In anticipation of Halloween in a few days time here's a list of ten of my favourite moments/scenes from horror cinema. They are not in any order plus they are not all of them scary. But they are some of the moments/scenes that have left a lasting impression on me. There are lots of others that could have been included (and probably should have been) but these ones will do for now. Let me know what you think. Enjoy.
Poltergeist – "Now lets go get your daughter!"
This never fails to give me chills. Pure Spielberg. Zelda Rubinstein is great as Tangina and Jobeth Williams gives one of the best 'mom' performances ever. Plus she's cute.
An American Werewolf in London – On the Moors
It could have been any number of moments from this film but for pure tension, atmosphere and scare value it is hard to top this one.
Ringu – Sadako
Simply one of the most downright creepy, chilling sequences ever.
The Grudge – Bedtime
I wanted to put the original Ju-on clip in but couldn't find it. Still, this is pretty much identical and simply terriyfing on a conceptual level. Bed should always be safe and secure. Brrr
Night of the Living Dead – "They're coming to get you Barbara!"
Romero's opening to his seminal 1968 horror. Weird, unsettling and brilliant!
The Eye – Elevator
Pure tension and creeptastic atmosphere from the Pang Brother's classic chiller. Love it.
Halloween – 1st Person Stabber
Carpenter's masterclass on use of Steadicam and in creating grim atmosphere which will underlie the rest of the film. Genius.
The Exorcist – "The sow is mine!"
I was going to include another clip (the one with the crucifix – you know the one I mean) but couldn't bring myself to do it. Yes, I bottled out. But this one will do fine.
Let the Right One In – "You have to invite me in."
I adore this film. This scene is more emotional than scary being about growing trust and love while still managing to be icky and uncomfortable. The young actors sell it marvelously.
Curse/Night of the Demon (1957) – Forest Chase
A short atmospheric clip from Jacques Tourneur's 1957 British horror classic. A great movie.
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 October 2013
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.2: BARGAINING (PART 2)
Bring Me To Life
WRITER: David Fury
DIRECTOR: David Grossman
WHAT’S THE SITCH?
Unbeknownst to Willow and the other Scoobies the ritual to bring Buffy back to life has worked. Our girl has regenerated and is alive and trapped in her coffin under the earth. Screaming in terror she begins to claw and fight her way free.
Meanwhile, up above, the evil demon bikers continue their rampage through Sunnydale.
Back at casa Summers, Spike tells Dawn they can’t stay there and have to leave as the neighbourhood burns. Hijacking a motorcycle Spike and Dawn take off, looking for safety.
In the woods, the Scoobies split up with Xander carrying an exhausted Willow while Tara and Anya head separately back in to town. The two girls soon arrive at the Magic Box and wait there for their loved ones to get there too.
Back to Buffy who has now escaped from her grave and is wandering dazed and confused through the burning, ransacked streets of Sunnydale. Soon she stumbles across the gathered throng of demon bikers and their leader who have the captured Buffybot chained by each limb to four different motorcycles. Real Buffy then watches horrified as the motorbikes proceed to speed away, ripping the poor Buffybot to pieces. Seeing real Buffy, the demons, thinking she is another robot, try to grab her too. But real Buffy runs off with the demons in hot pursuit.
Back in the woods, Xander and Willow are lost. But then a magic light appears to guide them home, a light Willow knows has been sent by Tara. Soon, Xan and Will arrive back at the Magic Box, reunited with Anya and Tara. Thinking the resurrection of Buffy failed, the gang determine that it is up to them to stop the demon horde, and tooling up, they head out to do battle.
Spike and Dawn, still on the bike, find the abandoned wreckage of the Buffybot. Spike knows she is done for but Dawn goes to her just in time to catch her final words. Buffybot saw the real Buffy and asks Dawn where “other Buffy” went? And with that the poor broken bot ‘dies’. Dawn, making a leap of faith, runs off, looking now for “other Buffy” with Spike not even noticing she has gone until it is too late. Furious he sets out to find the runaway niblet.
Eventually Willow, Xander, Tara and Anya run in to real Buffy in an alleyway. After initially thinking she is the Buffybot, Willow realises she is in fact the real thing. The gang are amazed and happy yet also worried by Buffy’s dazed and confused behavior. Right then, the demons arrive and a fight ensues. Thankfully some of the old Buff returns and she engages the horde in battle, beating them down. But then, battle done, she runs off, clearly traumatised by the whole affair, leaving Tara to finish off the nasty demon leader with a well placed axe to the back. Her first, she proudly announces.
Dawn arrives at Glory’s tower, which is still standing, but only barely. She looks up and sees someone up on top. She runs to the tower and ascends it as fast as she can.
Up on top of the tower, it is Buffy standing at it's edge. She is staring down at the ground far below as fragments of memories of her fatal sacrifice fill her mind.
Suddenly Dawn appears behind her.
Dawn, scared that the somehow newly returned Buffy is going to take another swan dive, begs her sister to come away from the edge, to come back home with her.
For a time Buffy seems unsure and appears more inclined to jump once more.
But as the rickety tower begins to shake and crumble, and as Dawn screams out in terror, Buffy snaps out of it. At the last moment she turns, grabs her little sister, and grabbing a cable, swings them both off of the tower and down to the ground and safety…just as the whole thing comes tumbling down behind them.
The episode ends with Dawn hugging tightly her returned and thoroughly confused looking big sister.
WHAT’S THE SITCH BENEATH THE SITCH?
Nothing specific as this carries on directly from part 1. I guess there is something in there about putting those you love before your self.
WHO’S GIVING US THE WIGGINS THIS WEEK?
Still the nasty demon biker gang
WHY IT ROCKS
Seamless: It’s a direct continuation of part 1 and the join is seamless even though it has a different writer.
Payoff: Part 1 was the set up and this is the resolution. As such there is a lot of action and running around and fights. And they are all great as per usual. The emotional beats hit home too, especially the loss of poor Buffybot and the real Buffy looking and acting so lost and traumatised throughout.
On your bike: Spike's flying kick, taking the demon rider off of his motorbike and Spike then nicking it. Very, very cool.
SMG: whether playing the demise of poor Buffybot or the newly returned Buffy she is tremendous. As Buffy she has virtually no dialogue relying almost entirely on body language and on a pretty face that tells a traumatic tale with nothing more than a simple look.
Go Tara! Great to see Tara getting in on the demon slaying action. Nice axe to the back, girl!
WHY IT SUCKS
Bye, bye Buffybot: She’s gone to electro heaven. Rest easy, sweet, funny robo babe. We miss you. :(
The Scoobies must have realised that they’d need to dig Buffy out of her grave. So why didn’t they bring tools to dig her out? And why didn’t they dig up the grave before doing the spell so Buffy wouldn’t suffocate?
SMG’s post-death shock wig is kinda…shocking.
Still no cops
And no fire-fighters either
IT’S BUFFTASTIC
Spike’s flying kick to take out a motorcycle demon…and then nicking his ride. Cool.
DIALOGUE TO DIE FOR
Spike: A couple of stakes, holy water, one cross. (picks up cross) Ow! (drops it) Brilliant.
Willow: Xander, that's not the North star. It's an airplane.
Xander: No, that's not an airplane. That's definitely... a blimp. But I can see how one would make that airplane mistake.
Xander: Demons. Ah, there's something you don't see every day. Unless you're us.
Willow (following the tiny glowing light sent by Tara): Xander, it's not a bug. It's Tara.
Xander: And how long have you known that your girlfriend's Tinkerbell?
Xander: This place is NORAD when we're at DefCon 1. (The girls look at him blankly) Okay, I *so* need male friends.
Xander: I happen to be a very powerful man-witch myself. A male... (turns to Willow) is it a warlock? (turns back to the demon biker) Warlock.
Xander: Tara, nice axing.
Tara: My first!
AND ANOTHER THING
The location where Dawn finds Buffybot was the same place used for Glory and the monks' original hideout in 5.5 'No Place Like Home'.
This is the second time we’ve seen Buffy six feet under. There’s a scene in 1.10 'Nightmares' where Buffy is buried alive by the Master - it’s one of her fears.
HOW MANY STAKES?
Still a bargain at 4 (out of 5)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.1: BARGAINING (PART 1)
Promo
WRITER: Marti Noxon
DIRECTOR: David Grossman
WHAT’S THE SITCH?
And we’re back!
It’s been several months since Buffy died, sacrificing herself at Glory’s Tower to save her little sister as well as the rest of the world. Things in Sunnydale seem to have settled in to some sort of slaying routine, even without our deceased heroine being around. The gang, led by a mystic all seeing (and telepathic) Willow, are a well oiled slaying machine…kind of. They are all present and correct – Tara, Giles, Anya, Xander and Spike, all following Willow’s instructions to hunt down and slay a big fat vamp in the cemetery. Oh, and they have an ace up their sleeve. The Buffybot. The gang are using our reprogrammed electro girl to make the supernatural world think that the Slayer is still alive and kicking…their arses. And RoboBuffy has been doing a mighty fine job of it too, even cracking wise in a fight just like the real Buffster.
But no matter how good a copy she is, Buffybot is not the real Buffster.
The truth is Buffy’s demise has left a gaping hole in the lives of all the Scooby gang. They miss her terribly. Guilt is rife, especially from Giles and Spike. And poor Dawn, while putting a brave face on her loss, at night sneaks in to the room where the Buffybot recharges and secretly cuddles up to the robotic copy of her lost sister.
But unbeknownst to Dawn, Spike and Giles, Willow has a plan.
She’s refused to give up on the lost Slayer and has vowed to use whatever magic she can to bring Buffy back! Working secretly with Tara, Xander and Anya, she is preparing a dark and very dangerous spell to rescue Buffy from the eternal torment of the hell dimension in which she thinks Buffy is trapped. Willow declares that because Buffy died an unnatural death through mystic energy, they have a very good chance of bringing her back to life. Xander though is unsure, worried about the morality of what they plan to do. But Willow convinces him, mostly with the simple words: “It’s Buffy!” Xander can’t argue with that and agrees to help. The plan of resurrection is on for that very night.
Meanwhile, a weaselly little vampire has managed to cause a slight injury to Buffybot, exposing her electrical circuitry and damaging her navigational system, thus allowing the little monster to get away. He escapes with the knowledge that the Slayer is in fact nothing more than a machine and he ends up at an out of town bar where he tells his story to an ugly and vicious gang of motorcycle demons who all now know that with the real Slayer gone the Hellmouth is ripe for the taking. The vile gang heads off at top speed, violence on their minds, destination: Sunnydale.
Also meanwhile, Giles has decided to leave. He’s realised that with Buffy gone he has no real reason to stay. And so he secretly heads to the airport to catch a plane back to England. But the Scoobies discover what he is doing and they just about manage to get to the airport for a heartfelt goodbye before the G man’s flight is called. And so Giles leaves, not knowing that Willow and co. are planning on Bringing Buffy back that very same night; a plan he is not informed of as Willow knows that he would try to stop her.
And so later that night, gathered around Buffy’s grave, Willow begins the ritual with Tara, Xander and Anya looking on concerned.
Said ritual is dark, and it is extremely painful on Willow. Her flesh is slashed, bugs crawl under her skin, and she vomits up a snake! Xander tries to stop it but Tara stops him, saying Willow told her this would happen, that it is a test. But just as the ritual is building to its climax the demon biker gang shows up pursuing the Buffybot who is damaged and has automatically sought out Willow for repair. Then, right at the crucial moment of the ritual, a demon’s motorcycle goes and breaks the Urn of Osiris, abruptly ending Willow’s resurrection spell. Heartbroken by the perceived failure and terrified by the rampaging demons, the Scoobies flee in to the woods leaving behind the damaged Buffybot to be taunted and tortured by the evil horde.
Meanwhile, underground, inside her coffin, the withered corpse of Buffy Anne Summers is enveloped by mystical energy and begins to regenerate. After a few shimmering seconds, the now newly regenerated slayer opens her eyes and gasps for air. She’s alive! ALIVE!
WHAT’S THE SITCH BENEATH THE SITCH?
Not too much in the way of underlying theme or subtext here. I guess the only obvious one is about how we each deal with loss - the refusal to believe it, to accept it, the guilt, the anger, the simple terrible absence in your life. All are shown here, though they are not explored in any great depth.
WHO’S GIVING US THE WIGGINS THIS WEEK?
Demonic motorcycle gang The Hellions. Ugly bunch of suckers.
WHY IT ROCKS
Life goes on: the gang are all stepping up and dealing with life after Buffy. The world still thinks the Slayer is active. With Willow and Tara now living at 1630 Revello a new family unit has been created to look after Dawn and to keep things afloat. It all seems plausible and workable. And with Buffybot around, life, though different, appears not to be so bad. At least on the surface.
How we deal: There are some nice character beats throughout the ep. showing how the Scoobies are (and are not) dealing with the loss of the Buffster. Willow refuses to believe she is gone, being determined to put things right via magic at any cost (a portent of her fall from grace this season). Giles is feeling guilty and is full of self loathing, thinking he has finally achieved a Watchers role in life – to watch his Slayer die. Spike is angry with himself for having failed to save Buffy, for having failed to keep his promise to her to protect Dawn, and as a result has now turned in to Dawn’s constant babysitter, refusing to leave her on her own and unprotected. And Dawn, she is quietly accepting, though in secret she pines desperately for her sister. Only Xander seems to be the voice of reason and true acceptance. Of course that doesn’t last after Willow convinces him otherwise.
The set up: part 1 is of course all about showing where everyone is, physically, emotionally and mentally, and about getting them to the point of bringing Buffy back. The emotional beats provided by Marti Noxon’s functional yet emotionally engaging script are all honest and affecting. We feel the Scoobies sense of loss, of pain. We feel awful for poor Dawnie as she cuddles up at night to the Buffybot. We feel Giles’ stoic anguish, Willow’s stubborn refusal, and perhaps most of all, Spike’s barely restrained fury and pain. Soulless? No way.
Buffybot: Aw, I love her so much. The innocent, smiley, chirpy, ever helpful Buffybot. So cute. And SMG is fabulous at playing her. It’s such a great device to keep your star in the episode and the character around when she really isn’t. Plus she’s just so darn adorable. I especially like how Spike can’t look at her properly anymore and is devastated when a bit of her old ‘I adore Spike’ programming rears its head. It’s all about character.
The funny: for what could be a very depressing and mawkish episode Bargaining Part 1 defies those expectations to actually be very funny and charming. Much of this is thanks to Buffybot and to some great lines of dialogue from a cast so in tune with their characters and with each other.
Stylish: Willow et al sure do have stylish wardrobes this year. World of leather must have signed them up for a discount. They all look great. All the girls look gorgeous, dressed and made up to the nines. The lads all look great too, cool and handsome. The photography is glossy and lush and the FX top notch. The move to UPN seems to have done them all the world of good.
WHY IT SUCKS
Um, demon bikers? Okay, the demon biker gang The Hellions are a goofy idea much like the Knights who say Nee from season 5 (or whatever they were called). They are just a bunch of dumb violent lugs and nothing more. And how do they exist and operate in a world that is still largely unaware of the supernatural? They seem to ride around and hang out in bars without giving their appearance to humans a second thought.
Where are all the cops? So the demon gang discover that the Slayer is no more and decide it is open season on Sunnydale. They show up in town and promptly run riot, looting, destroying, burning… And where exactly are Sunnydale’s finest while all this is going down? Have they all gone out for doughnuts? Are they all on summer leave? C’mon! Buff wasn’t the only protection Sunnydale had from bad guys.
The headstone: So, if the gang are trying to make the world think Buffy is alive and well and still slaying, why then do they plant a great big headstone with her name on it in the cemetery where all can see, effectively telling the world she is dead? Duh!
IT’S BUFFTASTIC
Lots of great moments but for pure shock value it has to be Willow, the cute baby deer, and the BIG knife! Oh my god, she killed Bambi!
DIALOGUE TO DIE FOR
Spike: Oh, poor Watcher. Did your life pass before your eyes? Cup of tea, cup of tea, almost got shagged, cup of tea?
Buffybot: That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo!
Willow: And I got her off those knock-knock jokes.
Buffybot: Ooh, who's there?
Xander: You know, if we want her to be exactly...
Spike: She'll never be exactly.
Xander: I know.
Tara: The only really real Buffy is really Buffy.
Giles: And she's gone.
Buffybot: "You know, if we want her to be exactly, she'll never be exactly, the only really real Buffy is really Buffy, and she's gone" who?
Xander: House of chicks, relax. I'm a man, and I have a tool. (pause) Tools. Lots of plural tools, in my, uh, toolbox.
Spike (to Dawn): She responded to Buffy-Bot because a robot is predictable. Boring. A perfect teacher's pet. That's all school's are, you know. Just factories, spewing out mindless little automatons. (Guilty pause) Who go on to be very valuable and productive members of society, and you should go.
Tara: You found the last known Urn of Osiris on eBay?
Anya: Yeah, from this desert gnome in Cairo. He drove a really hard bargain, but I finally got him to throw in a limited-edition Backstreet Boys lunchbox for...
Xander: (coughs)
Anya: A friend.
Buffybot: Sorry I questioned you, Spike. You know I admire your brain almost as much as your washboard abs.
Anya (to Giles): I'll take really good care of your money.
AND ANOTHER THING
In the US part 1 was originally shown with part 2 as a feature-length special to celebrate Buffy's re-launch on the UPN network. On the UK DVD set it also plays as one long double episode.
