"I... must
kill!... the babysitters!"
THE EXORCIST: This film is just friggin' CREEPY. And
uncomfortable. And gross. And terrifying... and that's just the staged 70's campus riot
for the film Ellen Burstyn's character is shooting! The possession stuff is REALLY scary!
I remember when this film came out my mom would absolutely not let me see it...
even though I'd read the book three times. Go figger. Maybe it was all the reports of
audience members passing out and/or throwing up that spooked her. Do you remember that?
Some theatres were providing barf bags for this film? Man, have we come (or fallen) a long
way since then. A little pea soup honked on someone in a movie nowadays is a comedy.
But times change - there were reports of audience members passing out and/or throwing up
during screenings of FRANKENSTEIN in the 30's. Must've been Colin Clive's overacting. THE
EXORCIST stands up as a truly atmospheric and frightening piece of filmmaking, as well as
a textbook example (along with JAWS - another scary movie) of how to adapt a popular book
for the screen. Working from his novel, William Peter Blatty manages to keep all the high
points ("Your mother sucks cocks in hell!" - proof positive that the devil
invented trash talk), while chucking stuff we don't need, like the subplot involving the
German housekeepers' drug addict daughter. It's lean, tight, gets right to the scares and
keeps 'em coming. Now let's get the long-rumored special edition laserdisc released, shall
we Warner Brothers?
THE EVIL DEAD: If THE EXORCIST made people barf, just think what
reactions this film would've gotten in 1973. We're talking troughs in the aisles.
THE EVIL DEAD is a slyly witty, very creative, phenomenally gory horror movie. Made
by Sam Raimi (DARKMAN, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD), this film's impact has been slightly
dulled by the flashiness of its sequel, EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN, and the sheer goofiness
of the third film in the series, ARMY OF DARKNESS. But THE EVIL DEAD stands up quite
nicely as a genuinely terrifying, claustrophobic movie. Taking the NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD template (people get trapped in a secluded house while supernatural forces attack
from outside), Raimi creates an audacious film with images straight from your worst
nightmares. Ghouls and demons howl from the cellar, the camera whips through the woods to
provide us a devil's eye view, and the trees and bushes in the forest sexually attack a
woman. Yup, you heard me right, the trees and bushes. And while it all sounds kinda campy
and silly (which it is, let's face it), it also gets pretty rough. If you're looking for a
gross-out good time with scares and laughs mixed in equal doses, check out EVIL DEAD 2:
DEAD BY DAWN. It's a blast! But if you want to be really scared, grossed out, and
assaulted by a horror film - THE EVIL DEAD is for you.
Peekaboo! It's your
local Mary Kay representative!
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD: The
GODFATHER/GODFATHER II of horror films. There hasn't been a fright film to have such a
terrific sequel since BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN followed FRANKENSTEIN. NIGHT concerns a group
of people holed up in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse when the dead rise from their graves
and start feeding on the living. DAWN takes place a little later, once the population of
the dead and the living has about evened out... with the dead definitely gaining the upper
hand. Both films concern the struggles of a small band of people trying to survive the
onslaught of flesh-eating zombies, but each handles it in a distinctively different way.
NIGHT is a full-on, chills-down-your-spine horror movie, while DAWN is more an
action/splatter film. And both are great. George Romero has given us two telling
examinations of human nature, placing his characters together in an extreme situation and
seeing how they'll respond. In NIGHT they turn on one another, while in DAWN they work
together to re-create the comfort and isolation of the world they once knew. Each are
doomed to failure. NIGHT and DAWN are horror-films-as-social-commentary... but both are
damn fun gross-out movies as well. Heads explode, entrails are devoured, flesh is ripped
away - the usual recipe for queasiness. If you want to be scared, NIGHT is the film for
you. If you want an exciting (yet gross) horror/adventure, rent DAWN. And if you want a
great night of fright films, rent them both.
It's your mystery
date! Will he be a dream... or a dud?
RE-ANIMATOR: You wanna get grossed out while laughing so hard you think you
might burst at the seams (which is ironic, because that's just what happens to a few of
the characters in this film)? Then RE-ANIMATOR is the movie for you! Stuart Gordon's loose
adaptation of this H.P. Lovecraft story has got to be one of the hands-down gooiest movies
ever made. But the gore isn't what sets it apart, it's its sense of humor. RE-ANIMATOR is
filled with macabre jokes and gags that I'm not about to try and describe here because
they have to be seen in the context of the entire film to be appreciated. In other words,
I'd sound like some sick lunatic trying to explain why a guy trying to get a severed head
to stand up on its own, only to resort to sticking it on a letter spike is funny. But I
will say that RE-ANIMATOR contains a great, hammy, hilarious performance from Jeffrey
Combs as Herbert West, the off-kilter (I'm being polite) young scientist who has perfected
the serum that brings the dead back to life. Well, kinda brings 'em back to life.
Mostly it just causes a lot of unpleasantly aggressive behavior accompanied by lots of
oozing. If you ever find yourself in the mood to laugh at things you've been told your
whole life not to even talk about, then check out RE-ANIMATOR. Just don't eat
during it.
