Do you like scary movies?
October 26, 2020 8:39 AM   Subscribe

What's your favorite scary movie? Do you really like scary movies? The low-budget schlocky kind, the classic 80's horror kind? Zombies? Werewolves? Creeping hands? Masked killers with implausible murder weapons?

Triskaidekafiles is a comprehensive review site of those movies. Focusing on the "cinematic messterpieces from the 80" . The site's founder has been around and watching horror movies of questionable quality for over a decade.

The reviewer has a clear love of these movies, but at the same time does not fear to point out the bad lighting, writing, acting, directing... the list goes on :) And yet - finds joy in the dubious quality all the same.
posted by FritoKAL (65 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
I was going to post some links to my favorite of the reviews, and had to pull myself away after falling down the rabbit hole of opening about 20 tabs to skim reviews I remembered being amused by - and that way my friends leads to also falling down the eternal black hole of wikipedia or tvtropes.

Disclaimer: The reviewer is one of my twitter mutuals and ages ago we were part of the same fanfic community.
posted by FritoKAL at 8:41 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Do you like scary movies?

No. Life is scary enough.
posted by terrapin at 8:45 AM on October 26, 2020 [10 favorites]


I'm not a horror movie fan per se, but my wife is so I wind up watching a lot of them with her. Usually I can get through them, but one I noped out on was The Descent...once it got to the part where (probably not a spoiler) one woman breaks her leg I was out of there. It was like that movie was specifically constructed in a laboratory to freak me out.

Last night we watched Ganja & Hess, which wasn't really all that scary but was definitely unnerving in parts (great sound design and use of music) and not at all what either of us were expecting, and earler this month I finally watched the original Halloween with her and enjoyed it (aside from laughing a bit at how nobody in that movie - even by horror movie standards - had any peripheral vision or spacial awareness whatsoever).

If I had to choose a favourite horror (or at least scary) movie...The Devil's Backbone and the orginal version of The Haunting are two that spring to mind.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:58 AM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


I grew up during the heyday of 80s horror films and saw all the Fridays and Nightmares first run in the theater. Friday 3 in 3D was a special favorite dose of schlock.

I think Hellraiser (the first film only) is a really interesting film. One of the few I can rewatch these days. I don't get into the horror that much anymore.
posted by hippybear at 9:12 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


I've always found the Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn romantic comedy vehicle "Overboard" to be absolutely terrifying. Also, "Hereditary."
posted by thivaia at 9:19 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


I'm a fan of Richard's Gale's short film The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon. Also, Nick Deboner's homage to one of Kubrick's finest films, The Chickening, is a must-see.
posted by Schadenfreude at 9:21 AM on October 26, 2020 [10 favorites]


The BBC's television adaptation of M.R. James' "Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad". Either the 1968 or the 2010 version, they're both great. If we're sticking to the 80s, then John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness".
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:28 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


> I've always found the Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn romantic comedy vehicle "Overboard" to be absolutely terrifying.

Yeah, that movie is creepy AF. There are a lot of 80s comedies which could be remade as horror movies or at least psychological thrillers without changing the basic premise at all.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:28 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


There are a lot of 80s comedies which could be remade as horror movies or at least psychological thrillers without changing the basic premise at all.

In a lot of cases, changing the music to a minor key would be all it takes.
posted by mhoye at 9:29 AM on October 26, 2020 [12 favorites]


Overboard with Donald Glover and Janelle Monae? SHUDDUP AND TAKE ALLLL MY MONEYS!
posted by sexyrobot at 9:36 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


I love horror films - especially the ones that aim to be genuinely disquieting, surreal or nightmarish like The Vanishing, Jacob's Ladder, Eraserhead, Neco z Alenky - but also the schlock monster films, the 80s films that everyone nervously pretends is schlock even though they're deeply traumatic (The Blob, man, no movie would have child deaths today, let alone agonizingly slow child deaths), the weird Italian stuff (Suspiria 1977 ♥), the surprisingly artistic and beautiful remakes of the weird Italian stuff (Suspiria 2018 ♥), all the stupid Troma films... I used to say my favorite film was The Wicker Man - the horror version with Christopher Lee and the comedy with Nic Cage. The only stuff I don't like are the "torture porn" films where the whole thing is just supposed to be humans inflicting suffering on someone helpless for no reason. There is enough of that in reality, and the situation does not inspire horror in me so much as anger.

