eFilmCritic

[Rob Gonsalves]

Something's fundamentally wrong with a list that doesn't have Halloween anywhere on it.

Weinberg, go spew spittle at him.
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But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams.

- Iris Barry, Let's Go to the Movies, 1926
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Shoot him again. His soul is still dancing.

[David Cornelius]

Well, who has room for Halloween when Candyman II needs a place on the list?

[MP Bartley]

Cube? Really? I mean, I dig the flick but I don't know if I'd even call it a horror.

And I'm so glad the author has seen so many pre-80s flicks - apart from the glaringly obvious ones really...
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"We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc just wasting good matches?"

[UDM]

Hellraiser is #1? It has its merits, but I seem to recall that it falls apart toward the end (due to that age-old culprit, studio interference).


UDM

[SeveredAreolas]

What about Evil Dead? Silence of the Lambs? Seven? The Shining? Each of these should easily qualify more so than at least 10-15 of the movies on this list.

F.
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http://blog.myspace.com/severedareolas

[Zebra 3]

Black Christmas ('74) and Jaws ('75) didn't make the list!?
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'Huuutch!' - Starsky

[Jack Sommersby]

Must admit to liking Carpenter's grossly-underrated Vampires very much, so I was glad to see it on a list.
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"Joe the Plumber -- you can quote me -- is a dumbass." -- Meghan McCain

[Jason Whyte]

I think we all need to put up our own Top 50 horror film lists on here.
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"I talked to Jeremy Piven on the phone, and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury. So my understanding is that he is leaving showbusiness to pursue a career as a thermometer." -- David Mamet

[MP Bartley]

I'm no horror afficiando, so my choices may be a little obvious, but here's mine nevertheless:

50) The Brood

49) Cabin Fever - yeah, Roth's an arsehole but this one works.

4 Jeepers Creepers - 2nd half sucks, but that first half...

47) Shaun of the Dead - for all the great jokes, the zombies themselves are never made silly.

46) Dracula - 1930s Universal version.

45) Plague of the Zombies

44) Evil Dead

43) The Howling

42) Candyman

41) 28 Days Later - you could stick the sequel in there too.

40) Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein - what, above both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein? Yep. Tarantino put it best when he said the funny bits are really funny, but the scary bits are really scary - which is why Young Frankenstein hasn't made the list. An honourable mention to their encounter with Dr. Jekyll too.

39) Dracula - Hammer version from the 1950s.

3 Ghostbusters - c'mon, that bit in the library at the beginning? Terrifying.

37) The Others

36) Don't Look Now

35) Rosemary's Baby

34) An American werewolf in London

33) The Wicker Man - original. Duh.

32) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre - original. Duh.

31) Manhunter - not the best Lecter film, but the scariest.

30) Gremlins - not as wacky as you first think. The Gremlins following Billy's mother around the house still haunts me.

29) Dawn of the Dead - original, but the remake can hold its head proudly.

2 Night of the Demon - or Curse of the Demon in the US.

27) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

26) The Exorcist

25) Nosferatu

24) Salem's Lot - original. Still the best vampire flick ever.

23) The Birds

22) The Exorcist 3 - best scare ever in this one.

21) The Omen

20) Ringu

19) The Fog

1 Friday the 13th

17) Poltergeist

16) Quatermass and the Pit

15) Invasion of the Bodysnatchers - 1970s version. Yeah, it's probably more sci-fi than horror - but it scares the living daylights out of me.

14) Alien - Sci-fi or horror? Both actually.

13) Se7en

12) Session 9

11) The Thing - See Alien for justification.

10) The Innocents

9) A Tale of Two Sisters

The Haunting - original, which is the scariest haunted house film ever.

7) The Descent - scariest film I've ever seen at the cinema.

6) Carrie - the lesson is, never piss a girl off who's on her period.

5) The Blair Witch Project - yeah yeah, there's as many haters as lovers for this one. But I'll champion it's undeniable power til the day I die.

4) Night of the Living Dead

3) Halloween

2) Psycho

1) The Shining - yeah it's obvious, but fuck it. It crawls under your skin like no other.[/b]
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"We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc just wasting good matches?"

[Rob Gonsalves]

The Shining is intellectualized anti-horror to such a perverse degree that it has become one of the heavyweights of modern horror, endlessly ripped off.

I think Spartacus was really Kubrick's last genre film. After that he just made Kubrick films, period. Consider how lame it sounds to call 2001 or Clockwork Orange "science fiction films," or Full Metal Jacket a "war film"...or The Shining a "horror film."

I think of the scene Stephen King hated so much, when Wendy is looking at all the typed pages and then Kubrick cuts to Jack slowly approaching her, instead of having him pop up suddenly in the frame, like every other director would do. Kubrick didn't go for the "boo!" effect. He went for something else, and the choice is so deliberately odd that it's far more effective than "Boo!"

But if you want genuine pants-shitting terror, Kubrick gives you that, too: those damn twin girls..."Come and play with us, Danny...forever...and ever...and ever..." Goddamn, that gives me chills to this day.
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But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams.

- Iris Barry, Let's Go to the Movies, 1926
----------
Shoot him again. His soul is still dancing.

[MP Bartley]

It took me 4 attempts to watch The Shining all the way through - mainly because I was too terrified to watch anymore after the twins started popping up.
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"We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc just wasting good matches?"

[Jason Whyte]