Horror Roundtable - Week Fifty!
Name your all-time favourite horror movie.
Favourite all-time horror movie? I’m sure I’m mentioned a little movie called Halloween in the past. It’s one of John Carpenter’s masterpieces. It was one of the first horror movies I ever saw. My father and brother were watching it on TV in the early ’80’s and I happened to catch the opening sequence when young Michael kills his sister. I was terrified. The film still holds up 29 years later.
It’s the quintessential slasher flick that set the standard for countless knockoffs in the years to follow. If you haven’t seen Halloween, you’ve never seen a great horror film. I just hope that Rob Zombie doesn’t fuck up the remake.
Dave - Rue Morgue’s The Abbatoir
Oh come on, now! It’s like asking a parent who his favourite child is. Don’t even go there, Wintle…
Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
This is an EXTREMELY difficult question to answer because there are a half-dozen or so horror movies I just love to pieces. But I’m going to say Hellraiser, because it fills my heart with a transgressive glee, like something different is flowing through my veins after I’ve watched it, a feeling just as strong now as it was the first time.
Jeff O’Brien
Dawn of the Dead
All-time favorite? Pick only one? You asked for it: 1985’s Return of the Living Dead. It has everything that I want in a horror movie. First, even though it’s a spin-off, it has its own original premise and mythos. Zombies demanding brains to eat is a trope of the genre, and this is the movie that started it all. Second, the script is smart, funny and endlessly quotable. It runs the gamut from comedy to terror to pathos, veering through some unpredictable twists along the way, and never misses a mark. I’d wax poetic about some of my favorite scenes and gags, but I don’t want to spoil the pleasure for any newcomers. Third, the special effects and makeup are creative and gruesome. The emaciated “tar-barrel” zombie is a particular standout. And finally, but by no means least, Return of the Living Dead has some of the best horror nudity I’ve ever seen. If you’re the sort of person who likes to look at naked women, and I know I am, Linnea Quigley’s graveyard striptease will haunt your dreams.
Some great horror movies make you break out in a cold sweat and dread the unknown. Other great horror movies make you ponder the depravity hidden in the human soul. Return of the Living Dead will make you grin from ear to ear. It’s just that much fun.
Rony
My favourite horror movie has got to be The Changling. That movie still scares the living crap out of me. Yeah it’s slow in the beginning, but the sequence with the wheel chair always freaks me out.
LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR. I no longer believe in a kind, loving God.
Not just my favorite horror movie, it may be my favorite movie, period - Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. I love every single thing about it, and have probably seen it upwards of twenty times. Most valuable lesson I have ever learned: Beware the chalky under-taste!
Brainbug - The Celluloid Cesspool
Right now, my favourite is Amando de Ossorio’s When the Screaming Stops. It’s a Spanish horror film about the legend of Lorelei, the Rhine River siren who killed sailors by luring them to the water with her beauty. The movie opens with a bride-to-be getting killed by a large lizard-like beast in a small sleepy village. The siren is beautiful by day but turns into a slimy monster by moonlight. The town is appalled by the murder and the local girl’s boarding school hired a professional hunter to keep them safe. This leads to more deaths, some romance and the inevitable showdown in an underwater cave. The movie is a blast and features frequent, blood-soaked murders. There are terrific close-ups of flesh being ripped apart and hearts being torn out. I also love the blind violin player who recounts the legend, the siren’s man-servant Alberic who likes whipping people, the abundance of lovely female students who spend all their time in bathing suits and revealing nightgowns, the rubbery beast that enjoys jumping through windows and eating human hearts, and the scientist who has sheep running around in his laboratory while he develops a way to kill the monster. Plus Tony Kendall is great as the burly hunter and Silvia Tortosa is simply gorgeous as the vulnerable boarding school teacher. This is an often gory, sometime unintentionally funny and always entertaining horror film. I can’t recommend it enough! It’s also known as The Lorelei’s Grasp, but I prefer the VHS version since it includes spliced-in red flashes of impending doom before every death scene.
I cannot answer this one!!!!!!! Aaaargh!
Hellraiser is my favorite horror movie. I love this film for many reasons, and it is scary as hell. I remember the first time I saw the film how freaked out i was when the hooks started to sink into the flesh after the puzzle box was unsuccessfully solved. The Cenobites are just badass, and a woman goes to bars, to entrap men to murder, so she can bring back her dead brother in law (to continue their affair).
