Just Keep Telling Yourself It's Only a Thread: Talking Time's Top 50 Horror Movies!

[YangusKhan]

The unfortunate situation with Dawn of the Dead is that it's tied up in licensing hell because the license holder is some kind of egomaniac, so there hasn't been a reprinting of the movie since like 2007 and that was only in Italy. You can't stream it anywhere either.

 

[Dracula]

The unfortunate situation with Dawn of the Dead is that it's tied up in licensing hell because the license holder is some kind of egomaniac, so there hasn't been a reprinting of the movie since like 2007 and that was only in Italy. You can't stream it anywhere either.

Seriously??? I had no idea about this. It's funny by way of comparison with Night, which thanks to the public domain thing Kishi mentioned has been abundantly available everywhere for ages.

 

[Vaeran]

It's been alluded to a few times already so maybe the story is pretty well known, but the reason for Night of the Living Dead being in the public domain is pretty funny. The film was originally going to be called "Night of the Flesh Eaters," but had its title changed prior to release. Unfortunately when the distributor put in the new title card, they forgot to also add the copyright notice back in, so it became public domain immediately upon release. Whoops. This is part of the reason the 1990 remake was made.

 

[ShakeWell]

The unfortunate situation with Dawn of the Dead is that it's tied up in licensing hell because the license holder is some kind of egomaniac, so there hasn't been a reprinting of the movie since like 2007 and that was only in Italy. You can't stream it anywhere either.

Yeah, so glad I have my 2004-ish DVD (with the extended Italian cut included).

It's been alluded to a few times already so maybe the story is pretty well known, but the reason for Night of the Living Dead being in the public domain is pretty funny. The film was originally going to be called "Night of the Flesh Eaters," but had its title changed prior to release. Unfortunately when the distributor put in the new title card, they forgot to also add the copyright notice back in, so it became public domain immediately upon release. Whoops. This is part of the reason the 1990 remake was made.

Yeah, it's nuts but until the mid-'70s if you didn't put the © and the year on the film, you didn't get copyright protections! But, like It's a Wonderful Life, one wonders to what extent being in the public domain helped the film become so well-known.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Two genres that are hard to make "epics" for are ones that often aim to create involuntary reactions in the viewer: comedy and horror. But Dawn of the Dead feels close in tone to an epic in that it follows characters over a long period of time as they try to survive a world where the monsters more or less won. If you can call it a victory. But it is really George Romero's examination of the spectre of capitalism in a post-paying for anything world. Consumerism is so comfortable that the dead head to the malls. As important as Night of the Living Dead is, this one MADE (as in cemented rather than originated) the "zombie" genre and despite many knock offs, few were as intelligent as Romero's films.

 

[Dracula]

No. 26 TIE

Scream (1996)
Points: 101 | Lists Neo Skimbleshanks (#1); Patrick (#25); Issun (#6); Beta Metroid (#15)
“There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie.”

​

Scream is a 1996 American slasher film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. The film stars David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, and Drew Barrymore. Released on December 20, it follows the character of Sidney Prescott (Campbell), a high school student in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California, who becomes the target of a mysterious killer in a Halloween costume known as Ghostface. The film combines black comedy and "whodunit" mystery with the violence of the slasher genre to satirize the clichés of the horror movie genre.

Drac’s Notes: Perhaps the most decade-characteristic horror movie of the 90s, Scream seeks to disassemble the tropes present in slasher films from the 70s and 80s. Like many of the sneering parodies of the 90s, it picks at the surface-level qualities of slashers, but doesn’t quite cut all the way to the heart. However, Scream isn’t quite a parody - it’s funny, at times, sure, but in practice it’s itself a legitimately frightening film, and I think this part of it is the part that ages well and keeps it firmly in the pantheon of great horror films. Tarantino once said you can’t really subvert the slasher genre, because it has to be rote or else it ceases to be a slasher. Scream takes it about as far from the genre roots as it can go.

Oh, and we should talk about ghostface. It’s easy to forget that, before Scream, the ghostface mask was actually a common Halloween accoutrement (apparently designed by the Fun World costume company). Nowadays, when you see it, it’s almost always Scream-branded. But the masked killer was popular enough to spawn a series of sequels and spin-offs which I’ve never seen and don’t much care to. Hey, if you’re a Scream franchise superfan, let’s hear about it!

Predator (1987)
Points: 101 | Lists: Sabrecat (#12); Kishi (#15); Beta Metroid (#12); Shakewell (#8)
“If it bleeds...we can kill it.”