A lot of the films on this site are ones I'd give a pass due to limited time, but I see Phantasm so I am content.
posted by Lonnrot at 9:37 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


"What's your favorite scary movie? Do you really like scary movies? The low-budget schlocky kind, the classic 80's horror kind? Zombies? Werewolves? Creeping hands? Masked killers with implausible murder weapons?"

I recently discovered that I LOVE horror films, BUT mainly the ones that fit the inverse of the above description. Give me all your Krisha, Don't Look Now, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Get Out, The Endless, The Witch, Diabolique, Rosemary's Baby, Mother. Basically, if someone's being psychologically tortured within the confines of what should otherwise be normal circumstances, I am there.
posted by iamkimiam at 9:47 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]


PS - Ernest Scared Stupid: legitimately scary movie. The vehicle is a dumb children's comedy about a good-hearted know-nothing who nonetheless always manages to rise to the occasion, sure, but the delivery is a grotesque mucous-covered mat of hair that organically grew from a tree in the vaguely mocking shape of man to abduct children and transform them into wooden carvings through a process that is evidently slow and extremely painful with every indication that the pain continues indefinitely after it is complete. There are no barriers that can stop this thing, no wards, no magic spells. It is protean, can take any form at any time, can phase through walls, could appear to you as your perfectly safe, ordinary bed only to wrap you in its nauseating tendrils the moment you close your eyes. All that stops it in the end is being run over by a pickup truck, something we actually see as the film does not even consider sparing us one graphically violent moment.

I grew up watching horror films of all stripes, including "grownup" films like Alien or The Wall. Ernest Scared Stupid is the one that gave me night terrors. Such a great, underrated classic.
posted by Lonnrot at 9:47 AM on October 26, 2020 [13 favorites]


Basically, if someone's being psychologically tortured within the confines of what should otherwise be normal circumstances, I am there.

I bet you're a blast to be quarantined with! ;)
posted by hippybear at 9:59 AM on October 26, 2020 [14 favorites]


I suspect there will be a glut of found footage quarantine films in a few years.
posted by iamkimiam at 10:35 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Lonnrot: Earnest Scared Stupid is the movie that scared me so badly as a kid that for years I'd have to sleep on the couch if I thought about it too much because of that scene where a kid looks under his bed, sees nothing there, and then turns over to find the monster in bed with him. Monster can't be in behind me if there is no room behind me (my big 6 year old brain thought). Years of intermittent counch sleeping. Years.

Bless you for validating me.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 10:40 AM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


I second The Haunting (1963). I first saw it a few years after its release. It was a school night so I was supposed to be in bed asleep. But no, I had my little portable B&W TV on in the dark, listening with the earplug from my transistor radio and not making a sound. I've seen it a number of times since then and it has aged beautifully. The cast, the pacing, the cinematography, the sets, the script are all wonderful. And still scary...
posted by jim in austin at 10:41 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


Some ~80s-themed horror books on sale this week include Kindle versions of Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism and Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction. Also, the discount is small, but Valancourt is bundling all 13 of their republished Paperbacks from Hell series (Goodreads list).
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:42 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


I loved Blair Witch Project, and I've loved so many found-footage horror movies since then. I know they're mostly motion sickness with occasional jump scares, but they're plausibly scary in a way that other horror isn't. The first three Paranormal Activities were such good first watches. I don't think found-footage horror holds up to a re-watch, but I love the initial straining to see what's happening.

One of my favorite horror movies Shaun of the Dead. It's genuinely funny, emotional, and scary. I'm not sure if Midsommar counts as horror, but I loved that too.

