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In honour of Jonesy's question about horror movies in "stupid movie" thread:
Rather than clutter that thread with "off topic" remarks, why not yet another movie thread! Just what was lacking from the boards!
:dunno:
First, let me admit I'm not big on the genre because I find so many of them so badly done, needlessly gory, and ultimately boring! The few that are actually scary save the genre, but to me, they are very few indeed.
Favourites (no particular order):
Psycho (Hitchcock's original, of course - TOTALLY caught me off guard the first time I saw it, as I was completely caught up in the "bait and switch" plot concerning the money. 30 years later, Psycho II was actually pretty good as well, but not as good as the original - the other sequels, 3 and 4, couldn't have sucked any worse, however)
Silence of the Lambs (wonderful, intensely psychological creepiness)
Dead Ringers (Man, what a creepy film. I don't know another movie that make one's skin crawl like this one does. How Jeremy Irons was passed over by the Oscars for this, I'll never understand. As great as Hopkins was in Lambs, his performance was almost bush league compared to Irons)
The Omen (the original one - despite a couple of silly moments, a pretty creepy film. Gregory Peck's always believable performance kept the film from sliding off into ridiculousness)
Alien (creeped me out for some time, not diminshed by its lame sequels)
Halloween (despite all the terrible sequels and rip-offs that followed, the original was pretty scary)
The Serpent And The Rainbow (I hesitate calling this a horror movie, more like a thriller with a little extra added to the creep factor)
Sisters (despite stealing the initial plot from Rear Window, DePalma pulls a "Psycho" and twists off down a plot we never see coming. Intense, psychological, whacked stuff)
An American Werewolf in London (scary, funny, slick, freaky make-up jobs - no CGI cheating for the metamorphoses! - a great romp)
The Exorcist (despite becoming something of an 'icon' and being lampooned constantly, many moments in the film are quite unnerving)
Wow, didn't think I could come up with ten excellent ones! There are a few others (I'm not counting funny horror movies like Army of Darkness in this, only ones that purport to be geniunely scary) that I think are OK, but nothing to write home about.
Bloody Awful (There's way too many to mention, so I'll try to stick to the more recent ones):
Saw (more plot holes than swiss cheese, and stupid)
The Blair Witch Project (A friend said it was a very scary movie for him because he invited three buddies out away from wives and kids. As the film dragged on, he became more and more frightened his buddies were going to drag him behind a truck for ruining their free night with this boring movie)
Scream (and its equally bad sequels, though I was never sure if the original wasn't supposed to be bad)
Dark Water (depressing movie about bad parenting, not at all scary - and sporting a major plot hole to boot)
The Ring (Yawn...yawn...yawn...is this supposed to get scary at some point?)
The Grudge (actually more boring than the Ring)
OK, I can't help it, here are a few "classics" (anti-classics?) that I thought were awful:
The Birds (I will never understand why this pathetic movie is considered a classic: dumbest. ending. ever.)
The Shining (bad realisation of the only genuinely scary novel King ever wrote; I admit the TV remake was even worse)
Rosemary's Baby (will this movie EVER go anywhere!?!?!)
Scanners (They blowed up real good!)
The Fog (dull, dull, dull, Carpenter apparently used every idea he ever had in Halloween)
Friday the 13th - and the whole string of awful slasher movies that followed including the 'Freddie' movies, Halloween sequels, on into Chucky, etc., etc. (I'll never forget rolling with laughter through the original F the 13, the first Halloween rip-off, as my buddies and I accurately shouted out every "shock" that was about to happen). We started going to all those horridly bad slasher movies afterward, laughing at the predictable plots, poor make-up, and bad dialogue. Other teenage boys hated us because their dates - who soon started giggling along with us - didn't get scared and grab hold of them like they'd been hoping. We did get kicked out of the theatre twice, but what fun it was...
Rather than clutter that thread with "off topic" remarks, why not yet another movie thread! Just what was lacking from the boards!
:dunno: First, let me admit I'm not big on the genre because I find so many of them so badly done, needlessly gory, and ultimately boring! The few that are actually scary save the genre, but to me, they are very few indeed.
Favourites (no particular order):
Psycho (Hitchcock's original, of course - TOTALLY caught me off guard the first time I saw it, as I was completely caught up in the "bait and switch" plot concerning the money. 30 years later, Psycho II was actually pretty good as well, but not as good as the original - the other sequels, 3 and 4, couldn't have sucked any worse, however)
Silence of the Lambs (wonderful, intensely psychological creepiness)
Dead Ringers (Man, what a creepy film. I don't know another movie that make one's skin crawl like this one does. How Jeremy Irons was passed over by the Oscars for this, I'll never understand. As great as Hopkins was in Lambs, his performance was almost bush league compared to Irons)
The Omen (the original one - despite a couple of silly moments, a pretty creepy film. Gregory Peck's always believable performance kept the film from sliding off into ridiculousness)
Alien (creeped me out for some time, not diminshed by its lame sequels)
Halloween (despite all the terrible sequels and rip-offs that followed, the original was pretty scary)
The Serpent And The Rainbow (I hesitate calling this a horror movie, more like a thriller with a little extra added to the creep factor)
Sisters (despite stealing the initial plot from Rear Window, DePalma pulls a "Psycho" and twists off down a plot we never see coming. Intense, psychological, whacked stuff)
An American Werewolf in London (scary, funny, slick, freaky make-up jobs - no CGI cheating for the metamorphoses! - a great romp)
The Exorcist (despite becoming something of an 'icon' and being lampooned constantly, many moments in the film are quite unnerving)
Wow, didn't think I could come up with ten excellent ones! There are a few others (I'm not counting funny horror movies like Army of Darkness in this, only ones that purport to be geniunely scary) that I think are OK, but nothing to write home about.
Bloody Awful (There's way too many to mention, so I'll try to stick to the more recent ones):
Saw (more plot holes than swiss cheese, and stupid)
The Blair Witch Project (A friend said it was a very scary movie for him because he invited three buddies out away from wives and kids. As the film dragged on, he became more and more frightened his buddies were going to drag him behind a truck for ruining their free night with this boring movie)
Scream (and its equally bad sequels, though I was never sure if the original wasn't supposed to be bad)
Dark Water (depressing movie about bad parenting, not at all scary - and sporting a major plot hole to boot)
The Ring (Yawn...yawn...yawn...is this supposed to get scary at some point?)
The Grudge (actually more boring than the Ring)
OK, I can't help it, here are a few "classics" (anti-classics?) that I thought were awful:
The Birds (I will never understand why this pathetic movie is considered a classic: dumbest. ending. ever.)
The Shining (bad realisation of the only genuinely scary novel King ever wrote; I admit the TV remake was even worse)
Rosemary's Baby (will this movie EVER go anywhere!?!?!)
Scanners (They blowed up real good!)
The Fog (dull, dull, dull, Carpenter apparently used every idea he ever had in Halloween)
Friday the 13th - and the whole string of awful slasher movies that followed including the 'Freddie' movies, Halloween sequels, on into Chucky, etc., etc. (I'll never forget rolling with laughter through the original F the 13, the first Halloween rip-off, as my buddies and I accurately shouted out every "shock" that was about to happen). We started going to all those horridly bad slasher movies afterward, laughing at the predictable plots, poor make-up, and bad dialogue. Other teenage boys hated us because their dates - who soon started giggling along with us - didn't get scared and grab hold of them like they'd been hoping. We did get kicked out of the theatre twice, but what fun it was...
lus-un2: 
