But I love scary movies. NOT the gore-fest, slash-em-up, stick things in their eyes and watch them bleed for the sake of it kind. Saw? No way, no day. Uh-uh. Never saw one of them. But at this time of year I get a hankering for some good ole' fashioned fright fests. I have my perennial favorites:
Halloween
There is very little actual blood in this movie; it's the suspense that I love. And the awesome score, and the screaming babysitter, Jamie Lee Curtis, seemingly the only cool head in the whole town while the nutjob runs around with a William Shatner mask (okay, who doesn't see the humor in that?) only killing HER friends. Great stuff. Oh, and by the way, every Halloween after number 2 sucked.
Scream
I find this one of the best scary movies EVER. What I love about it, and the gore is really low-key considering, is both the suspense AND the misdirection. The mystery of 'who is the real killer' was really well done. Of course after you've seen it once, you can go back and pick up all the clues and go 'of course, why didn't I see it before!'
Scream 2 was good, Scream 3 bordered on just plain dumb
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Okay this one might take the prize for total cheese, but I still like it. It's like a twin to Scream, and I liked it for many of the same reasons - suspense and misdirection. It's not as good as Scream, but I can watch it over and over.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer? Meh.
Final Destination 1-850,000
All of these kind of blur together into a single film for me, but I love the idea: that a group who cheats death is picked off one by one by supernatural forces. They get very creative with these demises, and I think that's also what I love. Terrific watching on an October night with a bowl of popcorn and the lights out.
The Blair Witch Project
Yes, I really like this movie. I think it was a good idea, and it was totally cheesy, which is WHY I love it. I know, I know, I am breaking some kind of scary-movie-lover pact by admitting that I like this. It's good TV watching. Whatever, don't judge me.
The House on Haunted Hill
There is NOTHING like a Vincent Price movie - except a Vincent Price movie remake. I LOVE THIS MOVIE. It's completely creepy and has a great premise: the home of a wealthy and deceased psychiatrist, which sits on top of his closed mental hospital, plays host to a group for an evening. All kinds of ghostly shenanigans ensue, and the corpses keep piling up. This has a great twist ending, and I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it. While I love Vincent, Geoffrey Rush does a spectacular job in his role. A classic.
Amityville Horror
The Original. Always. I don't think I need to list my reasons why. It's classic horror at it's finest.
The Shining
The original ONLY. Yes, it's a bit gory, but it's Stephen King. Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall are perfection, and again, the idea of a haunted and evil place rather than a person is fabulous.
That's my list. So as they say...What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?
4 comments:
Jacob's Ladder has always been a big hit for me. Psychological horror does what gore flicks cannot. It gets into your head, and haunts you for days! (It also helps that the Silent Hill series based their visuals heavily on this movie, and I'm a SH gamer geek!)
Exorcism movies get to me too.. I was raised Catholic, but I'm not even close to Catholic anymore. Yet The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose will still make me scream. My cat does a wicked impression of Emily Rose in that contorted floor position, and it scares the bejesus out of me. (No pun intended.)
I've got so many favorite scary movies, I can't count them all. My dad was a big fan of Zacherly's tv show, and I think I learned to love horror films because of him. It was something that was just ours--Mom couldn't care less. Initially, one of my husband's great attractions was, yes, he loved them, too. :-)
Renee- YES! That's what I love about those. You can keep Saw, or Hostel, or any of those ridiculous slasher flicks. Scream was technically slasher, but it was much more psychological.
I might be the only person I know that loves the mini-series for The Shining. The 1980 Jack Nicholson version was wonderful, but it wasn't the book. The mini-series nailed it!
I love supernatural, occult sources for horror. I wish the slasher genre had never developed, and it makes me hopeful to see things like the Paranormal Activity franchise gain ever growing audiences.
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