Responding to the Buffybot's comment about "That'll put marzipan in your pie-plate bingo", Spike asks "Why the Dada-ism?" referring to the German absurdist art movement of the 1920s. Not many prime time US shows would casually refer to such things. Love it.
Tara gives Giles a little rubber monster as a leaving present and says "Grrr, argh" - clearly a reference to the monster in the Mutant Enemy logo at the end of every episode.
This episode is the first time that Anthony Stewart Head is listed as a guest star in the credits. Alyson Hannigan now appears in the opening sequence in the spot he used to occupy. Tony had decided to leave the show full time in order to spend more time with his family back in England and to pursue other roles. But he remained a big part of the show for its remaining two seasons.
Season six sees the writer of this episode Marti Noxon promoted to co-executive producer alongside Joss, taking on the day to day running of the show as Joss moved on to do other things. Thus her name now appears alongside Joss' in the end credits.
The scene where Willow kills the deer is nasty enough but originally it was a lot gorier and had to be cut back in order to be suitable for transmission. Interestingly, the music playing during this scene is listed in the production notes as "Willow Stabs Bambi". Alyson Hannigan found it extremely difficult to film this scene. She was very upset at the thought of Willow doing such a thing and Marti Noxon says that Alyson cried the whole day it was being filmed.
In this episode we discover that Anya and Xander are engaged, but Xander doesn’t want to tell the others yet, causing tension between him and Anya.
Franc Ross, who played the lead hellion demon Razor, played ‘Monty Reynolds’ in Joss Whedon’s Firefly episode ‘Trash’.
The vampire who discovers that Buffy is a robot is wearing a Hanson t-shirt. Vampire or not, he is clearly evil.
HOW MANY STAKES?
It’s a bargain at 4 (out of 5)
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Argento sucks the life out of Dracula
Dario Argento's Dracula 3D
Argento's version of Lucy's staking.
Coppola's version of the same scene.
And so here we have the latest adaptation of one of THE great works of horror literature, a new representation of one of the world's most enduring villains given to us by someone who was once an unquestioned master of horror cinema.
So it should be great, right? Something any self respecting horror fan should be gasping to see, right?
Um...
Well, first thing to say is that I didn't see Dario Argento's Dracula in 3D. Thank God!
Second thing to say is that, sadly, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a laughably terrible adaptation of Stoker's classic tale with, I'd imagine, the only worthwhile 3D in it being the extra dimensions added to the luscious Italian ladies of the cast who somehow ended up in this utter tosh. Okay, so the effortlessly sexy Asia Argento couldn't really say no to her role what with her legendary dad being co-writer and director. But what excuse for the rest? Judging by the cheap and shoddy production values it doesn't look as if the ladies could have made any money out of it. So, the lure of working for the (once) great man maybe?
That greatness has long since gone.
Argento's take on Drac comes across as something of a bastard offspring of Hammer's fun 50's romp Horror of Dracula mixed with elements of Coppola's awesome 1992 version. The entirety of the story takes place in the same small Eastern European town ala Horror, and it has a reincarnated love interest thing going on, as in Coppola's film. The only notable additions to the myth here is that the village elders seem to have entered in to a secret Faustian pact with Drac (Thomas Kretschmann with his scary side parting, looking and sounding like a cranky bank manager). It's a pact that sees the town get money and status out of Dracula's presence while Drac gets to suck on a few of its young lovelies in return. In to this comes librarian Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde – uncomfortable and wooden), employed by the Count to take stock of his castle's huge and dusty old library. Though this job offer soon turns out to be nothing but a ruse to lure Harker's demure young wife Mina (Marta Gastini - okay in her own petite, doe eyed innocent way) to the remote town seeing as how she bears a striking resemblance to Drac's long lost love. Of course, Harker gets vamped by buxom vampire bride Tania (Miriam Giovanelli – charismatically sexy and nicely ferocious) and promptly disappears, leading to Mina coming to town to find him. This also gives young Mina the opportunity to meet up with her old friend Lucy (Asia Argento - comatose), a bored local piano teacher who lives at home with daddy still. Not long after, Lucy pegs it due to Drac's suckage, and old codger Van Helsing (a sleepy and bored looking Rutger Hauer) turns up to try and kill Drac who he's been hunting for years. Cue lots of running around in woods, terrible CG effects, casual nudity, casual blood spilling and some of the worst performances ever from actors who should be so much better (Argento, Kretschmann, Hauer). I mean, who on earth casts the gorgeous and effortlessly sexy Asia Argento as a Lucy who is such a dull and boring go nowhere character? Yes, her role in the tale is to get vamped which then spurns our heroes on. But Lucy is supposed to be fun, wild, loving the boys, loving teasing the boys. I can see Asia doing that. I'd love to see Asia doing that. But no, here she is comatose with inaction. And yet daddy Argento still makes her get naked. Just the once mind. Gotta exploit your little girl's two biggest assets at least once per movie I suppose, right Dario?
I have no idea the budget for Dracula 3D but the movie sure looks cheap and is saddled with some of the most laughable CG effects seen in a mainstream film for a good long while. The script is appalling, filled with lines cheesier than a cheese cake made only of cheese, its plotting so haphazard and throwaway you'd think they were just making it all up as they went along. And worst of all, how on earth did the man who gave us the horrifically gorgeous, stylish and atmospheric Suspiria manage to make a film so utterly devoid of any style, atmosphere and tension? Okay, there are a couple of quite nice gore moments and maybe one reasonably effective jump scare. But that's it. The lighting is flat. The sets sparse and cheap. The FX laughable.
The sad truth is Argento couldn't even direct traffic anymore. Just watch how spectacularly he fluffs the staking of Vampire Lucy in her crypt sequence. Remember Coppola's take? Stunningly strange, bloody and genuinely creepy. Forget that here. It's hilarious. Like badly staged panto. No, the only things this movie has going for it is the undoubted sexiness and ferocious charm of Miriam Giovanelli as super hot vampire bride Tanya, giving by far the best performance in the film, and a wonderfully camp operatic rock song over the end credits.
In summation, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a bad film. A very bad film. There's no doubt about that. But at least it's not offensively bad in a Uwe Boll kind of way. It's just ultra cheap, cheesy and flatly made. It never makes you angry. In fact, it will probably make you laugh a fair bit. Also it's never boring due to the sheer hilarity of its camp awfulness. Approach it as a camp vampire panto and you might just have some fun. Still, it does make you wonder whatever happened to the man who made horror classics such as Suspiria and Tenebre. Disappointing then to say the least. But, hey, at least it's better than Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000. Ugh! Now that's REAL Dracula suckage for you!
Argento's version of Lucy's staking.
Coppola's version of the same scene.
And so here we have the latest adaptation of one of THE great works of horror literature, a new representation of one of the world's most enduring villains given to us by someone who was once an unquestioned master of horror cinema.
So it should be great, right? Something any self respecting horror fan should be gasping to see, right?
Um...
Well, first thing to say is that I didn't see Dario Argento's Dracula in 3D. Thank God!
Second thing to say is that, sadly, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a laughably terrible adaptation of Stoker's classic tale with, I'd imagine, the only worthwhile 3D in it being the extra dimensions added to the luscious Italian ladies of the cast who somehow ended up in this utter tosh. Okay, so the effortlessly sexy Asia Argento couldn't really say no to her role what with her legendary dad being co-writer and director. But what excuse for the rest? Judging by the cheap and shoddy production values it doesn't look as if the ladies could have made any money out of it. So, the lure of working for the (once) great man maybe?
That greatness has long since gone.
Argento's take on Drac comes across as something of a bastard offspring of Hammer's fun 50's romp Horror of Dracula mixed with elements of Coppola's awesome 1992 version. The entirety of the story takes place in the same small Eastern European town ala Horror, and it has a reincarnated love interest thing going on, as in Coppola's film. The only notable additions to the myth here is that the village elders seem to have entered in to a secret Faustian pact with Drac (Thomas Kretschmann with his scary side parting, looking and sounding like a cranky bank manager). It's a pact that sees the town get money and status out of Dracula's presence while Drac gets to suck on a few of its young lovelies in return. In to this comes librarian Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde – uncomfortable and wooden), employed by the Count to take stock of his castle's huge and dusty old library. Though this job offer soon turns out to be nothing but a ruse to lure Harker's demure young wife Mina (Marta Gastini - okay in her own petite, doe eyed innocent way) to the remote town seeing as how she bears a striking resemblance to Drac's long lost love. Of course, Harker gets vamped by buxom vampire bride Tania (Miriam Giovanelli – charismatically sexy and nicely ferocious) and promptly disappears, leading to Mina coming to town to find him. This also gives young Mina the opportunity to meet up with her old friend Lucy (Asia Argento - comatose), a bored local piano teacher who lives at home with daddy still. Not long after, Lucy pegs it due to Drac's suckage, and old codger Van Helsing (a sleepy and bored looking Rutger Hauer) turns up to try and kill Drac who he's been hunting for years. Cue lots of running around in woods, terrible CG effects, casual nudity, casual blood spilling and some of the worst performances ever from actors who should be so much better (Argento, Kretschmann, Hauer). I mean, who on earth casts the gorgeous and effortlessly sexy Asia Argento as a Lucy who is such a dull and boring go nowhere character? Yes, her role in the tale is to get vamped which then spurns our heroes on. But Lucy is supposed to be fun, wild, loving the boys, loving teasing the boys. I can see Asia doing that. I'd love to see Asia doing that. But no, here she is comatose with inaction. And yet daddy Argento still makes her get naked. Just the once mind. Gotta exploit your little girl's two biggest assets at least once per movie I suppose, right Dario?
I have no idea the budget for Dracula 3D but the movie sure looks cheap and is saddled with some of the most laughable CG effects seen in a mainstream film for a good long while. The script is appalling, filled with lines cheesier than a cheese cake made only of cheese, its plotting so haphazard and throwaway you'd think they were just making it all up as they went along. And worst of all, how on earth did the man who gave us the horrifically gorgeous, stylish and atmospheric Suspiria manage to make a film so utterly devoid of any style, atmosphere and tension? Okay, there are a couple of quite nice gore moments and maybe one reasonably effective jump scare. But that's it. The lighting is flat. The sets sparse and cheap. The FX laughable.
The sad truth is Argento couldn't even direct traffic anymore. Just watch how spectacularly he fluffs the staking of Vampire Lucy in her crypt sequence. Remember Coppola's take? Stunningly strange, bloody and genuinely creepy. Forget that here. It's hilarious. Like badly staged panto. No, the only things this movie has going for it is the undoubted sexiness and ferocious charm of Miriam Giovanelli as super hot vampire bride Tanya, giving by far the best performance in the film, and a wonderfully camp operatic rock song over the end credits.
In summation, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a bad film. A very bad film. There's no doubt about that. But at least it's not offensively bad in a Uwe Boll kind of way. It's just ultra cheap, cheesy and flatly made. It never makes you angry. In fact, it will probably make you laugh a fair bit. Also it's never boring due to the sheer hilarity of its camp awfulness. Approach it as a camp vampire panto and you might just have some fun. Still, it does make you wonder whatever happened to the man who made horror classics such as Suspiria and Tenebre. Disappointing then to say the least. But, hey, at least it's better than Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000. Ugh! Now that's REAL Dracula suckage for you!
Saturday, 3 November 2012
MY 50 FAVOURITE HORROR MOVIES: 10 to 1
And here's the last lot...
10. Alien (D: Ridley Scott, 1979)
Ridley Scott’s space based horror classic has lost none of its terrifying power in the three decades since it was first released. It also remains a truly timeless film due to Scott’s direction; the wonderfully worn down industrial look of the human world and the wonderfully weird, utterly original, utterly horrific and iconic design of the alien and everything connected to it. But the real power of the film is, like Carpenter’s Halloween, in its chilling simplicity. Mostly likeable, relatable people stalked by a horrific and seemingly unstoppable monster looking to appear suddenly from the shadows to kill them at any given moment. The cast are all great, especially Ian Holm as the treacherous android, and Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, a character that is the touchstone for her career and that defined the tough, smart, capable, yet still feminine heroes who would follow in her wake. This film looks utterly gorgeous in every way from the design to the cinematography to the miniature model effects. Plus Jerry Goldsmith goes and adds yet another classic score to his resume. Sci fi horror doesn’t get any better than this. Well, perhaps just one other movie manages to. But more about that later. Alien produced a classic sequel (Aliens), which is arguably an even better film than its progenitor, though not strictly a horror film, so is not eligible for this particular list. It also produced one very good if flawed sequel (Alien 3), one terrible sequel (Alien: Resurrection), and one interesting prequel (Prometheus). Oh, and the godawful Alien vs. Predator spin-offs too. But for sheer pant wetting class all the way you can’t top Sir Rid’s original. Because remember, in space nobody can hear you scream.
9. Poltergeist (D: Tobe Hooper, 1982)
Ah, the summer of 1982, when classic genre films fell from the sky like golden rain. It was the summer of ET, The Thing, Star Trek 2, Mad Max 2, Blade Runner, Conan the Barbarian, Tron. And a certain little horror film co-written and produced by none other than king beard himself, Steven Spielberg. The Freeling family – dad Steven (Craig T Nelson), mom Diane (JoBeth Williams), eldest daughter Dana (Dominique Dunne), young son Robbie (Oliver Robbins), and youngest daughter Carol-Anne (Heather O’Rourke) live in Cuesta Verde, California, a new build suburban housing estate. Steven also works on the estate selling the remaining houses off to new buyers. Soon, though, strange things start happening around the Freeling’s brand new house, events mostly centred on their young daughter, 6yr old blond moppet Carol-Anne, who hears whispered voices in the TV – the ‘TV People’. At first the disturbances are just strange and kinda cool. But when Carol-Anne announces that “They’re heeeere!” and then goes and vanishes in to thin air (or her closet), Mom and Dad Freeling call in the paranormal experts to investigate. The scientists, quickly finding themselves out of their depth, call in a highly regarded psychic medium to try and find out what is going on and where poor little Carol-Anne has got to. Enter four-foot nothing Tangina, one of horror cinema’s greatest characters played to the quirky hilt by the late great Zelda Rubinstein. Poltergeist is a Spielberg movie through and through, even though The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper directed it. The set up and the setting are pure Spielberg - middle class suburbia where something decidedly abnormal is about to happen to normal people. Also the film's shot set ups and the way the actors are directed, especially the kids, reeks of The Beard. Poltergeist is a modern haunted house movie using (then) cutting edge special effects to tell a chilling story of ghoulies and ghosties. But primarily it is an emotional tale of helpless and harried parents who have lost a child and are desperate to find her and rebuild their fractured family. The cast is excellent with especially strong work from JoBeth Williams as Diane and Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina. But the film really hits home through the sweetly realistic performance of the cute as a button Heather O’Rourke as little Carol-Anne. It is part of the sad legacy of Poltergeist that the poor little mite passed away suddenly five years later from a misdiagnosed bowel condition. She was aged just 12. Also, Dominique Dunne who played eldest Freeling child Dana was murdered by her ex-boyfriend only five months after Poltergeist premiered. Two terrible clouds that will always hang over what is an utterly brilliant film.
“Let’s go get your daughter.”
8. The Shining (D: Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Stanley Kubrick was a filmmaking god and a well known perfectionist who would do endless takes until he got exactly what he wanted. He punished his actors by doing so. None more so than poor Shelley Duvall who was reduced to a crying nervous wreck due to the endless hell she was subjected to in making The Shining. But it paid off in spades. Kubrick's film of Stephen King's haunted hotel tale is a coldly unnerving descent in to madness as writer and winter hotel caretaker Jack Torrance, seeing ghosts in the closed for the winter Overlook Hotel, descends in to homicidal madness and tries to kill his nervy wife and young psychic son. King's novel is more involved with the ghosts and the supernatural goings on which Kubrick chopped right back so that the madness of Torrance becomes the focal issue with the ghosts may or may not being part of his psychosis. Apart from a few second unit location shots the entire film was shot on soundstages in London. The Overlook hotel was built on those stages as was its snowbound exterior in a marvel of design and art direction. Technically the film is a triumph from its design to its cinematography to its editing and minimal score. But it is the intensely precise and utterly chilly direction of Kubrick's and the compelling performances by Nicholson and Duvall that truly sells the film. Nicholson has never been better being hugely scary with that axe. And your heart aches for poor Shelley, for her character and for the actress herself.
