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

Credit where credit's due--The Old Dark House is James Whale, not Tod Browning

Speaking of those two, You Must Remember This just launched a series on Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

Enlightening or prurient?

Oh, I'm a dunce. Of course The Old Dark House is Whale. I recently watched Browning's The Devil Doll, another film of the popular '1930s horror movies featuring inexplicable senior citizen cross-dressing' subgenre.

i dont really like or seek out horror but this is my approx top ten of movies i think are good & have horror elements:

psycho
suspiria
possession
the shining
wolf creek
eden lake
entrance
lake mungo
pulse
night of the hunted

suspiria
jacob's ladder
high tension
rosemary's baby
the others
house on haunted hill (1959)
the birds
it follows
the shining
nosferatu (herzog)

i dont have a ten right ths minute BUT my #1 is Black Christmas

Black Christmas is always a good answer

I’ve got to think about this a bit, honestly, kids make seeing things hard. Initial quick reacts would be

Get Out
The Wailing
Green Room
Raw
Baskin

Just looked back at my first post in this thread and want to be clear that “Dream Home” should not be confused with “Dream House” which is reaaaaal bad.

Wait, did I just see Creep this year? Creep was great.

Just saw HAUSU. As crazy as everyone says. I dug it.

Hausu is all time amazing.

30th anniversary remaster of Christopher Young's Hellraiser score is fucking gorgeous

new to me in the past year:

the exorcist iii
the beyond
carrie
the house on sorority row
phantasm iv: oblivion
hello mary lou: prom night ii
ghostwatch
fright night
the initiation
daughters of darkness

I finally watched Michael Powell's Peeping Tom this week, which I liked, but is kind of another case of the old Casablanca vs. To Have and To Have Not debate where I've heard enough "better than Psycho" arguments that I'm just not buying. I think my main problem was that I couldn't believe the neighbour's attraction to him, which survives not only their first uber-creepy meeting, but the countless red-flags that follow. Marion, in comparison, is kind of trapped into interacting with Norman Bates and regards him with a far more believable mixture of sympathy and suspicion. Also, as I'm pretty sure Scorsese is a big fan, I can see the seeds of the Robert De Niro/Cybil Shepherd relationship in Taxi Driver, though that one, again, feels more plausible than the one here.

Trying to decide what other classic horrors I want to catch up with this week: Black Sunday? Eyes Without a Face? The Bird with the Crystal Plumage? Fade to Black? (Advice welcome!)

Have you seen blood on satans claw?

read this thread title to the tune of men without hats 'we can dance / everybody look at your hands'

xpost

I have not! The titles I listed are the ones I just grabbed from the library and, since I don't know if I'll get around to all of them this week, I was more wondering which ones to prioritize. Plus, I tend to like to watch something that I've seen before and that I know is classic on the actual night of Halloween. I'm thinking The Fog this year.

See Black Sunday.

Just got my copy in the mail yesterday so I'm on it.

In addition to all of the unimpeachable old-school classics I have lined up, I also got some new-school stuff I haven't seen yet but that I already know will be half junk (Annabelle, Conjuring 2, Ouija twofer) but I'm looking forward to the half that isn't (and, okay, yes, I'm looking forward to the junk, too).

I'm pretty fond of Eyes Without a Face, Black Sunday also good

I hear the second Oujia is actually not crap!

That's really the only reason I bought the set. Although I'm not sure why the good word-of-mouth re: the second Annabelle movie necessitated my buying the first.

I also have an unwatched copy of Eyes Without a Face! There are only so many movie-watching hours before Halloween is over! Guess I just need to call in sick or something, huh.

Late on the revive but I've been tearing it up in the usual style. Here are some things I've seen for the first time this month:

Witchfinder General
Night of the Demon
Mandy
Ghoulies

Okay, so one of those things is less awesomely classic than the others, but it was pretty entertaining cheese. Mostly I've just been watching episodes of Friday the 13th: the Series, which is extra extra cheesy but so watchable.

Also, I decided to stop pussyfooting about and jumped all the way back to the beginnings of gothic fiction a couple of months back, starting with Castle of Otranto. Lots of Ann Radcliffe on the docket.

Been watching Haunting of Hill House on Netflix which is surprisingly good value thus far. I bought a copy of Heredity sight unseen. Hopefully I can coerce company into watching it this evening.

Tell me what's good, peeps.

as documented elsewhere i watched every halloween movie this month. tbh one of the better horror franchises, gets a bad rap bc the original is so totemic but the sequels all manage to have incredibly distinct identities and approaches to the mythology of michael myers (which i can't really say for friday the 13/jason or nightmare/freddy). the "shitty" ones (five and six, mainly) have a "recorded straight to a vhs tape that was then buried 100 miles underground" quality, even in crisp hd. the zombie films were both better than i'd remembered. i is a total failure, its two parts don't match up at all, but ii is fascinating, dreamy, and sad, aka a true halloween movie

if i had to rank them:

halloween iii: season of the witch
halloween h20: 20 years later
halloween ii (2009)
halloween (1979)
halloween 4: the return of michael myers
halloween: the curse of michael myers
halloween ii (1981)
halloween (2018)
halloween (2007)
halloween 5: the revenge of michael myers
halloween resurrection

beyond that these were all new to me:

messiah of evil (fucking incredible early '70s horror that's not quite sure what it is, theater scene is legitimately terrifying)
let's scare jessica to death (budget-less droning early '70s horror that's not quite sure what it is, completely awesome)
mandy
the fog
hell house llc (found footage haunted house trash but a surprisingly well-done version of it)
the haunting (1963) (god i fucking love robert wise)

Just rewatched Legend of Hell House last night which I think, at this point, officially seals the deal on that as an annual tradition. Love that thing to pieces.

