Say your goodbyes.

Dave - Rue Morgue’s The Abbatoir

The problem I’ve often had with the Horror Roundtable questions is that sometimes they feel too broad, that they demand an essay or a top ten to answer appropriately. Ah, such is the excitement of a horror geek.

Steve’s project has been a fantastic forum for passionate genrephiles to good naturedly argue, to shed light on the more obscure corners of The Dark and generally share the love of all things transgressive.

So, I’ll end this last Roundtable contribution with an argument:

“Death Proof” sucks, and will only suck harder in the future. Please stop defending Tarantino’s ham-dicked snore-a-thon, and celebrate the gooey goodness of “Planet Terror”.

By shedding some light:

“The Reflecting Skin”. I don’t think I ever got to talk about this 1990 film, but it’s an amazing prairie gothic tale guaranteed to disturb. Unavailable on DVD here, but rumour has it you can find a nice widescreen laser disc rip on the torrent sites. See it!

And, some love:

I looked forward every week to, if not participate, at least read the entertaining bytes of insight here. Coming up with a 100 questions isn’t easy, so nice work, Wintle, I can’t wait to see what you cook up next. I hope the end of the Roundtable means you’ll finally have time to finish that robotic Sasquatch you’ve been working on for so long, and that the people who mocked your mad science will finally pay for their scorn.

Make them pay, Steve. Make. Them. All. Pay.

GlowStormLion - Happy Horror

The last Roundtable… I remember the very first time the crew of Happy Horror participated (yet I can’t figure out WHICH post it was so just pretend you remember, too, ok?). I remember wondering how long it would go and how entertaining it would be. I found out about SO many blogs I had no clue existed. Sites that helped me broaden my understanding of horror as a genre and horror fans as a community.

Steven’s given us such a terrific opportunity to be able to vent and speak our minds while we connect with each other. He’s a big part of what kept Happy Horror going by sending us visitors even during our leanest months. I never feel very confident with goodbyes and maybe I just secretly hope for a resurrection or change of heart.

Either way, though I didn’t participate as often as I wish I would have, I’ll miss the fun of getting to ponder the questions and respond as intelligently as possible. At least we’ve got the archives, though! :)

And those of you participating here and running a horror blog shouldn’t forget to come over to Happy Horror and not just read our completely subjective reviews, but ask us for a link to your own site, too!

Eric - Bloody Good Horror

Wow, it’s really over, huh? I’ve only been posting on this roundtable for a few months now, but I’m going to seriously miss it. Steve’s questions in the mailbox every Sunday afternoon were sort of like a sign that a new week was about to begin. Not only that, but they were also a handy reminder of why horror movies are my passion, since reading through everyone’s answers every week always served as inspiration to keep up all the work I’ve put into my site.

And since he implored us to plug our own sites, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention to visit bloodygoodhorror.com. We’re a fully functional horror website, with reviews, columns, interviews, blogs… as well as a weekly podcast where we all get together and debate the crap out of each other. If you’re a reader of this blog, hopefully you’ll find something in our rag tag crew that you can identify with. So, hope to see you around! And long live The Horror Blog.

T Van - Tolerated Vandalism

Thanks for the opportunity to participate in a great roundtable. It’s been fun. Now if you’ll excuse me, i have to go fill my freezer with my own blood.

B-Sol - Vault of Horror

I’d just like to thank Steven for the opportunity to be a part of the Horror Roundtable. When I started, The Vault of Horror was just getting off the ground. Now, it’s one of the most widely read horror movie blogs on the internet. I’m glad for the chance to share my opinions, and to help my website reach more readers than it would have otherwise. Hope to see you back in action soon, and don’t forget, the invitation to the League of Tana Tea Drinkers remains open!

RedHawk - Happy Horror

I had alot of fun participating in the round table. I know I didn’t post as often as alot of other people did, but it was still fun. Take care, everyone!