7. The Haunting (D: Robert Wise, 1963)
Robert Wise's film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's classic story The Haunting of Hill House is the greatest ghost story ever made. Wise was a genius. He was a director who worked in almost every genre and made classics in them all. For Sci-Fi see The Day the Earth Stood Still and (to a lesser extent) Star Trek: The Motion Picture. For musicals see West Side Story and The Sound of Music. For horror see this movie. The Haunting sees parasychologist Dr Markway (Richard Johnson) bringing together a small group of sensitive people to take part in an experiment at Hill House, a grand old pile that's allegedly heavily haunted. The doctor wants to prove the existence of the paranormal and hopes to do so at Hill House. The main character is Nell (Julie Harris), a fragile young woman who spent most of her adult life caring for her demanding and now deceased elderly mother. Nell is both excited and fearful to be at the creepy old Hill House. She is also strongly attracted to the thoughtful, caring and intelligent Markway. The rest of the group is made up of provocative and sensual clairvoyant Theo (Claire Bloom) and young playboy Luke (Russ Tamblyn), the future inheritor of Hill House. After a sinister warning from departing housekeeper Mrs Dudley the group settles in for what will soon become a terrifying stay in the old house as the supernatural presence there begins manifesting itself in increasingly dangerous and disturbing ways. The Haunting is gloriously old school. The emphasis is on character and the psychological impact of what scares us. Wise employs highly effective sound effects, a few subtle physical effects and creative camera set-ups and editing to make the audience uneasy and to deliver genuine shivers. He is helped by strong performances all round, especially from the wonderfully fragile Harris as Nell and the charismatic Johnson. But the real star is Wise and his technical team who deliver a truly scary ghost story without any cheap tricks all the while keeping character and story to the fore. A note of interest: the entirety of the film was shot in England doubling for the USA. This was due to the British subsidiary of MGM being the ones who put up the money. A great film then, just forget all about its appalling CGI filled 1999 remake from Speed director Jan De Bont
Trailer
6. The Thing (D: John Carpenter, 1982)
Another summer of 82 classic, John Carpenter’s adaptation of John W. Campbell, JR’s novella Who Goes There, filmed once before in 1951 as Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World, is the pinnacle of sci fi horror. A US team in Antarctica discovers that an alien life form, frozen for millennia in the ice until being unwittingly awoken by Norwegian scientists and escaping, has now infiltrated their isolated base. It soon becomes apparent that the alien kills living beings, absorbs them and essentially becomes them, creating the perfect place to hide. What follows is a tale of frozen paranoia and terrifying body horror as the survivors of the US base try to discover which of their number may be a Thing while also trying to prevent it from escaping and reaching civilisation. Carpenter’s movie is stupendous in every way. It is nerve shredding tension from start to finish based around a smart, tight screenplay which gives us distinctive and relatable characters played by a top notch cast led by Kurt Russell as tough and cynical pilot Macready. Dean Cundey’s cinematography is arguably his best work to date and Ennio Morricone’s score is wonderfully low key and throbbing. But outside of Carpenter’s work, arguably the greatest impact of The Thing is in the still startling and hugely effective make up and mechanical creature effects by Rob Bottin. Along with the work of Rick Baker in a certain werewolf film Bottin’s work on The Thing remains as the high point of make up and creature effects in cinema to this day. Just watch the entirety of the defibrillator sequence and what follows. Two words: spider-head. Brrr The Thing also has a brilliant and classic Carpenter ending – bleak, nihilistic, open ended. On original release The Thing was a flop, opening and quickly closing, all the alien attention in ‘82 going to a certain little dude trying to phone home. Since then the film has become highly regarded and is now a recognised modern classic. Just as it should be.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me!”
5. The Exorcist (D: William Friedkin, 1973)
Everyone knows this film. Its name has lived in infamy for almost forty years now. The tale of a little girl called Regan (Linda Blair) who gets possessed by the Devil and who is eventually confronted by elderly Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) and young Father Karras (Jason Miller) in an attempt to drive the loathsome evil our of the child once and for all. William Friedkin’s film adapted from the William Peter Blatty novel of the same name by Blatty himself is for sure one of the most disturbing and terrifying films ever made…even if you don’t believe in the Devil. What the film does is expertly plant the idea in your head, the ‘What if…?’ It makes the seemingly absurd utterly believable. This is partly down to the slow burn character and theme driven screenplay, the realistic and gritty style of direction and the naturalistic performances, especially from Linda Blair as Regan. The reality of what this then twelve year old child had to endure, with the brilliantly horrific Dick Smith make-up, the freezing set, and the awful things she was required to do while possessed, are horrific enough by themselves, let alone the fictional story she and the director are conveying. The increasing horror of Regan’s possession is the spine of the story but I always forget the other major part, which is all about Karras, dealing with his wavering faith and the loss of his mother. Also there is Ellen Burstyn as Regan’s mother having to deal with what is happening to her daughter. And cop Kinderman (Lee J Cobb) investigating the grisly death of a friend of Regan’s mother near to their house. All of this adds up to a rich, character and story driven film filled with chilling ideas and sequences that still shock as much today as they did forty years ago. The mark of a truly great film, The Exorcist works on many levels, taking itself deathly seriously and giving its audience a cinema experience that might make them question their own personal beliefs, if only for a moment.
Trailer
4. Dawn of the Dead (D: George A. Romero, 1978)
In 1978 George A. Romero ventured back in to Dead territory for the first time since Night of the Living Dead with this, his sequel to that movie. However Dawn of the Dead is a different beast to the seminal original. Night is a wonderfully dour, deathly serious, starkly shot in black and white and utterly humourless affair. Dawn, though, is bright, garish, fast paced, action packed while being highly comic book in tone and feel. Yes, it is still apocalyptic. And thanks to the legend who is Tom Savini it is still extremely gory. But this time Romero is determined to have fun with the genre he created. And also to take aim at the deficiencies of late 70’s US culture as he saw it: namely consumerism gone mad. As the zombie epidemic spreads and grows worse, helicopter pilot Stephen picks up his girlfriend - TV reporter Fran, and his SWAT Team friend Peter along with another SWAT Team buddy of Peter’s called Roger and flies off looking for a safe haven. Soon they spot a large out of town shopping mall and decide to put down there. Deciding to stay, the four secure the place, getting rid of the zombies inside and locking it down. And for a while things seem to be going well. They have everything they need with this huge palace of consumerism all to themselves. But before too long the outside world comes a calling and everything goes straight back down in to hell. Made for only $600,000 and funded and produced by Italian horror legend Dario Argento, Dawn of the Dead went on to become massively successful grossing nigh on $100m worldwide. Despite its hard core gore and shocks it also garnered wide critical acclaim with smart reviewers seeing through the gore and comic book trappings to the sly social commentary and pointed jabs at 1970’s America. To this day I cannot visit a shopping mall without thinking of how all the people shuffling around seemingly aimlessly are just like those poor mindless ‘consuming’ zombies. And it always makes me giggle.
Original Trailer
3. Halloween (D: John Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween is the film that made John Carpenter John Carpenter. I won’t bother to recant the story here as I’m sure you all know it by heart. And if not, why not? What’s wrong with you? Anyway, Halloween pretty much invented the stalk and slash movie and proved to be a huge hit and game changer for horror cinema. But whereas the countless imitators that followed would rely on gore and gimmicks, Carpenter relied on style, atmosphere and tension. Creating a genuinely scary mythic vibe to his bogeyman Michael Myers, Carpenter crafted a film that chills without trying. It's mostly a slow, steady build up to what is a nerve shreddingly tense and creepy finale as poor Laurie Strode (a career making turn from Jamie Lee Curtis) must defend herself and her babysitting charges from the seemingly unstoppable killing machine that is The Shape aka Michael Myers. With classic support from Donald Pleasance as Myers old shrink Dr Loomis who is hot on his heels, Halloween is a delicious cat and mouse affair between Loomis and Myers where you never really know who is the cat and who is the mouse. Halloween was a massive hit upon release. For a long time it was the highest grossing independent film ever. And it remains an undisputed classic, a game changer for Carpenter and for horror cinema as well as an abject lesson in filmmaking from a master. The night HE came home!
Laurie in the closet
2. Let the Right One In (D: Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
It’s 1982 and twelve year old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a meek and bullied loner living with his single mother in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm in Sweden. Lonely and resentful, Oskar soon meets the new arrival just moved in next door: a strange little girl called Eli (Lina Leandersson), dressed in rags and barefoot in the freezing snow. After several tentative meets the two become friends, eventually becoming close. Meanwhile local people have been attacked and killed, drained of blood. It soon becomes clear that Eli is a vampire and the old man living with her is her human slave/carer, who goes out each night and kills for her, getting her fresh blood. But when the old man messes up and goes and gets captured, Eli is forced to fend for herself and to possibly flee the area as the police and the suspicious locals begin to close in. Knowing now what his new friend truly is, Oskar comes to terms with it and helps Eli evade capture and doesn’t stop her when she flees the area for pastures new. But with Eli now gone, Oskar is left all alone to face what is likely to be an awful fate at the hands of his incessant tormentors. I adore this film. I connected right away with the chilly isolation, loneliness and sadness that underlies this mournful yet also rather lovely little tale of childhood disconnection, unlikely friendship and budding love. Adapted from John Adjvide Lindqvist’s novel of the same name by the author himself, Let the Right One In is a vampire film, yes, but it is also so much more. Essentially this is a love story about two lost, lonely, damaged souls who find each other amidst a world of endless snow and torment. Restrained and artful direction from Tomas Alfredson brings out wonderful performances from the films two young leads while not ever skimping on the violence and shocks. The end sequence in the swimming pool is a standout and is one of the greatest sequences in recent film memory. The film’s cinematography is sharp and stark and the score by Swedish composer Johan Söderqvist is a thing of haunting romantic beauty. It is rare enough for a horror film to be a genuinely great film. It is even rarer for it to be a deeply touching human story and a work of art that transcends its genre roots. LTROI is not just one of my favourite horror films it’s one of my favourite films. Period. It should also be noted that Matt Reeves’ splendid US adaptation of Lindqvist’s novel titled Let Me In is almost as good too.
Trailer
1. An American Werewolf in London (D: John Landis, 1981)
And so here we are at my number one favourite horror movie of all time. The story goes like this. Two young American backpackers, Jack and David, are travelling around northern England. Stopping off in the creepy village of East Proctor and its extra creepy pub, the two lads are quickly sent on their way by nervous locals, the bizarre warning of stay off the moors and beware the moon ringing in their ears. Lost in the dark outdoors, the lads are soon stalked and attacked by a savage beast. Jack is killed while David survives and is taken down to a London hospital to recuperate. The police believe it was an escaped madman who was responsible while David insists it was an animal, a wolf. Before long the deceased Jack, looking like a walking meat loaf, is visiting David to warn him that they were attacked by a werewolf and that in two days time, on the full moon, David, having survived, will become a werewolf too. Jack urges David to kill himself so as not to kill anymore people and curse his victims to limbo until the wolf’s bloodline is severed. David thinks he’s going mad. Taking pity on him, comely Nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter) invites David to come stay with her when he is released from hospital the next day. The following night, though, after a last ditch attempt by Jack to warn David, David does indeed turn in to a werewolf and stalks the streets and underground of London munching on the locals. The movie ends with a chaotic and show stopping finale as David in werewolf form goes on the rampage in a busy Piccadilly Circus, Nurse Alex rushing to get to him to try and calm the savage beast before the police riddle him with bullets. Needless to say it doesn’t end well for poor David. Well, what can I say about John Landis' legendary lycanthropic classic? Lets start with this: as a life long werewolf geek this was THE horror movie that as a kid I simply HAD to see as soon as I possibly could. I followed its production through the pages of Starburst and Fangoria magazines, reading every article I could find and drooling over every awesome looking photo. When it finally came out in the cinema I got my parents to go see it, then come back and report every tiny detail. And as soon as it came out on video rental I got hold of it myself and devoured it like a ravenous werewolf chomping down on a late night underground commuter. It didn't disappoint. AAWWIL is ridiculously simply plotted, darkly funny and pant-wettingly scary. Plus it still has arguably the best make up and creature effects in cinema history courtesy of Rick Baker who won an Oscar for them (they actually had to invent a new category for him for this, one which still lasts to this day.) Oh, and it also has Jenny Agutter as a sexy nurse. Result! The cast are excellent, especially David Naughton as poor doomed David Kessler and Griffin Dunne as zombie Jack Goodman. Plus the supporting British cast are just sublime, having tons of fun with Landis’ quirky and jet black humour, even delving in to silly physical humour with the likes of the well meaning but bumbling copper Sergeant McManus. What AAWWIL also does wonderfully is capture a genuine feel of Britain in the early 80’s. The TV is terrible, the tabloid newspapers are openly salacious, and the cost of living is high and getting higher. There’s an underlying feeling of grim reality to the whole thing tempered with jet-black humour, and not just regarding the carnivorous lunar activities of poor David Kessler but also about life in general in Great Britain at the time. So, things haven’t really changed that much then. My only quibble with Landis’ movie is this (and it has always bugged): why does David turn in to a werewolf on two consecutive nights? Jack tells him he turns on the full moon. Well, there is only ever one proper full moon per month. A glaring error by Landis. I understand why for story purposes he wanted David to turn twice in a row but only a slight tweaking to werewolf lore was needed. A line of dialogue to say that, for example, that someone who is a werewolf turns every full moon and the night immediately following the full moon. Anyway, it’s a minor annoyance that doesn’t spoil the overall movie experience. The bottom line is I love this movie so much that it makes me wanna howl! Beware the moon!
Time to change in to something less comfortable
A few other titles that could (and maybe should) have been included in this countdown:
The Cabin in the Woods - Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon's brilliantly fun celebration and also undercutting of the horror genre would be a top five film in this list. However the very nature of the film and what it is doing I thought would be unfair to all the 'real' horror films in the list. Cabin sits above (or below?) the specific horror genre in a genre all of its own. So I decided to leave it out of this list just to be fair on all the others. But it is utter;y brilliant!
From Dusk ‘Til Dawn – Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s rollicking gangster/vampire flick with George Clooney becoming an instant movie star and Salma Hayek as the sexiest vampire with a snake ever.
30 Days of Night – David Slade’s stylish and bloody adaptation of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s classic comic book about a band of savage vampires attacking the small Alaskan town of Barrow after the sun sets for thirty days and nights.
The Wicker Man – Robin Hardy’s classic folk horror with Edward Woodward as a god fearing copper going to a remote Scottish island to find a missing child.
American Psycho – Mary Harron’s excellent adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’ novel about psycho yuppie Patrick Bateman who goes mental in the 80’s. A career making performance from Christian Bale.
Let Me In – Matt Reeves’ US adaptation of John Adjvide Lindqvist’s novel Let the Right One In. A wonderful movie almost as good as the Swedish original.
The Woman – Lucky McKee’s brutal and shocking story about a feral woman captured in the wild by a family and then kept in their shed in order to try to tame her.
10. Alien (D: Ridley Scott, 1979)
Ridley Scott’s space based horror classic has lost none of its terrifying power in the three decades since it was first released. It also remains a truly timeless film due to Scott’s direction; the wonderfully worn down industrial look of the human world and the wonderfully weird, utterly original, utterly horrific and iconic design of the alien and everything connected to it. But the real power of the film is, like Carpenter’s Halloween, in its chilling simplicity. Mostly likeable, relatable people stalked by a horrific and seemingly unstoppable monster looking to appear suddenly from the shadows to kill them at any given moment. The cast are all great, especially Ian Holm as the treacherous android, and Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, a character that is the touchstone for her career and that defined the tough, smart, capable, yet still feminine heroes who would follow in her wake. This film looks utterly gorgeous in every way from the design to the cinematography to the miniature model effects. Plus Jerry Goldsmith goes and adds yet another classic score to his resume. Sci fi horror doesn’t get any better than this. Well, perhaps just one other movie manages to. But more about that later. Alien produced a classic sequel (Aliens), which is arguably an even better film than its progenitor, though not strictly a horror film, so is not eligible for this particular list. It also produced one very good if flawed sequel (Alien 3), one terrible sequel (Alien: Resurrection), and one interesting prequel (Prometheus). Oh, and the godawful Alien vs. Predator spin-offs too. But for sheer pant wetting class all the way you can’t top Sir Rid’s original. Because remember, in space nobody can hear you scream.
9. Poltergeist (D: Tobe Hooper, 1982)
Ah, the summer of 1982, when classic genre films fell from the sky like golden rain. It was the summer of ET, The Thing, Star Trek 2, Mad Max 2, Blade Runner, Conan the Barbarian, Tron. And a certain little horror film co-written and produced by none other than king beard himself, Steven Spielberg. The Freeling family – dad Steven (Craig T Nelson), mom Diane (JoBeth Williams), eldest daughter Dana (Dominique Dunne), young son Robbie (Oliver Robbins), and youngest daughter Carol-Anne (Heather O’Rourke) live in Cuesta Verde, California, a new build suburban housing estate. Steven also works on the estate selling the remaining houses off to new buyers. Soon, though, strange things start happening around the Freeling’s brand new house, events mostly centred on their young daughter, 6yr old blond moppet Carol-Anne, who hears whispered voices in the TV – the ‘TV People’. At first the disturbances are just strange and kinda cool. But when Carol-Anne announces that “They’re heeeere!” and then goes and vanishes in to thin air (or her closet), Mom and Dad Freeling call in the paranormal experts to investigate. The scientists, quickly finding themselves out of their depth, call in a highly regarded psychic medium to try and find out what is going on and where poor little Carol-Anne has got to. Enter four-foot nothing Tangina, one of horror cinema’s greatest characters played to the quirky hilt by the late great Zelda Rubinstein. Poltergeist is a Spielberg movie through and through, even though The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper directed it. The set up and the setting are pure Spielberg - middle class suburbia where something decidedly abnormal is about to happen to normal people. Also the film's shot set ups and the way the actors are directed, especially the kids, reeks of The Beard. Poltergeist is a modern haunted house movie using (then) cutting edge special effects to tell a chilling story of ghoulies and ghosties. But primarily it is an emotional tale of helpless and harried parents who have lost a child and are desperate to find her and rebuild their fractured family. The cast is excellent with especially strong work from JoBeth Williams as Diane and Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina. But the film really hits home through the sweetly realistic performance of the cute as a button Heather O’Rourke as little Carol-Anne. It is part of the sad legacy of Poltergeist that the poor little mite passed away suddenly five years later from a misdiagnosed bowel condition. She was aged just 12. Also, Dominique Dunne who played eldest Freeling child Dana was murdered by her ex-boyfriend only five months after Poltergeist premiered. Two terrible clouds that will always hang over what is an utterly brilliant film.