Poltergeist is the movie that scared me the most, full stop. I was way too young to watch it, and I don't know that I'll ever get over the clown/tree scene. Poltergeist II with the terrifying preacher also scared me, even if the rest of it wasn't great.
posted by gladly at 10:44 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Metafilter: psychologically tortured within the confines of what should otherwise be normal circumstances
posted by otherchaz at 10:54 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


one I noped out on was The Descent...once it got to the part where (probably not a spoiler) one woman breaks her leg I was out of there.

I don't remember that because I noped out even earlier. In the first five minutes one person needs to crawl through a very small, body-diameter tunnel. She gets a bit stuck in that very small hole, a very small hole under a mountain of rock where rescue would be difficult or impossible because the hole is very small. I hear there are monsters in the movie but small hole very small can't wiggle forward wedged in can't wiggle back very tight very small...
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:00 AM on October 26, 2020 [14 favorites]


Yep, that was me, too. That scenario you just described, plus a cave-in, plus a broken leg. Nopity-nope-nope.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:02 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


quick search of Triskaidekafiles finds SOCIETY, so we're good ...

Because this is when we are introduced to the Shunt. What is the Shunt? I...I don't know. The best I can describe it is some sort of orgy, but that is only scratching the surface. These people are not really people. What they are, I also do not know, good reader..


previously on Metafilter: the truth about the 1 percent (lots of spoilers)
posted by philip-random at 11:11 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


I have to laugh at myself because I legit thought the first Paranormal Activity was real. I must have missed the reviews or whatever hype there was because it wasn't until the end that I learned it was not real. So my first watch of it was truly terrifying. I then proceeded to win one my many Mother of the Year crowns a week later when I had my 10 year old son watch it with me (not telling him it was fake).

As a penance for doing that to my kid, I have lost my taste for horror movies and can't really tolerate them anymore.
posted by sundrop at 11:14 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


I don't get into the horror that much anymore.

With current movies it can be hard to tell in advance whether it's going to be horror or just torture porn, which I don't find fun at all.

Usually it's not so bad; lack of monsters means pr(torture porn) is high; monsters means it's low. But the exceptions on both sides are annoying.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:15 AM on October 26, 2020


There's no entry for my all-time favorite movie, Phantom of the Paradise.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:15 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]


Fail Safe. Terrifying.
posted by kinnakeet at 11:48 AM on October 26, 2020


Long ago, my little sister and I (about 11 yo) were watching Creature Feature on TV one night. On tap: 1958's The Blob. The meteor crashes, the guy gets it on his hand (a bit scary) and goes to the clinic, and we're still fine. Then the scene with the doctor asking "where'd the guy go?" and then seeing a much larger, red, pulsating blob on the floor.

My sister and I looked at each other. "Yeah, I think we're done." And turned the TV off.

Looking back at that scene much later (yesterday), I notice that the bed where the patient was earlier, before the Blob ate him, was not only empty, but clean. And dry. This is the most fastidious monster I've ever seen. If blobs really worked like that, I'd rent one from Home Depot to clean out the shed in back.

(The 1988 remake of The Blob is a lot more messy, but a lot of fun.)
posted by kurumi at 11:49 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


David Cronenburg is a reliable source of "body horror" films (Videodrome, Scanners, The Fly, Existenz, among others). He's effective not just through "shock" (any dummy can toss out a bucket of yuck). He draws you to view the story through the experience of a sympathetic character, and maintaining sympathy during the character's transformation is a major narrative challenge.
posted by SPrintF at 11:58 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


I have the same problem with Horror that I have with Anime, which is that every now and then I'll stumble into something extremely good like Get Out or It Follows and realize I've been sleeping on the whole genre and I'll go to a friend who's a fan and be like, "Wow have I been missing out! What should I watch?" and like, either I'm extremely picky about this particular type of thing (possible) or fans of the genre have absolutely no barometer for what I liked about what I watched, but I get some REALLY left-field recommendations. Like I went to a friend with those two and they pointed me toward The Conjuring which was okay, but pretty far from scratching the itch.

