(because '18' = 'three 6s').
Apologies for another movie-related blog, and I promise, this will definitely be the last one for a while (well, maybe for two or three weeks), but I've just come off the back of a really interesting argument with a mate, and I just had to get typing.
As some background info, my mate is one of the biggest film geeks around. He was harping on about Citizen Kane at the age of 12 while the rest of us were looking forward to Police Academy 6: Mission To Moscow, and he was analysing Francis Ford Coppola's directing technique while most of us still saw The Godfather as that generous bald bloke who gave us £10 notes on our birthdays.
Yet, the other day, he dropped this bombshell: there are NO good horror films, except for Dr. Caligari's Cabinet, which was a German expressionist silent from the '20s. He said The Exorcist was, and I quote, "a pile of shit that everyone laughed at".
I stood back aghast.
"What about The Wicker Man?" I asked, knowing it was he who introduced to me that Brit classic.
"It's not a horror film," he replied, adamantly. (I disagree of course, but that's another discussion).
"Rosemary's Baby?"
"Rubbish ending." (Again I totally disagree).
Now, introduction to myself: I am a massive, massive horror movie fan. But it's true, nailing an effective horror film is a very hard thing to do, and there are probably a million more horror films I despise than actually rate. In fact, I'm very protective when it comes to the horror genre, I tend to only like the 'classy' ones, or the really unusual 'trashy' ones, and a bad horror film is probably only personally more bearable than a romantic comedy with Huge Grunt in it.
So, I'm going to deliver to you My Top 20 Horror Films of All Time, with 'horror' being judged as a film that's predominately supernatural, but not always, with its core intent always being to shock, terrify, frighten and/or unsettle audiences (so Hostel and Saw would definitely qualify, Silence of the Lambs and Seven wouldn't, as they focus as much on criminal investigation and human terror than anything 'out there').
So anyway, here goes. and please feel free to recommend me any horror films you feel I may not have seen, because I'd be very intrigued.
1 - ROSEMARY'S BABY (1969)
Roman Polanski's chiller is a slow-burning masterpiece, that's faultless in every respect, from the way he subtly works witchcraft into a completely believable New York setting to the larger-than-life Satanic elderly couple who make exotic herb-laden cakes. And anyone who didn't like the ending can kiss my arse!
2- THE WICKER MAN (1974)
Weird, unique, very British, very unsettling, very influential (see Belgian thriller 'The Ordeal' and League Of Gentlemen TV show) and climaxes with the best ending ever. Watch the 'director's cut' with the shagging slugs, but fast-forward through the unnecessary opening on the Scottish mainland. Christopher Lee, to this day, hails it as the best film he's ever starred in.
3- SUSPIRIA (1978)
I can sort of see why non-films fans may find Dario Argento's masterpiece 'trashy' - because of its production values - but it doesn't take much to admire its hallucinatory, dreamy qualities, and its almost-surreal visual style, which makes brutal killing an art-form with some of the most artistic death sequences in the history of cinematic sadism. Plus, is there a more terrifying soundtrack than Goblin's acid-throated kiddie's nursery rhymes? The answer is 'no'.
4- DON'T LOOK NOW (1973)
More psychological arty weirdness, this time from Brit auteur Nicolas Roeg, which also features one of the most unnerving, surreal and unexpected endings in horror cinema. The strangely desolate Venice setting couldn't have been more appropriate. Plus it really looks like Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie get it on.
5 - THE OMEN (1976)
This was astonishingly listed in a book of the 'Worst 50 Films Ever' by some total dickweed, but is one of the most powerful biblical thrillers ever with a terrifically nervy mystery. Just check out that creepy kid with a giant forehead, and the unrelenting tension in all those death sequences.
6 - THE SHINING (1980)
Stanley Kubrick's envisagement of Stephen King's 'haunted hotel' novel was oddly met with disdain by the author because it ventured too far away from the novel. King was clearly being an over-protective pilchard, because The Shining was a fantastic cinematic achievement that's 0% unintentional comedy and 100% pant-filling terror.
7 - THE EXORCIST (1973)
I remember watching this in a cinema full of people pissing themselves at the pea-soup scenes, and getting really annoyed and crying. The problem with The Exorcist is that it's a victim of its own notoriety and has been parodied to buggery. Detach yourself and watch it properly, and it really is a shit-scary, biblical masterpiece.
8 - THE FOG (1980)
Halloween may have been seminal, but The Fog is easily John Carpenter's finest hour for me.
9 - CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)
I loved this old black and white B-movie. It's pure '60s ghostly Coney Island broodiness with a mental church organ soundtrack and a Sixth Sense-y twist. It's the second best Coney Island film after The Warriors (and possibly Tod Browning's Freaks, if that was set on Coney Island - I can't quite remember).
