Horror Show

[Scorpio]

Well I think Silence of the Lambs would qualify a horror movie and it won best picture. Horror films are designed to evoke emotion just like comedies and can be thus either good or bad. To me, Alien is a fantastic movie and Psycho is pretty good as well. As a rule, I think most people sympathize with the victim in a horror film which is actually the opposite of a comedy movie which is really sadistic to be honest. We all laugh when the guy sprains his ankle slipping on a banana peel.

I think silence of the lambs occupies horror territory in exactly the same fashion as David Fincher's SEVEN. Both movies slyly use classic horror movie devices to illicit disgust and fear.

[martin wilson]

I think Silence of the Lambs is a horror film as well, my criteria are those films that stay with you for whatever reason, scary,creepy,repulsive,sickening etc as opposed to the classic horror film genre which often dont promote any response whatsoever,other than regretting the waste of money spent on them.
The Hammer films were beautifully shot, had great casts and Ingrid Pitt in a low cut dress,but they were dated even by the mid 70's, although Blood on Satans Claw was mentioned by Mark Gatiss in his horror appreciation on BBC4. which is about the only film they made that I remember as being genuinely scary.
Seance On A Wet Afternoon is regularly shown on film4 and again has that eerie, unsettling quality I class as horror, similair to The Haunting, great film that I forgot about,but each to his own!
All the best.

[Beowulf]

I still prefer the three Frankenstein movies directed by James Whale to any modern horror movie.

Quite a lot of the old movies were so much better than the new. They were more subtle and could frighten you easily. The Haunting is a good example, '65.

[sdreid]

Well I think Silence of the Lambs would qualify a horror movie and it won best picture. Horror films are designed to evoke emotion just like comedies and can be thus either good or bad. To me, Alien is a fantastic movie and Psycho is pretty good as well. As a rule, I think most people sympathize with the victim in a horror film which is actually the opposite of a comedy movie which is really sadistic to be honest. We all laugh when the guy sprains his ankle slipping on a banana peel.

[Scorpio]

Hi, i have seen Ellroys ' My dark places '; it is mostly about his mother, who was raped and murdered when he was a child. Mr Ellroy is as engaging as we have any right to expect considering the subject matter. Oh, and Nick Nolte is in it.
Love Wickerman; but if it were not for Mr Woodward being burned alive at the end, i'd keep forgetting it is a great horror movie and not just a great movie.

[martin wilson]

I would agree that the horror movie genre has been thoroughly debased over the years, too many tedious slash 'ems where unlikeable American teenagers go to try to fix the generator on their own,in the dark, in the full knowledge there is some lunatic with a machete lurking around, I suspect that we are not supposed to root for the good guys any more but for the monsters who represent almost nostalgic figures for the older generation.
In some ways they represent a return to the AIP formulaic Roger Corman school 'I dont want it good, I want it Tuesday' pumped out for the drive in movie audiences, but intelligence and subtlety have long given way to upping the gore content,particularly torture porn flicks like Hostel and Saw.
Anyway here are my choices of horror films that I have been most frightened/unsettled/plain weirded out by.

Wickerman, the original of course not that ludicrous Nic Cage remake.
Felicias Journey.
Audition.
R Point
The Host
Dumplings (this film WILL make you feel nauseous)
James Ellroys Feast of Death (documentary, discusses the Black Dahlia case,and the first time I saw the crime photographs)

Cant think of any more.
All the best.

[Scorpio]

Is there any intrinsic value to the horror movie ?. They say anything gets respectable if its survives long enough, but the nasties never did. To many Terrible scripts and cruddy production values have scarred the surface of the genre; but it may be qualitative values, or lack of, that has done the damage. Critics on the whole loathe horror movies:some might consider them akin to pornography, or to catering to instincts even less worthy than pornography aspires to;and they carry no intellectual water at all. There is a lot of ground to cover within the horror movie; some people feel that tecnical and intellectual failings within the genre has earned it huge affection, and others feel that its taste for disaffection has made it truly special. I feel that the horror genre is a complex thing, like fragile economy that is subject to wild fluctuations in its currency value; but if it maintains a gold standard it will endure.
Here are some of my choices for golden oldie status, and why.

PSYCHO: Seedy bad joke of a movie, or an insightful exploiter of anxiety in an increasingly violent and permissive society.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: Fantastically offensive rubbish, or a bracing study of an America that tourists will never go to, and the effects of social unrest : the foundation stone of a stable society THE FAMILY UNIT, or a mutated version of one, is the agent of mayhem, and years of Vietnam reportage in glorious technicolor.
ALIEN: Tarted up monster movie, or an intriguing look at the possible reality of close encounters: Infection, infestation, anhilation.


If you have your own golden nominations and your own thoughts on what a good horror movie is, then contribute to the list. Altenatively, if you hate horror flicks and feel like putting the critical knife in, get typing. I know you want to!.