Hmmmmm . . . if I’m in a giallo mood, it’s BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, but if I’m in a gothic monster mood (as I happen to be now), it’s NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF.
David Z. - Tomb It May Concern
Favorite horror film has to be HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY. It captures everything I like about Eurohorror, Lucio Fulci (my gateway drug) and spooky house flicks.
And gore…lots of gore!
An amazing score, a crack director with a stacked deck of talent and a monster called FREUDSTEIN. How can you beat that.
Impossible to answer. I’m going to have to pass on this week’s roundtable. I could put a Top 100 List together if I had more time or maybe pick a favorite “zombie” “ghost” “vampire” or some other sub-genre film, but I just can’t name one horror title that I love above all else.
Gremlins
It’s hard to even look at as a horror movie nowadays and I’ll probably think of another one after I’m done this. Gremlins scared and thrilled the hell out of me when I was a kid. From those cocoons opening, to the swimming pool scene and especially striped melting and bubbling with the skull underneath…holy shit, I love that movie. So many great moments of terror and twisted hilarity.
Not only is this the fiftieth weekly Roundtable, it’s also The Horror Blog’s one-year anniversary! Boy, it feels as if it’s been going forever, doesn’t it? Like it will never end. Thanks to all the hooligans above for sticking with it. Won’t you add your own favourite to the comments below?
June 9th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Fave: Somewhere between The Haunting(1963) and Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness.
Happy Anniversary, Horror Blog!
June 10th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Cronenberg’s The Fly, man. It’s scary, gruesome, intellectual and heartbreaking all at once. Watching your lover transform, deform and twist away into a gigantic bug? This movie has got to be among the best in horror.
Also, I love this blog.
June 10th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Deep Red maybe, or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Maybe Phenomena. I also like Horror Hotel.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Damn!
Both John & Warren must be kindred spirits or long long relations or something ’cause they’ve listed a half dozen of my all time favs amoung them in their two posts. Six that rank VERY high up in my personal top ten or so.
While THE HAUNTING has been considered a genre classic ever since it’s theatrical release back in 1999 … WHOA, just kidding of course! … back in the early ’60s, Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS has very rarely gotten it’s just due as a classic in it’s own right. It’s easily his most under-appreciated work IMHO.
I consider it an integral part of the director’s unofficial Lovecraft trilogy bookended by THE THING & IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS.
As for the Argento films mentioned, I LOVE me some DEEP RED & PHENOMENA. As much as I adore his other giallos, DEEP RED has always been my favorite. Going all the way back to when the only way I got to watch it was on that old muddy, edited, pan & scanned VHS tape that I wore out.
PHENOMENA? An awesome mix of giallo elements & the supernatural thriller. An all time favorite ever since I first saw it on tape in truncated form as CREEPERS.
What can I say about TCM that hasn’t already been said about it?
My first exposure to it was when it was released in my area on a double bill with the Bruce Lee classic RETURN OF THE DRAGON in 1974. I was only 12 or 13 at the time & it left an indelible impression on me by seeing it that young. Though I was a lifelong horror/monster movie fan, I wasn’t quite ready for TCM at that time. It REALLY fucked me up! I had a had a difficult time sleeping for a solid week or two after seeing it.
Of course I eventually “grew into it” & by the time I saw it again during a subsequent re-release further into my teens, I loved it. And it still stands as the most intense, unrelenting horror film in history in my book.
Onto what I often call my personal all time favorite film of all ( I sometimes bestow that honor on THE EXORCIST too though, it’s just too close to call really, but for tonight it’s ) HORROR HOTEL. Another all too often overlooked & under-appreciated gem that I never tire of ( though I now save my annual viewing of it for on or around Halloween, a treat that further adds to my enjoyment of what is my favorite holiday season ).
I’m an absolute sucker for atmospheric horror films, of the sub-genre of films that deals with horrific happenings in isolated, backwoods little towns, as well as centuries old curses & evil sects. ALL of which HORROR HOTEL ( aka CITY OF THE DEAD ) has in spades!
June 18th, 2007 at 1:17 am
It’s nice that even a year later I can still get excited about a movie I’ve discovered through other people’s contributions to the blog. I’ll have to check this Horror Hotel out.
September 9th, 2007 at 11:55 am
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