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

I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about this bc I didn't see it on Netflix but can we talk about XTRO? It was like Phase IV-level weird and I thought the effects were great! Kinda Cronenbergy, what with the woman giving birth to a full grown man and all.

There's a great click somewhere on http://siskelandebert.org/ of Gene and Rog flipping out over how awful and gross Xtro is. Always kinda made me wanna see it.

It's gross but not awful! I loved it.

I think I just generally love the Cronenberg/DePalma 80s batshit gross out style. This came with a bonus array of accents, face-sucking turkey legs, and pulsating alien eggs incubating in a pool of what appeared to be avocado mush in an overturned refrigerator. I won't go into the kid's magical dream sequences. The music was good too.

The Tall Man was def the year's biggest letdown for me, horror-wise. So much so that it's caused me to rethink a lot of the stuff I *like* about Martyrs.

xtro's pretty entertaining in a berserk b-movie way, there's something discomforting about its emotionless disregard of the basic requirements for cinematic engagement, it's like a movie made by cyborgs who have never seen a movie before but they did read a book on how to make a movie once

I bet "Deadgirl" could have been good given a better director and writer. There's a lot of thematic/metaphoric potential, sort of wasted.

Also, this would have been really powerful/iconic if it was made and released during the Vietnam era with the likes of "Last House," etc. But now? Just a grisly indie misfire.

fighting words

snowtown murders is a horror movie the same way henry:portrait of a serial killer is, but in some ways more bracing and effective. its a cold sad film.

Deadgirl remains in my number one spot for horror movies of the last decade so

Inside for me. I'm boring that way.

ha well inside would be prob top 5, def top ten for me.

thats right eric you are also in the "inside is better than martyrs" camp w/me. *clinks glass*

may I join you

Well, Martyrs is still top 5.

Pending some viewings of Mr. Hal's Jam.

Inside was actually scarier than martyrs, top ten for me too.

watched Inside a few weeks ago. it was good for that sort of thing, but it made me realize i've gotten a little soft in my old-er age with regards to this extreme gore stuff. i mostly just felt nauseated.

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.

Still waiting for your point-by-point takedown of that Salon article, btw, jjj.

emotionless disregard of the basic requirements for cinematic engagement

it's like junk food for your eyes! i think that's why i like it tbh. i don't have to care about anyone or anything, i don't have to be scared or feel like throwing up, i can just enjoy looking at the people (and panthers) doing the things. it's definitely not as good as depalma/cronenberg but there's something similar enough that makes me like it. i dunno. maybe i have terrible taste.

yeah there's something gruesomely fascinating about xtro but it's not by design. depalma/cronenbeg are always in control of their aesthetics.

deadgirl def one of the better horror movies of the past few years but it didn't tip over into all-time great for me, not sure why. feel like the narrative played it a little too safe, or maybe it was the high school students who look like they've already graduated college. I know those are stupid complaints, maybe I'm partially in agreement w/ josh that these guys had a great concept but executed it in a workmanlike way. still recommend it tho.

i don't have to care about anyone or anything (...) i can just enjoy looking at the people (and panthers) doing the things.

this! I never worry about whether a movie is making me care about its characters. I think all I care about is atmosphere and vibe, in the end. A movie is an entity looking at me and I'm interested mainly in the feeling I get from it looking at me.

i mean movies of all kinds are intensely emotional for me but the emotion doesn't derive from the characters or the 'plot'...

i still think the dude who played the worse (as in most evil) of the two main characters was amazing in it, really bums me out to see him stuck slogging through tons of awful half-assed horror stuff, i was worried that that performance might make him an untouchable and i think thats happened

re: deadgirl

xpost Wow, I am the total opposite. Or at least those things are important to me. A movie doesn't need plot to move me, but a good plot needs more than atmosphere to sell it to me. And I like movies that are mostly atmosphere, or vibe, but if nothing is done well with those things then the absence of character or plot bugs me. Usually to move me a movie needs at least a couple of those things. Otherwise, I'm just looking at a screen. Def. character and plot and writing and acting elevates a movie to greatness ime. Any doof with a camera can get the atmosphere part down.

I thought the evil-er guy in Deadgirl overacted terribly, like Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume or something. Wish they had more fun with the concept, because teens so pent up they resort to sex with restrained zombies is rife for satire, not so hot played straight. Though to its credit, it's rarely outright ugly and never seemed out strictly to shock.

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