10 - THE HAUNTING (1963)
My ex-girlfriend fell asleep during this, which probably explains why we split up. This is one of those great psychological 'haunted house' chillers where you don't really see anything, except some kind of odd shape being pushed into the bedroom while the victim's trying to snooze (not the ex-missus).
11- CARRIE (1976)
This is a really beautiful film and a very sad story. Nothing much happens in the first half, but the final third is truly frightening, especially when Carrie's mum comes a cropper and gets impaled with all those flying knives and scissors.
12 - JU-ON (aka THE GRUDGE) (2000) - (Japanese original!)
Because everyone dies in it, and there's not really any story, moral or purpose to it, just a bunch of random people getting cursed and dying, which is just dead morbid for a horror film. Apparently, the director made those horrible clicking noises himself, which must go down really well at dinner parties.
13 - THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974)
It's like a snuff movie episode of Scooby Doo made by someone who's really good behind a video camera.
14 - THE WOMAN IN BLACK (1989)
This is an old TV movie which is really hard to get hold of, but I remember watching it one Christmas when I was about 15, and I can honestly say it's the one single film in my history that has actually scared me rigid and prevented me from getting a good night's sleep for at least three years. If I watched it now though, I'd probably think it was a pile of crap, but I really hope not. Again, it had a really horrible and depressing ending, that's not too dissimilar to The Grudge.
15 - EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960)
Hmmm, is it horror? It's very borderline, but the fact that it's French and opens with a car driving through heavy rain, and it has this really strange nightmarish quality, I'd say it was. It's also very ace.
16 - 28 DAYS LATER (2002)
I love the way the makers get pissed off if you describe this British zombie film as a zombie film. Oops.
17 - MARK OF THE DEVIL (1970)
Utterly shocking witch-hunting film set in the 1600s, which revelled in some pretty gruelling torture scenes. I actually just about prefer this to the Vincent Price film Witchfinder General, which is very similar, but less graphic. Also, it's quite amusing that the lead 'hero' is wearing eyeliner throughout. Did they manufacture Maybelline in those days? It's a bit like seeing microwaves in the Flintstones.
18 - RINGU (1998)
Another classy Japanese outing.
And if these films could be classified as horror, they would definitely feature in my list (in order), because they're all absolutely brilliant.
1) Audition
2) Silence of the Lambs
3) Pan's Labyrinth
4) Seven
5) Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)
6) Psycho
we are a professional webdesign agency/company in india, our website designers offer innovative e commerce & online marketing solutions/services, flash, graphic design, illustration design services. we also specialize in web design consulting & web based applications. <a href="http://www.webdesignfunda.com/web-design-company.html" title="web programming company india">web programming company india</a>
Added: 8 hours ago by webdesignfunda1
Apparently, you can make a pretty decent living out of being in a tribute band. If you're any good and look the part, university unions and weddings will be all over you like a rash.
However, personally, I'm a big fan of a little bit of endeavour. The best tribute bands in my book are the ones that find a twist, rather than be straight-down-the-line imitators. Despite some suited political types telling us that Britain is officially out of recession, I'm far from convinced. So if you're looking at earning an extra bit of dough, I reckon forming one of these tribute bands is a guaranteed nice little earner.
In fact, I'm well up for forming Irony Laden, myself. Anyone else in? Just email Kontraband and I'll sort out the rehearsal room!
THE TOP 10 TRIBUTE BANDS THAT HAVEN'T BEEN FORMED - BUT SHOULD BE:
IRONY LADEN:
The ULTIMATE tribute band. Or non-tribute band, as the case may be. Basically, Iron Maiden's back catalogue over-performed by a bunch of over-dressed metalheads with extended 23-minute guitar breaks, random and pointless drum solos, and eardrum-rupturing wails that push Bill Withers' 'Lovely Day' for length of duration, who all seem to be taking their job with the same level of seriousness as an accountant filing tax returns for Microsoft.
But really underneath all the dramatic schlock, they're just taking the piss, it's ironic, hahahahahaha. Just that no-one knows. Unless they read the name first.
SPINAL CRAP:
The big problem at the heart of Spinal Tap: The Movie is the fact that the band are actually very talented musicians, performing quite intricate musical compositions that require more than a modicum of technical ability.
A Spinal Crap would essentially consist of the same songs being played by a bunch of individuals to their very best abilities, but having only just picked up a guitar nine-months previously - a wood-cracked imitation Les Paul purchased from Argos or Cash Converters - they're still fingering the chords to 'Wonderwall' with the co-ordination of an embryo, so 'to the very best of their abilities' would have the same musical impact of an abused tortoise painfully crawling over the strings of the said guitar, and dying halfway across.
PUNK FLOYD:
Unfortunately, despite developing the ingenious (and ironic) idea of transforming Pink Floyd's sophisticated prog rock soundscapes into snarly two-minute thrash-outs, it appears someone's already executed the idea. Technically, it should be in the subsequent category, but I don't care, I thought of this, too. I'm having it. In your face 'the real' Punk Floyd. In fact, I have no idea whether the 'real' Punk Floyd even perform punk versions of Pink Floyd songs.
NUNS AND MOSES:
A Christian rock incarnation of Axl Rose's legendary sleaze rockers, featuring added gospel backings, slight lyrical adjustments and a singer with a relaxed and fulfilled grin on his face. First album would include Use Of Your Illusion rocker 'Garden Of Eden', plus 'Holy War', 'Holy Child O' Mine', 'My Mary' and 'Paradise City of Jerusalem'.
CHARLES AND DAVID:
Chas n' Dave classics performed by classically trained harpists.
LIBERTINES-X:
A Jessica Taylor lookalike singing Pete Doherty numbers while smoking crack.
ALICE IN PAINS:
A bit sick this one, but I'm starting to run low on ideas, so. An all-girl tribute band, singing dark and depressing grunge songs about menstrual issues rather than drugs. There's definitely a joke to be had in the band's original favourite of 'Angry Chair', but I'm looking for it.
ROD-NEY STEWART:
Rod Stewart hits performed in the style of Nicholas Lyndhurst as Rodney Trotter.
DAMON ALL-BRAN:
Blur look-alikes performing songs from Kellog's cereal commercials.
MICHAEL BUBBLY:
Performing all of Michael Buble's astonishing easy listening hits, but by farting or burping the melodies into the mic.
AND HERE'S THE GREAT ONES THAT HAVE BEEN DONE
HAYSEED DIXIE
Not a band-specific tribute act per se, despite the nifty nameplay on Aussie rockers AC/DC, Hayseed Dixie (originally AC/Dixie) ply their trade in banjo-y, violin-y countrified covers of famous rock hits. The Hayseeds have built up a massive cult following, have released several albums and are well worth checking out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mU2lJKkQ04
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Kj781O3js
LEZ ZEPPELIN
Ingeniously, a quartet of New York women performing Led Zeppelin covers to a relatively high standard. It's not clear whether they're actually lesbians, though. What is clear is that they're pretty hot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YxObEPlR-U
DREAD ZEPPELIN
I'll let Wikipedia explain this one: 'Dread Zeppelin is an American band best known for performing the songs of Zed Zeppelin in a reggae style as sung by a 300 pound Vegas Elvis impersonator'. That's cleared that one up, then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CO7FPU7a2
RODEOHEAD
Some pair called Hard and Phirm have sung Radiohead favourites in a country style. What else can I say?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyzVXFIbSDM
there's already a really aptly named maiden/priest cover band that tours & is pretty ba called judas beast.
Added: 6 days ago by jerktown
Planet of the Apes, The Haunting, The Wicker Man, Get Carter, House of Wax, Rollerball, The Grudge.spot the connection?
All cherished cult films, blessed with individuality and artistic flair, and representative of the time they were made - and all turned into moronic Hollywood turd-heaps, which bombed at the box office anyway, making them even more pointless than Simon Cowell's hairstylist.
I don't get it.
Two weeks ago, I was watching the Karate Kid trailer, a remake that transfers the action to China and therefore doesn't even feature karate as its main form of combat, making it to the biggest WTF movie venture of the summer. And going forward, Dario Argento's arthouse chiller Suspiria - one of my favourite films ever - is poised for some predictably hideous Hollywood dumbing treatment, while, bizarrely Steven Spielberg is reshooting Korean thriller Old Boy with (apparently) Will Smith in the main role, which is actually, so, so wrong, it may just work.
But why is Hollywood remaking these great films, anyway? Why doesn't it just remake shit films instead, as long as there's enough potential in the original premise to ooze out some quality? Most of the audiences these are made for haven't even heard of most of the originals anyway, and hey, a plot's a plot. At least the pressure's off, and there's no great source material to tarnish.
Or better still, why not screw Hollywood altogether, and give a bunch of turkeys to the 'rest of the world' and show the big-buck studios how it's done. In fact, I'd happily see these ten Hollywood films get the remake treatment. Especially Howard The Duck.
