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Best Horror/Halloween movies?


WordWolf
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Let's say you were going to plan a movie festival for friends, or programming the movie list for a TV channel for Halloween, with the obvious theme of "horror film" in any reasonable sense of the word. (i.e. no adding "The Star Wars Holiday Special" to the list just because it's so awful.)

What movies do you think should at least be considered for the list?

1) I'll start off with the original "Psycho."

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Night Of The Living Dead

The other movies mentioned are all great but NOTLD is a definite.

To that I'll add:

-- The Excorcist

-- The Blair Witch Project

-- Rocky Horror Picture Show

-- almost any black and white gothic horror movie released between say 1950 and 1965.

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I should mention also that, while I can take or leave the 1974 original, the 2003 remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is one of the creepiest, sickest and most disturbing movies I've ever seen. (That's a positive review, BTW.) If you like horror check it out but be warned: it's not for everybody.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 9 years later...

CafeCap, how did you even find this thread, buried for nine years?

I wouldn't call it a horror film, but "Experiment in Terror" was an EXCELLENT thriller.

By the way, CC, please join in in some of the other game threads.  The rules (for most of them) are posted in a pinned thread at the beginning of this forum.  The main, general rules are:  the person who gets the answer gets to post the next puzzle, and no googling to get the answer (though it's okay to google when giving the clue).

George

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On 12/29/2020 at 11:16 AM, GeorgeStGeorge said:

CafeCap, how did you even find this thread, buried for nine years?

 

I wouldn't call it a horror film, but "Experiment in Terror" was an EXCELLENT thriller.

By the way, CC, please join in in some of the other game threads.  The rules (for most of them) are posted in a pinned thread at the beginning of this forum.  The main, general rules are:  the person who gets the answer gets to post the next puzzle, and no googling to get the answer (though it's okay to google when giving the clue).

George

Even though this thread was buried for nine years - you forgot one thing, George - Sometimes They Come Back (1991 made for TV horror movie based on Stephen King's short story  :biglaugh: )

 

I've never seen Experiment in Terror - but after looking it up on the internet I've put it on my watchlist. thanks.    

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On 12/29/2020 at 7:07 AM, CafeCap said:

Love 'The Shining'- unconventionally excellent piece of art

Welcome to Grease Spot,  CafeCap!

I’m glad you’ve brought this thread back from the dead – muha ha ha ha ha!!

I think The Shining is a great psychological horror/thriller movie…it freaked me out when you finally get to see what Jack had been laboriously typing – page after page of the same phrase “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” – yikes ! almost as bad as the repetitive nonsense we had to endure in the way corps training program :biglaugh:     …I prefer either the old horror classics or good psychological horror thrillers (like The Shining) over the gore fest in a lot of horror movies…I also like to check out remakes of classic horror films:

Invasion of the Body Snatches (1956) – for me the original is always the best..btw, and you've probably heard this before - in the 1950s alien movies were often allegories for the communist menace.

Invasion of the Body Snatches (1978) – a scary element in this movie is Leonard Nimoy’s character – a self-help guru who uses “logic” to talk people into ignoring their emotions and well-founded fears - reminded me of the tactics of cult leaders - yikes !!!

Body Snatchers (1993) – I will put the helicopter scene right up there with the best scary scene out of any horror movie

The Invasion (2007) – interesting to note this last iteration of the Invasion of The Body Snatchers shows the alien invaders are more along the lines of a flu-virus.

 

And another classic alien invader:

The Thing from Another World (1951) – for me the original is always the best

The Thing (1982) – interesting idea of “the thing” along the lines of a virus in the blood – like the above “The Invasion

The Thing (2011) – this movie has a lot of gore compared to the earlier versions – but like the 1951 and 1982 films, it generates a lot of suspense – isolated in the cold lonely Artic or Antarctic…who knows what otherworldly menace lurks down some long dark corridor or some store room…or under the familiar appearance of a coworker. Triple Yikes Yikes Yikes !!!

== == ==

I also like more recent psychological thrillers – especially when they twist around unexpectedly – there’s 3 that I think have some similarities:

Vanilla Sky (2001)

Ex Machina (2014)

Archive (2020) – without giving away too much I thought Archive is a cross between Vanilla Sky and Ex Machina.