Predator is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by John McTiernan and written by brothers Jim and John Thomas. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the leader of an elite paramilitary rescue team on a mission to save hostages in guerrilla-held territory in Central America, who encounter the deadly Predator (Kevin Peter Hall), a technologically-advanced alien who stalks and hunts them down.

Drac’s Notes: Speaking of iconic, franchise-building costumes, here we have another entry that may end up being a bit contentious. Is Predator a horror film? Oh, I dunno. It certainly feels like one in some ways - here we have a group of people being stalked through the woods by an unknowable, monstrous killer with nigh-on supernatural powers. The difference is, instead of screaming, horny, teenage victims, we follow a group of roided-up yelling totally straight manly men with machine guns. I’m not sure what I think.

Well, I think I want to see more of that big muscly guy. I liked him. He made me feel safe.

Oh, did he? Perhaps you'd like to see another movie.

I mean...okay...but now I'm worried...

No. 25 The Terminator (1984)
Points: 103 | Lists: Kishi (#16); Beta Metroid (#9); Shakewell (#7); Jbear (#13)
“It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!”

​

The Terminator is a 1984 American science fiction film directed by James Cameron. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose son will one day become a savior against machines in a post-apocalyptic future.

Drac’s Notes: Y’all decided, not me, to put two high-octane Schwarzenegger films on a list of horror movies. Before the Terminator franchise was about ever-more-convoluted time travel shenanigans and armies of skeleton robots, it was a fairly simple film about a woman fleeing a robotic murder-machine. Schwarzenegger is possibly better remembered as the reformed, heroic murder machine from Terminator 2, but in the first film, he is nothing more than a silent killer, walking slowly through crowded bars and killing whoever he wants with total calm. Actually, I have no problem deeming this film as horror. I’ve had literal nightmares where I’m being pursued by a terminator. The idea of an unkillable monster who slowly follows you until you die is fucking horrifying, and Cameron’s movie does a fantastic job expressing this horror. So what separates this from the similar Predator? Well, the main thing is, the characters in Predator have more autonomy. They’re better equipped to deal with the threat. Sarah Connor becomes an action hero later, but in the first film, she’s just a waitress, and Kyle Reese, the soldier sent from the future to help her, is no match for the might of a single killer robot. Ultimately Sarah has only herself to depend on, and it’s really easy to feel that fear as she flees. Great film. Maybe the best Terminator movie. Oops!

GREAT, now I'm gonna have nightmares about the big muscly guy. Thanks, Video Knight!

A pleasure to be of service.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I didn’t vote for Scream because, frankly, didn’t care much for it, or Predator for the expected reasons of not being able to really consider it horror...

But Terminator was a plain oversight on my part and consider the fact that it doesn’t have another couple dozen points is my own fault

 

[Falselogic]

Octo also thinks the Terminator is a 'good dog.'

And to be fair, it is one in Terminator 2.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Failure to appreciate good dogs is how one identifies Terminators

 

[Vaeran]

But the masked killer was popular enough to spawn a series of sequels and spin-offs which I’ve never seen and don’t much care to. Hey, if you’re a Scream franchise superfan, let’s hear about it!​

I'm no superfan, as I've seen each of the sequels exactly once and my brain has retained approximately zero percent of their content. But while 2 and 3 felt largely disposable, for some reason I found myself enjoying Scream 4 at the time. Maybe I was just in a generous mood that night.

The original Scream didn't quite make my list, but it was close, as that opening sequence with Drew Barrymore is one of the all-time greats.

 

[Lokii]

Okay this is getting ridiculous. I know we're just having fun but there has to be a line in the sand. I'm sorry but Scary Movie just isn't horror!

 

[Falselogic]

It's certainly more horror than the Terminator or the Predator.

 

[YangusKhan]

But Terminator was a plain oversight on my part and consider the fact that it doesn’t have another couple dozen points is my own fault

This is me also! And Terminator is one of my favorite movies of all time! And I distinctly remember making a post (probably more than one) on TT 2.0 in support of it being a horror movie!! What a dope I am.

 

[Daikaiju]

I tell you one thing. We should make the TIE fighter the mascot for this list.

 

[Patrick]

I put Scream at #25, and I’m now realizing that probably pushed it up past the Romero zombie movies. D’oh! Oh well, Scream is pretty fun.

I just re-watched Night of the Living Dead in October, and it’s still great. What a classic. I have a DVD of Dawn of the Dead, and I didn’t realize that it was hard to get now. I’ll have to revisit it soon.

 

[Kishi]

Predator is a horror film. It wants you to think it's an action movie, sure. There's the bicep handshake, a smiling Arnold chomping a cigar, and the sequence where the good guys annihilate an enemy camp with gratuitous one-liners and pyrotechnics. But all of that is at the beginning of the picture, and it's all a trick.

