrilled to the fact that the girl saved the day.
1. Nosferatu (1922): I saw this in a theater during the re-release, live orchestra and all, and it was purely terrifying. Max Schreck, life-size, rising up out of that coffin = the entire audience gasped.
5. Freaks (1932) – for the obvious reasons.
4. I keep forgetting the title to this 50s B flick, but it had this glowing woman who could kill people instantly by touching them, walking through the woods. People would run away from her and she just walked, never changing her pace, yet would always catch up to them. She gave me the willies. I don’t know if it was a Roger Corman movie, but it had that same low budget flick look. Anyone know what the title was?
3. Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) – They were just disgusting.
2. Dawn of the Dead (1978) – The whole zombie thing gave me recurring nightmares.
1. The Exorcist (1973) – My parents let me watch this on HBO when I was 8 and I couldn’t sit through it once she was possessed. That voice scarred me for life.
There was a Vincent Price movie, I think it was call the Thriller? Very cool.
Silence of the Lambs
that’s pretty much it, I don’t watch scary movies in their entirety, too big of a baby. If I want to be freaked out, I’ll go in my boy’s bathroom.
Marathon Man — former Nazi dentist….
Freaks (1932)
Gooble, gahble, one of us!
Tracy, I think you’re thinking of “The Tingler.”
Personally, I was creeped the hell out by “The Crying Game.” I leaned over to a friend of mine and said “That’s a dude.” He said “No, it isn’t.” I said, “Yeah, it is.” Finally, growing tired of watching filthy perverts have oral sex, I just walked out and waited in my car for my friend to come out once the movie was over.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“Gee, I dunno, I guess it’s just because I’m just not gay?”
That’s the one! Thanks R3!
We were freaked out by the Crying Game too, and I will never see another critically acclaimed movie because of it. That was the movie that finally told us loud and clear that my standards and Hollywood’s were completely different.
“The Tingler” was one of Netflix’s new releases this past week. Don’t know if that means it’s just out on DVD or if Netflix just got around to stocking it, though.
Not a big fan of horror films – I find ‘em all pretty creepy, so here are a few I found disturbing…My Little Eye (internet snuff show – ick!), Devil’s Rejects (clowns=super creepy), The Grudge (japanese child ghosts – get me outta here)and the Hostel movies.
Blair Witch Project — saw one of the VHS copies of a copy of a copy floating around Hell-A before it broke and the shitty quality of the tape didn’t help in keeping me off edge.
Silence of the Lambs
Salem’s Lot, Christine and Pet Sematary
Nosferatu
5) Magic – Good call Wanks, strange movie
4) Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? – The decaying mansion, the make-up smeared Bette Davis…(shudder)
3) Silence of the Lambs – No contest, scariest movie villain of all time
2) The Boys From Brazil – Just watched this last night for the first time, that Hitler clone was pretty scary
1) Vertigo – Everything about this movie is creepy, the strange color scheme Hitch used, the disorienting camera angles, the dream sequence, the idea of possession by a dead person
One I forgot to mention is Takeshi Mike’s Audition (1999). This has one of the creepiest creep out scenes I’ve ever watched … a psycho broad cuts off this guy’s foot with piano wire. I’ve never cringed so low while watching a movie before, unless it was some of his other movies.
+JMJ+
5) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors — This probably wouldn’t scare me now, but I saw it as a little girl and I totally believed it could happen to me.
4) The Exorcism of Emily Rose — One year, I had a job that kept me up all night and asleep for most of the day; whenever the “witching hour” approached, I’d grab my rosary and refused to let go.
3) Red Dragon — Since this one already freaked me out, it’s a good job I never saw The Silence of the Lambs!
2) Ringu — After seeing this, I crawled into my sister’s bed for three straight nights so I wouldn’t have to sleep alone.
1) The Shining — To this day, whenever I’m scared (for whatever reason), I have trouble entering a bathroom.
Exorcist
Exorcist
Exorcist
Exorcist
Exorcist
Hon. Mentions: EVIL DEAD, Midnight Meat Train, some others I cannot think of.