Unkle Lancifer - Kindertrauma

I’m really going to miss checking out THE HORROR BLOG every Friday. It’s quite an incredible feat to get so many interesting and different opinions corralled into one space. It’s been a pleasure throwing my 2 cents in the mix for the last couple of weeks and I’m sure I’ll be returning every once in a while to dig through the extensive archives here. At the risk of sounding like a door-to-door salesman or an annoying telemarketer, I can’t pass up this opportunity to invite all the readers and writers here to stop by Kindertrauma.com to share their tales about the films, books and whatever that scared them in their youth. (I know, a site dedicated to ONE question, while the HORROR BLOG has posed exactly ONE HUNDRED. Don’t I feel like an underachiever?) Anyway, we’d love to hear from all of you. In the meantime, long live THE HORROR BLOG, truly a constant source of inspiration!

Nathan - MicroHorror

Honestly, what is there to say? I’m really going to miss this thing. I came in about halfway through the Roundtable’s run, and my only regret is that I wasn’t able to get on board earlier. I’ve learned a lot, found out about great movies I never would have heard of otherwise, and had a marvelous time all around. Thank you, Steven, for creating and helming this wonderful project, and thank you for letting me in despite not being a horror blogger per se. Thanks to the other Roundtablers as well– I’ve found some terrific horror blogs that have become part of my daily reading. I’m going to miss the Roundtable– it was a highlight every week.

But here’s a thought: If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our favorite genre, it’s that it’s awfully hard for things to stay dead. Maybe the Roundtable will come crawling back out of the grave someday. We can only hope.

P.S. Visit MicroHorror.com for the world’s largest online archive of short-short horror fiction. Read hundreds upon hundreds of terrifying stories, each no longer than 666 words. Hey– you did suggest that we plug our sites. :)

Tim - Mondo Schlocko

All I really want to say is that it was a honor being here and I had a blast. It’s a shame to see the roundtable end. Good-bye to all of the fellow roundtable guests and I will continue to check out your blogs as well as this one as well. Stay weird!

Matt - Highway 62

Goodbye? But I just got here.

And kinda played hooky for the last many weeks. My own fault for thinking “I’ll just give it some time to stew and then I’ll get right to it,” and by that time it’s Saturday and I’ve gone and let another one rush past me.

I should push my book, so I will. Strangeways: Murder Moon. Ask for it by name. Western horror like you like it (if you like 70s Warren horror mags and the cramped, dirty atmosphere of the haunted frontier). It’s still relatively fresh; not too many scavengers have gotten to it yet. http://www.highway-62.com/strangeways is the place to go.

Thanks to Sean for turning me on to this place and Steven for letting me play along. And all the commentators out there who gave me something to chew on.

State of the art? I’m the last guy to ask about that. Hell, I had to look up “torture porn” to even follow recent conversations. Pretty clear that the genre is wider than anyone here, which means there’s a lot of room in it yet, a lot of unexplored territories. We’ve been on the map a long time (I certainly didn’t deviate from it much), but now we oughta give some thought to the terrifying blank spaces left, where you go upriver and maybe don’t get to come back.

The best thing about it is, that those places are just around the corner and under your nose, having only to be seen in a slightly skewed light, a momentary insight that lets you understand that this is indeed an uncharted region, and maybe just maybe, there’s someone else out there who’d appreciate that insight. Go uncover those, the stucco ruins of the bright city, where shadowy titans make their true selves manifest. Find daytime horror, that is unafraid to walk in the sunshine, knowing that the piercing light of day can only illuminate its true nature further.

Those blank, soft places are unwritten and undiscovered as of yet. But they can’t stay that way ever.

Curt - Groovy Age of Horror

Thanks for a great run, Steven! I’ve enjoyed a lot of these questions tremendously–both answering them and reading everyone else’s answers. Enjoy your hiatus, but know that your return will be eagerly awaited!

Chick Young - Trash-Aesthetics

“In forgetting they were trying to remember.” W.P. Blatty, The Exorcist

Ah yes, parting is such sweet sorrow. And, as a relative latecomer to The Horror Blog (on the contributing end - not the reading), I don’t have archives of posts to fall back on for plugs, laments, or missed opportunities! I really hope Steven reopens the doors to The Horror Blog sometime in the near future as it has always been a wonderfully stimulating and lively site, thank you Steven.

