The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[Rayon Vert]

Going back to shorts, not that it makes my list but in case anyone didn't know/see it there's the less than 3-minute, jump scare-reliant 2013 Lights Out that was made into the 2016 feature.

[therewillbeblus]

Speaking of Lynch, don't forget his minute-long contribution to the 100 Years of Lumière project, Premonitions Following an Evil Deed

I did forget about that one, and now I’m scrambling my brain for another (I think 5ish minute) short where a woman is kept in a glass tube. I thought it was by Guy Maddin but is doesn’t seem to be..

Speaking of Guy Maddin, I seriously considered Brand Upon the Brain! for this project, especially regarding the mad scientist atrocities, but like a lot of films this project it’ll likely be a sacrificial lamb and wind up definitively placing on the Sci-Fi list instead, along with Upstream Color, Detention, Happy Death Day 2U, etc.

[bottled spider]

Going back to shorts, not that it makes my list but in case anyone didn't know/see it there's the less than 3-minute, jump scare-reliant 2013 Lights Out that was made into the 2016 feature.

Thanks RV! I had seen that before (recommended elsewhere on the forum by Dom H.?), but couldn't remember what it was called, and didn't how to search for it. Didn't know it had been made into a feature.

[domino harvey]

Yep, I posted it here (and it is hard to find, I only found it by searching for me saying the word “hallway,” as the scariest thing then and now is still that my hallway freaks me out like this). Good short and well-worth watching, but it won’t make my list

[Rayon Vert]

X the Unknown (Norman 1956). (1st viewing) Hammer made this other horror sci fi pic in between the first two Quatermass films. All around I found it to be of the same general level of (high) quality. It’s definitely less spectacular and has a more sedate tone, and it’s more a very slowly unwinding mystery around a strange source of radiation and the burns and deaths it provokes. But it’s very suspenseful and like the first two Quatermass films has a realism grounded this time in a Scottish setting. The unimaginative ending is a bit of a disappointment though.



The Fog (Carpenter 1980). (1st viewing) I liked this quite a bit, more than I expected. The film’s impact is diluted just a bit by the fog’s revenants having such a clear motivation for their actions, as opposed to The Birds, a film that gets evoked here, where the attacks are unexplained. But it’s suspenseful and really terrific in establishing and sustaining a mood, and looks wonderful with those coastline shots, with and without “the fog”. I love the concept and design of that little radio station in a lighthouse too. In fact that sounds like a dream job, spinning vinyl and talking to the local folks on the radio in that marvelously cozy and charming little abode. This squeaks in at the bottom of my list.


The Final Conflict (Baker 1981). (rewatch) Of course the Antichrist would have to be into S&M! Definitely the weakest in the original Omen trilogy, really all because of the story: an actual, literal Second Coming, the killing of the newborns, etc. etc. Just too much like an evangelical apocalypse film. But maybe there wasn’t any way around such a conclusion. A shame because it’s still overall a solid production, and benefits from the return to London for the shoot. And Sam Neill’s performance is the stand-out thing here – watching this several times as a teen it’s never been possible since to not associate the actor with the character of Damien Thorne.


The Mummy’s Shroud (Gilling 1967). (1st viewing) The way the Ancient Egypt backstory was placed at the very beginning, as a prologue, helps the film, and it’s actually an affecting tale in itself so that we’re invested in the mummies – although I can’t say unfortunately that the rest of the film does much with this. The whole, fairly lengthy quest and excavation for the tomb part I thought was also pretty suspenseful and engaging. The weaker point is more the lack of originality in the material overall, and the mummy attack scenes. The film’s drama lies more in the relationships between the English intruders, and the conflicts at the hotel between the archeological team and the financier. Not a great Hammer film but definitely decent like the previous Mummy entry. I don’t understand why these get the 5.5-level. IMDB ratings – they’re better than that; at least low 6’s!

[Finch]

Lights Out the short is very good and Sandberg has made a couple other shorts before and after he made it in Hollywood and while most of them can start to feel a bit same-y if watched in succession, I'm really fond of the short featuring a photograph called Pictured found here.

Sandberg's channel is here. His most recent short is Shadowed.

[therewillbeblus]

I assume I can vote for Richard Ayoade's Garth Marenghi's Darkplace? I wish I'd realized this earlier to properly recommend it to everyone. It's basically a much more farcical take on the premise of Riget, which rather fittingly came out the same year as Stephen King's remake

This was a palette-cleansing treat at the end of my Riget revisit with some direct homages, but I won't vote for it for the same reason I won't vote for Young Frankenstein or any comedy-skewed horror spoof. I laughed a lot though, so thanks for the rec

[domino harvey]

Nice deflection but I just received your list and it’s Saturday the 14th listed fifty times in alphabetical order

[colinr0380]

X the Unknown (Norman 1956). (1st viewing) Hammer made this other horror sci fi pic in between the first two Quatermass films. All around I found it to be of the same general level of (high) quality. It’s definitely less spectacular and has a more sedate tone, and it’s more a very slowly unwinding mystery around a strange source of radiation and the burns and deaths it provokes. But it’s very suspenseful and like the first two Quatermass films has a realism grounded this time in a Scottish setting. The unimaginative ending is a bit of a disappointment though.