Wankette, I’m with you on Nosferatu. Wish I had the experience of seeing it on the big screen. May I recommend Max Herzog’s “Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht”? Klaus Kinski does a very good Max Schreck and he’s just scary in his own right. Scared the bejeebers outta me. I prefer the original but Herzog has some killer location shots.
“Magic”: great choice. I saw that on a group outing with a first year 5th grade teacher in 1978. Don’t know what she was thinking. A couple of times she called out “Don’t look, girls!” Made a big impression on me and being the strange child I was I had a huge crush on Anthony Hopkins for many years.
wanks here: I came over to correct this egregious error — and it is egregious; I hate that Anne Rice crap — and Floyd did it for me. With A Vampire” is a so-so film with a brilliant conceit: that Max Schreck really WAS a vampire.
it’s on IFC right now
Shadow of the Vampire. You were correct of course….. Women always are.
5. Magic – I remember the commercial from when it was in theaters: just a close up of the dummy’s face with it’s eyes slowly moving. Nothing scarier than a ventriloquist’s dummy…
4. Poltergeist – …except for clowns. And clown dolls are the worst of both worlds.
3. The Omen – Creepy premise, creepy music, creepy kid.
2. The Blair Witch Project – I saw this a long time after it came out on DVD and had not heard very good things about it. The copy I rented kept skipping and freezing, and yet I still got caught up in it. When those kids stumble upon those dozens of stick figures hanging from the trees, in that glorious black-and-white footage, the girl’s panicked mea culpa, their abducted friend’s (or was it?) incomprehensible screams, the sight of that horrible house looming out of the night, those children’s handprints, and the final shot. 45 minutes of sheer terror.
1. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – The scariest movie I’ve ever seen (although I saw it when I was 7 or 8 so don’t know how it would hold up today.) Not out on DVD, and probably never will be, because it was a made-for-TV movie. Anyone remember it? A couple move into an old house with a bricked-up chimney in the cellar. After the husband opens it up, the wife begins to be terrorized by tiny creatures that only she can see.
5. Suspiria — When I first saw this it was the weirdest fucking thing I had ever seen in my life… mainly because I hadn’t seen the rest of Dario Argento’s movies. This one still had the biggest impact on me, just for the sheer surrealism of it.
wanks here: You’re right — that movie is a freak-fest, and hard to get out of your system. Even after a shower and a brillo pad.
4. Halloween — A master class in suspense-film pacing. A gradual buildup of ominous atmosphere and the occasional sudden shock — and then the creepy shit starts coming in thicker, and by the end you’re being beaten over the head with one scare after another.
3. Audition / Ichi the Killer (tie) — I had to put something by Miike on this list because one of the trademarks of his style is a conscious attempt to disorient the viewer. One of the most excruciating experiences in horror is that uneasy sensation that you’re out of the loop — that “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!” feeling. “There’s a pattern here, I can feel it. The plot’s too coherent to be completely random; it must mean something… but what is it?” If done right, the movie can avoid answering that question entirely and not leave you feeling let down.
2. 28 Days Later — because it was the first believeable zombie movie I ever saw. How they managed to make London look not just trashed but DESERTED… I can’t imagine how much planning that took.
1. Eraserhead — To paraphrase Kevin Murphy, this is a brilliant movie, but I’m not sure I ever want to see it again. It is the most disturbing thing I have ever seen. Miike is a fucking wuss compared to David Lynch.
Yeah, but Ichi the Killer had some laughs, like how Miike superimposed that guy’s face on the bodybuilder’s body.
Any Jane Fonda film. Oh, you said HORROR movie, sorry.
wanks here: bwah!
Matt beat me to it…”Audition”!I went to bed with the lights on after I saw that.
I always felt like Vincent Price’s “Tomb of Ligeia” had a good creep factor, as well as the original 4 hour version of “Salem’s Lot.” “Ghost Story” with John Houseman and Fred Astaire was also a good one to have company around when watching. I got weirded really bad when watching it alone one night.
Nosferatu is TCM’s “Silent Sunday” movie tonight.
Honorable mention: POLTERGEIST. No comment necessary.
1: Nosferatu
2: Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man barf
3: Kathy Bates, Misery
4: Buffalo Bill Silence of the Lambs…it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
Can’t think of a fifth….sorry Wanks.