Well, ya know, horror has always been my thing. I was the kid who had his face stuck in Famous Monsters while the other kids were reading Sports Illustrated. I was the kid who was figuring out how to get that blood bladder to work for my Halloween costume, I was the kid who never put his hands over his eyes during the scary parts, and I was the kid who always chose the evil girl over the nice one (not so much anymore).

I’m not entirely thrilled with the state of the genre (as a professor of film, I expand upon this greatly in writing and in class - of which, neither are appropriate here). Suffice it to say that the state of the genre is also a good barometer for measuring the state of human affairs - which is a bloody mess. The most profoundly philosophical genre - horror is always with us - utterly ubiquitous. In a car, on a plane, on the beach, in a house, in an airplane, in the woods, in the desert, in our minds, etc. - it is not dependent upon a place or a time or a character (unlike other genres). Horror is locatable everywhere and usually is most profoundly found when looking in the mirror. To quote the great Stephen Prince, “The anxiety at the heart of the genre is, indeed, the nature of human being.” I am not thrilled with the climate of the remake, prequel, sequel culture (lazy, mundane, easy), which thrives not on the genuine creative impulses of a writer or director, but typically, more on the distinct ring of the cash register. This business practice and attitude is not new, but it is certainly far more pronounced than it has EVER been. And yet, in the midst of such transparent efforts, we get a modest little film from Spain in 2007 which scared the absolute shit out this 37 year old genre veteran. Yes, “.Rec” is that good - if you have not seen it, do yourself a favor and do so. So, there is hope for the state of the genre, but not because of anything the industry will or could do - there is hope because the diet staples that feed this genre are synchronic with social anxieties, fears, taboos and ideologies. And, dear friends, as long as these remain good and fucked up, we will continue to find repressed monstrosities to feed the machine.

We are a brother and sisterhood of genre fanatics. I’ve been honored to throw in with you on Steve’s notoriously interesting and diverse roundtables. I suggest you stop on by my pad sometime and we can mull it over - over a frothy stein of A negative (www.trash-aesthetics.blogspot.com). I have a good deal of fun there, and, on occasion, may even have something clever or entertaining or even rhetorically sound to say now and again. Cheers.

Retropoliltan - Tales To Astonish

I’ll just say that I’ve loved this feature for 99 weeks, and I’m sad to see it go. I was honored to be a part of it while it lasted, but I hope some industrious young horror blogger out there takes up the Roundtable mantle. Thanks for the good times!

Also, I would like to add:

ZOMBIES RULE, VAMPIRES DROOL

Louis - Damaged 2.0

Well, this really sucks. The Horror Roundtable has been something that I’ve looked forward to every Friday, and now what will I have? That’s right. Now I have nothing. I have discovered so many awesome blogs through this exercise, and made a few friends, so at least there is always that. At least. I should pitch my blog, Damaged 2.0 to you at this point, so, if you get the time, try to visit. It’ll never take the place of your dad, and I’m not trying to, but I really love your mom and want to be part of this family. Vaya con Dios, Horror Bloggers.

Corey - Evil On Two Legs

I think this roundtable is a fabulous idea; my only regret is that I didn’t discover it sooner. I hope that it returns in some form in the near future as I will miss reading the responses of so many intelligent writers on a single topic. In any case, thank you for allowing me to participate.

In regards to the state of the genre — I’m very excited about the future of horror. Since the advent of film, horror has been well represented (going all the way back to Edison’s Frankenstein). However, the quality, tone and relevance of horror films fluctuates in a cyclic pattern. Fortunately, I think the last few years show that we’re in the midst of a horror revival. Some may feel there’s been an over-saturation of J-horror, but you can’t deny that The Ring ushered in an unprecedented appreciation for foreign horror, opening the door for films from Japan, Korea, France, Australia and others to be seen by American mainstream audiences. The widespread adoption of unrated DVD releases (as well as the fact that the MPAA is more lenient than they have been in decades) has given horror auteurs more freedom than ever before. It’s a good time to be a horror fan, and I only see that becoming more true in the coming years.

