Hey it's halloween, everybody should shit their pants - ilx horror crew top tens.

Though I do think the camera/director can be a winning character, as with Jackson or Raimi or whomever.

considering the subject matter it could've been wildly offensive but they did get the tone right

xp

Any doof with a camera can get the atmosphere part down.

can't disagree with you more here

also never watch an argento film

Most of the horrors I've watched in the past few months have been oldies.

Quatermass and the Pit - slow-burn classic
Prince of Darkness - John Carpenter's final wave to fans before sinking into mediocrity.
Curse of the Crimson Alter - stagey, proto-Wicker Man with Christopher Lee, and a cameo role for an 80 year old Boris Karloff, who is actually really good.
The Silent House (original) - lots of quietly creeping around in the dark, which had me on edge. But the reveal at the end was a bummer.
Shivers - amazing Ballardian body-horror from C-bergz

And a bunch of old Hammer films w recently restored prints on shiny Blu-ray:
The Horror of Dracula
The Plague of the Zombies
The Devil Rides Out
The Reptile - considered a minor work, and formulaic, as most of 'em are, but I enjoyed it immensely.

(And the nu-Hammer: The Woman in Black with Harry Potter, which was crap.)

And I have to give mention to INBRED, as I vaguely know the director, Alex Chandon, who is a good guy. Anyway, Inbred is a fun, shoestring-budgeted splatter film with League of Gentlemen-style black comedy. Check iiiit.

ike Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume Hey now what's wrong with Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume? I think acting has to be really horrible for bad acting to stand out to me, I hardly ever notice it. I'm easily sold on most movies though.

I file Argento under "director provides character" a la auteur theory.

I didn't say any doof with a camera can get atmosphere right. Just that it's a lot easier to make something look cool or spooky than make someone a good actor. Which is why you never hear "wow, the acting was so good, and I really cared about the characters, but the sets looked fake."

Nothing wrong with Slater in Volume, I guess. HIs overacting style is better on display in Heathers, which was probably a better comparison re: Deadgirl.

Acting SUPER matters to me. I'd never diminish that element. But for me acting not necessarily = making me care about the characters...

Curse of the Crimson Alter - stagey, proto-Wicker Man with Christopher Lee, and a cameo role for an 80 year old Boris Karloff, who is actually really good.

The ritual scenes in this were absolutely delicious and perfect. Hern the Hunter!

"wow, the acting was so good, and I really cared about the characters, but the sets looked fake." This was Aliens for me!

Shivers - amazing Ballardian body-horror from C-bergz

sometimes I think this is my fave cronenberg, so economical, effective, and disturbing. opening montage is like some crazy gauntlet being thrown down.

I guess I can tolerate a lot of plot holes (xtro was nothing but plot holes) in the name of eye candy. Why else would I keep looking at the image thread from the horror poll. I just like to idly look at pictures.

For example
Barbara!!
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljbhhbdYGb1qz72v7o1_500.jpg

some of the greatest horror films ever made have terrible acting, cardboard characterizations, clumsy plotting, etc. when done right the cheapness of b-movies can make things more nightmarish and horrific. but you knew this.

But minus all those things, I have trouble liking b-movies that are outright witless. That's what makes, say, Hammer so awesome. They're campy and cheap but they have style and vision.

And décolletage.

BTW, I kept thinking of Shivers is a great example of a good concept - sexual panic made literal - done right. Been a while since I saw either, but I want to say "Rabid" did even better with the same general idea.

Huh, ignore that gibberish before the word Shivers. Weird.

guys i want to watch so many goddam horror movies this weekend! It hurts! 0_0

ok I just finally got nauseated by my own dn finally

lol

rabid's good but shivers is more creepy and claustrophobic, I like the way it gets down to business and then builds to a crescendo, rabid's quotidian finale is haunting but kind of anticlimactic pardon the pun

and while rabid is broader in scope, shivers somehow feels more sprawling, maybe because of the lack of a central character

I'm making my list today of our horror fest for this weekend, so far it's Apartment 143, Rosemary's Baby and if I can find Amer. Any thought on Ethan Hawke doing horror?

no ethan hawke no

you've already ruined shakespeare, julie delphy, and the act of novel writing

wait are you talking that vampire movie? that was vaguely ok, but not one i would bother to seek out.

think he's talking about sinister not daybreakers but I've been wrong before

Yeah I was talking about Sinister, I'm not sure if it's out yet, based on a Stephan King short story.

stephan king, a little known greek horror scribe of the early 1900s

haha

HA!!

and his well-known post-apocalyptic novel "The Strand"

Has anyone watched any of thesePhilippine horror films

Noticed that "Amer" is virtually torrent proof. Keep getting "American Horror Story."