SCREAM: There was a lot of talk when this film came out about how - by
virtue of its characters having knowledge of horror movies - it 'deconstructed' modern
fright films. I have this to say about that: Bite me. Writer Kevin Williamson found a way
to put a terrifically fun spin on teen slasher films. Period. It's an angle, not an
academic treatise. SCREAM's strength isn't some detached irony (criminy, every horror film
of the past 20 years has had that - mostly for the bad), it's that it loves the genre so
much that it completely embraces all its cliches and expectations. SCREAM is so much fun
because it's having so much fun. Williamson realized that the way to celebrate all
the horror film conventions he holds so dear was to make his characters aware of them, and
able to comment on them (and then usually screw up by walking right into them). This is
what made SCREAM fresh. From the terrific opening with Drew Barrymore - great, scary stuff
- to the bizarre ending in which the mystery is solved, this film is about as much fun as
you can have, y'know, watching people get hacked to death.
By the way, this mask
used to sell at Pic N' Save fora buck ninety-nine. I saw it this year for $40. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: Like SCREAM, this film was directed by Wes Craven. Unlike SCREAM, he also wrote this one. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is much like HALLOWEEN to me - an excellent film which has been diminished by a bunch of shitty sequels. But NIGHTMARE has been even more diminished, I think, because of the popularity of its villain, Fred Krueger. It didn't take long for Fred to become 'Freddy', a wise-cracking nutball who - oh yeah! - kills people. It got so bad that I even saw Freddy Krueger dolls for sale at Toys R Us. Um, EXCUSE ME? Fred Krueger was a CHILD KILLER! Does anyone remember that? That's how low this franchise sunk. Which is too bad, because the original NIGHTMARE is a really scary, original, visually stunning movie. Craven pulls off something very rare here, in that his dream sequences actually feel like dreams! And Krueger, kept in check and in the shadows, is a classically terrifying villain. You want to know how good this movie is? It's so good that it can even survive the fact that Ronee Blakely is giving one of her worst performances in a long career full of worst performances. Now that's the sign of quality! THE HAUNTING: As a break from all the knife-wielding-killer, exploding-head movies on this list, may I suggest you take a look at Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING? Based on the novel by Shirley Jackson, THE HAUNTING is the story of a group of researchers who set up shop in a notoriously haunted house, hoping to find proof that ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night really do exist. Unfortunately they find that things in Hill House don't go bump in the night... they go WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! in the night. This is a classic ghost story with richly drawn, complex characters. But what makes it so effective isn't what you see - it's what you don't see. Or even what you think you might have seen. Wise's masterful use of sounds and bizarre, distorted imagery creates frights more effective than any misty figure in the shadows ever could. And that's what makes this film so spooky, the realization that what we can conjure up in our imaginations is far more frightening than anything the filmmakers could show us. This is great, sitting-around-the-campfire-type storytelling. Watch it with the lights off... and the doors sensibly shut. (Just a note: Don't confuse this film with THE HAUNTING OF HELL HOUSE. HELL HOUSE is a rip-off of THE HAUNTING lacking all the subtlety that makes the earlier film so wonderful. If you feel that you absolutely must be hit over the head to be scared, or are a fan of crummy Roddy MacDowall performances then by all means watch it. But if you're interested in layered, rich writing and skillful direction and performances, stick with THE HAUNTING.)
THE HAUNTING - it's
subtle, it's minimalist...what the hell's it doing on this list? THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: You're driving through Texas in the middle of a heat wave with a bunch of people you don't particularly like. You're about out of gas, and you end up off the main road on some damn-fool excursion. Finding a house, you knock on the door to see if you can borrow some gas. Unfortunately, you've knocked on the wrong door, because this house is home to a bloodthirsty family of cannibals who like to prepare their meat with chainsaws and sledge hammers. And in their eyes, you're the meat. And then you wake up, right? Wrong. Not in this film. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is like the worst dream you've ever had, only it keeps going, and going, and going. It's like the Energizer Bunny with a buzzsaw instead of a drum. Oh yeah - and a mask made of human flesh (how many batteries do you think they'd sell with that image?). CHAINSAW is effective because it's ruthless. It doesn't cut you any slack, and it doesn't let up. The cannibal family doesn't have a soft spot in their hearts - if they see you, they kill you. Except for one unlucky girl, that is, who would probably be better off dead than exposed to the bizarre rituals of this inbred bunch of murderers. If you have any friends who claim to not be scared by horror films? Show them CHAINSAW and let the squirming begin. There are other terrific, scary films out there that I'd recommend in a heartbeat - things like ALIEN and ALIENS, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (they don't get much scarier, on a real-world basis, than HENRY), THE HOWLING, THE INNOCENTS, MARTIN, THE THING (both versions), CARRIE, PSYCHO, PHANTASM (another film that captures the disjointed quality of a dream state very effectively), and... aw hell, there's a ton of 'em. So rent them all and have yourself a scare-a-thon. I guarantee if you watch all of these films back-to-back your eyes'll bug out so far you won't need a mask to scare the neighborhood kids on Halloween night. Mwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!
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