“Let’s go get your daughter.”
8. The Shining (D: Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Stanley Kubrick was a filmmaking god and a well known perfectionist who would do endless takes until he got exactly what he wanted. He punished his actors by doing so. None more so than poor Shelley Duvall who was reduced to a crying nervous wreck due to the endless hell she was subjected to in making The Shining. But it paid off in spades. Kubrick's film of Stephen King's haunted hotel tale is a coldly unnerving descent in to madness as writer and winter hotel caretaker Jack Torrance, seeing ghosts in the closed for the winter Overlook Hotel, descends in to homicidal madness and tries to kill his nervy wife and young psychic son. King's novel is more involved with the ghosts and the supernatural goings on which Kubrick chopped right back so that the madness of Torrance becomes the focal issue with the ghosts may or may not being part of his psychosis. Apart from a few second unit location shots the entire film was shot on soundstages in London. The Overlook hotel was built on those stages as was its snowbound exterior in a marvel of design and art direction. Technically the film is a triumph from its design to its cinematography to its editing and minimal score. But it is the intensely precise and utterly chilly direction of Kubrick's and the compelling performances by Nicholson and Duvall that truly sells the film. Nicholson has never been better being hugely scary with that axe. And your heart aches for poor Shelley, for her character and for the actress herself.
7. The Haunting (D: Robert Wise, 1963)
Robert Wise's film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's classic story The Haunting of Hill House is the greatest ghost story ever made. Wise was a genius. He was a director who worked in almost every genre and made classics in them all. For Sci-Fi see The Day the Earth Stood Still and (to a lesser extent) Star Trek: The Motion Picture. For musicals see West Side Story and The Sound of Music. For horror see this movie. The Haunting sees parasychologist Dr Markway (Richard Johnson) bringing together a small group of sensitive people to take part in an experiment at Hill House, a grand old pile that's allegedly heavily haunted. The doctor wants to prove the existence of the paranormal and hopes to do so at Hill House. The main character is Nell (Julie Harris), a fragile young woman who spent most of her adult life caring for her demanding and now deceased elderly mother. Nell is both excited and fearful to be at the creepy old Hill House. She is also strongly attracted to the thoughtful, caring and intelligent Markway. The rest of the group is made up of provocative and sensual clairvoyant Theo (Claire Bloom) and young playboy Luke (Russ Tamblyn), the future inheritor of Hill House. After a sinister warning from departing housekeeper Mrs Dudley the group settles in for what will soon become a terrifying stay in the old house as the supernatural presence there begins manifesting itself in increasingly dangerous and disturbing ways. The Haunting is gloriously old school. The emphasis is on character and the psychological impact of what scares us. Wise employs highly effective sound effects, a few subtle physical effects and creative camera set-ups and editing to make the audience uneasy and to deliver genuine shivers. He is helped by strong performances all round, especially from the wonderfully fragile Harris as Nell and the charismatic Johnson. But the real star is Wise and his technical team who deliver a truly scary ghost story without any cheap tricks all the while keeping character and story to the fore. A note of interest: the entirety of the film was shot in England doubling for the USA. This was due to the British subsidiary of MGM being the ones who put up the money. A great film then, just forget all about its appalling CGI filled 1999 remake from Speed director Jan De Bont
Trailer
6. The Thing (D: John Carpenter, 1982)
Another summer of 82 classic, John Carpenter’s adaptation of John W. Campbell, JR’s novella Who Goes There, filmed once before in 1951 as Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World, is the pinnacle of sci fi horror. A US team in Antarctica discovers that an alien life form, frozen for millennia in the ice until being unwittingly awoken by Norwegian scientists and escaping, has now infiltrated their isolated base. It soon becomes apparent that the alien kills living beings, absorbs them and essentially becomes them, creating the perfect place to hide. What follows is a tale of frozen paranoia and terrifying body horror as the survivors of the US base try to discover which of their number may be a Thing while also trying to prevent it from escaping and reaching civilisation. Carpenter’s movie is stupendous in every way. It is nerve shredding tension from start to finish based around a smart, tight screenplay which gives us distinctive and relatable characters played by a top notch cast led by Kurt Russell as tough and cynical pilot Macready. Dean Cundey’s cinematography is arguably his best work to date and Ennio Morricone’s score is wonderfully low key and throbbing. But outside of Carpenter’s work, arguably the greatest impact of The Thing is in the still startling and hugely effective make up and mechanical creature effects by Rob Bottin. Along with the work of Rick Baker in a certain werewolf film Bottin’s work on The Thing remains as the high point of make up and creature effects in cinema to this day. Just watch the entirety of the defibrillator sequence and what follows. Two words: spider-head. Brrr The Thing also has a brilliant and classic Carpenter ending – bleak, nihilistic, open ended. On original release The Thing was a flop, opening and quickly closing, all the alien attention in ‘82 going to a certain little dude trying to phone home. Since then the film has become highly regarded and is now a recognised modern classic. Just as it should be.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me!”
5. The Exorcist (D: William Friedkin, 1973)
Everyone knows this film. Its name has lived in infamy for almost forty years now. The tale of a little girl called Regan (Linda Blair) who gets possessed by the Devil and who is eventually confronted by elderly Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) and young Father Karras (Jason Miller) in an attempt to drive the loathsome evil our of the child once and for all. William Friedkin’s film adapted from the William Peter Blatty novel of the same name by Blatty himself is for sure one of the most disturbing and terrifying films ever made…even if you don’t believe in the Devil. What the film does is expertly plant the idea in your head, the ‘What if…?’ It makes the seemingly absurd utterly believable. This is partly down to the slow burn character and theme driven screenplay, the realistic and gritty style of direction and the naturalistic performances, especially from Linda Blair as Regan. The reality of what this then twelve year old child had to endure, with the brilliantly horrific Dick Smith make-up, the freezing set, and the awful things she was required to do while possessed, are horrific enough by themselves, let alone the fictional story she and the director are conveying. The increasing horror of Regan’s possession is the spine of the story but I always forget the other major part, which is all about Karras, dealing with his wavering faith and the loss of his mother. Also there is Ellen Burstyn as Regan’s mother having to deal with what is happening to her daughter. And cop Kinderman (Lee J Cobb) investigating the grisly death of a friend of Regan’s mother near to their house. All of this adds up to a rich, character and story driven film filled with chilling ideas and sequences that still shock as much today as they did forty years ago. The mark of a truly great film, The Exorcist works on many levels, taking itself deathly seriously and giving its audience a cinema experience that might make them question their own personal beliefs, if only for a moment.
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4. Dawn of the Dead (D: George A. Romero, 1978)
In 1978 George A. Romero ventured back in to Dead territory for the first time since Night of the Living Dead with this, his sequel to that movie. However Dawn of the Dead is a different beast to the seminal original. Night is a wonderfully dour, deathly serious, starkly shot in black and white and utterly humourless affair. Dawn, though, is bright, garish, fast paced, action packed while being highly comic book in tone and feel. Yes, it is still apocalyptic. And thanks to the legend who is Tom Savini it is still extremely gory. But this time Romero is determined to have fun with the genre he created. And also to take aim at the deficiencies of late 70’s US culture as he saw it: namely consumerism gone mad. As the zombie epidemic spreads and grows worse, helicopter pilot Stephen picks up his girlfriend - TV reporter Fran, and his SWAT Team friend Peter along with another SWAT Team buddy of Peter’s called Roger and flies off looking for a safe haven. Soon they spot a large out of town shopping mall and decide to put down there. Deciding to stay, the four secure the place, getting rid of the zombies inside and locking it down. And for a while things seem to be going well. They have everything they need with this huge palace of consumerism all to themselves. But before too long the outside world comes a calling and everything goes straight back down in to hell. Made for only $600,000 and funded and produced by Italian horror legend Dario Argento, Dawn of the Dead went on to become massively successful grossing nigh on $100m worldwide. Despite its hard core gore and shocks it also garnered wide critical acclaim with smart reviewers seeing through the gore and comic book trappings to the sly social commentary and pointed jabs at 1970’s America. To this day I cannot visit a shopping mall without thinking of how all the people shuffling around seemingly aimlessly are just like those poor mindless ‘consuming’ zombies. And it always makes me giggle.
Original Trailer
3. Halloween (D: John Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween is the film that made John Carpenter John Carpenter. I won’t bother to recant the story here as I’m sure you all know it by heart. And if not, why not? What’s wrong with you? Anyway, Halloween pretty much invented the stalk and slash movie and proved to be a huge hit and game changer for horror cinema. But whereas the countless imitators that followed would rely on gore and gimmicks, Carpenter relied on style, atmosphere and tension. Creating a genuinely scary mythic vibe to his bogeyman Michael Myers, Carpenter crafted a film that chills without trying. It's mostly a slow, steady build up to what is a nerve shreddingly tense and creepy finale as poor Laurie Strode (a career making turn from Jamie Lee Curtis) must defend herself and her babysitting charges from the seemingly unstoppable killing machine that is The Shape aka Michael Myers. With classic support from Donald Pleasance as Myers old shrink Dr Loomis who is hot on his heels, Halloween is a delicious cat and mouse affair between Loomis and Myers where you never really know who is the cat and who is the mouse. Halloween was a massive hit upon release. For a long time it was the highest grossing independent film ever. And it remains an undisputed classic, a game changer for Carpenter and for horror cinema as well as an abject lesson in filmmaking from a master. The night HE came home!
Laurie in the closet
2. Let the Right One In (D: Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
It’s 1982 and twelve year old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a meek and bullied loner living with his single mother in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm in Sweden. Lonely and resentful, Oskar soon meets the new arrival just moved in next door: a strange little girl called Eli (Lina Leandersson), dressed in rags and barefoot in the freezing snow. After several tentative meets the two become friends, eventually becoming close. Meanwhile local people have been attacked and killed, drained of blood. It soon becomes clear that Eli is a vampire and the old man living with her is her human slave/carer, who goes out each night and kills for her, getting her fresh blood. But when the old man messes up and goes and gets captured, Eli is forced to fend for herself and to possibly flee the area as the police and the suspicious locals begin to close in. Knowing now what his new friend truly is, Oskar comes to terms with it and helps Eli evade capture and doesn’t stop her when she flees the area for pastures new. But with Eli now gone, Oskar is left all alone to face what is likely to be an awful fate at the hands of his incessant tormentors. I adore this film. I connected right away with the chilly isolation, loneliness and sadness that underlies this mournful yet also rather lovely little tale of childhood disconnection, unlikely friendship and budding love. Adapted from John Adjvide Lindqvist’s novel of the same name by the author himself, Let the Right One In is a vampire film, yes, but it is also so much more. Essentially this is a love story about two lost, lonely, damaged souls who find each other amidst a world of endless snow and torment. Restrained and artful direction from Tomas Alfredson brings out wonderful performances from the films two young leads while not ever skimping on the violence and shocks. The end sequence in the swimming pool is a standout and is one of the greatest sequences in recent film memory. The film’s cinematography is sharp and stark and the score by Swedish composer Johan Söderqvist is a thing of haunting romantic beauty. It is rare enough for a horror film to be a genuinely great film. It is even rarer for it to be a deeply touching human story and a work of art that transcends its genre roots. LTROI is not just one of my favourite horror films it’s one of my favourite films. Period. It should also be noted that Matt Reeves’ splendid US adaptation of Lindqvist’s novel titled Let Me In is almost as good too.
Trailer
1. An American Werewolf in London (D: John Landis, 1981)
And so here we are at my number one favourite horror movie of all time. The story goes like this. Two young American backpackers, Jack and David, are travelling around northern England. Stopping off in the creepy village of East Proctor and its extra creepy pub, the two lads are quickly sent on their way by nervous locals, the bizarre warning of stay off the moors and beware the moon ringing in their ears. Lost in the dark outdoors, the lads are soon stalked and attacked by a savage beast. Jack is killed while David survives and is taken down to a London hospital to recuperate. The police believe it was an escaped madman who was responsible while David insists it was an animal, a wolf. Before long the deceased Jack, looking like a walking meat loaf, is visiting David to warn him that they were attacked by a werewolf and that in two days time, on the full moon, David, having survived, will become a werewolf too. Jack urges David to kill himself so as not to kill anymore people and curse his victims to limbo until the wolf’s bloodline is severed. David thinks he’s going mad. Taking pity on him, comely Nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter) invites David to come stay with her when he is released from hospital the next day. The following night, though, after a last ditch attempt by Jack to warn David, David does indeed turn in to a werewolf and stalks the streets and underground of London munching on the locals. The movie ends with a chaotic and show stopping finale as David in werewolf form goes on the rampage in a busy Piccadilly Circus, Nurse Alex rushing to get to him to try and calm the savage beast before the police riddle him with bullets. Needless to say it doesn’t end well for poor David. Well, what can I say about John Landis' legendary lycanthropic classic? Lets start with this: as a life long werewolf geek this was THE horror movie that as a kid I simply HAD to see as soon as I possibly could. I followed its production through the pages of Starburst and Fangoria magazines, reading every article I could find and drooling over every awesome looking photo. When it finally came out in the cinema I got my parents to go see it, then come back and report every tiny detail. And as soon as it came out on video rental I got hold of it myself and devoured it like a ravenous werewolf chomping down on a late night underground commuter. It didn't disappoint. AAWWIL is ridiculously simply plotted, darkly funny and pant-wettingly scary. Plus it still has arguably the best make up and creature effects in cinema history courtesy of Rick Baker who won an Oscar for them (they actually had to invent a new category for him for this, one which still lasts to this day.) Oh, and it also has Jenny Agutter as a sexy nurse. Result! The cast are excellent, especially David Naughton as poor doomed David Kessler and Griffin Dunne as zombie Jack Goodman. Plus the supporting British cast are just sublime, having tons of fun with Landis’ quirky and jet black humour, even delving in to silly physical humour with the likes of the well meaning but bumbling copper Sergeant McManus. What AAWWIL also does wonderfully is capture a genuine feel of Britain in the early 80’s. The TV is terrible, the tabloid newspapers are openly salacious, and the cost of living is high and getting higher. There’s an underlying feeling of grim reality to the whole thing tempered with jet-black humour, and not just regarding the carnivorous lunar activities of poor David Kessler but also about life in general in Great Britain at the time. So, things haven’t really changed that much then. My only quibble with Landis’ movie is this (and it has always bugged): why does David turn in to a werewolf on two consecutive nights? Jack tells him he turns on the full moon. Well, there is only ever one proper full moon per month. A glaring error by Landis. I understand why for story purposes he wanted David to turn twice in a row but only a slight tweaking to werewolf lore was needed. A line of dialogue to say that, for example, that someone who is a werewolf turns every full moon and the night immediately following the full moon. Anyway, it’s a minor annoyance that doesn’t spoil the overall movie experience. The bottom line is I love this movie so much that it makes me wanna howl! Beware the moon!
Time to change in to something less comfortable
A few other titles that could (and maybe should) have been included in this countdown:
The Cabin in the Woods - Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon's brilliantly fun celebration and also undercutting of the horror genre would be a top five film in this list. However the very nature of the film and what it is doing I thought would be unfair to all the 'real' horror films in the list. Cabin sits above (or below?) the specific horror genre in a genre all of its own. So I decided to leave it out of this list just to be fair on all the others. But it is utter;y brilliant!
From Dusk ‘Til Dawn – Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s rollicking gangster/vampire flick with George Clooney becoming an instant movie star and Salma Hayek as the sexiest vampire with a snake ever.
30 Days of Night – David Slade’s stylish and bloody adaptation of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s classic comic book about a band of savage vampires attacking the small Alaskan town of Barrow after the sun sets for thirty days and nights.
The Wicker Man – Robin Hardy’s classic folk horror with Edward Woodward as a god fearing copper going to a remote Scottish island to find a missing child.
American Psycho – Mary Harron’s excellent adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’ novel about psycho yuppie Patrick Bateman who goes mental in the 80’s. A career making performance from Christian Bale.
Let Me In – Matt Reeves’ US adaptation of John Adjvide Lindqvist’s novel Let the Right One In. A wonderful movie almost as good as the Swedish original.
The Woman – Lucky McKee’s brutal and shocking story about a feral woman captured in the wild by a family and then kept in their shed in order to try to tame her.
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
MY 50 FAVOURITE HORROR FILMS: 20 to 11
And here's more...
20. The Descent (D: Neil Marshall, 2005)
Brit director Neil Marshall's second film is a super tense claustrophobic underground scarefest which sees a band of six female friends go exploring an unmapped cave system, getting lost, surviving a cave-in, only to then have to deal with hideous underground cannibalistic monsters called Crawlers. The Descent of the title not only refers to the descent underground but also to the psychological descent in to guilt, terror and madness by the main character Sarah after her husband and child are both killed in a car accident that she survived. All the actresses are excellent, especially Shauna Macdonald as Sarah, and the script by Marshall is character driven and intelligent. His direction is fantastic too, piling on the tension, atmosphere and scares. Marshall is helped no end by inspired set designs (all of the caves are interchangeable studio sets, which you'd never guess watching the film) and stunning cinematography from his regular DP Sam McCurdy, one of the best DPs currently working. To note, Marshall’s werewolf flick Dog Soldiers remains my fave of his films but I’ve left it out of this list as it’s more of a monsters vs. soldiers action movie than a horror movie, in the same way Aliens isn’t in this list either but Alien for sure will be.
