Counter-Currents
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Treat your mind (or trick it) with Halloween writings at Counter-Currents.
Jef Costello, “I Wake Up Screaming: My Top Ten Halloween Horror Flick Picks”
William de Vere, “All Hallows’ Eve: On Death & Remembrance”
James O’Meara, “‘Did that Scarecrow Move?’ Reading Matter for Halloween”
Leo Yankevich, “Halloween, 2006”
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22 comments
I didn’t agree with a lot of Jef Costello’s top ten list of horror films (sorry, but I did not find The Witch, The Birds, or Rosemary’s Baby to be even remotely frightening). I did, however, come away with a strong desire to watch The Innocents, which I think I will do tonight. Totally agree with the inclusion of The Shining, House of Dark Shadows, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula on the list. All strong films and fine contenders for great horror films. For what it’s worth, here’s my top ten list, minus the essays:
1.The Exorcist
2.The Shining
3.Texas Chainsaw Massacre (only the original, not any of the horrible sequels/reboots)
4.Dracula (1979 version with Frank Langella—often very unfairly overlooked)
5.Witchboard
6.Phantasm
7.The Haunting (1963 version)
8.The Mothman Prophecies
9.The Changeling
10.Salem’s Lot
Quite a fine list, Richard. I’d put Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) at #1, which is to my eyes and ears a notch above whatever anyone else’s #1 would be. A fun trivia question: Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting “Christina’s World” is said to have helped form Tobe Hooper’s vision of TCM. The kicker? Both are housed in MoMA–the latter housed in its permanent collection, IIRC.
I like the first two Hallowe’en movies. The first one is the best horror of all time, especially the version with the scenes that somehow got cut for the TV version. Donald Pleasence was excellent in both flicks.
I like TCM (note my handle) for its raw terror. The Omen (the nanny terrifies me to this day). The first Friday the 13th.
I’m overdue to watch Salem’s Lot again, with Hutch, as I haven’t seen it since I was a kid.
The Evil Dead is terrifying.
Burnt Offerings with Oliver Reed scared me as a kid.
I really liked House of the Devil, with Christopher Lee.
The Conjuring and Insidious flicks pack some good scares.
A guilty pleasure of mine is Fright Night. Lost Boys is my favorite vampire flick, although not very scary.
I love Fright Night and Lost Boys, and have seen Lost Boys more times than I can count. I guess the thing with both of them though is that I just didn’t find them particularly scary. Both excellent films, however.
Richard, I agree, neither is terribly scary, but both very cool comedy/horrors in their own right. I especially like the 80s esthetic of Lost Boys, not to mention the soundtrack. Kiefer was at his best, as were the Coreys. I also liked Dianne Wiest, great actress.
I had no clue the song where they are racing on their bikes on the beach is from Lou Gramm (Lost In The Shadows?). The INXS song and Cry, Little Sister also memorable. I often play Midnight Blue by Gramm when I feel especially nostalgic for the 80s. Visiting Santa Cruz in ’01 made me realize hey this is Santa Carla (when I saw Lost Boys with my cousins out west when it came out on video in ’87, I didn’t know the town was fictional).
Fright Night may very well be the first movie I saw in theater, one of those old downtown movie palaces our city has long since razed in favor of suburban multiplexes.
Jeff’s comments are closed, but I would like to recommend Hereditary, which is easily the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. Toni Collette is brilliant and you can see the moment she loses her mind. It is very, very scary.
Ok, Weave, I took your advice and rented Hereditary last night. You’re right about Collette’s performance. By the end I was about as tense as that piano wire. Whoa.
Uh, y’all liked that? It’s just a mash up of the Witch and rosemary’s baby. Horror is such a blatantly derivative genre.
I admit that I haven’t seen a lot of horror films — and not the two you mentioned. We were more of a Hitchcock and cheesy 1930s horror-film family. But I was entertained by Hereditary, yes.
I had nightmares last night.
I didn’t find The Witch or Hereditary scary in the slightest. It’s part of that new breed of horror that started around 2010 or so–exceptionally well-crafted, creatively written, slickly produced, and not one bit frightening.
It’s like excruciating but not supernaturally scary. Like the girls head getting knocked off and the brothers guilt and reaction are awful, but not frightening.
The Witch was that one set in rural Puritan New England, right? I thought that was somewhat scary. I found Hereditary really boring as I recall (and that’s about all I can recall of it). I recall The Witch much better.
Not strictly Halloween-related, but “Quiet, Please” was a radio show from 1947-1949 that is exceptionally gloomy and grim:
https://www.quietplease.org/episodes/
The show’s writer, Wyllis Cooper, also did a creepy-crawly radio show in the 1930s called “Lights Out”:
https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/thriller/lights-out
A Classic Horror Story is a pretty freaky Italian horror movie. Very disturbing and terrifying.
If I had the moolah I’d ask Mr. Goad to karaoke the Gino Paoli song at the end, Il Cielo In Una Stanza.