Sean - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat

Good times and bad times
Hellos and goodbyes
Just past the joint
And let’s get high

THX HORROR ROUNDTABLE
LYLAB

Arbogast on Film

I came to the Horror Round-Up very late in the game, making me feel a bit like William Smith on the last season of HAWAII FIVE-0. It’s been my honor to rub shoulders with the big wheels of the Blogosphere and to wax thoughtful about our favorite subject. To a continuing world of Gods and Monsters. But mostly Monsters.

JA - My New Plaid Pants

I just want to take this opportunity to thank you Steven, for allowing me to participate, and for introducing me to all of my brilliant fellow Rountablers, and for all of the movies that I’ve been introduced to via the topics and answers that’ve come up over the past 100 weeks. My horror knowledge had been rather limited in scope - I never really realized that I even was a horror geek until well into my 20s, and I’ve had a lot of ground to catch up on, and this forum has been absolutely instrumental in my continuing education. Oh how we’ve laughed and we’ve cried, and lovingly pondered all manner of viscera - this is what family is supposed to be like!

So much for just discussing the state of the genre or plugging your site. I’ve always strived to keep the Roundtable topics easy and accessible, which is why I never put forward one that centres on saying nice things about me. Thanks, everyone. That must have been the toughest Roundtable yet.

A wonderful world of Horror awaits you.

Name a piece of horror art or entertainment that you believe changed the genre, and explain how.

Jeff O’Brien

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I think it ushered in the era of graphic horror even more than the drive in gore flicks that preceded it. It was graphic, dour and realistic. And the zombie rules it established have been so widely copied that it’s a shame George Romero isn’t living fat off the royalties.

Bill - Pulp 2.0

Absolutely one of the most influential pieces of art or body of work which has influenced the horror genre is the work of H.R. Giger.

He melding of tech, flesh, sado-masochism, predator and disease has influenced several major horror/scifi works which directly used his design work (ALIEN, SPECIES) and countless others who imitated his unique, dark vision not only in film but in comics, book covers, album covers, games and other media.

B-Sol - Vault of Horror

Rosemary’s Baby doesn’t get enough credit for what it truly did for the genre. Night of the Living Dead came out the same year, and everyone knows how drastically that film changed horror cinema. But Rosemary’s Baby did as well, in another way. Horror flicks had been consigned to B-movie purgatory ever since Universal demoted them in the late 1930s, and Rosemary’s Baby was the first mainstream, “respectable” Hollywood horror movie to come along since that time. It demonstrated that you could do a horror movie with A-list actors, an A-list director, major publicity, etc. Plus, it was nominated for the Academy Award. Movies like The Exorcist, The Omen, Alien, and so many others followed soon after. Although B-horror movies still proliferate, it’s because of Rosemary’s Baby that horror movies can also be more than just exploitation fare–although I fear that the recent “torture porn” trend may wind up forcing horror back into the b-movie closet.

Corey - Evil On Two Legs

I could easily go with Psycho or Halloween for creating the slasher genre or Scream for revitalizing it when the slasher film seemed all but dead… but I think I’ll go a different route and say The Silence of the Lambs. When Hannibal Lecter swept the Oscars, I think it heralded a change in how horror films were perceived and defined for both the general public and for horror fans themselves. Many didn’t define The Silence of the Lambs as a horror film, but that’s only because the genre carried a stigma precluding anything of such quality. Silence is certainly a horror film and not purely a ‘psychological thriller’ (the term usually given to a horror film once it passed a certain threshold of quality) — it was featured on the cover of Fangoria, the plot revolves around a guy killing women to make a suit out of their skin and one of the primary characters is a cannibal. When Silence won the top 5 awards at the Oscars that year, I think it lent some legitimacy to and broadened the definition of the genre (much as The Exorcist had done two decades earlier), reminding people that truly remarkable films can come from any genre, even those generally looked down upon.

Eric - Bloody Good Horror

H.R. Giger’s alien designs for the “Alien” series are still some of the most visually disturbing imagery ever put to film. They’ve influenced science fiction and horror filmmakers going on 30 years now, and probably will continue to do so for another 30.