Directed by Leslie Norman, film critic Barry Norman's father, just before he did the 1958 version of Dunkirk for Ealing!

The Fog (Carpenter 1980). (1st viewing) I liked this quite a bit, more than I expected. The film’s impact is diluted just a bit by the fog’s revenants having such a clear motivation for their actions, as opposed to The Birds, a film that gets evoked here, where the attacks are unexplained. But it’s suspenseful and really terrific in establishing and sustaining a mood, and looks wonderful with those coastline shots, with and without “the fog”. I love the concept and design of that little radio station in a lighthouse too. In fact that sounds like a dream job, spinning vinyl and talking to the local folks on the radio in that marvelously cozy and charming little abode. This squeaks in at the bottom of my list.

This is such a good 'atmospheric' film. I think that extended sequence of Adrienne Barbeau driving along the coastline and walking down the steps to the lighthouse all whilst playing through the station i.d.s for her radio show is beautiful and eerie at one and the same time. And the way that the film builds the tension by cross cutting in that final sequence between the group getting to the church and isolated Barbeau being menaced in, around and on top of that lighthouse is very powerfully done. Of course Carpenter's relentlessly pounding score really adds to that too. It also has a totally justified (at least for me) final stinger moment, all the more amusing for completing the curse at the last possible moment of the film!

I have not really looked too much into the background of the making of this film but I know that it was originally meant to be a PG-13 film (EDIT: A PG rated film, as noted by domino below) and then at the last minute was upped to a R, with Carpenter being requested to add more violent bits in to justify the adult rating. Was it just some of the gorier shots that was added or were certain characters expanded out? I could see both the Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis characters having scary moments added to beef up that aspect a bit.

And Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is fantastic! I think they even parodied The Fog in one episode!

[Mr Sausage]

The whole bit with Barbeau being menaced in the tower was reshoots. The reshoots make the plot somewhat incomprehensible, but they do add some necessary tension and stakes.

[domino harvey]

PG-13 didn’t exist til 1984 in response to outrage over the one-two punch of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins being PG

[Rayon Vert]

According to Wiki, yes the gorier kills in The Fog were part of what was in the reshoots. (Which definitely surprise you, and give it a bit of a Halloween slasher feel as well.)

It's a (relatively) low-budget movie, but it doesn't feel and look like it. The only indication is the relatively small sets/action-drama points of focus, but then you have all those vista shots that prevent it from feeling cramped and closed in.

[DarkImbecile]

I already had three Carpenters on my list, so it didn't make it on, but The Fog is quite fun. The sequence where the kid is stuck alone in the house after the kindly older neighbor babysitting him is killed was memorably disturbing when I saw the movie too young (probably nine or ten)... probably because the person who let me watch it was the kindly older neighbor who was babysitting me at the time!

[Rayon Vert]

The Fog gave me 3 Carpenters as well on mine. I'm pretty sure what are two of yours, and probably a lot of people's, but wondering what your third is? (Carpenter ties Polanski with 3 on my list, but then Terence Fisher has 6... although none in my top 20).

[knives]

I think I was the only one to vote for Lost Highway last time

If I considered it a horror film I would vote for it. Possibly my favorite American film ever.

I'm a month late to asking this, but I'd really like to know more about why this is your favorite American film and also how it doesn't fit into horror for you? Not that either of those baffle me, but spark enormous curiosity. For the record, I do think Lost Highway is much more than a horror movie and in many ways unclassifiable, but a lot of what works for me is how Lynch takes horrifying imagery and terrifying philosophical concepts and twists them to provide pleasure, even if it's the kind of pleasure that one needs to work at embracing (or at least I did, since it's gone from one of my least favorites to favorites over a series of watches in 15 years).

Almost skipped over this. Basically I file it as a noir in my head which however much related I consider a separate category. As to the favoritism, part of it is nostalgia as it was one of the very first films I watched while trying to branch away from being just a horror fan to being a movie fan. It came from a impassioned review on "Arrow in the Head" that made the movie sound interesting. If I remember correctly it was the same week I saw 8 1/2 for the first time to give a sense of things. But also (and I don't know the causative relationship here) the themes of identity, memory, and human relations are just sort of catnip for me.

[DarkImbecile]

The Fog gave me 3 Carpenters as well on mine. I'm pretty sure what are two of yours, and probably a lot of people's, but wondering what your third is? (Carpenter ties Polanski with 3 on my list, but then Terence Fisher has 6... although none in my top 20).

I at first tried to handicap directors from having multiple entries, but realized that — with this genre in particular — denying what works best for me just doesn't feel right... so I ended up with ten directors with multiple entries making up just under half the list! Also ended up far more biased toward recent releases than I had expected, but again, can't deny what works.

(3 films) Carpenter (Prince of Darkness being the non-obvious choice) and Tourneur

(2 films) Polanksi, Cronenberg, Lynch, Hitchcock, Eggers, Aster, Aronofsky, and Perkins

[therewillbeblus]

It came from a impassioned review on "Arrow in the Head" that made the movie sound interesting. If I remember correctly it was the same week I saw 8 1/2 for the first time to give a sense of things. But also (and I don't know the causative relationship here) the themes of identity, memory, and human relations are just sort of catnip for me.

Arrow in the Head! Good ol’ Joblo days. Fair enough, makes sense - I think it certainly plays with noir the most in skeletal form but the undercurrent is so beautifully destabilizing horror that I can’t help but prioritize that genre reading as an evolved form of horror into the 90s dissolution of ideological meaning. The “identity, memory, and human relations” themes are my favorites as well which is partly why this works as horror in deconstructing them by basically violently beating them down to a place where we must reconstruct using new tools. Also this is more of a successful horror than Inland Empire for Lynch in that the later film throws all semblance of audience capacity for assembling sense with our conditioned tools to the wind, while Lost Highway gives us a false sense of groundedness and then strips away the facades of reality as we chip away until we can adapt our tools and surrender to the part of life that is a nightmare. The later film doesn’t force that surrender because it doesn’t trap us with a lure to the familiar, to our literal homes and signifiers of safety, though Lynch isn’t manipulating so much as showing that reality is enigmatic in the places we thought were solid, known, and true. It’s essentially a therapeutic process that is dark and scary but rewarding in that only once we relinquish our rigid holds on these socially constructed forms of meaning can we then make our own, and simultaneously validates that inescapable torment of living in such a world that doesn’t aid us in forfeiting itself.

[knives]

Funny. I don't read either film that way though I can see how the structure of both can lend that. With Lynch I treat his narrative as a narrative of emotion almost like a Rothko painting or a jazz improv session. Thus, both film seem very straightforward as a narrative. Lost Highway is about the emotions of disassociation from guilt (Lynch and Gifford have said that OJ inspired the film) and its story is that movement while INLAND EMPIRE is the narrative of the emotional movement into isolation (among other emotions). Both are almost like a '12 stages of grief' set up.

[therewillbeblus]

Well I agree with you that I think he is all emotion and that manifests as visual ideas. The roots of dreams are emotion as are the base of cognition and Lynch understands that as well as that significance is subjective. I don’t mean that he intends that reading I have but that by flooding us with that emotion, which is the only form of truth, the other structures deteriorate as facades jumpstarting that horror reading, or conversely can just be taken at face value as the emotions they are and tackled less philosophically. He, I think more than most directors, creates works that are canvases for what we bring, like abstract art- but in blending that pure emotional space in Lost Highway with the exact amount of vulnerable threads of stability he does provide in concrete form his surreal milieu, a dynamic of binding and release is established that his other works don’t quite achieve as well for me. I guess what I’m saying is that like therapy, Lynch’s works acknowledge the emotional murky waters that we are generally uncomfortable traversing but that primarily drive us as the only raw truths, hidden beneath the cognitive surfaces that we operate on, and strips the comfort away to make us sit with those emotions. This is very much fitting with IFS therapy and the transcendental meditation that Lynch himself practices and uses as an influence on his work and has argued for people to practice. If seen through that lens I think the film can have the optimistic reading I talked about a few pages ago in that it’s not nihilistic but therapeutic in digging to the seemingly intangible terrain of emotions and building the skills to be content with that emotion.

Since I practice and receive and have grown up with a parent who specializes in this IFS therapeutic framework (which has influenced a lot of my thoughts here) the similarities to Lynch’s films and own meditation are uncanny and I feel pretty strongly about this connection as a result, though I’m probably not explaining it clearly since IFS is challenging to grasp with tangible tools like language (for me still, a work in progress).

[DarkImbecile]

The literal last viewing I did for this project was Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil, which I think fits surprisingly well alongside the more clearly horrific Lynch features with a similar nightmare logic and roots in psychological concerns more straightforward than first meets the eye; I don't usually connect very deeply with the widely appreciated Italian horror directors, but this one struck me as more interesting than most I've seen from Fulci, Bava, and even Argento. Snuck in at the bottom of my list.

[therewillbeblus]

Good choice on last minute viewing, DI, definitely Bava's best horror, and the highest ranking Italian horror on my list.

In an expectedly unexpected move, I'm bumping something for Dutchman which takes a fierce dramatic play on race and transforms it into a more universally-deafening weaponization of menace on the audience that out-Pinters Pinter. I suspect this will be a head-shaking orphan but it's the epitome of social horror filmed with a terrifying tone and had more unpredictably jarring moments in 54 minutes than most of my list does across double that length, so on it goes to that populated hill on which I'll die alone.

[Ferocious Detritus]

I assume I can vote for Richard Ayoade's Garth Marenghi's Darkplace? I wish I'd realized this earlier to properly recommend it to everyone. It's basically a much more farcical take on the premise of Riget, which rather fittingly came out the same year as Stephen King's remake

Assume, recommend, rather fittingly.

[therewillbeblus]

God I hate 4/20

[domino harvey]

I intentionally chose 4/20 because the ultimate horror movie will be the Devil literally blazin’ it when we get to Hell

[therewillbeblus]

And in that moment he will giggle to himself and say: “Intentionally, ultimate, Hell.”