So what separates this from the similar Predator? Well, the main thing is, the characters in Predator have more autonomy. They’re better equipped to deal with the threat.

This is the thing: Despite appearances, the victims in Predator aren't equipped to deal with the threat, at all. It's similar to the Viet Nam allegory of the in-over-their-heads Marines in Aliens, but Predator places a finer point on it. One of the film's centerpieces is a scene where Dutch's group spy a glimpse of their attacker and fire bullets, shells, and grenades into the bush, uninterrupted, for a full minute. They squeeze till there's nothing left. It looks like they cut down every tree for ten meters in front of them. Pure gun pornography. Then the smoke clears, and they realize: "We hit nothing." This moment is, if not the single turning point, the clearest statement that the action hero approach built up in the first act is in fact less than useless.

In Aliens, you have Ripley asserting this from the beginning, and you can immediately tell her self-assured jarhead cohort are going to have to come around to her way of thinking when the hammer inevitably drops. But Predator effectively disguises itself as a different kind of movie. We're in it with nothing but the jarheads themselves, and so we share in a sinking feeling as their macho bravado gets chipped away and replaced by a welling fear of death.

Then they die. Some die screaming in defiance, some stage bold last stands, and some throw themselves to death expecting to kill their adversary in the process—but they die all the same. In the end, Dutch alone survives by rejecting convention to the point of assuming an image of primitive humans: crawling through muck, staying quiet as death, and stealing victory with the type of cleverness born only from sheer desperation.

 

[SabreCat]

Kishi said it way better than I could have! Pale shadows of thoughts like those are what led me to put it on my list.

 

[Dracula]

Alright! I can buy that. That's a good angle. I need to rewatch Predator sometime soon.

Speaking of watching stuff, I've recently watched two films from this list that I hadn't seen before.

Annihilation

Spoiler: Review

Loved this movie. There's a certain type of theme in horror and sci-fi that really gets to me. Let's call it "left in the fridge horror." It's the idea that there's something been left somewhere for a while, and when it's rediscovered, it's going to be way more horrible than when it was put there. Annihilation has a lot of that. And there's a very scary bear. I'm already frightened by wild animals. Give one your dead friend's voice and a missing face and it's a billion times worse. Also love a horror movie with bright colors. It makes it harder to expect what's coming.

I enjoyed this one enough that I went ahead and started reading the book, too, although it hasn't quite sunk it's teeth in me yet.

Ring (1998)

Spoiler: Review

Watched this last night, and even though I knew pretty much exactly what to expect going in, I still had a hard time sleeping. Many of the scare setpieces and locations feel substantially similar to the American version, which was a surprise for me. I think the Scary Tape is a little bit more disturbing in the Verbinski version. But I love the angle in this one, the idea of taking a journalistic approach to a haunting. It still feels fresh even 20+ years later. Sadako's design is pitch-perfect disturbing. When she comes out of the TV at the end, I love the way she drags herself along the ground, as if she's forgotten any form of locomotion except the futile clawing at the sides of the well. It's no wonder her design has been referenced and reinterpreted so many times in the years since. True horror classic.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Wait, was The Worlds Scariest Bear just using the missing explorers voice? I thought it was the explorer, turned mid-way into a bear, and only able to repeat one statement.

Either way, a Very Beary Scare.

 

[Falselogic]

I don't think the movie even tries to answer that question...

 

[Zef]

Thematically, it's both.

Spoiler

The Shimmer is Change. Change within and change without. You change everything you touch, and everything that touches you, changes you, on some level. You can interpret this on a philosophical level, as the film's greater theme posits, or you can take it literally as stated by the imagery. When a great personal tragedy hits, you can reject it, fight it, but it's still having a powerful effect on you; you can submit to it and lose yourself to it; you can learn to live with it, and even though you won't be the same you that went in, it's still you because you can't be anyone, or anything, else.

That's why all of our characters are, I don't want to say damaged, but irreversibly changed by defining events in their lives. From Tessa's outward scars, which she tries to hide throughout the expedition until she's made peace with herself (and disappears into the flora), to Lena's deeper, unresolved issues in her marriage.

So yeah, the Bear killed Cass. That's self-evident. But in doing so, it, itself, was changed by the experience. You can think that it absorbed some essence of her, or you can think that she took it over, or you can think that they became one and the same. However you interpret it is your call, and what this interpretation represents to you, in the great allegory of the film, is also up to you.

Also remember that, at one point, we see two identical deer running around. Was it one deer that became two? Was it two different deer that, catalyzed by the Shimmer, changed each other equally until they became indistinguishable copies of each other?

