Great Horror Movies

[cactusfan]

inspired by talk on the movie thread...

yes. 'torture porn' movies of today are depressing and awful. and that's all horror has turned into. which is too bad, since it's such a great medium for getting at all sorts of interesting moral issues along with scaring the crap out of you.

what are people's favorite horror flicks?

a few older ones i like:

Night of The Living Dead, the original from '68. if you've never seen it, you must check it out. brilliant. scary and weird. and with one of the all-time great endings. horrible, but great. if you know what i mean. considering that the hero of the movie is black, the ending is quite a political statement for the time as well.

Repulsion. a roman polanski movie from '65, with catherine deneuve as a woman locked in her apartment for a weekend who goes insane. not gory, but very freaky.

and for straight-up, gory madness, there's always david cronenberg's first movie, They Came From Within, about a sexually transmitted leech-like monsterous disease that eats into everyone in an apartment building until the whole place is full of sex crazed zombie freaks.

[birdman]

Here's three that all scared me shitless as a young child:
Amityville Horror
The Shining (one of my alltime fav. movies EVAR)
Poltergeist- that freaky clown owned me

[tet]

The Shining is up there for me... i'm a Kubrick fanatic to begin with, and that's just a brilliant piece from all angles. 

also a fave of mine is Evil Dead.  classic and awful at the same time.

edit: birdman reminded me of clowns.  not so much Poltergeist for me, though it was scary - i hate clowns anyway, but even more so after the adaptation of Stephen King's IT.  way freakier than Phish's IT.  read the book, it's GREAT.

[sls.stormyrider]

another vote for Night of the Living Dead. classic.

The Exorcist (although the book was better)

the most scared I can remember in a movie theater was when I saw Carrie. I thought the movie was OK and was just waiting for it to end. Then, with the last scene, I must've jumped about 10 ft in the air. There was a big echo of HOLY SHIT in the theater-I remember people walking out of the theater shaking.

[whyweigh5.0]

what was that movie where that doctor took the dead bodies back to his home and ground them up and packed them like hamburger.  Fed it to his family and shit

for some reason that one scared me a good bit.  I was little when I saw it too

[whyweigh5.0]

The Shining is up there for me... i'm a Kubrick fanatic to begin with, and that's just a brilliant piece from all angles. 

also a fave of mine is Evil Dead.  classic and awful at the same time.

edit: birdman reminded me of clowns.  not so much Poltergeist for me, though it was scary - i hate clowns anyway, but even more so after the adaptation of Stephen King's IT.  way freakier than Phish's IT.  read the book, it's GREAT.

killer clowns from outerspace

[cactusfan]

the Shining is a favorite of mine, too. so good. and weird and creepy. the sound of the big wheels on the floor/carpet/floor/carpet somehow manages to be the scariest sound i've ever heard.

i liked being scared as a kid.
as a 10 year old my second favorite movie ever was Raiders of the Lost Ark.
my first favorite-- An American Werewolf in London. that movie messed me up, and i loved it.

[thechad]

Well, IMHO any list of Horror movies isn't worth a damn unless the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is mentioned. 

[mattstick]

Not a "classic" necessarily, but a good 80s slasher flick...

[tet]

killer clowns from outerspace

heh, i always liked that movie.  not scary really, but pretty funny.

and i think it's Killer Klowns From Outer Space - the "K" makes it sKarier and Krazier!

[alcoholandcoffeebeans]

thank you for this thread. 
i'm always looking for GOOD scary movies...

night of the living dead has its' vote from me...

i can remember being little and watching things like "the pit and the pendulum" (sp?) and "the house on teh haunted hill" with vincent price, alongside my grandad and gettign super freaked out...

anything with Nosferatu used to give me a scare, too...

[cactusfan]

speaking of vincent price, try watching The Abominable Dr. Phibes sometime. not really scary, but totally out there bizarro. definitely in the realm of so uniquely bad it's great.

another classic with Price, the original The Fly. holds up, for '50s horror. Cronenberg's remake is also awesome.

another fav: The Thing, carpenter's '82 remake. i fucking love it. most imaginative goopy effects of all time.

[whyweigh5.0]

what was that movie where that doctor took the dead bodies back to his home and ground them up and packed them like hamburger.  Fed it to his family and shit

for some reason that one scared me a good bit.  I was little when I saw it too

[susep]

Amittyville was a freakin' mind scrambler when I saw it as a young kid.  I watched it at my friend Dave's house and then had to walk like five or six blocks home in the dark.  I remember I called my dad and was like, "Dad, can you meet me half way?"  He was like, "Just hurry home son." :-D

Another freaker was the first time I saw A Nightmare On Elm Street, the first one on HBO.  My buddy and I were shatting. :-o

I saw Psycho II before I saw the original and that too was horifying, esp. when Norman was voicing his mom, "Norman!"

Not really a horror but just as intense was the first time I saw Faces of Death.  There was a sequence where these two dudes jumped a fence in used car lot only to be mauled by dogs.  The camera was a security cam that panned left and right  I was scared of dogs after that for quite some time.

[shoreline99]

The Shining
House of Wax (the original, in 3d)
House on Haunted Hill (the original)
Halloween (the original)
The Omen (original one)
Carrie, i second that one.

I actually liked the original Japanese version of The Ring as well. Creepy.

Oh, and with regards to 'IT', the book was WAY better than the movie BUT Tim Curry was PERFECT as Pennywise the Clown, and I'm sure led to plenty of nightmares.

They all float down here...