Horror Show

[Scorpio]

Horror? I think that the viewing public has become so de-sensitised to blood spurting from arteries and heads being severed in glorious colour that nobody is frightened any more.Its more a fun thing now.laugh a minute as yet another victim is decapitated,squashed or torn asunder. Its a sad indictment ,or rather indicative of the state of humanity.We havent progressed that far from the eras of the Roman Games,throwing Jews down wells and **** fighting etc.Just for fun. No harm in it ,people say,its only virtual reality,and I suppose it is.My question is why would anyone want to watch it? and why would it be classed as entertain ment?
I dont class films like Psycho ,for one, amongst that number.Hitchcock made people use their imagination ,perhaps thats too much to ask for in present times.

I don't believe horror films need to be scary to be entertaining. Seven and Silence of the lambs did not scare me, but they did engage me.

[Scorpio]

Over-the-top gore films with a predicable plot were fun before CGI, because it was like watching a magic act, trying to figure out how it was done, and if an individual effect was convincing, even if the movie itself wasn't, it was very cool, because someone had done something good, maybe with models, maybe with trick photography, maybe with judicious editing and forced perspective, maybe with animatronics, hydraulics, make-up, props. It was fascinating.

Now it's just CGI. The answer is always CGI. It has ruined gore-fest horror films for me.

I dont like CGI in horror movies either, but i thought the CGI in the red band Evil dead trailer was used effectively to add a little atmosphere.

[Scorpio]

I had to think back- weren't we just discussing them on the last page? But I guess it was over a month ago.

Both of these killers were the victims of indifference from people who were supposed to be taking care of them as children. With Jason it was camp counselors, and with Michael it was his older sister. Jason's story though, despite his greater number of movies and victims over the years, was taken in a non-serious and almost cartoonish direction. He became unambiguously supernatural, killed and resurrected numerous times. He even went into outer space, and there was constant dark humor injected into the story. Michael is more grounded in reality, with only a hint that there might be something supernatural in his nature, and not a bit of humor. As I said earlier, I would have been perfectly satisfied with the ending of the first "Halloween." He's shot six times, he falls off the balcony, and when the doctor peers over the side his body is gone. Poof. Guess he really was the Boogy Man, end of story. The lower quality sequels ruined it for me.

Michael wins for me as to the more compelling character, but you really need to check out Rob Zombie's remake of "Halloween" to fully appreciate him. Five minutes is spent in the original on what made him snap. Zombie's spends 20-plus on it. Kid Michael shows classic signs of being a future serial killer. He loves his mother but she is a stripper and married to a sleazy stepfather, and he has a promiscuous older sister. He is taking out his rage over all this by torturing animals. His first kill is a bully in school who taunts him about what his mother does for a living. It's one of the most brutal things I've ever seen on screen- Michael ambushes the kid in some woods after school and beats him to death with a tree branch as the bully cries and begs for mercy. Shortly thereafter comes Halloween night. Michael's mom has to work, but she tells the sister she has to take her brother trick-or-treating. But of course she'd rather spend quality time with her boyfriend, and Michael in his clown costume is left out in the cold. He snaps. And in this version, he kills his sister, the sister's boyfriend, and his stepfather in a blood-soaked massacre that his horrified mother comes home to. Once confined to the asylum, Michael grows into a hulking monster of a man who never speaks and when presented with arts and crafts as an activity becomes obsessed with creating nothing but masks, a huge collection of various styles of masks. Until the inevitable night of his violent escape.

Explaining Michael Meyers? His own personal world dealt him nothing but bad cards. Instead of attempting to play them, he threw them back in the world's face and said screw this, I don't want to play anymore. I only want to win.

I haven't seen that movie yet. But i will get round to it.

[kensei]

I haven't seen that movie yet. But i will get round to it.

Sorry if I put too many spoilers in there then. I should caution you about one thing- Rob Zombie's movies are done in a very raw and gritty fashion, as if really terrible things happened for real and someone was there with a camera, rather than being stylized big budget Hollywood productions. There is only one big star in it- Malcolm McDowel as Dr. Loomis. The rest of the cast being for the most part never before seen actors makes it feel all the more real. (Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon, is in many of his films and she plays Michael's mother.)

[kensei]

Having some further thoughts now on Jason Voorhees, and the fact that he was a developmentally disabled kid. That is an element that could have been made very poignant if the Friday the 13th movies hadn't gone in the cartoonish direction they did. I think he was sent to summer camp with the thought that it would be good for him, maybe even therapeutic, but instead the other kids made fun of him, and ultimately he drowned in the lake when the counselors who were supposed to be watching him were off somewhere having sex. His mother was the killer in the first movie, getting revenge for her boy, and her death at the end somehow triggered his resurrection at which point he took up the cause from there on. He was this lumbering, mute, mentally retarded adult killing machine, a total simpleton with a single purpose- revenge on young vibrant 20-somethings because they had destroyed his family. I really think there might have been room for a serious exploration of mental illness there if it had been done differently. But the closest they ever came to that was in "Freddy vs. Jason" in which there's a dream sequence where Freddy Krueger is seeing Jason as he was in childhood at the time of his death and he says, "Now that's a face only a mother could love," and then sinks one of his blades into Jason's head and says how much he'd love to get into that little addled mind and take a peek at what makes him tick. Nasty stuff.

A few years ago, there were two one-off remake films done in the same year of "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street." I saw the Friday the 13th one, in which Jason's childhood wasn't explored much and he was just this psycho killer living out a rumored existence out in a rural area. There was nothing supernatural about him in that version, which was a nice change. One weird twist though was that he kidnapped a girl and held her prisoner for an extended period, rather than killing her, for no apparent reason. I didn't see the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, but it starred Jackie Earl Haley as Freddy. I LOVED him as the ragtag superhero Rorschach in "Watchmen." He also played the drunken groundskeeper Willie in the Johnny Depp "Dark Shadows" revival. He had this wonderful gruff voice when he played Rorschach, which is nothing like his regular speaking voice. But then I saw the ads for his run as Freddy, and he sounded EXACTLY like Rorschach! Guess he only has one "character voice" that he can do.