Yes, Season of the Witch is absolutely the best Halloween movie. Aside from the new one, Resurrection is the only one I have not seen and do not own, and nothing I've heard suggests that I need to change that state of affairs.

Really want to see Let's Scare Jessica. Come on, Scream Factory. (And also come on with the dozen movies I ordered from you a month ago and hoped I'd be able to watch by tonight.)

halloween resurrection is sorta fun after the opening twenty minutes, which are unfortunately... insulting. great busta performance

I haven't watched a damn thing this season. my local video store shut down (waiting for Alamo to re-open whatever rental service they're going to run with their acquired stock) so I don't have a good reliable source for stuff anymore.

I have 100s of spooky movies on the shelf with many still unwatched so I don't really need to indulge myself, but I understand Shudder is good value.

Having read an inordinate amount about the French Revolution of late, I've found myself wondering: is it possible that no one has ever done a historical horror film about la Terreur? And if not, for the love of god why not?

I've stepped up the pace a lot for International Halloween Month

Glad to watch these again on Shudder: Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980), Argento's Tenebrae and Inferno

New-to-me on Shudder: Wolf Guy (Sonny Chiba!), Demons, C.H.U.D., The Lords of Salem

Best recent re-watching TCM: Bride of Frankenstein, The Cat People (1942), Carnival of Souls, Black Sabbath

hell house owns. really well done

i loooove Wolf Guy

saw a 35mm screening of Witchfinder General tonight, that is some stark doom in there

In the Mouth of Madness wound up being the pick of the evening. It's possible that I love it more every time I see it (in an empty theater, laughing maniacally as my mind unravels).

Definitely underrated.

one of my faves

we rewatched Fright Night last night & i decided i dont like it anywhere near as much now as i used to. The overracting really bugs me now, and the makeup effects are really unpleasant. Especially evil ed’s janky teeth & chris sarandon’s weird red gekko eyes

aw i loooooooooooooooove fright night and the sequel

the music is still great tho

at the time (pre-Scream) the meta-commentary aspects of it maybe made it seem more clever than it is. cuz yeah I don't love it so much anymore either.

Perhaps u would like it better if it starred Colin Farrell, and if so I have good news 4 u.

u r incorrect

last night's Halloween pick was JAWS, which my wife had never seen before. It's on streaming in what i assume was the most recent clean-up version and it looks amazing. I enjoyed her reaction to some of the choice moments: Ben Gardner's face popping down into the open hole in the hull, the actually horrifying moment the shark attacks the boy on the raft behind the other people in the water (something in this version made it even more shocking), the buildup of suspense before the shark attack in the "pond" with the kids and the fake fin, and the girl on the shore who spots it. It's all just as good as I remembered.

And also it's an extremely amusing film in a very naturalistic way that seems to have been replaced in current films w/more meta humor, the latter really irrationally embarrassing me bc i can see the snarky effort from the writers. Compare that to Jaws w/Brody's little asides and replies and the timing in those moments, Hooper's perpetual bemusement mixed with shock at the ignorance of the people he's dealing with, and also the very easy, low-key funny way Brody and his wife deal with each other.

my wife noted correctly that it's not a horror film, it's more a seafaring adventure thriller, but it does show a knack for horror moments that a lot of more mediocre directors of horror aren't very skilled at.

I love all the moments w Sherriff Brody & Mrs Brody

the makeup effects are really unpleasant. Especially evil ed’s janky teeth & chris sarandon’s weird red gekko eyes

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, November 1, 2018 4:06 PM (two days ago)

Wrong type of unpleasant? Or do you mean they were low quality? I always quite liked the scary faces in the first two films.

unpleasant as in, idk - they look like they are REALLY uncomfortable to wear? like those contact lenses are so big, too big for Sarandon’s eye, and almost completely opaque, and they look really thick. i just look and think OW. and Ed’s vampire teeth are way bigger than his mouth & he can’t really talk... like that set of teeth would be comically oversized on an adult & with the added saliva effect it’s just kinda hard for me to look at him

the visuals were cool when i first watched the movie though, no real diss against them as effects.

but the practical aspect stands out to me more now

Somebody should write a history of sharp teeth on film actors. So many years of vampire teeth looking a bit silly and concept artists cant really go crazy with the teeth because it probably wont work.

i looked up the wikipedia & jfc @ this:

The most excruciating part of the makeup process for the cast were the contact lenses. In those days the lenses were hard plastic, which Steve Johnson hand-painted (throwing some glitter into the mix), lacquered and sanded.[22] The cast could only wear them for a maximum of 20 minutes because they were virtually blind in them, and they were thick, painful and dried out their eyes. A set was made for Stark to wear when he's in his final pursuit of Peter and Charley, but he kept tripping on the stairs. Holland told him to take one out, and he was then able to perform the scene.[9][22] Three sets were made for Amanda Bearse, but one of them caused her agonizing pain which she initially tried to endure. When it finally became too much to bear, she took the contacts out and the crew realized they'd forgotten to buff them.[22] For the scene in Mrs. Brewster's bedroom, Geoffreys kept his contacts in for nearly 40 minutes, resulting in scratches on his eyeballs for months afterward.[22]