I have that experience kind of a lot with this category. I'm usually open minded about film to a fault, but I have a hard time navigating horror in a satisfying way. Maybe it's just that if the pieces don't come together in a way that works for me, it just winds up feeling pointlessly unpleasant? I don't know.

Meanwhile Cemetery Man / Dellamorte Dellamore is one of my very favorite movies, so who even knows?
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:00 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


I'm 26 movies into 31 Days of Horror and watching a horror movie a day has really reminded me why it's my favourite genre. There's so much versatility and nuance to the genre.

I didn't set out with a list of movies but rather let each day and my mood that day guide me. And, like this site amply demonstrates, there's a horror movie for every mood.

I love 80s/90s slasher films for the same reason that others love cheesy romantic comedies: sure, of course we know that the two leads/group of teens are going to get together/be murdered but that's not the point. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
posted by slimepuppy at 12:01 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh man Society is one I would describe as legitimately "dream staining." As satire, it's pretty cool but the imagery of the finale makes you question the reliability of senses and the limits of human comprehension. I would do unspeakable things to know Cronenberg's immediate reaction to seeing that, if he has seen it - if not, we all need to start bugging him incessantly about it on social media.

Great, weird film.
posted by Lonnrot at 12:04 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Oh, another one I really enjoyed but never see talked about these days was They (not to be confused with Them!, the giant ant classic). It is definitely monster horror, but a slow and surreal flavor where the monsters are ambiguously literal, incomprehensible and also intimately entangled with mental health, especially chronic night terrors and sleep paralysis. As one of the lucky winners who has to deal with night terrors in adulthood, I found it pretty engaging. It could go a lot farther with the concept than it does, but it wants to fall a bit more on the "fun" side. Even so, it's one of the very few horror films that succeeds in an atmosphere and worldview of cosmic horror that left me with the feeling that our entire reality is a soap bubble about to burst on the razored edge of something vaster and more horrible.

Stay had a similar vibe, with a bit more wonder than horror, but totally blew it in the ending. They goes for a natural conclusion that's very bleak but satisfying.
posted by Lonnrot at 12:18 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Oh! One last comment. I have been watching The Third Day and it is outstanding. If you're into British folk horror, check it out.
posted by Lonnrot at 12:24 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Couple of nights ago I watched the good parts of "American Werewolf In London" and still, all these years later, it's so much fun. 1981 I think, it was huge for the gore special effects, and just all the special effect period. The movie doesn't scare me, I just enjoy it, I love that it's a comedy / smoochy love story / scary as fuck gore fest, all in one.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:32 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


I second The Haunting (1963).

This movie really stands up and manages to be genuinely scary mostly through excellent editing and sound design (I say this as a devoted horror fan who is not normally scared by most movies).

One of my favorite cinematic memories was seeing a double-bill of The Haunting and Jacques Tourneur's masterful 1957 film Night of the Demon at San Francisco's iconic Castro Theater on Halloween night. The Castro is an immaculately preserved act deco theater which features an organ which pops up out of the stage. For the Halloween screening, the organist was dressed as Dracula, and he played, of course, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
posted by whir at 12:42 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


speaking of Cronenberg and horror, I'm pretty sure Maps To The Stars (aka Cronenberg's hate letter to Hollywood) has zero sci-fi or fantasy content but it's one of the most horrifying movies I've seen in the past decade.
posted by philip-random at 12:43 PM on October 26, 2020


No. Life is scary enough.

Funny because I have the opposite feeling... life can be so scary that I like to take a break from it with terror.