19. The Eye (D: The Pang Bros., 2002)
The Pang Brothers pan-Asian chiller is a brilliantly creepy and imaginative tale which sees blind twenty year old Hong Kong classical violinist Mun getting an eye transplant which allows her to see for the first time since she was two. Unfortunately her new eyes also let her see angry spirits and ghostly apparitions of terrible tragedies which have already happened and which may yet happen. The Eye is simply a great story filled with atmosphere, strong performances, visual creativity, pant wettingly scary moments (the ghost in the elevator springs to mind) and an ending which is nothing short of horrifically spectacular. Brilliant film. Just don't bother with the lame US remake.
18. Bram Stoker's Dracula (D: Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
Coppola's lush, bloody, romantic, erotic, grandly theatrical and wonderfully overblown take on Stoker's classic novel is my favourite film version of the story for exactly those reasons. And for Gary Oldman's startlingly original and utterly compelling take on the titular character, recast here as a tragic, romantic antihero. Simply, Oldman is amazing! His performance as either creepy wizened old man or elegant romantic lead or bloodthirsty bat demon or sex hungry Wolfman is jaw dropingly awesome. Alongside him Anthony Hopkins makes for a gloriously mad Van Helsing. Winona Ryder is lovely and full of repressed eroticism as Mina, the object of Drac's affections. Sadie Frost is adorable and sexy as flirty Lucy. And Tom Waits, Richard E Grant, Carey Elwes and Bill Campbell all provide solid support. The only duff link in the acting chain is poor old Keanu Reeves, atrociously miscast as Jonathan Harker, his being one of cinema's most embarrassingly awful performances of all time. But not even the terribleness of Keanu can sink this movie. Bram Stoker's Dracula is a visual and storytelling tour de force that harks back to old style movie making on grand sets with imaginative camera work, make-up and in-camera FX rather than snazzy editing farts and glossy CGI. It looks like a wondrously produced stage play with the actors going big as if they are indeed performing to a live audience. And it works. Also, the film doesn't skimp on the blood and the horror. The sequence where Van Helsing and co. track down and kill vampire Lucy in her tomb is stunningly shot and edited and gloriously gory. A special call out goes to the thunderously dramatic and doomladen score by Polish composer Wojciech Kilar. It's one of my all time faves. I know that this film has as many critics as it does fans. And I do understand why many don't go for it. But I do. Big time. For me, Coppola’s film is the most all round enjoyable, visually arresting and compulsively watchable version of Dracula yet made.
Vampire Lucy
17. Interview with the Vampire (D: Neil Jordan, 1994)
Neil Jordan's film of Anne Rice's classic 1976 novel is a classy and beautifully mounted production. That it stays hugely faithful to Rice's text is down to Jordan and to producer David Geffen who employed Rice herself to write the screenplay with help from Jordan. It was only when Tom Cruise was cast as the inimitable Vampire Lestat, the brat prince anti-hero of many of Rice's vampire novels that Rice and much of her fandom balked. However, after seeing Cruise's work, Rice admitted she was wrong and took out a public ad in Variety saying as much and praising Cruise's performance. As well she might. For though the story of Interview is really that of morose vampire Louis who Lestat turns back in 18th century Louisiana, it is Cruise as Lestat, a part-time presence in the film, who electrifies. He is pure savage charisma, a selfish, cruel and utterly amoral monster that enjoys inflicting pain and suffering for his own amusement. He is elegant and charming, then feral and furious. He is pure swaggering ego with fangs and an endless lust for blood. The scene where he toys with and tortures a young prostitute before killing her all to make a point to Louis is cruel and ghastly. But as we follow the undead existence of vampire Louis as he recounts his tale to a writer in a dingy contemporary San Francisco room, it is one other character and actor who comes to truly steal the film. Kirsten Dunst in her screen debut is Claudia, an orphan child who Lestat and Louis turn in to a vampire, taking as their immortal daughter. She is a child who over the decades will mature in mind, but will never grow up in body. The then twelve-year-old Dunst is fabulous as this tragic and ultimately doomed woman child. Her scenes with Brad Pitt's Louis are as touching as her scenes with Cruise's Lestat are tense and combative. Rices' script is rich and thoughtful, pondering often on the nature of life and death, of good and evil, while being filled with such tangible despair (Rice wrote the original book in order to deal with the loss of her young child). On a technical level Dante Farretti's sets are beautifully designed, being often exaggerated versions for their period. Phillippe Rousselot's photography is both lush and gloomy as needed. And the mournful choral score by Elliot Goldenthal is highly effective. Also worth noting is the FX. Digital Domain provided many subtle digital FX along with matte paintings and set extensions. The subtle CG morphing as both Louis and then Claudia become vampires is a lesson in how to do great unobtrusive CGI. And the make-up and animatronics by the late Stan Winston are some of the best he ever did. The sequence where Claudia cuts Lestat's throat and he slowly bleeds to death on the floor is a marvel of FX work combining Cruise's performance and gory make-up merged with an amazingly life like animatronic of Cruise as he writhes, bleeds, desiccates and dies in front of our eyes. As a long time fan of Rice's first tranche of Vampire Chronicles books (from Interview up to Memnoch: The Devil) I couldn't have wished for a better film version of her original beloved text. Sympathy for the Devil indeed.
Angry Claudia
16. The Company of Wolves (D: Neil Jordan, 1984)
Neil Jordan's other horror movie (at least until his new one Byzantium comes out) was partly what got him the gig for Interview with the Vampire. The Company of Wolves is a strange, lyrical, dreamlike fable based upon Little Red Riding Hood and adapted by Jordan together with the late author Angela Carter from short stories by Carter in her book The Bloody Chamber. Carter's book is a reworking of several famous (and some not so famous) fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast, but with a strong feminist slant, as tales of burgeoning womanhood and sexual awakening. In the movie, in contemporary times, a young girl, 14 or 15, takes to her bed and falls asleep. In her dreams now we are in a small village in a deep dark forest in long ago times. Here, the same young girl, now called Rosaleen, is being constantly warned by her parents and her granny to beware the wolves who prowl the forest and also nefarious men who will try to take her virtue. Granny tells her too that some wolves can disguise themselves as men, making them doubly dangerous. What follows are several tales told by granny of men who become wolves and all the terrible things that then happen. But Rosaleen’s sexual awakening is more powerful than any scary old tales. And she soon ignores granny’s warnings when she meets a handsome huntsman out in the woods who charms her and challenges her to a race to granny’s cottage. Of course, we all know what happens next. “Oh granny, what big eyes you have...” I'm a huge fan of fairytales and of how they can be reinvented and reinterpreted. I've read The Bloody Chamber and it is a beautifully written, hugely evocative and deeply intelligent text. Jordan's film keeps the same feel as the book and plays like a beautiful nightmare filled with classic fairytale imagery and added blood and gore and some very, very icky werewolf transformations. The film looks gorgeous with the intricate sets and lush photography making it appear far more expensive than it actually was (a budget of only £410,000.) But it is Jordan's overall style of direction – the dreamlike quality – and the thematic depth that makes this something so very special. It is the best, most fully realised, most intelligent adult fairytale ever put on screen. The cast is uniformly excellent including such luminaries as Angela Landsbury, Stephen Rea and David Warner. And George Fenton's score is darkly melodic and quite lovely. A beautiful, lyrical, scary film, The Company of Wolves stays with you, especially in your dreams...and nightmares.
The Wolfgirl
15. Candyman (D: Bernard Rose, 1992)
Bernard Rose’s film adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story The Forbidden transplants Barker’s tale of horrific urban legends from England to the US, specifically to the run down public housing estate of Cabrini Green in Chicago. Virginia Madsen is Helen, a graduate student doing a thesis on urban legends, who is investigating the legend of the Candyman, a slave who fell in love with a white woman only to be tortured and murdered for doing so. Apparently if you say his name five times in to a mirror he appears and splits you open with his hook for a hand. Several murders have happened on the Green, which the locals attribute to the Candyman. Fascinated, Helen delves deeper in to the legend and in to the world of Cabrini Green…only to find more than she ever bargained for - a bloodbath with herself as the number one murder suspect. Rose’s film is a grim, poetic, scare and blood filled nightmare of murder and possible madness. Is Candyman real? Is Helen really mad? Candyman is all about the power of legends, of folklore, of combined belief where what is real and what is believed to be real becomes blurred. It is also damn scary with several sequences that will make you jump out of your skin and cringe in horror. Madsen, always a good actress, is perhaps at her best ever here. And as Candyman himself, Tony Todd creates one of cinema’s finest and most iconic scaremongers. Also worth noting is Philip Glass’s odd, jarring and brilliantly haunting score. Be my victim!
14. The Omen (D: Richard Donner, 1976)
Not much needs to be said about Richard Donner’s classic 1976 tale of the antichrist coming to earth in the form of a little boy called Damien. We all know the story. We all know it is brilliant! Gregory Peck and Lee Remick are both splendid as the child’s unwitting adoptive parents Robert and Katherine Thorne, Robert being the current US ambassador to the UK. Donner’s film is a classy production, which follows the mystery of who and what young Damien really is, the evil that happens around him, and his adoptive father’s own investigations and eventual horrific discovery of the truth. The film is chock full of classic sequences and unforgettable moments that chill the blood to this day. It is helped enormously too by Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar winning score which is utterly foreboding in its choral grandeur and chilling Latin chants. By far the best of all the Omen films and a million times better than the dull and pointless 2006 remake.
13. The Fog (D: John Carpenter, 1980)
John Carpenter’s 1980 follow up to Halloween is an oft-overlooked classic. A gloriously atmospheric ghost story that , like Halloween, relies on mood, atmosphere and tension over gore and cheap shocks (though it does have a couple of very good shocks). The small coastal town of Antonio bay is celebrating its centenary when a creepy fog rolls in at night from the sea, sending things around town a little crazy. Soon, the ghosts of drowned lepers, betrayed by the original towns folk, return to exact their gruesome revenge on the descendants. Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau and Hal Holbrook lead the cast and do strong work. But the true star of the film is Carpenter along with his DP Dean Cundey who together create a film dripping with atmosphere and slow creeping dread. A simple but great ghost story, I never get tired of watching The Fog and always get a chill when I see a real life fog bank. Ghost lepers…brrr!
12. Evil Dead 2 (D: Sam Raimi, 1987)
Well, what can one say about Sam Raimi’s madcap surreal loony tunes horror/comedy? It’s pure bonkers genius, being a quasi remake and sequel to the first movie while utterly changing the tone from seriously grim and gruelling horror to utterly un-serious and hilarious comic book monster mash. Bruce Campbell is back as poor hapless demon fighter Ash, still stuck in that darn cabin fighting those pesky deadites as some new human arrivals turn up to make his already hard life even harder. This time, Campbell gets to unleash his inner Buster Keaton as a madcap physical comedian, beating himself up, sawing off his own hand, chasing his own possessed hand around with a shotgun… He’s brilliant! So, so funny. The monsters and gore are so cartoonish and rubbery that scares are pretty much non-existent. But when a film is this bonkers, this creative, this out and out zany, who cares about scares? Evil Dead 2 is a riot. I like the first movie but have never loved it. With Evil Dead 2 Raimi found his groove, his horror style. And knocked it outta the park. Evil Dead 2 is pure insane fun from start to end.
“WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?”
11. Day of the Dead (D: George A. Romero, 1985)
George A. Romero’s third zombie film is possibly his darkest, most nihilistic of them all. After the comic book styling of Dawn, Day is a grey, grim, dour look at a ruined world and its last few ruined people. A small band of scientists and military are holed up in an underground bunker apparently searching for a cure to the zombie epidemic which now seems to have claimed the world above. The scientists, led by Sarah (Lori Cardile) and the eccentric but brilliant Dr Logan (Richard Liberty) are experimenting on ‘live’ zombies with Logan thinking they can be tamed and made harmless, as demonstrated by his prize pupil Bub, the ‘smart’ zombie he’s helping learn. Meanwhile, the military types, led by the aggressive and increasingly unhinged Rhodes (Joe Pilato), are getting increasingly frustrated with the scientists and what it is they are doing. Tensions rise between the two groups and when Rhodes discovers something awful that Logan has done he loses it and things in the bunker quickly go to hell. Day of the Dead is an unrelentingly grim look at humanity and how communication between people can break down so easily and lead to terrible things. The humans ironically do not learn from their mistakes and their violent impulses, whereas the zombie Bub is the only one who is learning and controlling his horrid impulses as the humans around him descend in to violence and idiocy. Everything about Day is fabulous. The grim look of the film, the score by John Harrison, the intelligent script, and the acting – specifically Howard Sherman as Bub, the most loveable zombie ever. But above all else, Tom Savini’s make-up and gore FX reach new heights in realism and pure grossness. Real offal was used in the film. And it looks like it too. A great film filled with social commentary, great scares (the opening hands through the wall is genius) and gore by the bucket load. Just avoid the shit 2008 remake.
“Choke on ‘em!”
Top 10 coming soon.
20. The Descent (D: Neil Marshall, 2005)
Brit director Neil Marshall's second film is a super tense claustrophobic underground scarefest which sees a band of six female friends go exploring an unmapped cave system, getting lost, surviving a cave-in, only to then have to deal with hideous underground cannibalistic monsters called Crawlers. The Descent of the title not only refers to the descent underground but also to the psychological descent in to guilt, terror and madness by the main character Sarah after her husband and child are both killed in a car accident that she survived. All the actresses are excellent, especially Shauna Macdonald as Sarah, and the script by Marshall is character driven and intelligent. His direction is fantastic too, piling on the tension, atmosphere and scares. Marshall is helped no end by inspired set designs (all of the caves are interchangeable studio sets, which you'd never guess watching the film) and stunning cinematography from his regular DP Sam McCurdy, one of the best DPs currently working. To note, Marshall’s werewolf flick Dog Soldiers remains my fave of his films but I’ve left it out of this list as it’s more of a monsters vs. soldiers action movie than a horror movie, in the same way Aliens isn’t in this list either but Alien for sure will be.
19. The Eye (D: The Pang Bros., 2002)
The Pang Brothers pan-Asian chiller is a brilliantly creepy and imaginative tale which sees blind twenty year old Hong Kong classical violinist Mun getting an eye transplant which allows her to see for the first time since she was two. Unfortunately her new eyes also let her see angry spirits and ghostly apparitions of terrible tragedies which have already happened and which may yet happen. The Eye is simply a great story filled with atmosphere, strong performances, visual creativity, pant wettingly scary moments (the ghost in the elevator springs to mind) and an ending which is nothing short of horrifically spectacular. Brilliant film. Just don't bother with the lame US remake.
18. Bram Stoker's Dracula (D: Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
Coppola's lush, bloody, romantic, erotic, grandly theatrical and wonderfully overblown take on Stoker's classic novel is my favourite film version of the story for exactly those reasons. And for Gary Oldman's startlingly original and utterly compelling take on the titular character, recast here as a tragic, romantic antihero. Simply, Oldman is amazing! His performance as either creepy wizened old man or elegant romantic lead or bloodthirsty bat demon or sex hungry Wolfman is jaw dropingly awesome. Alongside him Anthony Hopkins makes for a gloriously mad Van Helsing. Winona Ryder is lovely and full of repressed eroticism as Mina, the object of Drac's affections. Sadie Frost is adorable and sexy as flirty Lucy. And Tom Waits, Richard E Grant, Carey Elwes and Bill Campbell all provide solid support. The only duff link in the acting chain is poor old Keanu Reeves, atrociously miscast as Jonathan Harker, his being one of cinema's most embarrassingly awful performances of all time. But not even the terribleness of Keanu can sink this movie. Bram Stoker's Dracula is a visual and storytelling tour de force that harks back to old style movie making on grand sets with imaginative camera work, make-up and in-camera FX rather than snazzy editing farts and glossy CGI. It looks like a wondrously produced stage play with the actors going big as if they are indeed performing to a live audience. And it works. Also, the film doesn't skimp on the blood and the horror. The sequence where Van Helsing and co. track down and kill vampire Lucy in her tomb is stunningly shot and edited and gloriously gory. A special call out goes to the thunderously dramatic and doomladen score by Polish composer Wojciech Kilar. It's one of my all time faves. I know that this film has as many critics as it does fans. And I do understand why many don't go for it. But I do. Big time. For me, Coppola’s film is the most all round enjoyable, visually arresting and compulsively watchable version of Dracula yet made.