The exploration of mental illness in these kinds of movies makes me think of an obscure one that was made for t.v. back in the 80s I think. I have it on VHS so it's probably still available- "Dark Night of the Scarecrow." A mentally retarded man befriends a little girl, and townspeople eye them suspiciously. One day the girl is attacked by a mad dog and the man saves her, but she's badly injured, and when someone sees him holding her afterward they think it was him that attacked her and a group of men go chasing after him. He runs into a field, finds a scarecrow and climbs inside of it to hide. They find him, and shoot him dead. When they learn what really happened they engage in a coverup of what they've done which includes having to kill other people, but then they start being killed off one by one by various methods having to do with farm equipment. Each time, before they're killed they see a scarecrow that's been planted in the ground nearby. The retarded man has risen from the grave, still clad in the costume of a scarecrow and is taking his revenge. In the end, after killing the last man, he is greeted by the little girl who is happy to have her friend back, and in his scary scarecrow costume he gently hands her a flower. Great stuff for network tv! No overt blood and gore, just really solid network-approved horror. The leader of the gang that killed the guy is played by Charles Durning, and there's great acting throughout.

[Magpie]

Two very unique movies I would recommend are "Cube" and "Exam"

Cube (its sequel Cube 2 and its prequel, Cube Zero) is a low budget sci-fi thriller about a disparate group who must work together to escape a huge, booby-trapped cube. We know virtually nothing about them, and the reason for them being there is never explained (although it's hinted at in the prequel). Saw 2 lifted the plot virtually wholesale.

Exam is similar, except that the disparate group never leaves a single room where they are undergoing the final test for a prestigious job position.

Neither of them is a gorefest, but when they get meaty, they are pretty unflinching about it.

[Ayailla]

Exam is similar, except that the disparate group never leaves a single room where they are undergoing the final test for a prestigious job position.

I am going to go with you on that one. I think Exam is a brilliant film.

[Scorpio]

What is the scariest movie ever?.
My vote goes for The shining. Kubrick uses so many devices to get under your skin that it succeeds by a process of osmosis that mirrors Jack Torrance's descent into madness. This correlation between fear of the irrational forces and descent into insanity or surrender to irrational forces may be source of its effectiveness.The Shining is probably the scariest and smartest horror movie ever.

[kensei]

What is the scariest movie ever?.
My vote goes for The shining. Kubrick uses so many devices to get under your skin that it succeeds by a process of osmosis that mirrors Jack Torrance's descent into madness. This correlation between fear of the irrational forces and descent into insanity or surrender to irrational forces may be source of its effectiveness.The Shining is probably the scariest and smartest horror movie ever.

I'll vote for "The Exorcist." It made people feel that if demonic possession is real then it could literally happen to anyone at any time, right in the safety of your own home.

I'll assume you're asking from a purely adult point of view. As I've already written, when I was a kid I saw movies like "The Vulture" that I was sure were the scariest movies possible, and when I rewatch them now as an adult they are just total cheese-fests.

[Scorpio]

The excorcist is quite scary, but the ending spoils it for me. The far fetched demonic entity explanation is overplayed with Father Karras becoming the new host. With that scene both mystery and credibility went out the window along with priest. The Phenomena of possession was an enigma until then with a the purely psychological explanation provided by psychosis that was at least as scary.

[kensei]

The excorcist is quite scary, but the ending spoils it for me. The far fetched demonic entity explanation is overplayed with Father Karras becoming the new host. With that scene both mystery and credibility went out the window along with priest. The Phenomena of possession was an enigma until then with a the purely psychological explanation provided by psychosis that was at least as scary.

Actually I think the ending of "The Exorcist" was based on the exorcism that takes place in the Bible, performed by Christ, in which He drives the demons out of the possessed man and they need somewhere else to go so they enter the bodies of a nearby herd of pigs, who then go mad and throw themselves off a cliff. Just as Father Karras throws himself out the window.

[kensei]

The excorcist is quite scary, but the ending spoils it for me. The far fetched demonic entity explanation is overplayed with Father Karras becoming the new host. With that scene both mystery and credibility went out the window along with priest. The Phenomena of possession was an enigma until then with a the purely psychological explanation provided by psychosis that was at least as scary.

Further, I think it had been pretty well established before the ending that something genuinely supernatural had to be going on with Regan, unless we're talking about extreme telekinesis powers being part of a psychosis, which many people don't regard as natural anyway.

[Scorpio]

I would have preferred the film ending with Father Merrin's death and Regan's torment ending simultaneously. I just find the theatrical ending tasteless.

[Magpie]

What is the scariest movie ever?.
My vote goes for The shining. Kubrick uses so many devices to get under your skin that it succeeds by a process of osmosis that mirrors Jack Torrance's descent into madness. This correlation between fear of the irrational forces and descent into insanity or surrender to irrational forces may be source of its effectiveness.The Shining is probably the scariest and smartest horror movie ever.

Stephen King movie adaptions (at least the early ones) always seemed to fall flat, even under the direction of some of the greatest horror directors.

The only two excepts, for me, were The Shining, and The Dead Zone--the latter being one of my favourite King adaptions ever

[Magpie]

I don't believe horror films need to be scary to be entertaining. Seven and Silence of the lambs did not scare me, but they did engage me.

I love the Hammer horror movies. None of which are particularly "scary", but are fascinating. Other movies like The Creeping Flesh, from the same time, are haunting rather than scary.