I watch a lot movies in general and rarely re-watch stuff so while I have favourites (Planet of the Vampires or Eyes Without A Face as examples) I don't return to them every year. Saying that I have been this October. I've been revisiting the films of Paul Naschy, sort of the Lon Chaney of Spain, particularly his werewolf films which are uneven but have a dynamic energy to them. I'd seen a few of them as a teenager but poorly dubbed and heavily cropped so its like I'm watching a completely different movie. I've also been watching the original Universal monster movies with the kid which has been interesting to see how he relates to them. And I hadn't seen most of them in a few decades so it is good to have another look. I have recently watched a film I'd never seen that I think is worth a look - Il Demonio (almost a neo realist exorcist movie in set rural Italy).
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:47 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Yep, that was me, too. That scenario you just described, plus a cave-in, plus a broken leg. Nopity-nope-nope.

This is what makes The Decent such a great horror movie!!! all this before the monsters even show up!

also, more serious aside. I really appreciate this movie being essentially 100% female cast. there is a trope of the charismatic leader bringing the group into peril with their hubris and arrogance. its ALWAYS a man. so this was a breath of fresh air. or maybe a breath of dark, cold, close air damp against your face, the weight of the rock squeezing around you...what was that noise???
posted by supermedusa at 1:29 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Ok, I'm now obsessed with the idea of 'overboard' shot like 'the shining'... which is my personal pick for 'scariest movie ever'. Srsly, it's like the film itself is haunted. Some 'fun' facts about the shining:
-All of the signage in the movie (room numbers, 'wash your hands' signs in the kitchen,etc) had backwards versions made and about half of the film is shot flipped left for right. Why? So that if you try to make a map of the hotel based on what you see... you can't. It is an impossible structure.
-Most films are shot at around a 1:4 ratio. If the film is 2hrs long, they shoot around 8hrs of film. The Shining was shot at a 200:1 (!) ratio and Kubrick had to write a computer program (in 1979) to keep track of all the shots. One of the main expenses of the movie was the film itself.
-The scene where Jack Nicholson chops down the bathroom door was shot for over 2 weeks, often without film in the camera. They went through over 200 doors. Shelly Duvall's bone-chilling freakout in that scene is... real. She refused to talk about the making of the film for many years afterward.
posted by sexyrobot at 1:32 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Meanwhile Cemetery Man / Dellamorte Dellamore is one of my very favorite movies, so who even knows?

I'm a big fan of Dellamorte Dellamore, but I think it's an art film posing as a horror film so it inhabits a very small space among horror. Sort of like Zulawski's Possession.
posted by cazoo at 1:52 PM on October 26, 2020


Mkay, can someone explain what is so creepy and scary about Overboard? I've seen the movie many times, also the remake and even the Korean drama version by the Hong sisters. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell both play characters that are petty and awful in their own way, but a lot of comedies are like that.
posted by jabah at 1:53 PM on October 26, 2020


The horror film description of Overboard: "An injured, amnesiac woman is left for dead by her negligent playboy husband and kidnapped by an aggrieved former employee pretending to be her loving husband. The former employee executes a premeditated program of gaslighting, emotional and physical abuse (and enlists his young children to participate) for the purposes of revenge and sadistic pleasure. When the negligent husband comes back to claim her because he wants her fortune, the woman's memories are restored, but she is so wholly brainwashed, she believes she can only be happy when she is with the the man who has spent the weeks previous torturing her. And makes a 'choice' to return to him, because being abused and lied to was the only time in her life she ever felt valued."
posted by thivaia at 2:38 PM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]


Poltergeist II with the terrifying preacher yt also scared me, even if the rest of it wasn't great.

I paid six dollars or whatever it was to see that movie 34 years ago, and I realize know that my entire memory of it now (and let’s be honest, three months after I saw it), is Julian Beck saying softly but urgently through a screen door, “Let me in!”

Still, effective.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:40 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm not really scared by scary movies, except the original version of "The Vanishing".

For Xmas one year I did get a 50-movie box set of horror movies that included every terrible old movie you can think of, including "Attack of the killer shrews", and it included two movies that, while admittedly not good, were very interesting : "The Monolith Monsters" about extraterrestrial crystals, and "The brain that wouldn't die" about a detached head and... well, much much more.

[Thank you Mefites, for making me watch all those John Carpenter movies.]
posted by acrasis at 3:07 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


I'm on Team Phibes, 101%. Nothing quite like it before or since.

Ernest P. Worrell's entry was indeed scary, but that was balanced by my overwhelming hormonal lust for Jim Varney, who made my face hot for reasons I couldn't quite pin down for some time.

Other than that, being a guy of a certain age who discovered these things on UHF television, it's all glorious odd stuff, like Mario Bava's moody and stylish Terrore Nello Spazio, jarring British weirdness like the bone-melting Island of Terror and the hilariscary Die, Monster, Die!, and domestic fare like The Brain That Wouldn't Die, all constrained by the boundaries of 1970s broadcast censorship rules.

The most traumatic one, though? The made-for-TV Trilogy of Terror, starring Karen Black, which caused me to nearly burn my house down.

Not very interested in the genre in the age of ubiquitous hyperrealistic gore, which is more porn than shock.
posted by sonascope at 3:18 PM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


To this day, I watch John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing every Halloween. It was the first DVD I ever bought, and now that I'll have 4K-capable equipment as of next month, it'll be the first 4K movie I buy.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:34 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


life can be so scary that I like to take a break from it with terror.

The Reply All guys made a podcast series called "The Scardey Cats Horror Show" where they try to convert someone who is scared of horror movies into liking the genre. Especially they talk about the experience of watching scary movies in a scary world - watching them as an anxious or marginalized person, etc. It was really interesting to hear how many people find scary movies almost relaxing because unlike real life, a horror movie lets you explore the feeling of fear in a totally safe environment. It appears to be a common theme.

Unfortunately the podcast was short-lived, which is a shame because it's fascinating to listen to people talk about the why and how of horror movies.
posted by Emily's Fist at 3:36 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


The original 1953 War of the Worlds is not my favorite horror movie. Replete with ineluctably brutal scorch-all-Earth death-ray rain from nests of magnificently streamlined flying saucers, it frightened the living bejeezus out of me for more years than I care to divulge. My childhood circumstances at the time being what they were, I couldnʻt dare voice my deep trauma to anyone, couldnʻt even dare to look out my bedroom window at night for fear some grotesque Martian would be there, just staring at me. My fevered mind made it worse, because whatever I could imagine what such an alien might look like, IT WOULDNʻT BE THAT!!

In high school, I discovered my sweetheartʻs alcoholic dad looked astonishingly like Gene Barry, the ineffectual star of the movie. Still, I persisted with her, till she did me the great favor of dumping me.

Sorry, I digress.... At the movieʻs end, the Martians are all suddenly destroyed by earthly bacteria or some such letdown, far too long after I had been already frozen into my theatre seat, scared into paralysis and scarred seemingly forever. And now, in these days of seemingly inexplicable denial of the ineluctable reality of Covid-19 by tens of millions of Americans, I think of Pogoʻs "we have met the enemy, and he is us." God help us (which, of course, the ineffectual Christian God couldn't do in the movie).
posted by Droll Lord at 4:43 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


The 1988 remake of The Blob is a lot more messy, but a lot of fun.

Yeahbut the original wins on the theme song front.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:25 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


The OG Blob has a good theme song but the greatest theme song for a monster movie is for the wonderfully dumb Green Slime.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:30 PM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


Stephen King's Danse Macabre Movie List
A list comprising nearly 100 fantasy/horror movies related by release date and quality. All of them were released between 1950-1980 and are recommended by Stephen King in his non-fiction book about horror fiction troughout the media, Danse Macabre. As King states, they all brought valued contributions to the genre.
posted by mikelieman at 5:31 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


My favorite horror movies are old. Them!, The Blob, 5 Million Years To Earth/Quatermass And The Pit, and It came From Outer Space. I love the 50s version of War Of The Worlds but don’t usually think of it as horror.
My movie taste is very much shaped by what was shown on UHF TV when I was young. :)
posted by Gadgetenvy at 6:05 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the late 1970's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers! Scared the crap out of me...the practical effects were terrifying even in the present day.
posted by azuresunday at 8:21 PM on October 26, 2020 [6 favorites]