TEN HOLLYWOOD TURKEYS WITH 'REMAKE' POTENTIAL
MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
I know this film has only just come out, but if ever there was a case of get your butts back to the drawing board and start all over again, it sure as hell was this.
The whole premise of hippified soldiers being trained in the art of telekinesis and Uri Geller-style spoonbending, all apparently based on real fact, was enough to give most cinema-goers a 'see it now' boner. Unfortunately, this film's hilarious 'high point' was a soldier running into a wall. Laugh? I nearly slipped into a coma, and that was 12-seconds into the film. A complete waste of acting talent (Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges), this HAS to be remade almost as much as I need to order an Indian takeaway with a bottle of ice-cold Tiger beer tonight, because frankly I'm starving.
JUDGE DREDD
One of comic-book's meanest ever characters was transformed into a predictable, sappy plate of Hollywood toenail clippings, with Sly Stallone blasphemously removing the infamous Dredd helmet, and getting embroiled in a dopey plot engineered by a four-and-a-half-year-old kid while playing with his Action Man figures and doing all those 'pow, pow' noises. Considering the moody storylines and totalitarian horror of its comic-book inspiration, the Dredd franchise cannot be left to lie and rot like this.
EXORCIST II
One of the worst sequels ever, set almost entirely in a mental asylum with an acorn of a plot, but further undermined by laughable special effects akin to a Punch and Judy show. Remake it now, make it really chilling and really scary, and don't just rely on the voice of Darth Vader to give it some atmos. What a load of sweaty, stinky bollocks.
TWINS
Solely because all these photos of 'the world's tallest man standing next to the world's shortest man' need some sort of extra purpose than to just randomly appear in tabloid newspapers whenever their editors need to fill some space. A foreign-language remake of Twins, directed by legend horror oddball Tod Browning (after necromancers have resurrected his body) seems to be the ultimate way of converting Twins into a legend of cult cinema.
THE BODYGUARD
So maybe I'm being selfish here, but I'm proposing a remake of this dreary rom-thriller with the ginger one from Girls Aloud in the Whitney Houston role (or possibly Billie Piper or Jessica Alba), using Madonna's 'Erotic' as the 'And I Will Always Love You' song, and spicing it up with a with some ambiguously pornographic 'are they real?' sex scenes, preferably directed by Lars Von Trier, who loves that sort of thing, and me (see what I did here?) as the Kevin Costner bodyguard.
CLICK
What a waste of one of cinema's greatest farting scenes, when Adam Sandler uses his magical remote control to 'pause' his boss David Hasslehoff, and unleash gaseous venom into the abyss of his welcoming mouth. "Did you put shit in my sandwich?" the Hoff screams at his secretary after Sandler 'unpauses' him and innocently takes up a position the other side of the room. Unfortunately, the rest of this comedy was rubbish. This is crying out for a new production just so more can be made of that rippling bottom burp.
CHILDREN OF THE CORN
A cult of maniacal kiddies torturing and sacrificing adults in the haunting quiet of an American countryside, while a soft summertime breeze gently ripples through the seasonal harvest? This had all the potential ingredients of being a truly terrifying tale of biblical connotations, but was bottom-raped by a load of camp child acting, B-movie direction and a script airlifted straight from the Planet Cheese. What this needs is a sheen of Wicker Man-style weirdness, a spooky Christopher Lee soundtrack (yes, this man sings) and to be promptly lumped into a tranquil Olde English farmyard setting, complete with suspiciously possessed pigs. A Blighty reproduction could result in an instant genre classic. Do it now, people, do it now.
HOWARD THE DUCK
A live-action movie about a heroic, cigar-chomping duck. How on earth did its original creators manage to fuck this one up? It was there on a plate. In today's age of CGI advancement, this is primed for a high-brow re-telling, preferably with Guillermo del Toro direction to make it all dark and Pans Labyrinth-y, and to cart it off to civil war-era Spain for added emotional depth. Better than a giant-sized bowl of Paella!
GRUMPY OLD MEN
Walther Matthau is one of my favourite ever actors, so the fact that this comedy of two bickering pensioners was about as funny as a Medieval beheading on an Ecstasy comedown, came as one of the 20th century's greatest disappointments. If Albert Steptoe and Alf Garnett were still alive, I'd be envisaging a gritty East London makeover, with a script that's 87% "you faaaaccck'n caaaahhhhhnnnt", 12% manbag slapfests and 1% mulling over West Ham United's forward line.
TITANIC
Take out the romantic plot and all the pomposity, and hey, presto - a complete shipwreck of a movie. Literally.
great idea
adam
a href="http://www.fastrealestate.com.au/brisbane.htm" rel="dofollow">brisbane real estate</a>
Added: 8 days ago by adam123