Chick Young - Trash-Aesthetics

Wow, another tough one. So many achievements in the genre - thematic, aesthetic, and technical (I’m tempted to say Robert Stoker Jr. for his design and development of a the cobweb gun!). So many came to mind - especially with the clear demarcations between specific periods and the transgression boundaries in the postmodern era. But, I’m gonna go with Horrors of the Black Museum (1959). I think that its influence is obvious and very far reaching (well into the 21st century).

Shot in glorious HYPNOVISTA, Horrors really was the first movie to indulge at length in the “creative death” sequences that later became so commonplace in the Slasher sub-genre (and is, essentially the hook for, say, the entire Saw franchise). It also bears the distinguishing feature of being AIP’s first Cinemascope and Eastman color production. Pre-Black Sunday, pre-Psycho, pre-Blood Feast, pre-House of Usher, the only contemporaneous genre film that delights in showing as much unusual death is probably Nakagawa’s Jigoku (1960). Ya gotta love this film! The legendary binocular scene alone is worth this particular roundtable entry!

Tim - Mondo Schlocko

I’m not sure if this counts, but I do believe that GRINDHOUSE ruined the way some current mainstream films and drek from yesteryear are being promoted. Instead of it being a hip subgenre it is instead twisted in a way to market crap films and trick us into playing the role of the sucker who buys into it.

The whole thing stinks of how SCREAM changed films when suddenly every producer and their grandmother thought it would be a great idea to stick teens in every horror flick that is being cranked out today.

Unkle Lancifer - Kindertrauma

PSYCHO and HALLOWEEN deserve all the laurels they get and I’m happy that in the last 10 years BLACK CHRISTMAS has gotten it’s fair shake too, but I don’t think anyone ever takes FRIDAY THE 13TH’s contribution to the genre seriously enough. FRIDAY may owe its existence to HALLOWEEN (it should also buy BAY OF BLOOD and CARRIE a beer sometime too), but what it did with the opportunity HALLOWEEN allowed should not be taken lightly. HALLOWEEN may have opened the gate, but FRIDAY ripped it off its hinges and ran like a mo-fo. So much so, that by the time HALLOWEEN’s sequel came around, it was taking its cues from FRIDAY. I think most slasher movies that live under the umbrella term “HALLOWEEN clones” are in fact “FRIDAY THE 13TH clones.” FRIDAY invented the over-the-top, set-piece kill and conveyer-belt elimination game that any respectable slasher film had to emulate for years. HALLOWEEN does not have that structure; in fact, its focus is on showing as little as possible. HALLOWEEN derives its power from watching someone try to live where FRIDAY gains its power by watching people die. HALLOWEEN is not concerned with the visual aftermath of its deceased either; their bodies are rather neatly stored in cupboards and closets (or propped on a bed). FRIDAY lingers and dares you to look away. It shows death as messy, unpoetic and impossible to return from. Most forget that it’s queasy celebration of the human body’s potential for damage was absolute cutting edge for its time. Many people may not be happy with the mark left by FRIDAY, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Even with its rather obvious impact, you’d be hard pressed to find an actual positive review for the film in many horror reference books. It’s time to recognize that even beyond the elaborate bloody kills, FRIDAY has real atmosphere and tells a pretty damn scary tale too (anyone who grew up watching the edited version on television can attest to that.) It deserves much more than a condescending pat on the head from horror fans and a knee jerk dismissal from critics. I don’t mean to take anything away from HALLOWEEN, which at the end of the day I prefer, but FRIDAY THE 13TH was a lot more original and influential then anyone gives it credit for.

Arbogast on Film

I hate to be a negative Nellie but Anne Rice’s INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE sliced the balls off the creature in question and beget a generation of sensitive, brooding, mopey emo sluggards more interested in looking Goth than tearing jugulars. The 80s and 90s took the worst of it but we’re still dealing with the infection in TV shows like MOONLIGHT. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE may even have, in a delayed reaction sort of way, played some part in the current vogue for horror backstory, which particularized the crap-ass remakes of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and HALLOWEEN, showing us that the killers at the heart of these stories have reasons for being evil. Ye gods and little fishes, I don’t want excuses, I want unbridled, unblinking, heartless malevolence, I want monsters!