Edited by T-Bone
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As far as “best” horror movies go – I’m listing the ones that have elicited a strong physical reaction from me…so my list starts with:

The H-Man (1958) – a radioactive creature that oozes around like slime and dissolves people it comes in contact with. My older brother and sister took me to see it when I was like 5 or 6…I had nightmares for over a week – would not go down the basement stairs or take a bath because that’s where the H-Man had got some of his victims - that's why fear stinks :biglaugh: ...anyway, one night I awoke from a nightmare because I had to pee – or maybe I just dreamt I was awake and saw him in the hallway – so I peed the bed. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. :rolleyes:

Mark of the Devil (1970) – 1700s witch hunters in Austria…and actually my first girlfriend wanted to see it more than me…so I threw caution to the wind figuring it would be a good make out opportunity…uhm...not so much...pretty early into the movie a guy shoves what looked like an icepick through the tongue of a woman in chains (maybe she was a witch or the guy thought she was a witch - don't recall or  even want to recall any  details ) anyway – that was it for me…boy that freaked me out – I got up, dragged my girlfriend behind me and tried to get my money back at the box office. That was another scary moment since I don’t like to confront people…and alas I didn’t get my money back – chalk it up to experience.

The Exorcist (1973) – 12 year old girl gets possessed – unholy things done with a crucifix – heads turn – literally! I went to go see this movie with my second girlfriend, her parents, my girlfriend’s girlfriend and her boyfriend and her parents. The girls were best friends - and don't ask me who's cockamamie idea it was to make this a thing to do - dual-familia-octet-thrill-seekers... We waited in line outside the theater for almost 3 hours for a two hour movie…I should have realized my defenses were already worn down…The early scene of the 12 year old girl violently masturbating with a cross absolutely freaked out this good little Catholic boy – I felt the need to vomit. If I was by myself I would have just walked out – but I was not going to embarrass myself and my girlfriend or the rest of the octet - so I choked it down and for the remainder of the movie I focused on either the bottom left or bottom right corner of the movie screen and played back Beatles, Hendrix or Cream tunes in my head to drown out some of the intense movie soundtrack.

Edited by T-Bone
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I might be dating myself but a few of my favorite Horror (Just hit midnight, Have a Good Year) films are The Pit and The Pendulum, and The Shining has got to be up there too. Sometimes Sci-fy movies are technically horror movies like "The Thing" the Kurt Russell one, and Night of The Living Dead.

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14 hours ago, T-Bone said:

anyway, one night I awoke from a nightmare because I had to pee – or maybe I just dreamt I was awake and saw him in the hallway – so I peed the bed. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. :rolleyes:

When I was young, I had nightmares almost every night.  A lot of them involved a ghostly boogeyman who could paralyze me before getting a hold on me.  I remember one night dreaming that I woke up from one of the nightmares, but I could see the shortest wisp of the boogeyman going into our bathroom.  (This was a reasonable view, as my bed faced the hallway with the bathroom door.)  I forced myself awake, for real this time, but you can bet I was very tentative about heading into the bathroom to pee.  I did it, though.  No peeing the bed.

On a different note, I'm not good with blood and gore.  Not slapstick stuff, like Monty Python, but more realistic scenes.  In the first "Halloween," when Jamie Lee Curtis rams a coat hanger into "Michael's" eye, I nearly passed out.  Any wonder I never went to med school?  :anim-smile:

George

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1 hour ago, GeorgeStGeorge said:

...On a different note, I'm not good with blood and gore.  Not slapstick stuff, like Monty Python, but more realistic scenes.  In the first "Halloween," when Jamie Lee Curtis rams a coat hanger into "Michael's" eye, I nearly passed out.  Any wonder I never went to med school?  :anim-smile:

George

I'm the same way...I have a couple of friends who really get into gory stuff. They laugh and say it's not real. I tell them - yeah I know that but the images still bother me. Even a horror/comedy like Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead - I can tolerate somewhat and watch with friends - I laugh at the funny stuff but I don't really focus at the screen when there's a lot of blood and guts...never had an issue with the old horror classics - where things were suggested...like shadows on the wall of the monster killing somebody.

Edited by T-Bone
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On 12/31/2020 at 3:35 PM, T-Bone said:

Welcome to Grease Spot,  CafeCap!

I’m glad you’ve brought this thread back from the dead – muha ha ha ha ha!!

I think The Shining is a great psychological horror/thriller movie…it freaked me out when you finally get to see what Jack had been laboriously typing – page after page of the same phrase “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” – yikes ! almost as bad as the repetitive nonsense we had to endure in the way corps training program :biglaugh:     …I prefer either the old horror classics or good psychological horror thrillers (like The Shining) over the gore fest in a lot of horror movies…I also like to check out remakes of classic horror films:

Invasion of the Body Snatches (1956) – for me the original is always the best..btw, and you've probably heard this before - in the 1950s alien movies were often allegories for the communist menace.