I really enjoy not watching horror movies. I've had Under the Shadow cued up on Netflix for a week and watched The West Wing every night.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:46 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Agreed. The Thing still gives me nightmares.
posted by Windopaene at 11:32 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


When I was 6 (or 7), my mother had shown me Ringu, the Japanese film that The Ring was adapted from. That night, I was in bed about to go to sleep and saw a figure on all fours slowly creeping towards me, with long black hair obscuring the face. I cried because I was scared shitless, and my mum got yelled at by my grandmother, but now I look back at that memory fondly.

Dad has always been a horror fan. I remember watching a scary film (I think it was House of Wax) with him, and I threw up the nachos I was eating back onto the plate. We both laughed and he cleaned it up. When I grew old enough to read "harder" books I started borrowing his Stephen Kings. His entire library was Stephen King, and the first book I read was Gerald's Game, which the teacher found me reading under my desk during a maths lesson. Don't think I ever got it back.

So yes, I love horror films, and I love horror books. I love being scared–somehow it alleviates my real-life anxieties. I think there's been studies about this somewhere on the Internet.
posted by antihistameme at 12:41 AM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


When I was 6 (or 7), my mother had shown me Ringu, the Japanese film that The Ring was adapted from

Ok that's mean... my earliest horror movie was at 4 or 5 and it was Twisted Brain (aka Horror High) which was inexplicably on at 3 in the afternoon. Far less scary... though that paper guillotine scene made an impression.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:03 AM on October 27, 2020


ctrl + f “showgirls”
posted by pxe2000 at 6:20 AM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


somebody just linked this on my Facebook ...

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) - The Danse Macabre Scene
posted by philip-random at 10:08 AM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


The OG Blob has a good theme song but the greatest theme song for a monster movie is for the wonderfully dumb Green Slime .

Kudos to both themes, with their attempts at evanescently trendy lo-budget music. Both lovingly scream 1958 and 1969 cheap-ass teenage exploitation respectively. Nothing I think of offhand can pop the existential-horror balloons than hastily recorded bourgeois calypso and/or Haight-Ashbury rock.

We can argue which is the more ineffective, but itʻs a bit like arguing if yin is better than yang. My personal vote is for The Blob, wherein the aforementioned premature pop is actually written into the score, finger in cheek. Also Steve McQueenʻs wooden acting debut, IIRC.

The notorious pop --
posted by Droll Lord at 3:45 PM on October 27, 2020


I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the late 1970's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers! Scared the crap out of me...the practical effects were terrifying even in the present day.

I saw that picture in the theater when I was 12. (I'm a horror movie fan from waaaaaay back.) I've seen about one zillion horror movies since then and the last scene of that movie is still the scariest thing I've ever seen, period. When I moved to San Francisco in the early 2000s, I legit could not walk through the Civic Center without having heart palpitations.
posted by holborne at 6:19 PM on October 27, 2020


About 15-20 years ago, I started making a Halloween ritual of watching Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and The Raven. If you haven't watched the James Whale movies, you owe it to yourself. And The Raven is just fun.

I always had to take the kids Trick or Treating, and it's usually really kinda cold and nasty here in upstate New York. But I remember one year when my wife took over and I stayed home, and watched Audition, which freaked me the fuck out.

My new Halloween go-to movies (kinda new) are The Innkeepers and The House of The Devil, both by Ti West. He captures the 70's aesthetic in a way that just scratches that itch.

Another good Halloween movie is Rocky Horror. It just is.
posted by valkane at 7:02 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


James Whale's Frankenstein is SUCH beautiful movie!!!
posted by supermedusa at 1:48 PM on October 29, 2020


not really horror but I like to watch Donnie Darko at Halloween.
posted by supermedusa at 1:48 PM on October 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


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