No more interviews!

Nathan - MicroHorror

I have something in mind, but it can’t really be called horror, since the modern notion of genre literature hadn’t really been invented yet. For that matter, neither had the novel. You could call it fantasy, I suppose, or even fan fiction if you wanted to be uncharitable. I’m talking about John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” first published in 1667.

Milton’s epic poem is the first major work to depict Satan as a rounded and arguably sympathetic character. If not for Milton, we never would have had Al Pacino in “The Devil’s Advocate” (Pacino’s character is even NAMED “John Milton,” for Pete’s sake), Christopher Walken in “The Prophecy,” Jack Nicholson in “The Witches of Eastwick,” or any other interesting portrayals of Satan or similar fallen angels– nobody mentioned in Roundtable #66 at all, for that matter.

Milton started it, and we’ve just been playing in his sandbox ever since. I’ll bow out with a quote from the great 18th-century poet William Blake: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.”

Sean - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat

This is actually a hard question for me, because I’m so accustomed to (solipsistically?) focusing on how a given work of horror changed me. Frankly that’s more what I’m interested in. That said, I think there’s a pretty clear pre- and post-Psycho line of demarcation in terms of horror films intended to disturb and horrify in addition to “spook”–or at the very least their ability to do so with a contemporary audience.

Ninety-nine weeks of Roundtables; ninety-nine weeks of Sean struggling with the topic and/or answering Hellraiser. Thanks to all of this week’s participants for chiming in, and if you’d like to say your piece, please do so in the comments below. Join us next week for the finale.

Name your all-time favourite special effect sequence in a horror film.

Jeff O’Brien

Night of the Demons. The lipstick into Linnea Quigley’s nipple.

Sean - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat

This is no doubt getting ridiculous, but my favorite is from Hellraiser: Frank’s grisly rebirth through the floorboards. The combination of that great stop-motion gore and the rapturous Christopher Young score is the perfect distillation of Barker’s conflation of the beautiful and the grotesque.

Eric - Bloody Good Horror

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than watching Cropsy in “The Burning” snip Fisher Stevens’ fingers off with a pair of garden shears as blood splatters across his face. That whole sequence, choreographed masterfully by director Tony Maylam, contains some of the best work Tom Savini has EVER done.

Mark - Exclamation Mark’s SciFi/Horror Review

I’ve always been fascinated with Kong’s fight with the allosaurus in the original King Kong (1933). I’m still impressed by the way Kong plays with the dead dinosaur’s broken jaw after he wins the fight. Willis O’Brien will always hold a special place in my heart for that scene alone.

GlowStormLion - Happy Horror

Hopefully I’m not straying too far from the question, but there was an episode of the X-Files (a TV series, I know) that featured a guy who’d been born with a tail. I remember this segment very vividly as they held up an infant and the creepy little tail writhed around.

GROSS!

JA - My New Plaid Pants

Easily the scene in The Thing that begins with the defibrillator paddles and ends with the spider-legged head trying to sneak out of the room. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

Chick Young - Trash-Aesthetics

I labored long and hard on this one. So many films immediately came to mind with regard to special effects sequences. From the silent era (Barrymore’s Hyde or Rotwang’s creation of Maria from Metropolis for example) right up to present-day techniques, this became an increasingly difficult question to answer. I found that in the end, my gut was telling me all along what the answer was. It may not be my absolute favorite effect sequence of all time, but it is definitely the first and most impactive that I can remember. In Terence Fisher’s Brides of Dracula (1960), there was an effect that put a watermelon size pit in my stomach. The real rub of the matter is that it was ridiculously simple, and sometimes, the simplest effect is the most EFFECTual.

