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

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

xxp: Well they did both use the line, and I think it's more common to see the invocation from When A Stranger Calls when it's brought up; just pointing out that BC got there 5 years earlier.

Just watched Amer, I really loved it, but um...

The adolescent scenes was pure brilliance, untouchable, I'm still digesting the other parts.

I've already started in earnest but I'm preparing for an utter deluge this year. Beyond just rewatching old faves, I've bought a bunch of stuff to fill some of my horror canon holes. Just watched Rosemary's Baby for the first time the other night (good value but still doesn't supplant the other two Apartment Trilogy installments in my esteem), and I have The Innocents, The Haunting, Black Christmas, and a Universal 4-pack (Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride, and Creature From The Black Lagoon) lined up. And the director's cut of Little Shop of Horrors. My GF's onboard with binging and there's a bunch of classic stuff that she hasn't seen that I'm looking forward to watching with her. Still trying to sell her on Possession while questioning the wisdom of trying to sell her on Possession.

Oh, in the spirit of the thread title, the top ten I'm looking forward to watching this year that weren't in last year's list:

Phantasm
The Stepfather
Jacob's Ladder
In The Mouth of Madness
The Birds
American Werewolf in London
the first four Romero Dead films (haven't rewatched in years...or in the case of Land, since I saw it in the theater)

Brain Damage
The Blob (1988)
The Tingler
Pieces
Cathy's Curse
God Told Me To
The Tenant
Return Of The Living Dead
Christine
Nightmare On Elm St. 4: The Dream Master

Whoops. Oh, well, I'll rewatch all that stuff, too.

Oh man, I should review this years watch list and throw one of these together

and my list for this year - again, not all new releases, but new to me, mostly streaming on netflix. no order.

Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil
Kill List
ABC's of Death
Lords of Salem
Sinister
Citadel
Evil Dead (remake obv)
V/H/S 2
Magic Magic
Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh

just missed the cut - House at the End of the Street, Mama, John Dies at the End, and kinda sorta Some Guy Who Kills People, which is not really even horror at all, but super appealing nonetheless

My horror top 10 x 10:

http://letterboxd.com/ephender/list/slant-magazines-100-greatest-horror-films-1/

great list

intrigued by decasia and leviathan, neither of which i know anything about

also a big fu to them for disallowing short films because outer space is so so worthy. next time tell them if they don't want to count it, they should just loop it ten times

if i'm gonna watch 1 netflix horror flick tnite, which one should i make it?

For some reason, the ed. there has this thing against counting short films in any of Slant's lists to the point that he doesn't even list Un Chien andalou among his favorites despite Bunuel being possibly his all-time favorite director. I find it infuriating, but have made my peace with it. Whatever gets one out of having to sift through which Chuck Jonze and Frank Tashlin Looney Tunes to count and which to exclude, I guess.