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

Martha Marcy May Marlene (feel like this counts somehow)

Agreed. It's totally a horror movie in my eyes

Good stuff seen just this month:

Bloody Birthday
The Night of the Hunted
Sinister
The Last Broadcast
The Children (1980s, toxic-cloud-and-schoolbus plot)
Maniac
Death Bed: the Bed that Eats
Gothic (Ken Russell)
The Vanishing (original)

Bad stuff seen just this month:

Don't Answer the Phone!
Woodchipper Massacre
Red State
Uncle Sam (I know someone on here loves this, but it wasn't my cup of tea)

I don't know if I LOVE Uncle Sam, but really really like it, yeah.

Berberian Sound Studio rules but it's not v scary (nor should it be)

Actually I think the scariest movie of 2012(at least in a theater screening) is still The Grey.

Hated Sinister.

And Absentia is real good, everyone should see it.

I really haven't watched that many horror movies this year, unfortunately. Martyrs stands out from the relatively small pack. Thought The Kiss was surprisingly fun and lol '80s.

haha Thnig, if you got death bed from netflix this month, it probably had most recently been in my house, because given how long it sat in the very long wait section before i got it they only have one copy of it.

red state is absolutely TERRIBLE.

Absentia was terrific!

yeah Red State was just plain bad

really want to see Snowtown Murders, haven't had a chance to yet.

xpost

I thought my copy of Death Bed smelled like you! That movie was waaaaay more interesting than I expected.

Red State -- good lord, it's terrible. Just terrible.

Uncle Sam -- Yeah, I don't like that I put it in the "Bad" category. There are definitely things to like about it.

i'll mention "the tall man" again even though some purists might not consider it a horror movie, it's still pretty effective for a movie on netflix streaming starring jessica biel

xp.

'snowtown' not really horror but it's relentlessly grim and bleak. and one scene is as hard to watch as almost any extreme genre stuff i've seen.

Good ones I saw this year: Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil, Home Movie, Cabin In The Woods, The Legend Of Hell House, Martha Marcy May Marlene (toooootally count it!)

But here's a list of ten movies (beyond the popular favorites) I love to watch around Halloween (assuming that's the point of the thread):

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

yeah I was more interested bc I'm familiar with the story it's based on, and it got some good reviews when it came out in Australia iirc

it's v well made, has that surreal-realism thing a lot of australian films seem able to capture, if that makes sense.

Oh yeah, I liked both Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil and The Cabin In The Woods this year too.

Netflix stuff I've watched this month:

The Innkeepers (solid, Sara Paxton is great)
The House of the Devil (good first hour, lame ending)
Pontypool (good!)
Absentia (decent)
Bay of Blood (amazing)

also some Hammer stuff I've caught up with on TCM

Horror of Dracula (meh?)
The Curse of Frankenstein (very good!)
The Revenge of Frankenstein (excellent)
Frankenstein Created Woman (interesting!)
The Devil Rides Out (dated but enjoyable, Lee is great)

Misc:

Texas Chainsaw Massacre - 2003 (looks great)
Vampyr (obv)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (prob doesn't count, but terrible anyway)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (still love this)

Next few things I intend to stream:

Tall Man
Absentia
The Grey

Recently watched, not mentioned yet & wonder what ppl think:

Intruders (the one with Clive Owen)

My favorite horrors I watched in 2012
Absentia
The Grey
Insidious
The Innkeepers
Lovely Molly
The Tall Man
Rec 3
Pontypool
The Inkeepers
Paranormal Activity 3
Yellowbrickroad

Oh yeah, I saw bits and pieces of Lovely Molly the other day. Looked intersting.

It was relentless at points, Tera said it was too much for her, I thought it was great. Just saw World War Z is coming out next year, but the casting??

i don't really get "tucker & dale vs. evil" - had a good concept but beyond that wasn't very funny or incisive or scary

Don't think Tucker & Dale was intended to be in any way scary. I've been describing it as a comedy for fans of horror movies.

World War Z has been coming for years. To borrow someone else's zing, you know it's a mess when they call in Lindelof to rewrite the ending.

Still haven't seen Black Death, Amer, Human Centipede 2, House of the Devil, The Woman, Possession (new one), Apartment 143, Shutter, Grave Encounters ,Atrocious, Lots to watch.

Amer is incredible, the only reason it isnt on my list is that it isnt streaming

Top 10 from the past few years:

The Thaw
Cabin in the Woods
Pontypool
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
The Signal
Laid to Rest
Zombieland
Blood Snow (aka Necrosis)
Black Death (kinda Horror? idk...)
The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Stuff I still haven't seen but want to:

The Innkeepers
Cropsey
Yellowbrickroad
The Grey
Berberian Sound Studio
The Snowtown Murders

Most of that stuff I watched on Netflix, don't know if they're still streaming, I don't have Netflix at the moment.