After Gina has entered The Baron’s “unholy cult”, Marianne waits in the stable with a village laborer (Cushing’s Van Helsing gave strict orders for the body to be kept away from the school) while Gina’s body rests in a coffin which is securely sealed by two stout padlocks. The film is sumptuously rich in mood and atmosphere to begin with and at about sunset when these two padlocks suddenly fall off - IN TACT - I felt there was something especially sly and evil in this supernatural occurrence. The whole scene remains brilliant, but it starts with those old padlocks falling off of the coffin while securely locked. Creepy man. So, I will go with the pad-lock sequence from Brides of Dracula, it’s not a tour-de-force of technical wizardry, but it was damned scary, sadistically simple, and extremely effective. No school like the old school.

Nathan - MicroHorror

I don’t usually admire special effects. I find myself in agreement with Roger Ebert and his belief that if you ever find yourself saying “Wow, look at that special effect!” the effect has failed and thrust you out of the movie instead of drawing you into it. CG and compositing still haven’t quite made the necessary leap that will render them indistinguishable from reality, and I don’t know if they ever will.

I’m no killjoy, though. I admire the effort that goes into effects, especially practical effects, and I admire the expertise involved in turning latex and machinery into a monster. On top of that, I can’t deny my love of over-the-top comedy gore, so I’m going to have to say that my all-time favorite horror effects sequence is the final battle in Peter Jackson’s “Braindead.” The gigantic mutated mother-zombie… what could be better?

RedHawk - Happy Horror

I know I’m probably going to get alot of heat for this, but one of my favorite sequences has to be the shootout scene from the original House of the Dead movie. Sure, there are a few continuity errors in it (switching between shots from a pair of pistols to a shotgun, for one), and my favorite character in the movie gets killed (Rudy, stop flashing back and help her!) during it, but I’ve always enjoyed the combination of the music and the action.

Curt - Groovy Age of Horror

The whole blood-spurting finale of Argento’s TENEBRAE comes to mind. Also, though I wouldn’t want to single out anything in UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION as a “favorite,” I was very impressed at how extensively and effectively they used practical effects rather than CGI for a lot of the most striking scenes of monster mayhem.

Unkle Lancifer - Kindertrauma

I don’t mean to respond to nearly every question with an answer involving the work of JOHN CARPENTER, but really what choice do I have in this instance? ROB BOTTIN’s work in THE THING, as far as I’m concerned, has never been topped. The Norris spider head sequence is the be-all end-all when it comes to special effects and it blows any modern CGI I’ve ever seen out of the water. Like all great art, it not only amazes with what it’s actually showing you but also teaches you to see things in a different way as well.

Louis - Damaged 2.0

I guess that in the annals of horror that, for my all-time favorite special effects sequence I should choose something from THE THING or AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, but, as simple as it probably was to do, my all-time fave has to be this quick 15-second shot from a Freddy movie.

In NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS,there a scene when bad girl Taryn (played by then-hot Jennifer Rubin) is all punked-up and slings some switchblades at Freddy, proclaiming “In my dreams, I’m beautiful…and bad!”, to which Freddy’s fingers become hypodermics and, on Taryn’s arms, these little gasping mouths appears, begging for the drug in Freddy’s vials. That shot with the arms has always been so insanely and nightmarishly creepy that I have never been able to shake it, which is, I believe, the mark of a great special effects sequence.

Retropoliltan - Tales To Astonish

I have to say: the “yellow corpse” sequence from the first “Return of the Living Dead” flick.

The corpse effects may not have been the greatest or most convincing effects ever (but still impressive considering that it was all done practically), but the way that Dan O’Bannon structured and shot the scene really made everything work. From the basic unnatural color of the body to the head-sawing and pick-axe impalement, it’s a fantastic scene that just gets continually worse for the characters after every gruesome attempt to stop the zombie fails. Every little effect manages to build a little on the previous one, and the cast keeps everything lively enough to get you overlooking the rubber suit and animatronic head. It’s a great (and hilarious) scene in a great movie.

Arbogast on Film

This question was an unexpected stumper. I’ve seen a lot of special effects in my two-score and six. I’ve seen some of the great cities of the world leveled by water and fire and monsters big and small destroyed and reduced to dust… but the one effect that comes to mind as being particularly impressive is the spider scene in the John Barrymore version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Not only is it disturbing to imagine such a thing happening to us but from the character’s perspective the scene satisfies horror’s concern with the truly repulsive. Robert Louis Stevenson’s allegory of body horror was more than a hundred years ahead of Cronenberg and it gets a particularly vivid adaptation with Barrymore, who had his own personal demons and was a genuinely haunted man, may he rest in peace.