Invasion of the Body Snatches (1978) – a scary element in this movie is Leonard Nimoy’s character – a self-help guru who uses “logic” to talk people into ignoring their emotions and well-founded fears - reminded me of the tactics of cult leaders - yikes !!!

Body Snatchers (1993) – I will put the helicopter scene right up there with the best scary scene out of any horror movie

The Invasion (2007) – interesting to note this last iteration of the Invasion of The Body Snatchers shows the alien invaders are more along the lines of a flu-virus.

 

And another classic alien invader:

The Thing from Another World (1951) – for me the original is always the best

The Thing (1982) – interesting idea of “the thing” along the lines of a virus in the blood – like the above “The Invasion

The Thing (2011) – this movie has a lot of gore compared to the earlier versions – but like the 1951 and 1982 films, it generates a lot of suspense – isolated in the cold lonely Artic or Antarctic…who knows what otherworldly menace lurks down some long dark corridor or some store room…or under the familiar appearance of a coworker. Triple Yikes Yikes Yikes !!!

== == ==

I also like more recent psychological thrillers – especially when they twist around unexpectedly – there’s 3 that I think have some similarities:

Vanilla Sky (2001)

Ex Machina (2014)

Archive (2020) – without giving away too much I thought Archive is a cross between Vanilla Sky and Ex Machina.

Haha. Thanks for the list. The Shining was special in many ways. You did not have abstract objects scaring people. The horror purely relied on cinematography, music, and the brilliance of Jack Nicholson. I was impressed by the title shot itself where the aerial camera eerily follows the car. Not only did it build the excitement, but also covered the scenic beauty of the mountains. My favorite shot was the kid riding the cycle and going circles, the cinematography and music was simple superb. 

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On 12/29/2020 at 9:16 AM, GeorgeStGeorge said:

CafeCap, how did you even find this thread, buried for nine years?

I wouldn't call it a horror film, but "Experiment in Terror" was an EXCELLENT thriller.

By the way, CC, please join in in some of the other game threads.  The rules (for most of them) are posted in a pinned thread at the beginning of this forum.  The main, general rules are:  the person who gets the answer gets to post the next puzzle, and no googling to get the answer (though it's okay to google when giving the clue).

George

Found my interest. I think the movie for me broke the conventional meaning of horror. 

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7 hours ago, CafeCap said:

Haha. Thanks for the list. The Shining was special in many ways. You did not have abstract objects scaring people. The horror purely relied on cinematography, music, and the brilliance of Jack Nicholson. I was impressed by the title shot itself where the aerial camera eerily follows the car. Not only did it build the excitement, but also covered the scenic beauty of the mountains. My favorite shot was the kid riding the cycle and going circles, the cinematography and music was simple superb. 

I guess this would fall under the category of six degrees of filming locations  :biglaugh:   . Filming for The Shining was on interior studio sets in England, exterior shots were of Glacier National Park in Montana like the VW Beetle driving on Going-to-the-Sun road and the Timberline Lodge in Oregon. ( see     Wikipedia - The Shining    ). I really get into the details of how movies are made and found out something else interesting about how Stephen King got the idea for The Shining

“The Stanley Hotel inspired the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's 1977 bestselling novel The Shining and was a filming location for the related 1997 TV miniseries…

In 1974, during their brief residency in Boulder, Colorado, horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha spent one night at the Stanley Hotel.[10] The visit is known entirely through interviews given by King in which he presents differing narratives of the experience. At the time of his visit, King was writing a book with the working title Darkshine set in an amusement park, but was not satisfied with the setting. According to George Beahm's Stephen King Companion, "on the advisement of locals who suggested a resort hotel located in Estes Park, an hour's drive away to the north, Stephen and Tabitha King found themselves checking in at the Stanley Hotel just as its other guests were checking out, because the hotel was shutting down for the winter season. After checking in and after Tabitha went to bed [sic], King roamed the halls and went down to the hotel bar, where drinks were served by a bartender named Grady. As he returned to his room, numbered 217, his imagination was fired up by the hotel's remote location, its grand size, and its eerie desolation. And when King went into the bathroom and pulled back the pink curtain for the tub, which had claw feet, he thought, 'What if somebody died here? At that moment, I knew I had a book.'"

