Added: 832 days ago by Stephen Daultrey | Posted in: Celebs | 30 Comments

Rating:

 

Share:     Embed:     Fave:    

Item added to your favorites.

You must be logged in to add to your faves. Use the login box on this page or click here to regsiter.

<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/21421/THE-18-GREATEST-HORROR-FILMS-EVER/'>THE 18 GREATEST HORROR FILMS EVER.</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

(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

Added: 832 days ago by Stephen Daultrey | Posted in: Celebs | 30 Comments

Rating: