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

Watching In the Mouth of Madness on the screen was terrifying!!

never seen it, will get around to it

Huh, "Kill List" is like "The Wicker Man" crossed with "A Serbian Film" (though nowhere near as gross as the latter).

Ah, sorry, They Live! came out a year or two after Prince of Darkness, didn't it? I certainly don't love it, but, yeah, it is above mediocre. I remember not liking In the Mouth of Madness, but that's all I do remember. I need to revisit.

trying to figure out what exactly made Carpenter go off the rails. I mean, Memoirs of an Invisible Man? what was he thinking?

This is undoubtedly the kind of thing I should feel embarrassed about admitting, but I actually rewatched Memoirs for the first time since it was new a few years back and was surprised how much I enjoyed it.

word! Mouth of Madness is one of my favorite Carpenter films! Haven't seen his Masters of Horror efforts though, but if they're better than shit like Ghosts of Mars I assume I'll enjoy them.

I don't think They Live! should be taken as a serious horror film. It's more of a satire w/ scares and action IMO.

yeah, it's closer in tone to Big Trouble

the only Masters of Horror one I watched was this one, which was ridiculous but not bad

Well at least Tobe Hooper is getting work.

Village of the Damned was the one where Carpenter went off the rails

In The Mouth of Madness is a well-directed movie and no one would suspect that Carpenter had lost it from watching it, but the plot doesn't work

Weather permitting, I'm planning on an Alien/The Thing (Carpenter) double-bill Wednesday night--didn't they finish one-two in our poll? On the weekend, I'm seeing Romero (who, I didn't realize, has been living in Toronto for the past eight years) introduce Night of the Living Dead.

They did indeed, clemenza.

Any of you horror freaks got any suggestions for some last minute soundtrack downloading? DJing a krautrock & horror night on the 'ween itself. So far I've got Possession, Valerie, Hausu, Suspiria, All the Colours of the Dark, Bollywood Bloodbath and some miscellaneous Fulci...

Krzysztof Komeda!

Carpenter went downhill for much the same reason Romero did: sort of an eyes bigger than his stomach thing, where the stories they wanted to tell were much bigger than the budgets they had to work with. Both those guys worked much better with imposed limitations. Also, a lot of later Carpenter flicks really needed another run at the script, but it's almost as if the movies had to go forward before they were really ready to go. Hence sort of half-told movies like "Prince of Darkness," "Mouth of Madness" and "They Live.," "Escape from LA," et al.

Komeda, of course! Cheers, Josh.

Pino Donaggio always a good choice

I had to look him up - some good films on his roster, any in particular you'd recommend soundtrack-wise?

Carrie is my favorite! Plus there's the "they're all going to laugh at you" track.

The Howling and Don't Look Now are the other ones I have, but I have to say The Howling is more horrory than Don't Look Now iirc.

Fabio Frizzi's The Beyond has a few nice cheesy creepy tracks.

this one is great http://www.discogs.com/Giallos-Flame-House-At-The-Edge-Of-The-Dark/release/1237925

Yeah, Jacob, I picked a couple of tracks from The Beyond from the Fulci soundcloud, need to choose a few more though, I reckon. http://soundcloud.com/luciofulci

Just realised La Lech actually started a whole thread for this topic a while ago, but oh well, conversation is here now.

i just consulted that thread to jog my memory -- shoulda just linked!

Hahaha, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (it counts!) - now I'm tempted to take that along. Also, Wicker Man, duh.

Wow, "Absentia." That was like one of those classic Stephen King "Night Shift" stories, except executed with a really uncommon sensitivity.

Still catching up. "The Tall Man:" like it or not, what a truly surprisingly, honestly provocative movie. Makes up for the facile shocks of "Martyrs," imo. Though like "Martyrs," very oddly structured., almost radically, subversively so.

Anybody love *both* Martyrs and The Tall Man?

I'm not even sure the director does.

“I’m not sure you have made the right decision.” —director Pascal Laugier, in his video introduction to the Martyrs DVD

I like *both* Martyrs and The Tall Man, though the first half of Martyrs is much better than the second, wish it had carried on more with the first half.

Hey I just watched the French film the pack on streaming and congratulations, now you don't have to! Totally wildly incoherent and despite some good atmosphere nothing holds together at all.

Thx bro, I was gonna end up watching that at some point.

I finally saw Black Christmas for the first time

Goddamn that is one creepy movie. I had no idea that was where 'THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE' came from, lol

Also Andrea Martin rules

LOVE that movie. The... err... 'vocalizing' on the phone calls is straight up virtuoso.

Creepshow expires today on streaming.

oh the phonecalls are crazy! the pig noises and the baby crying and ... yeah.

a friend had told me 'it's good, it's just slow' but honestly I found it slow in the way that is SUPER compelling. Like I felt like I knew the story already, but I was hooked in becasue I wanted to see where they went with it.

and I love that it delivers 100% creep factor without delivering any kind of killer reveal or killer backstory or killer resolution at all.

Black Christmas is one of my favorite horror movies of all time

Also the woman who gets to be the 'last girl' is so NOT the one which later formulaic slasher films would favor. Don't want to give anything away but i like how the deaths are not dealt out as some form of paternalistic moral opprobrium.

I agree! At first I wondered if that's what was going to happen and it really didn't play out that way.

Also I saw Olivia Hussy talking on one of the special features - goddamn she just got more and more beautiful with age. What a stunner.

I've never seen Black Christmas!!

SEE IT

I am biologically opposed to slasher films and I think "Black Christmas" is one of the greatest horror movies ever made

djp otm

I'm all about that movie now.

I've never seen "Black Christmas" either. I just watched a 4 minute(!) trailer on youtube. Wau.

everyone needs to watch it! it's GREAT

We watched Rosemary's Baby last night, it was the first time watching since the first time years ago. I couldn't help feeling that Woody Allen squandered Mia Farrow's potential.

Never seen Black Christmas either and always thought "the call is coming from inside the house" came from When a Stranger Calls.

When A Stranger Calls was 1979; Black Christmas was 1974

I knew one came before the other, but not having seen Black Xmas, I always just assumed the line came from Stranger, which I vaguely remember seeing.

Of note to Black Christmas fans: http://www.fright-rags.com/teaser/black-christmas-teaser.html

whoa that's cool