In a 1977 interview by the Literary Guild, King recounted "While we were living [in Boulder] we heard about this terrific old mountain resort hotel and decided to give it a try. But when we arrived, they were just getting ready to close for the season, and we found ourselves the only guests in the place—with all those long, empty corridors." King and his wife were served dinner in an empty dining room accompanied by canned orchestral music: "Except for our table all the chairs were up on the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall, and, I mean, it was like God had put me there to hear that and see those things. And by the time I went to bed that night, I had the whole book [The Shining] in my mind." In another retelling, King said "I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of The Shining firmly set in my mind."

 From:   Wikipedia - The Stanley Hotel 

== == == == ==

The first night of our honeymoon was at The Stanley Hotel – this was in November some 44 years ago. And just like King described above, the hotel was shutting down for the season. We pretty much had the place to ourselves – we went down to the bar – and it was just the bartender and us – oh, and the resident cat who sat up on our little round table. So overall there was a cold and a somewhat creepy ambience to our experience. This is a very old resort and was not built for the winter months, and after our first night we had to find another hotel because the pipes had froze and they closed down…and now fast forward to recent years – in our vacation travels we have stayed in Glacier National Park and toured the Timberline Lodge…this has been another exciting episode of our brush with greatness :biglaugh:    .

Edited by T-Bone
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On 1/4/2021 at 7:19 AM, T-Bone said:

I guess this would fall under the category of six degrees of filming locations  :biglaugh:   . Filming for The Shining was on interior studio sets in England, exterior shots were of Glacier National Park in Montana like the VW Beetle driving on Going-to-the-Sun road and the Timberline Lodge in Oregon. ( see     Wikipedia - The Shining    ). I really get into the details of how movies are made and found out something else interesting about how Stephen King got the idea for The Shining

“The Stanley Hotel inspired the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's 1977 bestselling novel The Shining and was a filming location for the related 1997 TV miniseries…

In 1974, during their brief residency in Boulder, Colorado, horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha spent one night at the Stanley Hotel.[10] The visit is known entirely through interviews given by King in which he presents differing narratives of the experience. At the time of his visit, King was writing a book with the working title Darkshine set in an amusement park, but was not satisfied with the setting. According to George Beahm's Stephen King Companion, "on the advisement of locals who suggested a resort hotel located in Estes Park, an hour's drive away to the north, Stephen and Tabitha King found themselves checking in at the Stanley Hotel just as its other guests were checking out, because the hotel was shutting down for the winter season. After checking in and after Tabitha went to bed [sic], King roamed the halls and went down to the hotel bar, where drinks were served by a bartender named Grady. As he returned to his room, numbered 217, his imagination was fired up by the hotel's remote location, its grand size, and its eerie desolation. And when King went into the bathroom and pulled back the pink curtain for the tub, which had claw feet, he thought, 'What if somebody died here? At that moment, I knew I had a book.'"

In a 1977 interview by the Literary Guild, King recounted "While we were living [in Boulder] we heard about this terrific old mountain resort hotel and decided to give it a try. But when we arrived, they were just getting ready to close for the season, and we found ourselves the only guests in the place—with all those long, empty corridors." King and his wife were served dinner in an empty dining room accompanied by canned orchestral music: "Except for our table all the chairs were up on the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall, and, I mean, it was like God had put me there to hear that and see those things. And by the time I went to bed that night, I had the whole book [The Shining] in my mind." In another retelling, King said "I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of The Shining firmly set in my mind."

 From:   Wikipedia - The Stanley Hotel 

== == == == ==

The first night of our honeymoon was at The Stanley Hotel – this was in November some 44 years ago. And just like King described above, the hotel was shutting down for the season. We pretty much had the place to ourselves – we went down to the bar – and it was just the bartender and us – oh, and the resident cat who sat up on our little round table. So overall there was a cold and a somewhat creepy ambience to our experience. This is a very old resort and was not built for the winter months, and after our first night we had to find another hotel because the pipes had froze and they closed down…and now fast forward to recent years – in our vacation travels we have stayed in Glacier National Park and toured the Timberline Lodge…this has been another exciting episode of our brush with greatness :biglaugh:    .

Woow. It is a joy to understand and learn what inspired a creator to create. Thanks a ton!

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  • 2 months later...
11 hours ago, matthewh said:

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This is an advertisement, not a post.  This is an advertising account, not a new poster who wants to discuss things.

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2 hours ago, WordWolf said:

This is an advertisement, not a post.  This is an advertising account, not a new poster who wants to discuss things.

That’s funny and scary – since it’s on a thread discussing best horror and Halloween movies…imagine right in the middle of a Dracula movie, the vampire-hunter turns to the camera, holds up a fancy bejeweled cross and says “I buy all my crucifixes at Saint Alphonsus’ Catholic Supply House at 3645 Main Street ”.

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