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Brown underpants? Check! Brown trousers? Check!...May 09 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Sharks, zombies, hockey masks, long metal fingernails, axes, aliens, crazy people, dead people... mis-casting How do you define a “best” horror film? Well, I’ve decided to use the ol’ “brown underpants” system – whereby a horror film’s worth comes strictly from its ability to scare. So while many of these films aren’t “best” in every aspect of film-making they sure did their job of horrifying me – so stick with me through a list featuring the occasional bad direction, fuzzy footage and terrible acting in the search for the TEN BEST HORROR FILMS 1. Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh... who wasn’t scared to death when this film came out? Though no doubt looked down upon by the true horror-film blue-bloods, this film really deserves a lot more credit for being the horrifying masterpiece it is. A disembowelled girl thrashing about a room spraying blood everywhere. A disembowelled boy thrashing about a room spraying blood everywhere. A disembowelled.... you get the point, but it was all pretty shocking nonetheless. This film was probably one of the first true-gore horror films of note to ever exist, and in my eyes its total physical horror has never been duplicated since. Added to the raw gore is the lasting impression made by its villain, Freddy. His razor fingers, stripey sweater and beaten-up hat has made the basis for many a Halloween costume, and what about that high-pitched grating sound made by those claws scraping metal? It was certainly a hallmark of this film, and even today the sound of screeching metal makes me wince. It’s just a pity that all the sequels sucked. 2. Night of the Living Dead. More overwhelmingly creepy than out-right shocking, this film was pretty horrifying nonetheless. Perhaps it was the innocent mind of my youthful age, but there was something so realistic about its black and white footage and the amazingly suspenseful journey which finds zombies slowly breaking into a house boarded up with terrified human beings who become zombie-efied, one by one. The whole overtone of the film is eerie and sick because it feels somehow real, perhaps because of the natural filming-style which works better than the modern inclination towards Hollywood showiness and effects. 3. The Shining “Here’s... Johnny!” Eerie as hell and possibly the best Stephen King book to ever be adapted thanks to its brilliant director (Stanley Kuprick, of course) and star actor. Jack Nicholson can be scary in almost any role – his presence is commanding and his performances frightening and enthralling, though this time it’s his descent as a nice guy being dragged under by madness which instils fear in the viewer. He plays a fellow who slowly falls under the hypnotic spell of a haunted hotel which is determined to see its inhabitants dead like its previous occupants. His son, who is gifted with a telepathic power known as “The Shining”, is the only person able to put a stop to the house and it’s creepy-goings on. The scene where Jack Nicholson chases his family with an axe through the house and snow at the end is now typical because of its constantly being satired though it’s still one of the creepiest scenes I’ve ever seen. 4. Les Diaboliques (“The Fiends”) A film made in the earlier half of the nineteen hundreds (the forties, I think), The Fiends is probably not going to make a lot of lists under this topic because not many people have seen it, which is a damned pity because this eerie black and white French (subtitled) film is a certain brown-trouser forerunner. The head mistress of a boarding school discovers her husband is having an affair with one of her teachers and the two conspire to kill the scoundrel. Whilst the mild-natured head mistress is uncertain about the entire charade the teacher, a bossy blonde woman, manages to coerce her into dumping her husband’s body into the school pool to create the appearance of a drowning. The next morning, overcome with anxiety and dread over their actions, the teacher rushes to the pool to discover the body missing, thereby starting a sequence of events which show, via obscure little signs, that her husband is in fact not dead, including that of a student who insists he has seen him walking around the school grounds. All sounds rather typical-horror? Well, it IS – in a way. The film was remade in the nineties into a sad affair starring Sharon Stone (called, I think, rather incorrectly, Diabolical, or something similar) which by no means should be compared to the brilliant earlier film, which is stylish and slick in a way that modern horror films no longer are. Also, it includes two of the most frightening scenes I’ve ever seen: one, when the teacher runs up to discover the body missing in the pool, and the second towards the end – I won’t spoil it, but the horror and suspense it creates is truly of the “oh my god oh my god oh my GOD” variety. If you can manage to get your hands on this film, it’s well worth it. 5. Jaws Don’t go into the water! I was too young to witness the hype and kafuffle that surrounded this film’s release, but everyone’s heard the tales of how people found it so scary nearly everyone was afraid to go to the beach, and with the possibility of a shark this big existing who could blame them? Some poo-poohed the size of the shark (for it was bigger than ever previously recorded) but I have it on good authority (well... my Mum) that they found one even bigger shortly after this film was released, and I can only imagine this served to heighten the effects of the film. Okay, some people say that the shark itself looks mechanical in this film, but I defy anyone to say they didn’t squirm with horror when they first saw it lunge it’s body out of the water and swallow half the boat – and one of the guys – at the end of this film. It was horrifying and fascinating. And it’s a pleasant surprise to discover that even though this is really just a film about a giant fish it’s all done fairly stylishly, no doubt because of it’s amazing director, Stephen Spielberg. 6. Aliens It’s hard to know whether this film is more suspense or horror but I suppose it’s a bit of both. A very popular film which no doubt helped Sigourney Weaver’s career, it tells the story of a team of tough astronaut-army types who travel to a planet covered by, well, aliens. The whole film is basically a cat-and-mouse game as it’s star, Ripley (Weaver) tries to stay alive along with the help of a young blonde girl she’s picked up along the way. I re-watched this film a few years ago and half-way through, amidst a mouthful of coffee, spluttered, “look! It’s that guy!” when a pre-Mad About You Paul Reiser popped onto the screen. He plays the baddie, and you can’t help cheering when the Aliens make worms meat of him. Hmmm. 7. Scream A stylish mixture of humour and gore, this modern horror film lends much to its brilliant opening scene which is surely one of the most shocking horror scenes of the modern era. Everyone’s seen the bit I’m talking about: Drew Barrymore in a bad orange wig and nice jumper, phone pressed to one ear, lips open, chest visibly pounding in shock…. And the speaker on the other line telling her, “I want to know who I’m looking at.” “What?” she answers. “I want to know who I’m talking to,” he responds smoothly. I think everyone must have freaked out at that bit, if only because it’s impossible not to imagine what YOU would do if some stranger rang you up and said that. The rest of the film doesn’t live up to the suspenseful cat-and-mouse earlier scene but it’s still very good, especially because it makes fun of itself even as it proudly thrives in its horror-flick nature. Only, make sure you don’t watch the sequels. They suck. 8. Friday the 13th Alright, it’s b-grade, but still fairly scary. Also, it was the film that spawned all over those teenagers-all-getting-together-for-a-sex-romp-only-to-have-their-heads-lopped-off-by-an-axe type films. Also, Jason, the villain, made the hockey mask famous as a costume of terror much like Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street’s outfit did. It’s a film that’s also fun to watch because of the awful dated clothing and bad acting. 9. What Lies Beneath Alright, I’m a little ashamed at having added this b-class thriller, but I’ve thrown it in only because of the dead woman (Amber Valletta, looking decidedly less supermodel-ish what with the decaying skin and bodily bruises, though probably with the same amount of meat on her dead as alive – ha!). This is the most realistic and frightening looking dead person I’ve ever seen on film, and having her pop-up unexpectedly (as a reflection in glass, out of the water of a bath tub) is a typical director’s trick as far as horror films go, but it works here. It’s just a pity that she gets so little screen-time. She’s a truly scary dead person and ghost (owing completely to make-up, for she doesn’t really get the chance to act), though I don’t know if it’s worth watching the rest of this typical film just to see her. 10. Anna Karenina (tongue-in-cheek addendum) All right, this isn’t the sort of horror everyone was talking about, but.... Oh my God. Who would possibly witness this film and not feel the true horror of a classic tale gone terribly, terribly wrong? Has there ever been a film made before or since with such inexcusable atrocities in casting, direction, and plot design? To create a perfectly b-grade horror story is one thing: at least it’s honest about its awfulness (take tripe such as Urban Legends and Idle Hands as examples); but to desecrate a classic tale so relentlessly indicates, surely, some insane cruelty of mind. The most shocking editing job in the world gives us this film with plot holes so big it’s a wonder the actors didn’t fall through them (by the end of this piece of crud you’ll be wishing they did, just to rid the awful performances of Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean et al. from your eyes). An abomination the faint-hearted should avoid and only the very easily-pleased should consider (and only then if Days of Our Lives isn’t on).  |
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by Stephen_Murray
by carstairs38
by lindaohio