2012 has been a TERRIBLE year for horror. IMHO only a few films have gotten it right:
(starred titles are Streaming on Netflix)

388 Arletta Avenue
*Absentia
Excision
Himizu
*Hodejegerne
MMMM
Sound of My Voice

want to watch Lovely Molly again before I decide whether or not it's worthy of short-list inclusion. first viewing was confusing and underwhelming.

these were fun...
The Aggression Scale
Closet Space
*Dawning
Dear God No!
The Devil's Business
*The Devil's Rock
Famine
The Guard Post
*Mutant Girl Squad
*Nazis at the Center of the Earth
Seconds Apart
*Skjult (Hidden)
*Sympathy
Tormented

+ The Tall Man. even if this IS a horror thread.
+ Exit Humanity. i liked this somber Civil War zombie yarn a lot.
+ Juan of the Dead. upbeat/offbeat Cuban "of the dead." refreshing, even for a zom-com.
+ Livide. at least it's always pretty.
+ Piggy. nasty UK vigilante mindfrig
+ Werewolf in a Women's Prison. which managed to be everything its title promised, and maybe more.

Apparently I only saw three horror movies on instant so far this year that were worth giving three stars to this year:Deathdream, Cabin Fever 2, Frozen. I really need to watch more so i'm glad for this thread.

hey viceroy, sorry to report that Cropsey is boring and terrible imo

^^^ yeah I was so disappointed to hear that when u posted before.

Tell me about Black Snow cuz idk it looked like it wld be terrible?

I don't watch a lot of horror but The Innkeepers is awesome.

I think I mentioned it in the other thread, but watching Ti West movies, I keep sort of waiting for him to "happen." One of these days, I expect him to blow me away, but as of yet?

someday he'll team up with someone who knows how to make something actually scary at the end of the hallway

or he'll learn how to keep the suspense ambiguous throughout

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

how is this? and how is it see-able?

xxxp Damn, the premise seemed so rad. I hate it when people take good ideas and butcher the execution of them.

xp -- Re: The Poughkeepsie Tapes... If you can handle, I dunno, "moderate scenes of torture" its a really good mix of law/police procedural and "inside the mind of the serial killer" type movie. Its very shocking in spots but completely engrossing and well made. It's not as graphic as some of the french new wave horror but it's not exactly light on the torture either. Fortunately, you're not supposed to revel in it and it doesn't really keep the camera on extremely terrible things.

I'm pretty squeamish about abuse-of-females in my horror movies and I could get through it. But, YMMV...

hasnt it never got distribution or w/e? did you torrent, etc it?

It was on Netflix awhile back -- I believe it did get some distribution but it wasn't a major release anywhere. Probably played a week at art house cinemas.

cropsey is shitty

xp huh are u in usa? been in my 'saved' 4eva
im just naturally curious when things are hard 2 see tbh

this cropsey news is a bummer

Sound of My Voice

I assumed this was terrible because it shares personnel w/ Another Earth. Anyone else wanna vouch for it?

i looked up cropsey and it seems to be well rated on imdb, so all i am saying is that i hated it

yeah i have the same experience w/the poughkeepsie tapes i think, its been on my shortlist of stuff i want to see but cant get a hold of, along with Noroi/the Curse and (shudder) A Serbian Film

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]

and this is nightmare fuel O_o

The makeup for Evil Ed's wolf transformation took 18 hours.[22] While he had the wolf head on, the crew began pouring what they thought was Methylcellulose into his mouth to create the illusion of saliva, but when Geoffreys began to complain about the taste, Mark Bryan Wilson realized they'd been using prosthetic adhesive, which was gluing his mouth shut.[22]

there are awful stories from back in the day too...the shit that karloff went through for the Mummy, Frankenstein etc sounds godawful (and painful)

I first heard about those lenses on the commentary to Evil Dead, but I don't recall there being any mishaps like those examples above.

I recently acquired a trove of unseen (by me) classics. But which do I watch on this All Hallows' Eve?! Which!?!?

Dead of Night
Trilogy of Terror
The Night Stalker
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)

considering when it was released, Dead of Night is damned scary

I haven't seen Trilogy of Terror since it came out but Karen Black vs. devil doll is classic

I saw The Night Stalker again recently; the comic elements haven't aged well, but Barry Atwater as the non-speaking vampire is better than 98% of all other vampires

The Girl Who Knew Too Much aka The Evil Eye is an entertaining proto-giallo, if you can get past the silliness of the protagonist; extra points for John Saxon as her romantic interest

The 1931 Jekyll & Hyde is the best J&H if you like the property, but none of the film versions do much for me

so I'd recommend watching them all in the order listed

is dead of night aka deathdream? watch that immediately

No, it's the '40s Dead of Night. Too damn many Dead of Nights out there.

Deathdream by any title is creepy as hell, even though it looks like they spent about $500 making it

Bob Clark's career was weird as hell.