I’m not that into horror, it’s the lowest genre in my book, but movies that have scared or unsettled me at some point in my life would include:
1. The exorcist
2. Damien the omen
3. nightmare on elm street
4. the conjuring
5. black panther
6. the help
7. ….
I like lost boys, but as others have said, it’s not really horror, but more dark fantasy, with some comedic elements. Another one like that was Fearless Vampire Killers. It has a Jewish vampire. Crosses don’t work on it.
Black Panther? The Help? LOL. I assume you weren’t “scared” so much as disturbed (esp by that one scene in The Help … you know which one …).
I argue that horror is actually cinema’s profoundest expression. In fact, the greatest film of the last twenty years (Mulholland Drive) is essentially arthouse horror. Lynch’s final film, Inland Empire, is even more disquieting. These are some of the most exciting and daring artistic creations in any medium.
Horror lives or dies by its tone, and very little else matters. It’s why I hated the jokey-winky Cabin in the Woods and loved the aforementioned House of the Devil, starring Tom Noonan (not Christopher Lee). The latter was released in 2009 and kind of set in motion the dumb 80s homage trend a la Stranger Things. Anyway, truly sublime horror harasses our subconscious when our minds are elsewhere. The result is a total sensory experience. Two examples:
I went to a screening of House of the Devil at Chicago’s legendary Music Box late one autumn. This urban temple has just two theaters: one enormous auditorium with a swashbuckling pipe organ and plush red curtains, and then a tiny sterile arthouse-type theater with maybe a capacity of 50. On a dreary November weeknight I went to a late showing of HOTD in the small theater, and to my surprise I was the only one in there.
The main character, Samantha, is a broke college student who takes an ominous babysitting gig at a house out in the country (As alluded to earlier, great horror doesn’t require an original plot; it need only a compelling tone.) She is attending some old northeast liberal arts campus with beautiful ash-stone buildings. Even in the most conventional daytime scenes around campus, I sensed that something was uniquely off. I was unnerved. I simply could not take my eyes off the screen. It was only after the second or third time I watched the film when I figured out why that was.
Another example is a 12-minute short film called Alone Time (2013), directed by Rod Blackhurst. The camera follows an introverted New Yorker millennial gal who is clearly alienated by city life. By herself, she takes an impromptu weekend camping trip to the Adirondacks. She proceeds to do the cheeriest and most mundane things for the bulk of the film, but every movement, visual, and sound are amplified to epic proportions. The anticipation of each moment is unbearable. In fear’s grip our senses are supremely alive.
What are some of y’all’s favorite scenes in horror?
I had the same experience, except it was in the middle of the day in a 400+ seat theater, watching the movie Sinister (the original; I think there might be sequals). I had had a medical appointment that morning, which ended much more abruptly than anticipated. I had decided to take the whole day off work as a vacation day anyway, so with unexpected time, I decided to go to a multiplex and watch a bunch of movies all afternoon. The first one was Sinister. I was the only person at that roughly weekday noon showing. Normally, I find horror movies boring (yes, I do), with the exception of scifi horror (Alien), which is actually my favorite genre (though that’s more action than true horror). Generally, I prefer European movies with serious themes, or else sword epics like Braveheart, Gladiator, 300, and LOTR.
But Sinister really creeped me out. WIKI says it was made on a $3mil budget, which I find impossible to believe. (That figure certainly must not include actor salaries.) Normally, I forget horror films almost as soon as I’ve left the theater (I forget a lot of movie and even entire novel plots, which I hope is not a sign of early onset dementia; I do remember names and intellectual concepts and statistics well, however; maybe I just read a lot of fiction, and watch a lot of films). Not this one, which stayed in my mind for a long time. I wonder if I was more creeped out than normal because I was totally alone in a cavernous theater.
The other movie that stayed with me for quite a while was (this might be embarrassing) … The Blair Witch Project. Not sure why (I only saw it once, in theater when it came out in 1999), but the low budget aspect actually enhanced its creepiness. Us cityfolk forget how rural and sparsely inhabited much of our country remains. And there are abandoned structures all over this country. Finding one in a remote area is already creepy in itself; it gets more so when one starts to think about what might be residing in it …
Your writing style evinces intelligence. Please comment more here.
Being new to C-C yet having taken note of some of your previous comments, Lord Shang, I am genuinely touched by your vote of confidence.
Your notes on Sinister and the general lousiness of horror are well received, too. I once wrote for a large newspaper and interviewed the co-director of Blair Witch, who seemed unusually humble for a man who had spent just $20K on a movie which made $250 million the world over. I remember him also being particularly self-aware: He was in no rush to make another film because he simply couldn’t live with himself if he went down the horror trap of producing forgettable trash. And 99% of horror is unwatchable trash.
Thanks for the correction. Tom Noonan (not Christopher Lee) was the elderly gentleman in HOTD. Mea culpa.
Another good one I saw was It Follows. I like that director in general. I’m not sure it’s scary, so much as eerie, somewhere on the edge of urban myth. I think it has deep subtext of white flight and black crime, filmed in Detroit. None of his movies have any woke elements, which may be why he’s not bigger than he is.
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