Vampire Lucy
17. Interview with the Vampire (D: Neil Jordan, 1994)
Neil Jordan's film of Anne Rice's classic 1976 novel is a classy and beautifully mounted production. That it stays hugely faithful to Rice's text is down to Jordan and to producer David Geffen who employed Rice herself to write the screenplay with help from Jordan. It was only when Tom Cruise was cast as the inimitable Vampire Lestat, the brat prince anti-hero of many of Rice's vampire novels that Rice and much of her fandom balked. However, after seeing Cruise's work, Rice admitted she was wrong and took out a public ad in Variety saying as much and praising Cruise's performance. As well she might. For though the story of Interview is really that of morose vampire Louis who Lestat turns back in 18th century Louisiana, it is Cruise as Lestat, a part-time presence in the film, who electrifies. He is pure savage charisma, a selfish, cruel and utterly amoral monster that enjoys inflicting pain and suffering for his own amusement. He is elegant and charming, then feral and furious. He is pure swaggering ego with fangs and an endless lust for blood. The scene where he toys with and tortures a young prostitute before killing her all to make a point to Louis is cruel and ghastly. But as we follow the undead existence of vampire Louis as he recounts his tale to a writer in a dingy contemporary San Francisco room, it is one other character and actor who comes to truly steal the film. Kirsten Dunst in her screen debut is Claudia, an orphan child who Lestat and Louis turn in to a vampire, taking as their immortal daughter. She is a child who over the decades will mature in mind, but will never grow up in body. The then twelve-year-old Dunst is fabulous as this tragic and ultimately doomed woman child. Her scenes with Brad Pitt's Louis are as touching as her scenes with Cruise's Lestat are tense and combative. Rices' script is rich and thoughtful, pondering often on the nature of life and death, of good and evil, while being filled with such tangible despair (Rice wrote the original book in order to deal with the loss of her young child). On a technical level Dante Farretti's sets are beautifully designed, being often exaggerated versions for their period. Phillippe Rousselot's photography is both lush and gloomy as needed. And the mournful choral score by Elliot Goldenthal is highly effective. Also worth noting is the FX. Digital Domain provided many subtle digital FX along with matte paintings and set extensions. The subtle CG morphing as both Louis and then Claudia become vampires is a lesson in how to do great unobtrusive CGI. And the make-up and animatronics by the late Stan Winston are some of the best he ever did. The sequence where Claudia cuts Lestat's throat and he slowly bleeds to death on the floor is a marvel of FX work combining Cruise's performance and gory make-up merged with an amazingly life like animatronic of Cruise as he writhes, bleeds, desiccates and dies in front of our eyes. As a long time fan of Rice's first tranche of Vampire Chronicles books (from Interview up to Memnoch: The Devil) I couldn't have wished for a better film version of her original beloved text. Sympathy for the Devil indeed.
Angry Claudia
16. The Company of Wolves (D: Neil Jordan, 1984)
Neil Jordan's other horror movie (at least until his new one Byzantium comes out) was partly what got him the gig for Interview with the Vampire. The Company of Wolves is a strange, lyrical, dreamlike fable based upon Little Red Riding Hood and adapted by Jordan together with the late author Angela Carter from short stories by Carter in her book The Bloody Chamber. Carter's book is a reworking of several famous (and some not so famous) fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast, but with a strong feminist slant, as tales of burgeoning womanhood and sexual awakening. In the movie, in contemporary times, a young girl, 14 or 15, takes to her bed and falls asleep. In her dreams now we are in a small village in a deep dark forest in long ago times. Here, the same young girl, now called Rosaleen, is being constantly warned by her parents and her granny to beware the wolves who prowl the forest and also nefarious men who will try to take her virtue. Granny tells her too that some wolves can disguise themselves as men, making them doubly dangerous. What follows are several tales told by granny of men who become wolves and all the terrible things that then happen. But Rosaleen’s sexual awakening is more powerful than any scary old tales. And she soon ignores granny’s warnings when she meets a handsome huntsman out in the woods who charms her and challenges her to a race to granny’s cottage. Of course, we all know what happens next. “Oh granny, what big eyes you have...” I'm a huge fan of fairytales and of how they can be reinvented and reinterpreted. I've read The Bloody Chamber and it is a beautifully written, hugely evocative and deeply intelligent text. Jordan's film keeps the same feel as the book and plays like a beautiful nightmare filled with classic fairytale imagery and added blood and gore and some very, very icky werewolf transformations. The film looks gorgeous with the intricate sets and lush photography making it appear far more expensive than it actually was (a budget of only £410,000.) But it is Jordan's overall style of direction – the dreamlike quality – and the thematic depth that makes this something so very special. It is the best, most fully realised, most intelligent adult fairytale ever put on screen. The cast is uniformly excellent including such luminaries as Angela Landsbury, Stephen Rea and David Warner. And George Fenton's score is darkly melodic and quite lovely. A beautiful, lyrical, scary film, The Company of Wolves stays with you, especially in your dreams...and nightmares.
The Wolfgirl
15. Candyman (D: Bernard Rose, 1992)
Bernard Rose’s film adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story The Forbidden transplants Barker’s tale of horrific urban legends from England to the US, specifically to the run down public housing estate of Cabrini Green in Chicago. Virginia Madsen is Helen, a graduate student doing a thesis on urban legends, who is investigating the legend of the Candyman, a slave who fell in love with a white woman only to be tortured and murdered for doing so. Apparently if you say his name five times in to a mirror he appears and splits you open with his hook for a hand. Several murders have happened on the Green, which the locals attribute to the Candyman. Fascinated, Helen delves deeper in to the legend and in to the world of Cabrini Green…only to find more than she ever bargained for - a bloodbath with herself as the number one murder suspect. Rose’s film is a grim, poetic, scare and blood filled nightmare of murder and possible madness. Is Candyman real? Is Helen really mad? Candyman is all about the power of legends, of folklore, of combined belief where what is real and what is believed to be real becomes blurred. It is also damn scary with several sequences that will make you jump out of your skin and cringe in horror. Madsen, always a good actress, is perhaps at her best ever here. And as Candyman himself, Tony Todd creates one of cinema’s finest and most iconic scaremongers. Also worth noting is Philip Glass’s odd, jarring and brilliantly haunting score. Be my victim!
14. The Omen (D: Richard Donner, 1976)
Not much needs to be said about Richard Donner’s classic 1976 tale of the antichrist coming to earth in the form of a little boy called Damien. We all know the story. We all know it is brilliant! Gregory Peck and Lee Remick are both splendid as the child’s unwitting adoptive parents Robert and Katherine Thorne, Robert being the current US ambassador to the UK. Donner’s film is a classy production, which follows the mystery of who and what young Damien really is, the evil that happens around him, and his adoptive father’s own investigations and eventual horrific discovery of the truth. The film is chock full of classic sequences and unforgettable moments that chill the blood to this day. It is helped enormously too by Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar winning score which is utterly foreboding in its choral grandeur and chilling Latin chants. By far the best of all the Omen films and a million times better than the dull and pointless 2006 remake.
13. The Fog (D: John Carpenter, 1980)
John Carpenter’s 1980 follow up to Halloween is an oft-overlooked classic. A gloriously atmospheric ghost story that , like Halloween, relies on mood, atmosphere and tension over gore and cheap shocks (though it does have a couple of very good shocks). The small coastal town of Antonio bay is celebrating its centenary when a creepy fog rolls in at night from the sea, sending things around town a little crazy. Soon, the ghosts of drowned lepers, betrayed by the original towns folk, return to exact their gruesome revenge on the descendants. Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau and Hal Holbrook lead the cast and do strong work. But the true star of the film is Carpenter along with his DP Dean Cundey who together create a film dripping with atmosphere and slow creeping dread. A simple but great ghost story, I never get tired of watching The Fog and always get a chill when I see a real life fog bank. Ghost lepers…brrr!
12. Evil Dead 2 (D: Sam Raimi, 1987)
Well, what can one say about Sam Raimi’s madcap surreal loony tunes horror/comedy? It’s pure bonkers genius, being a quasi remake and sequel to the first movie while utterly changing the tone from seriously grim and gruelling horror to utterly un-serious and hilarious comic book monster mash. Bruce Campbell is back as poor hapless demon fighter Ash, still stuck in that darn cabin fighting those pesky deadites as some new human arrivals turn up to make his already hard life even harder. This time, Campbell gets to unleash his inner Buster Keaton as a madcap physical comedian, beating himself up, sawing off his own hand, chasing his own possessed hand around with a shotgun… He’s brilliant! So, so funny. The monsters and gore are so cartoonish and rubbery that scares are pretty much non-existent. But when a film is this bonkers, this creative, this out and out zany, who cares about scares? Evil Dead 2 is a riot. I like the first movie but have never loved it. With Evil Dead 2 Raimi found his groove, his horror style. And knocked it outta the park. Evil Dead 2 is pure insane fun from start to end.
“WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?”
11. Day of the Dead (D: George A. Romero, 1985)
George A. Romero’s third zombie film is possibly his darkest, most nihilistic of them all. After the comic book styling of Dawn, Day is a grey, grim, dour look at a ruined world and its last few ruined people. A small band of scientists and military are holed up in an underground bunker apparently searching for a cure to the zombie epidemic which now seems to have claimed the world above. The scientists, led by Sarah (Lori Cardile) and the eccentric but brilliant Dr Logan (Richard Liberty) are experimenting on ‘live’ zombies with Logan thinking they can be tamed and made harmless, as demonstrated by his prize pupil Bub, the ‘smart’ zombie he’s helping learn. Meanwhile, the military types, led by the aggressive and increasingly unhinged Rhodes (Joe Pilato), are getting increasingly frustrated with the scientists and what it is they are doing. Tensions rise between the two groups and when Rhodes discovers something awful that Logan has done he loses it and things in the bunker quickly go to hell. Day of the Dead is an unrelentingly grim look at humanity and how communication between people can break down so easily and lead to terrible things. The humans ironically do not learn from their mistakes and their violent impulses, whereas the zombie Bub is the only one who is learning and controlling his horrid impulses as the humans around him descend in to violence and idiocy. Everything about Day is fabulous. The grim look of the film, the score by John Harrison, the intelligent script, and the acting – specifically Howard Sherman as Bub, the most loveable zombie ever. But above all else, Tom Savini’s make-up and gore FX reach new heights in realism and pure grossness. Real offal was used in the film. And it looks like it too. A great film filled with social commentary, great scares (the opening hands through the wall is genius) and gore by the bucket load. Just avoid the shit 2008 remake.
“Choke on ‘em!”
Top 10 coming soon.
Friday, 26 October 2012
MY 50 FAVOURITE HORROR FILMS: 30 TO 21
More horror to make you poo your pants...
30. May (D. Lucky McKee, 2002)
Writer/Director Lucky McKee’s story of lonely, socially inept veterinary nurse May (Angela Bettis) who yearns for the love and companionship of the perfect friend is a disturbingly brilliant and moving little fable. May is a tragic, horrific, yet sympathetic character brought vividly to life by the wonderful Bettis, who to my mind is one of the finest actresses of her generation. Ably supported by Jeremy Sisto and Anna Faris, Bettis is compulsively watchable as she shows us the gradual fracturing of a mind and the obsessive and horrific lengths May will go to, to not be alone. McKee's script is strange, twisted, sad and poignant and his direction is artful and actor centric. He and Bettis are good friends and she appears in most of his films, almost as a muse. Their team works. More please.
29. Ju On: The Grudge (D. Takashi Shimizu, 2002)
There's been lots of different versions of this coldly creepy and highly unsettling Japanese chiller about a deadly supernatural curse, including a Korean remake, a Japanese TV remake, and a US remake starring Buffy herself as directed by the original's Japanese director. I've only seen the original and the US remake. The US remake is good but its obviously larger budget and slightly awkward and unnecessary inclusion of American characters in to a Japanese mythos stymies it somewhat. For me, the original remains the best and most effective. The scene of a poor tormented woman seeking refuge in her own bed...only for the murderous ghost to creep up over her from under her duvet is one of the simplest and scariest concepts in modern horror. Brrr!
28. Black Swan (D. Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
Darren Aronofsky's psychological art house horror sees childlike Ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) taking on the dual role of Odette and Odile in Swan Lake. Fine playing sweet, innocent Odette, the white swan, Nina has trouble embracing the darkness to play Odile, the sinister, devilish black swan. Pushed by her manipulative producer (Vincent Cassell) and overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey), and feeling threatened by newcomer dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), Nina begins to crack, believing she really is turning in to a black swan and doing all sorts of terrible things as a result. This is essentially a werewolf tale...but with a swan instead of a wolf. Aronofsky has stated as much. What it certainly is, is one utterly riveting film, beautifully directed, unsettling in places, and featuring a mesmerising (and Oscar winning) lead performance from Natalie Portman who is ably supported by Kunis, Vincent Cassell, Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey. The ballet sequences are stunning, while ome of the main underlying themes of confronting and embracing sexuality, though nothing new, is wonderfully and artistically handled. In many ways Black Swan reminds me of Neil Jordan's splendid The Company of Wolves in its themes and approach. Simply, Black Swan is a great film, horror or otherwise. See it.
27. Bride of Frankenstein (D. James Whale, 1935)
James Whale's sequel to his own film version of Frankenstein is a wonderfully odd, darkly camp, blackly humorous classic. Taking elements from Mary Shelley's original novel which weren't used in the first movie, Whale spins a tale that sees a chastened Doctor Frankenstein being sought out by the nefarious Dr Pretorius and then being seduced in to helping Dr P with his own bizarre life creating experiments. Pretorius has also made a deal with Frankenstein’s Monster to receive his aid and to study him in exchange for the promise of creating the Monster a companion, specifically a bride. With the eventual creation of the Bride in the stitched together form of the lovely and wonderful Elsa Lanchester, who's all too brief performance is every bit as iconic as Karloff's, we get a twisted take on unworkable and unrequited love. If you've never seen this film, do yourself a favour and seek it out. Gorgeous photography and art direction help to make it essential viewing for any self respecting film fan. And to this day Lanchester's Bride remains a classic goth fox.
Here comes the Bride!
26. The Mist (D. Frank Darabont, 2007)
Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's novella is a low budget high impact tale of humanity (or lack thereof) and how we behave when we are thrown together under the worst of circumstances. A small US town gets covered in a thick mysterious mist presumed to have escaped from a nearby military base. Within the mist there are all sorts of nasty killer creatures looking to munch on the locals, many of whom take refuge in a large supermarket, barricading themselves in as best as possible. What follows is a tense, scary and tragic microcosm of human society filled with people who may end up killing each other before the monsters get a chance to. Expertly written and directed by Darabont and filled with excellent actors led by Thomas Jane, The Mist's greatest trump card, though, is its ending: a horrifically tragic and soul crushing finale. With The Mist, Darabont proved yet again that he is a master filmmaker, especially when adapting the work of Stephen King. Please make King's Cell next, Frank.
25. Night of the Living Dead (D. George A. Romero, 1968)
George A. Romero's black and white zombie classic sees the dead coming back to life to eat the living with a small group of disparate souls hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse in an effort to try and survive the ghoulish apocalypse. And there's not much more plot than that. But, like all great horror movies and genre movies in general, NotLD is really all about us. It's about human beings and how we behave to each other, how society works and doesn't work. With NotLD Romero and co-writer John Russo created a brand new sub-genre – the zombie movie. Before NotLD, zombies were just dull-brained slaves. Post NotLD and zombies became deadly flesh hungry ghouls. Without Romero there would be no 28 Days Later, no Walking Dead, no Shaun of the Dead amongst many, many others. But Romero didn't just sit on his Laurels (an in joke there), he went on to make more zombie films with Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead. Romero uses his zombie tales as social commentary on the particular eras they are made in – be it 60's Vietnam and race relations with Night, rampant 70's consumerism with Dawn, 80's militarism with Day, and 2000's gated communities, economic woes, social media and sectarian fears with Land, Diary and Survival. All hail the great god of the zombies. All hail George!
24. Near Dark (D. Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)
Kathryn Bigelow's stylish 1987 vampire western is a revolutionary film in the vampire movie sub-genre. For the first time vampires move well away from their usual gothic image, becoming feral, blood hungry nomads who prowl the vast lands of the US mid-west sadistically preying on rednecks in bars and on whoever else crosses their paths with a pulse. In this tale, easygoing cowpoke Adrian Pasdar falls for cute vamp Jenny Wright who also takes a shine to him. Unbeknownst to Pasdar, she goes and turns him in to a vamp too (though the term vampire is never used in the film and there are no fangs or glowy eyes, just throat slashing and blood drinking). Pasdar then joins her band of vamps for a while before deciding its not the (un) life for him and goes and sets out to return home to his dad and little sister. Near Dark is a stylishly bloody lesson in how to successfully reinvent a classic monster. Unfortunately it was a box office flop, losing out hugely to the other vampire movie of 1987 – the glossy big budget pop video antics of The Lost Boys, another attempted reinvention of the vampire myth. Nowadays Near Dark is rightfully regarded as a classic genre changing film, while The Lost Boys is mostly thought of as just a fun little teen movie with a great soundtrack. And what became of Near Dark’s director Kathryn Bigelow? Point Break, a divorce from James Cameron, and an Oscar for The Hurt Locker is what.
23. Martyrs (D. Pascal Laugier, 2008)
Part of the current French new wave of horror, director Pascal Laugier's Martyrs is one truly horrible film. It is also utterly brilliant! The central idea doesn't reveal itself until fairly late in to the movie, after the film has led its audience on a twisty turny tale full of bloody revenge and potential madness. In the end, what this film is about is something so disgustingly ingenious that you have to applaud it. This is deeply intelligent filmmaking. But also almost unwatchably painful filmmaking as it delves deep, deep down in to horrendous cruelty and brutality, driving home its ideas like a repeated sledgehammer to the gut. To describe any of the plot in more detail would be a disservice. If you like intelligent horror and have a strong stomach and a reasonably stable mind then seek this out now. But be warned! It is a deeply unpleasant experience. I loved the film but I fear it too and have no wish to see it again any time soon.