I just found one by googling "amer 2009 torrent " haven't tried it yet, but there are a few.

Watched The Oregonian last night. Interesting, but kind of missed the mark for me.

i kinda dug Deadgirl's Gus Vant Sant-esque pretty teen angst vibe, but i don't think i believed anyone's behavior/decisions in it whatsoever.

― circa1916, Friday, 26 October 2012 17:52 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

watched 'deadgirl' las night and this hits the nail on the head. agree with those who said they had an interesting idea but executed it badly.

Just watched the Fright Night remake. Fun and goofy and allows for a couple of surprisingly nice moments in the midst of the mayhem. Effects were godawful, though, but such is the curse of the CGI age. Also, very dim looking, at least on the DVD I watched--a consequence of being shot for 3D?

If anything it should be brighter. If it looks dim without 3D glasses then it would have been impossible to see with them on

Well, the Slant review says it was "post-converted 3D," so I was wrong about what I said above about it being shot that way.

That's funny, I thought it looked pretty dim on DVD, too. I was wondering if that was just because it was set almost entirely at night, and maybe the contrast doesn't pop as well at home?

From what I remember, Colin Ferrell's sexy thrust was about the only enduring thing to take away from the remake. No small element, tho.

Or maybe it was dark to hide the shittiness of the cgi.

Man, did not like "V/H/S/." A bunch of good ideas, none taken advantage of to any real degree of satisfaction. Reminded me of, I dunno, "Tales from the Dark Side," the movie, but done indie and hand-held.

Not only am I effing sick of that whole grainy, hand held "indie" aesthetic in horror movies, I mostly became sick of it just from watching the trailers for these movies, not the movies themselves.

i enjoyed the first v/h/s short alot and the last one ok (not the wraparound), the second and fourth? (the skype one) had potential but didn't work for me really, the third one was straight garbage. i'm a pretty big sucker for found footage type things but found myself very happy they were all brief. considering the popularity of found footage horror and the inexpense of it i'm kinda amazed no tv channel has done their own esp since this is the kind of thing tv could pull off and not be crippled from the get go by broadcast standards the way they usually are when tv attempts horror. considering how great ghostwatch was twenty years ago it's seem like a gimme for syfy or fox.

Prince of Darkness - John Carpenter's final wave to fans before sinking into mediocrity.

this was much better than I remembered it. I think They Live! is a cut above mediocre tho

Watched Lovely Molly last night and liked it quite a bit. for people who get turned off by handheld cam stuff - soldier through the intro, the movie only uses the hand cam occasionally.

I'm glad to hear you liked Lovely Molly, I enjoyed how far it went in it's theme. The deer scene was gut turning and scary! We watched Apartment 143 last night, I dunno, maybe I'm getting tired of handheld cam horror ghost stories. I enjoy the cast, but I told Tera at the beginning that I'm going to be pissed if it's the daughter, and then big shocker. I loved all three Paranormal Activities, but it's wearing thin now.

Prince of Darkness - John Carpenter's final wave to fans before sinking into mediocrity.

Crazy talk. In the Mouth of Madness is great. Both of his "Masters of Horror" episodes were good too.

In other news, Paranormal Activity 4 was a let-down, the weakest in the series, but at least it has a good last couple minutes.

In still other news, I watched Human Centipede 2 and it was actually better than expected. Great casting, b&w photography, and sound design. Last 30 minutes have nowhere to go but into the crapper but up until then it had potential.

Yeah I might even like In The Mouth better than They Live and Prince O' D.