 

[Adrenaline]

I get the arguments that Terminator and Predator are horror movies, I just don't particularly agree with them. It's a structure versus tone thing. Terminator definitely gets closer to horror to me, but the experience of watching it just elicits more of a feeling of excitement and suspense than fear or terror.

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

For me, it's a horror movie if I'm afraid someone will suddenly produce aloud noise or come out of nowhere to do some threatening movements for psychologically implausible reasons. ("I am a future robot" or "I am an alien" count) There are other reasons things can be horror movies as well, but the former's enough.

Scream is good. I put it at number one but that's kind of arbitrary... (list making does not come naturally to me) It's a very comforting movie with a great cast and great music. The dialogue is absolutely part of the appeal and a reason the film holds up. I like the whole (film) franchise. (didn't finish watching season 1 of the tv show) This is probably my favorite thing Courtney Cox has done.

Fun fact: people dream disproportionately about men bc they often dream about being chased by random hostiles, almost always guys. But your brain goes with what you know when it casts dreams so I'm often pursued by movie slashers - I've dreamed about Freddy, Jason. Slashers can level the playing field... one time I had Urban Legend's parka killer. (Rebecca Gayheart) I'm not sure I've ever dreamed about ghostface, but that could be Emma Roberts. More importantly, it could be Laurie Metcalf. Less importantly and more speculatively, it could be Emily Mortimer. Important franchise, Scream.

 

[Issun]

But Terminator was a plain oversight on my part and consider the fact that it doesn’t have another couple dozen points is my own fault

Yeah, it absolutely is a horror film and I'm surprised I didn't think of it when making my list.

Scream is a very smart flick and I'm pretty sure it's the only slasher film I've ever seen.

 

[ShakeWell]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1216736141505978368

 

[Zef]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1216736141505978368

I never thought of Jingle All The Way as a slasher before, but I can see that.

 

[ShakeWell]

I mean, Howard does pop up at stores across the Twin Cities metro area and make retail employees miserable, AND he does it at the behest of his son, so he is kinda like a slasher.

 

[Adrenaline]

Honestly though the "What the heck is horror anyway?" conversation is one of my favorite things about this thread

 

[Kirin]

My big realization from this last batch is Scream is almost a quarter century old. Jesus. Now *that's* horrifying.

(I also overlooked Terminator but it probably would've made my list if I'd thought of it.)

 

[Dracula]

No. 24 Prince of Darkness (1987)
Points: 104 | Lists: YangusKhan (#2); Torzelbaum (#2); Octopus Prime (#3)
“You will not be saved by the holy ghost. You will not be saved by the god Plutonium. In fact, YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!”

Prince of Darkness is a 1987 American supernatural horror film directed, written and scored by John Carpenter. A group of graduate students and scientists uncover an ancient canister in an abandoned church, but when they open the container, they inadvertently unleash a strange liquid and an evil force on all humanity.

Drac’s Notes: I was surprised to see so many points allotted to this film! I have sort of seen it - you may have noticed the VHS copy stacked in the background of some of my photos. I've been a fan of John Carpenter's work for many years, but this is a movie I hadn't even heard of until a few years ago. I put on the VHS one night while I was doing other stuff, and that’s definitely not the way to experience this film. Just by watching the trailer I think you can get a good sense that this is a weird, confusing movie, and certainly one I need to give the time of day.

Shall we see one more for the week?

Sure!

Good. This one is a Video Knight special presentation.

No. 23 Videodrome (1983)
Points: 111 | Lists: Neo Skimbleshanks (#17); YangusKhan (#3); Kishi (#10); Johnny Unusual (#7)
“Death to Videodrome. Long live the new flesh!”

Videodrome is a 1983 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, and Debbie Harry. Set in Toronto during the early 1980s, it follows the CEO of a small UHF television station who stumbles upon a broadcast signal featuring violence and torture. The layers of deception and mind-control conspiracy unfold as he uncovers the signal's source, and loses touch with reality in a series of increasingly bizarre hallucinations.

Drac’s Notes: At last we come to the first, but not the last, David Cronenberg picture on this list. Cronenberg is the name in body horror. This is a movie wherein James Woods reaches into his own stomach, pulls out a gun, then the gun grows into his hand, then he uses the gun to shoot cancer bullets. But beyond the grody SFX stuff, Videodrome has interesting stuff to say about how we experience media, and maybe what it means to have a body (the latter is a recurring theme in Cronenberg’s oeuvre). This is an unforgettable film and I recommend it to anyone who can handle a bit of gross body horror stuff.

Uhhhh, new rule. No more Video Knight special presentations.