22. The Blair Witch Project (D. Eduardo Sanchez, Daniel Myrick, 1999)
If you don't like the ongoing craze for found footage films then you know who to blame. Back in 1999 when the internet was still young two aspiring filmmakers with no money but lots of new media savvy had a great idea. Make a zero budget horror movie pretending it came from found footage discovered after a band of students went in to the woods to investigate the local legend of a child killing witch. Then promote the resulting movie through its own interactive website, selling the events caught on cam as real while also filling in the whole witch mythology via fake historical documents and reports. And lo, the audiences did buy it. To the tune of $240 million world-wide. It didn't hurt that the movie itself was actually brilliant, being an edgy, highly creepy, highly effective little spook story that relies on characters, atmosphere and subtle sound effects as well as the power of suggestion to scare. I still think that its end sequence is one of the best end horror film sequences ever – no gore, no shock, just that utterly creepy and unnerving final image. Great movie then, plus a genuine phenomenon and trendsetter. Shame the sequel was pants.
21. Night of the Demon aka Curse of the Demon (D. Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
The second film in this countdown by French-American director Jacques Tourneur is a wonderfully creepy and classy British supernatural chiller based on the story Casting the Runes by M R James. American professor of psychology Dana Andrews travels to the UK to attend a conference only to get caught up in the dark world of curses, demonology and black magic. For much of the film we are led to believe that the nasty goings on are most likely nothing but a bunch of hocus pocus and psychological suggestion. However it eventually becomes clear that this is not the case as Andrews' investigations in to a possibly murderous sorcerer lead to him being cursed with a demon coming to take his soul. Like all Tourneur's films Night of the Demon is beautifully shot and is full of tension, mood and atmosphere and has a couple of very effective jump scares, the best involving the sudden appearance of a loudly hissing black cat. Creepy and effective, this was a film ahead of its time in many ways. Yes, the actual demon FX are a bit ropy, but by then you have been well and truly pulled in to its deadly serious and coldly creepy world of black magic and murderous demon worship.
20 to 11 will follow soon.
30. May (D. Lucky McKee, 2002)
Writer/Director Lucky McKee’s story of lonely, socially inept veterinary nurse May (Angela Bettis) who yearns for the love and companionship of the perfect friend is a disturbingly brilliant and moving little fable. May is a tragic, horrific, yet sympathetic character brought vividly to life by the wonderful Bettis, who to my mind is one of the finest actresses of her generation. Ably supported by Jeremy Sisto and Anna Faris, Bettis is compulsively watchable as she shows us the gradual fracturing of a mind and the obsessive and horrific lengths May will go to, to not be alone. McKee's script is strange, twisted, sad and poignant and his direction is artful and actor centric. He and Bettis are good friends and she appears in most of his films, almost as a muse. Their team works. More please.
29. Ju On: The Grudge (D. Takashi Shimizu, 2002)
There's been lots of different versions of this coldly creepy and highly unsettling Japanese chiller about a deadly supernatural curse, including a Korean remake, a Japanese TV remake, and a US remake starring Buffy herself as directed by the original's Japanese director. I've only seen the original and the US remake. The US remake is good but its obviously larger budget and slightly awkward and unnecessary inclusion of American characters in to a Japanese mythos stymies it somewhat. For me, the original remains the best and most effective. The scene of a poor tormented woman seeking refuge in her own bed...only for the murderous ghost to creep up over her from under her duvet is one of the simplest and scariest concepts in modern horror. Brrr!
28. Black Swan (D. Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
Darren Aronofsky's psychological art house horror sees childlike Ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) taking on the dual role of Odette and Odile in Swan Lake. Fine playing sweet, innocent Odette, the white swan, Nina has trouble embracing the darkness to play Odile, the sinister, devilish black swan. Pushed by her manipulative producer (Vincent Cassell) and overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey), and feeling threatened by newcomer dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), Nina begins to crack, believing she really is turning in to a black swan and doing all sorts of terrible things as a result. This is essentially a werewolf tale...but with a swan instead of a wolf. Aronofsky has stated as much. What it certainly is, is one utterly riveting film, beautifully directed, unsettling in places, and featuring a mesmerising (and Oscar winning) lead performance from Natalie Portman who is ably supported by Kunis, Vincent Cassell, Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey. The ballet sequences are stunning, while ome of the main underlying themes of confronting and embracing sexuality, though nothing new, is wonderfully and artistically handled. In many ways Black Swan reminds me of Neil Jordan's splendid The Company of Wolves in its themes and approach. Simply, Black Swan is a great film, horror or otherwise. See it.
27. Bride of Frankenstein (D. James Whale, 1935)
James Whale's sequel to his own film version of Frankenstein is a wonderfully odd, darkly camp, blackly humorous classic. Taking elements from Mary Shelley's original novel which weren't used in the first movie, Whale spins a tale that sees a chastened Doctor Frankenstein being sought out by the nefarious Dr Pretorius and then being seduced in to helping Dr P with his own bizarre life creating experiments. Pretorius has also made a deal with Frankenstein’s Monster to receive his aid and to study him in exchange for the promise of creating the Monster a companion, specifically a bride. With the eventual creation of the Bride in the stitched together form of the lovely and wonderful Elsa Lanchester, who's all too brief performance is every bit as iconic as Karloff's, we get a twisted take on unworkable and unrequited love. If you've never seen this film, do yourself a favour and seek it out. Gorgeous photography and art direction help to make it essential viewing for any self respecting film fan. And to this day Lanchester's Bride remains a classic goth fox.
Here comes the Bride!
26. The Mist (D. Frank Darabont, 2007)
Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's novella is a low budget high impact tale of humanity (or lack thereof) and how we behave when we are thrown together under the worst of circumstances. A small US town gets covered in a thick mysterious mist presumed to have escaped from a nearby military base. Within the mist there are all sorts of nasty killer creatures looking to munch on the locals, many of whom take refuge in a large supermarket, barricading themselves in as best as possible. What follows is a tense, scary and tragic microcosm of human society filled with people who may end up killing each other before the monsters get a chance to. Expertly written and directed by Darabont and filled with excellent actors led by Thomas Jane, The Mist's greatest trump card, though, is its ending: a horrifically tragic and soul crushing finale. With The Mist, Darabont proved yet again that he is a master filmmaker, especially when adapting the work of Stephen King. Please make King's Cell next, Frank.
25. Night of the Living Dead (D. George A. Romero, 1968)
George A. Romero's black and white zombie classic sees the dead coming back to life to eat the living with a small group of disparate souls hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse in an effort to try and survive the ghoulish apocalypse. And there's not much more plot than that. But, like all great horror movies and genre movies in general, NotLD is really all about us. It's about human beings and how we behave to each other, how society works and doesn't work. With NotLD Romero and co-writer John Russo created a brand new sub-genre – the zombie movie. Before NotLD, zombies were just dull-brained slaves. Post NotLD and zombies became deadly flesh hungry ghouls. Without Romero there would be no 28 Days Later, no Walking Dead, no Shaun of the Dead amongst many, many others. But Romero didn't just sit on his Laurels (an in joke there), he went on to make more zombie films with Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead. Romero uses his zombie tales as social commentary on the particular eras they are made in – be it 60's Vietnam and race relations with Night, rampant 70's consumerism with Dawn, 80's militarism with Day, and 2000's gated communities, economic woes, social media and sectarian fears with Land, Diary and Survival. All hail the great god of the zombies. All hail George!
24. Near Dark (D. Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)
Kathryn Bigelow's stylish 1987 vampire western is a revolutionary film in the vampire movie sub-genre. For the first time vampires move well away from their usual gothic image, becoming feral, blood hungry nomads who prowl the vast lands of the US mid-west sadistically preying on rednecks in bars and on whoever else crosses their paths with a pulse. In this tale, easygoing cowpoke Adrian Pasdar falls for cute vamp Jenny Wright who also takes a shine to him. Unbeknownst to Pasdar, she goes and turns him in to a vamp too (though the term vampire is never used in the film and there are no fangs or glowy eyes, just throat slashing and blood drinking). Pasdar then joins her band of vamps for a while before deciding its not the (un) life for him and goes and sets out to return home to his dad and little sister. Near Dark is a stylishly bloody lesson in how to successfully reinvent a classic monster. Unfortunately it was a box office flop, losing out hugely to the other vampire movie of 1987 – the glossy big budget pop video antics of The Lost Boys, another attempted reinvention of the vampire myth. Nowadays Near Dark is rightfully regarded as a classic genre changing film, while The Lost Boys is mostly thought of as just a fun little teen movie with a great soundtrack. And what became of Near Dark’s director Kathryn Bigelow? Point Break, a divorce from James Cameron, and an Oscar for The Hurt Locker is what.
23. Martyrs (D. Pascal Laugier, 2008)
Part of the current French new wave of horror, director Pascal Laugier's Martyrs is one truly horrible film. It is also utterly brilliant! The central idea doesn't reveal itself until fairly late in to the movie, after the film has led its audience on a twisty turny tale full of bloody revenge and potential madness. In the end, what this film is about is something so disgustingly ingenious that you have to applaud it. This is deeply intelligent filmmaking. But also almost unwatchably painful filmmaking as it delves deep, deep down in to horrendous cruelty and brutality, driving home its ideas like a repeated sledgehammer to the gut. To describe any of the plot in more detail would be a disservice. If you like intelligent horror and have a strong stomach and a reasonably stable mind then seek this out now. But be warned! It is a deeply unpleasant experience. I loved the film but I fear it too and have no wish to see it again any time soon.
22. The Blair Witch Project (D. Eduardo Sanchez, Daniel Myrick, 1999)
If you don't like the ongoing craze for found footage films then you know who to blame. Back in 1999 when the internet was still young two aspiring filmmakers with no money but lots of new media savvy had a great idea. Make a zero budget horror movie pretending it came from found footage discovered after a band of students went in to the woods to investigate the local legend of a child killing witch. Then promote the resulting movie through its own interactive website, selling the events caught on cam as real while also filling in the whole witch mythology via fake historical documents and reports. And lo, the audiences did buy it. To the tune of $240 million world-wide. It didn't hurt that the movie itself was actually brilliant, being an edgy, highly creepy, highly effective little spook story that relies on characters, atmosphere and subtle sound effects as well as the power of suggestion to scare. I still think that its end sequence is one of the best end horror film sequences ever – no gore, no shock, just that utterly creepy and unnerving final image. Great movie then, plus a genuine phenomenon and trendsetter. Shame the sequel was pants.
21. Night of the Demon aka Curse of the Demon (D. Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
The second film in this countdown by French-American director Jacques Tourneur is a wonderfully creepy and classy British supernatural chiller based on the story Casting the Runes by M R James. American professor of psychology Dana Andrews travels to the UK to attend a conference only to get caught up in the dark world of curses, demonology and black magic. For much of the film we are led to believe that the nasty goings on are most likely nothing but a bunch of hocus pocus and psychological suggestion. However it eventually becomes clear that this is not the case as Andrews' investigations in to a possibly murderous sorcerer lead to him being cursed with a demon coming to take his soul. Like all Tourneur's films Night of the Demon is beautifully shot and is full of tension, mood and atmosphere and has a couple of very effective jump scares, the best involving the sudden appearance of a loudly hissing black cat. Creepy and effective, this was a film ahead of its time in many ways. Yes, the actual demon FX are a bit ropy, but by then you have been well and truly pulled in to its deadly serious and coldly creepy world of black magic and murderous demon worship.
20 to 11 will follow soon.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
MY 50 FAVOURITE HORROR FILMS: 40 TO 31
The countdown continues...
40. Prince of Darkness (D. John Carpenter, 1987)
John Carpenter's often overlooked sci-fi/supernatural/horror from 1987 may not be up there in the premiere league of Carpenter’s work but it is still a stylishly intriguing affair. In the basement of an old church is a huge ancient canister of green goo apparently having been kept by the church for millennia. But the canister has recently shown signs of activity, which leads a priest (Donald Pleasance) to call in Professor Birack (Victor Wong) to investigate. Along with his team of science students, Birack makes a shocking discovery about the nature of the canister. And very soon we have possessed people stalking the dark halls and the zombie-like homeless surrounding the church, creating a siege for the scientists and priest inside. Prince of Darkness is pleasingly gloomy and creepy rather than being outright scary. The characters may be just a tad too bland but PoD makes up for its shortcomings with a real sense of slowly creeping dread, a brilliant central concept and a killer Carpenteresque ending.
39. 28 Days Later (D. Danny Boyle, 2002)
Danny Boyle's low budget not a zombie zombie film is a bleak, raw, nervy exercise in nihilistic terror as seemingly last man alive Cillian Murphy awakes in an abandoned London only to discover the nation has succumbed to an outbreak which turns people in to mindless rage fuelled monsters out for blood. Storywise there's nothing new here, with Boyle riffing on Romero and Richard Matheson along with other survivalist and disease outbreak flicks. What is new, though, is the way the material is presented - a rawness in shooting and editing helped a lot by the use of new digital cameras. And unlike traditional zombies, the infected are fast, agile and noisy, roaring at you as if the devil himself were inside of them. Terrifying. Nice one Danny.
38. Suspiria (D. Dario Argento, 1977)
By far Italian horror legend Dario Argento's finest work, Suspiria is a visual tour-de-force; a colourful, bloody, hypnotic nightmare which sees Jessica Harper enrolling in an isolated Italian ballet school only to discover it holds a horrifying supernatural secret built on murder and bloodshed. There really isn't any other film out there that looks anything like Suspiria. The photography is quite astonishing, and the Goblin score is a classic. Argento has never come close to making anything this good again I'm sorry to say. But at least we have this classic horror from him. And what is it with scary ballet? I have two films in my top 50 that centre on ballet and ballerinas. Maybe its due to the physical hell they put themselves through to try and perfect their art. I dunno. But it does seem to lend itself nicely to strange tales of horror.
37. Frankenstein (D. James Whale, 1931)
James Whale's classic film version of Mary Shelley's novel needs no explanation from me. Suffice to say it is a beautifully made film with Colin Clive on great mad scientist form as the good Doctor F. But of course it is Karloff who truly makes this movie what it is. His take on the Monster is definitive and beyond iconic. His performance is subtle, affecting, filled with childish innocence which is countered by often explosive tantrums. He is the model for all misunderstood and sympathetic monsters to come. A true classic.
36. The Wolfman (D. George Waggner, 1941)
Has there ever been a sadder more hopeless, helpless hero in a horror movie than poor lycanthropic Laurence Talbot as played here by Lon Chaney Jr? So much we take for granted about werewolf lore was either pulled together for the first time in this film or was actually created by its writer Curt Siodmak. “Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” Classic. And all from Siodmak. Most people know the story so I won't repeat it. In the end, The Wolfman is a wonderfully melodramatic atmospheric tale with a wonderful central performance by Chaney and some equally wonderful monster make-up by FX legend Jack Pierce. And I love every minute of it.
35. Switchblade Romance aka High Tension aka Haute Tension (D. Alexandre Adja, 2003)
Alexandre Adja's ferociously brutal, unpredictable stalk and slash is an evil little gem. Rural France and two young women, Marie and Alex, go to stay with Alex’s parents in their remote farmhouse. Later that night a stranger breaks in, brutally murders the parents and wounds badly Alex. Marie manages to escape, taking Alex with her, the savage stranger hot on their heels. What follows is a chase and slash as the two girls, one badly wounded, try to evade capture...at least until the shocking truth is finally revealed. A nasty, bloody, clever little movie, Switchblade Romance marked Adja as a name to watch as well as marking the start of the current French new wave of horror.
34. The Others (D. Alejandro Amenabar, 2001)
A classic ghost story with a twist, Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others is a moody, elegant and splendidly old-fashioned chiller. It’s the end of World War 2 and Nicole Kidman in a wonderfully brittle performance, is Grace, a widowed mother living with her two young children in a big isolated house on the island of Jersey. It soon transpires that the house is most likely haunted as strange goings on abound, with sudden noises, doors opening, strange sightings all making for an extremely effective scare show for poor mummy Nicole and the audience alike. The film looks beautiful too and Kidman has never been better. The Others proves you don't need elaborate effects or gore to make for a truly scary film. It's only a 12 certificate for cripes sake. Marvellous!
33. Zombie Flesh Eaters (D. Lucio Fulci, 1979)
The other Lucio Fulci film in my countdown is his most obvious cash in on the success of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. But it is also Fulci's most accomplished film too. Zombie Flesh Eaters sees New York journalist Ian McCulloch accompanying Tisa Farrow (Mia's sister) on a trip to an island in the Caribbean to find Tisa's missing scientist father. Once at the island our heroes meet up with another young couple who are there doing scientific research. And together the four of them along with local doctor Richard Johnson attempt to discover what is happening to the island's inhabitants who appear to be dying from a mysterious plague. Pretty soon, though, the dead begin returning to life and munching on the living in good ol' zombie style, leading our heroes to try and escape the island before they too become walking corpse food. I love this movie. It's a full-on gorefest with all kinds of bloody kills and offal eating. It also contains two of the most memorable zombie related sequences ever: a girl's eye vs. a broken piece of wood, and an underwater zombie vs. a real shark. Like City of the Living Dead, Flesh Eaters has a strange, dreamlike quality to it. It feels slightly surreal, disjointed. Strange camera angles and random editing is employed to enhance the feeling of unease. And it works. It is also very, very gory and has a wonderfully apocalyptic ending. One of my all time fave zombie films.
32. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (D. Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Tobe Hooper's black humoured tale of red neck cannibals vs. annoying kids is a great movie, if not the grisly terrorfest the myth leads us to believe it is. For a start, you don't actually see much of any graphic violence. Most of it is implied or happens just off screen. The horror comes from the idea and the situation and the grotesque family who ply their human slaughterhouse trade. The first time I ever saw this film was on a cinema re-release back in the 90's. And I was severely disappointed. I thought it was just very silly and not scary at all. But having watched it since... I've got the joke. It IS a black comedy, a satire on the state of Vietnam era America. Not that horrific then, but still a great movie.
31. Ginger Snaps (D. John Fawcett, 2001)
John Fawcett's brilliant werewolf film is a bloody and darkly humourous coming of age/entry in to womanhood parable for young girls. Moody, death obsessed teen sisters Brigitte and Ginger (Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle) live in a bleak and boring Canadian suburban housing estate menaced by a wild animal that's killing and eating the local pets. While out one night, the sisters are attacked by the very same animal. And Ginger is bitten before the animal goes and gets mashed on the road. It turns out the beast was a werewolf. And now Ginger is slowly turning in to a werewolf too, complete with growing tail, sharpening teeth, yellow eyes and a thirst for sex and blood. Can Brigitte find a way to save her sister before she goes full wolf? Karen Walton's script is keenly observed and full of sharp jabs at suburban family life as well as the horrors of growing up and 'maturing'. Ginger is horrified at the idea of her period and all that it means. To Ginger, becoming a werewolf is nowhere near as revolting as becoming a woman. Fawcett's direction is steady and assured with some decent frights and plenty of wry black humour, and the two lead performances of Perkins and Isabelle are pitch perfect. Teen angst body horror at its finest.
30 to 21 coming soon. MWAHAHAHAHA!
40. Prince of Darkness (D. John Carpenter, 1987)
John Carpenter's often overlooked sci-fi/supernatural/horror from 1987 may not be up there in the premiere league of Carpenter’s work but it is still a stylishly intriguing affair. In the basement of an old church is a huge ancient canister of green goo apparently having been kept by the church for millennia. But the canister has recently shown signs of activity, which leads a priest (Donald Pleasance) to call in Professor Birack (Victor Wong) to investigate. Along with his team of science students, Birack makes a shocking discovery about the nature of the canister. And very soon we have possessed people stalking the dark halls and the zombie-like homeless surrounding the church, creating a siege for the scientists and priest inside. Prince of Darkness is pleasingly gloomy and creepy rather than being outright scary. The characters may be just a tad too bland but PoD makes up for its shortcomings with a real sense of slowly creeping dread, a brilliant central concept and a killer Carpenteresque ending.
39. 28 Days Later (D. Danny Boyle, 2002)
Danny Boyle's low budget not a zombie zombie film is a bleak, raw, nervy exercise in nihilistic terror as seemingly last man alive Cillian Murphy awakes in an abandoned London only to discover the nation has succumbed to an outbreak which turns people in to mindless rage fuelled monsters out for blood. Storywise there's nothing new here, with Boyle riffing on Romero and Richard Matheson along with other survivalist and disease outbreak flicks. What is new, though, is the way the material is presented - a rawness in shooting and editing helped a lot by the use of new digital cameras. And unlike traditional zombies, the infected are fast, agile and noisy, roaring at you as if the devil himself were inside of them. Terrifying. Nice one Danny.
38. Suspiria (D. Dario Argento, 1977)
By far Italian horror legend Dario Argento's finest work, Suspiria is a visual tour-de-force; a colourful, bloody, hypnotic nightmare which sees Jessica Harper enrolling in an isolated Italian ballet school only to discover it holds a horrifying supernatural secret built on murder and bloodshed. There really isn't any other film out there that looks anything like Suspiria. The photography is quite astonishing, and the Goblin score is a classic. Argento has never come close to making anything this good again I'm sorry to say. But at least we have this classic horror from him. And what is it with scary ballet? I have two films in my top 50 that centre on ballet and ballerinas. Maybe its due to the physical hell they put themselves through to try and perfect their art. I dunno. But it does seem to lend itself nicely to strange tales of horror.
37. Frankenstein (D. James Whale, 1931)
James Whale's classic film version of Mary Shelley's novel needs no explanation from me. Suffice to say it is a beautifully made film with Colin Clive on great mad scientist form as the good Doctor F. But of course it is Karloff who truly makes this movie what it is. His take on the Monster is definitive and beyond iconic. His performance is subtle, affecting, filled with childish innocence which is countered by often explosive tantrums. He is the model for all misunderstood and sympathetic monsters to come. A true classic.
36. The Wolfman (D. George Waggner, 1941)
Has there ever been a sadder more hopeless, helpless hero in a horror movie than poor lycanthropic Laurence Talbot as played here by Lon Chaney Jr? So much we take for granted about werewolf lore was either pulled together for the first time in this film or was actually created by its writer Curt Siodmak. “Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” Classic. And all from Siodmak. Most people know the story so I won't repeat it. In the end, The Wolfman is a wonderfully melodramatic atmospheric tale with a wonderful central performance by Chaney and some equally wonderful monster make-up by FX legend Jack Pierce. And I love every minute of it.
35. Switchblade Romance aka High Tension aka Haute Tension (D. Alexandre Adja, 2003)
Alexandre Adja's ferociously brutal, unpredictable stalk and slash is an evil little gem. Rural France and two young women, Marie and Alex, go to stay with Alex’s parents in their remote farmhouse. Later that night a stranger breaks in, brutally murders the parents and wounds badly Alex. Marie manages to escape, taking Alex with her, the savage stranger hot on their heels. What follows is a chase and slash as the two girls, one badly wounded, try to evade capture...at least until the shocking truth is finally revealed. A nasty, bloody, clever little movie, Switchblade Romance marked Adja as a name to watch as well as marking the start of the current French new wave of horror.
34. The Others (D. Alejandro Amenabar, 2001)
A classic ghost story with a twist, Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others is a moody, elegant and splendidly old-fashioned chiller. It’s the end of World War 2 and Nicole Kidman in a wonderfully brittle performance, is Grace, a widowed mother living with her two young children in a big isolated house on the island of Jersey. It soon transpires that the house is most likely haunted as strange goings on abound, with sudden noises, doors opening, strange sightings all making for an extremely effective scare show for poor mummy Nicole and the audience alike. The film looks beautiful too and Kidman has never been better. The Others proves you don't need elaborate effects or gore to make for a truly scary film. It's only a 12 certificate for cripes sake. Marvellous!
33. Zombie Flesh Eaters (D. Lucio Fulci, 1979)
The other Lucio Fulci film in my countdown is his most obvious cash in on the success of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. But it is also Fulci's most accomplished film too. Zombie Flesh Eaters sees New York journalist Ian McCulloch accompanying Tisa Farrow (Mia's sister) on a trip to an island in the Caribbean to find Tisa's missing scientist father. Once at the island our heroes meet up with another young couple who are there doing scientific research. And together the four of them along with local doctor Richard Johnson attempt to discover what is happening to the island's inhabitants who appear to be dying from a mysterious plague. Pretty soon, though, the dead begin returning to life and munching on the living in good ol' zombie style, leading our heroes to try and escape the island before they too become walking corpse food. I love this movie. It's a full-on gorefest with all kinds of bloody kills and offal eating. It also contains two of the most memorable zombie related sequences ever: a girl's eye vs. a broken piece of wood, and an underwater zombie vs. a real shark. Like City of the Living Dead, Flesh Eaters has a strange, dreamlike quality to it. It feels slightly surreal, disjointed. Strange camera angles and random editing is employed to enhance the feeling of unease. And it works. It is also very, very gory and has a wonderfully apocalyptic ending. One of my all time fave zombie films.
32. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (D. Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Tobe Hooper's black humoured tale of red neck cannibals vs. annoying kids is a great movie, if not the grisly terrorfest the myth leads us to believe it is. For a start, you don't actually see much of any graphic violence. Most of it is implied or happens just off screen. The horror comes from the idea and the situation and the grotesque family who ply their human slaughterhouse trade. The first time I ever saw this film was on a cinema re-release back in the 90's. And I was severely disappointed. I thought it was just very silly and not scary at all. But having watched it since... I've got the joke. It IS a black comedy, a satire on the state of Vietnam era America. Not that horrific then, but still a great movie.
31. Ginger Snaps (D. John Fawcett, 2001)
John Fawcett's brilliant werewolf film is a bloody and darkly humourous coming of age/entry in to womanhood parable for young girls. Moody, death obsessed teen sisters Brigitte and Ginger (Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle) live in a bleak and boring Canadian suburban housing estate menaced by a wild animal that's killing and eating the local pets. While out one night, the sisters are attacked by the very same animal. And Ginger is bitten before the animal goes and gets mashed on the road. It turns out the beast was a werewolf. And now Ginger is slowly turning in to a werewolf too, complete with growing tail, sharpening teeth, yellow eyes and a thirst for sex and blood. Can Brigitte find a way to save her sister before she goes full wolf? Karen Walton's script is keenly observed and full of sharp jabs at suburban family life as well as the horrors of growing up and 'maturing'. Ginger is horrified at the idea of her period and all that it means. To Ginger, becoming a werewolf is nowhere near as revolting as becoming a woman. Fawcett's direction is steady and assured with some decent frights and plenty of wry black humour, and the two lead performances of Perkins and Isabelle are pitch perfect. Teen angst body horror at its finest.
30 to 21 coming soon. MWAHAHAHAHA!
Sunday, 14 October 2012
MY 50 FAVOURITE HORROR MOVIES: 50 TO 41
Greetings fellow horror hounds!
This year, to celebrate Halloween, I thought I’d do a countdown of my own personal favourite horror films of all time.
Now, I don’t claim these to be the ‘best’ horror films, just the ones I find I enjoy the most and can watch the most. In doing this I’ve tried where possible to steer clear of comedy/horror and to concentrate on pure horror, though there will be a few notable exceptions to that rule. I’ll aim to post my fave fifty in blocks of ten starting here with fifty to forty one, leading up to the final top ten being posted around Halloween itself.
This has been far from an easy task and almost certainly isn’t gonna be definitive as I’ll probably end up remembering titles after the fact that I should have included. But hey ho, it’s all just a bit of ghoulish seasonal fun.
Feel free to comment and slag off my choices and to suggest your own faves.
So, without further ado, here numbers fifty to forty one:
50. Ginger Snaps 2 (D. Brett Sullivan, 2003)
Brett Sullivan's sequel to John Fawcett's brilliant Ginger Snaps is a rare beast: a direct to dvd sequel that is not only a worthy follow up but a logical and smart continuation of the story begun in the first film. The excellent Emily Perkins returns as Brigitte, who after the death of werewolf sister Ginger in the original, is also now infected and is regularly injecting herself with wolfsbane to keep the curse at bay. This soon leads to a mix up with Brigitte being locked up in a drug rehab centre. Separated from her wolfsbane she must try to stop her change while also avoiding a new werewolf who is apparently tracking her down, looking for a mate. Smartly written, crisply directed and with two excellent performances from Perkins and Tatiana Maslany as a strange young girl called Ghost, GS2 is a sequel almost as good as the original.
Trailer
49. City of the Living Dead (D. Lucio Fulci, 1980)
The first of two films in this countdown from Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci, City is the first instalment of Fulci’s unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy, which also includes The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery. City is a weird surrealist mash-up of atmospheric Lovecraftian horror and Romero inspired zombie flesh munching. The story is something to do with the gates of hell about to be opened in the small US town of Dunwich, New England due to the suicide of a local priest. For some reason this suicide has gone and unleashed a horde of ghostly teleporting zombies to eat people up as well as various nasty curses which sees one young girl literally (and grossly) puke up her own guts. Like the best of Fulci, City doesn't make much sense but it is stylish, weirdly dreamlike, supremely atmospheric and utterly gross. Great demented fun.
Trailer
48. Rec. (D. Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007)
This Spanish found footage/mockumentary about a city building under quarantine after some kind of deadly outbreak is a swift, intense, super tense, super scary rollercoaster ride. Being shot almost in real time lends extra urgency and desperation to the whole affair with the dark hallways and rooms of the labyrinthine building being a non stop terror trap with hostile zombie types ready to leap out and attack at any second. The final ten minutes in the pitch-black attic is one of THE scariest sequences in horror history. The sequels are pretty damn good too.
Trailer
47. Trick r Treat (D. Mike Dougherty, 2007)
Mike Dougherty's gleefully nasty anthology celebrates Halloween with a slice of twisted small town Americana. It's as if Amblin had decided to make a proper horror film, if say, they'd pushed Gremlins that extra couple of notches to make it really gleefully nasty. The film's four separate tales intertwine cleverly, linked together by the presence of tricky little Halloween sprite Sam, before becoming one big and hugely satisfying whole at the end. Shot for only $12m and produced by Bryan Singer, the film looks gorgeous and is full of splendid actors including the fabulous Dylan Baker, Bryan Cox and Anna Paquin. No trick, this is a brilliant Halloween treat. Just don't be dissing the 31st October or little Sam will come get you.
Trailer
46. The Ring (D. Gore Verbinski, 2002)
Gore Verbinski's US remake of the Japanese original is to my mind the superior version of the story. Verbinski manages to capture the atmosphere of the original (something no other US remakes of J-horror have been able to do) while also building a deeper and more satisfying story around the cursed videotape and the dead girl who haunts it. Tense, chilling, and featuring a great central performance from Naomi Watts, The Ring will make sure you never watch TV the same way again. Seven days!
Trailer
45. The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (D: Jorge Grau, 1974)
Spanish director Jorge Grau's zombie horror is a strange one. It's a Spanish/Italian co-production set in England featuring the Manchester Morgue in the title yet set somewhere up in the Lake District instead. An experimental sonic pesticide machine being tested on a farm has the bizarre side effect of raising the recently deceased as flesh hungry zombies who roam the countryside killing and eating locals. It's up to a local copper, a young female tourist and a biker dude to combat the undead menace. A weird film, TLDatMM succeeds for three key reasons. First, the English locations (mostly the Peak District) are beautiful and Grau films them with an artist’s eye for composition and capturing natural beauty. Second, there is a strong eco theme running throughout the film re. science messing with nature. And third, the zombies, though not that many of them, are fab and do some very gory kills. Thanks to Grau, a good director, the film has atmosphere and though overall it might not make a whole heap of sense, it does stay with you.
Trailer
44. Audition (D: Takashi Miike, 1999)
Acclaimed Japanese director Takashi Miike's deeply disturbing tale of obsessive love and pain is a hard watch, especially once things get really full on and the wire saw comes out. Middle aged widower Shigeharu is looking for a new wife and decides to accept his film producer friend’s offer to hold an open audition for his prospective new bride with Shigeharu soon becoming smitten by Asami, a seemingly sweet young ex-ballet dancer. But Asami hides an appalling secret. And what follows is an exploration of how the search for true love can go horribly, horribly wrong, shown to us as only Miike can. Ghastly but great.
Trailer
43. I Walked with a Zombie (D: Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
The first of two films in this countdown by French-American director Jacques Tourneur is a dark, dream-like tale of jealousy and betrayal set on an island in the West Indies where a young Canadian nurse relocates to look after the sick wife of a rich white land owner. The nurse is introduced to the landowner's dysfunctional family as well as to the local legends of voodoo, which may or may not have something to do with the zombie-like state the sick wife is now in. Tourneur, who previously made the seminal Cat People (a toss up for this spot), was a great director for creating mood and atmosphere and went on to become a major player in film noir. Here, a deep sense of creeping unease permeates every frame of film, which also includes sound effects of omnipresent distant drums and whispering grasses and rumbling storms. Tourneur was also one of the first directors to use and to master the jump scare, with this film having one great one. A correctly regarded classic of the period.
Trailer
42. Braindead aka Dead Alive (D: Peter Jackson, 1992)
Peter Jackson's crazy, OTT, blood and gore soaked period Kiwi horror nearly didn't make this list as it also falls in to the comedy genre. And I've tried with this countdown to focus more closely on pure horror (with a couple notable exceptions). But Braindead is such a riotous affair and is so, so gory and so much horrible fun that it simply can't be ignored. A rare Sumatran Rat-Monkey is captured and taken back to New Zealand where it bites the ghastly mother of hapless put upon Lionel, turning her and then others in to depraved, flesh hungry zombie mutants. What follows is a Grand Guignol of Sam Raimi inspired sick, gory lunacy. Fun with a capital F.
Trailer
41. Dracula: Prince of Darkness (D. Terence Fisher, 1966)
It took Christopher Lee eight full years to be convinced to reprise his most iconic role for a sequel to Hammer's huge 1958 hit The Horror of Dracula. And according to Lee he only did it under the proviso that all of his dialogue was thrown out and that he wouldn't say a single word on screen. A genius move as it turned out. DPoD is essentially Dracula as The Terminator – a single minded, utterly unstoppable killer focussed on tracking down and getting the one woman he wants. And nothing will get in his way. Lee is all red eyes and snarling fangs, charging around with a manic animalistic energy. In his way is the gruff gun toting friar Father Sandor played by the late great Andrew Keir who delivers a performance as charismatic and charming as Lee is intense and bestial. A simple, streamlined plot and stylish and energetic direction by Hammer legend Terrence Fisher together with Lee's intensity and Kier's gruff charisma makes DPoD the very best of the classic Hammer catalogue.
Trailer
40 to 31 coming soon. Stay tuned.
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