Corey - Evil On Two Legs

I can’t think of any sequence more creative or awe-inspiring than the “spider head” scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing. Starting with Norris’ chest opening as a giant mouth and eating Copper’s arms and concluding with the spider-head-thing trying to crawl away, this sequence is all the more impressive given that it’s comprised entirely of physical effects and still holds up against anything from the modern CGI era.

Kimberly - Cinebeats

One of my favorite special effects sequences in any horror film is the splinter in the eyeball scene from Zombi 2. It’s rather simple but it never fails to make me a little queasy and I always get the urge to look away at the last minute. The way Fulci had a killer use a razor blade to slice up a woman in The New York Ripper was also really nasty and memorable as well. I think Italian special effects men like Giovanni Corridori, Gino De Rossi and Germano Natali (who also worked on lots of Argento’s films) really know how to make extremely effective and gory scenes that stick with you long after a movie has ended.

What a fantastic batch of considered responses. We’re really beginning to hit our stride. On a related note, two more weeks to go. Thanks to the overwhelming amount of participants for this Roundtable, and as always, if you’d like to have your say please consider leaving a comment below.

Name a movie considered by most to be non-horror that you consider more terrifying than most horror films.

Chick Young - Trash-Aesthetics

There’s a good many films that come to mind, but, I think, one in particular stands out for me. I’ll go with A Simple Plan (1998).

A cautionary morality tale reminiscent of Rod Serling’s wisdom fiction, A Simple Plan paints humankind as a biologically predetermined greedy and hopeless race. While watching this neglected masterpiece, one is reminded of Ben Franklin’s quote “Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.”

I love this film, but, my God, this narrative takes SO MANY wrong turns. Things just get worse and worse until we are presented with an ending that is not only a supreme downer but on a par with the pathos of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Delicately directed, supremely acted, hauntingly scored, A Simple Plan is a perfect film; the only thing that I don’t like about A Simple Plan is the utter hopelessness of it. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t find something “good” everyday, life can become depressing mighty quickly. A Simple Plan reminds us that we have been a violent, brutal, and viscous species since before the neolithic revolution and that our so-called “civil” society has been around, in comparison, for about a New York minute. What does it take? A duffle bag with 4.4 million dollars? Is that the price-tag that hangs on happiness? Is it merely our laws that keep brutal acts of violence at bay? Does rampant consumerism and capitalism commit us to transgress these laws? Are we just greedy and hopeless? Upon finding the money, we are presented with this exchange:

Lou: “It’s the American dream in a Goddman gym bag, and you just want to walk away from it?”

Hank: “You work for the American dream, Lou. You don’t steal it.”

Brave talk, but, how quickly Hank’s rapid descent into the maelstrom. This is one mighty bleak and perfectly constructed (I argue, horror) film from a director with humble horror beginnings, Sam Raimi. A Simple Plan interrogates the thin line that separates us from committing unspeakable acts and our rationalizations for them. After a lot of blood has been shed, Jacob, played by Billy Bob Thornton asks his brother Hank, “Do you ever feel evil?” I suggest he’s asking us the audience the very same question. The monster is the one staring back at you in the mirror.

Jeff O’Brien

I would have to say Peter Bogdanovich first film, TARGETS. It was about horror movies but also about real life horror. An aging horror film star played by Boris Karloff is retiring because he thinks his films can’t compete with the Vietnam era horror of real life. It was extremely tense, suspenseful enough that it’s have to believe he didn’t go on to more films in the genre. Some parts of the film are genuine white knuckle moments.

B-Sol - Vault of Horror

I’ll have to go with Taxi Diver. That movie is so bleak, so sinister, and presents such an unforgivingly stark view of human nature and society at large. Travis Bickle’s world is a completely amoral one, with no checks and balances of any kind. Manhattan in that film truly is hell on earth. And at the end, when Bickle is hailed as some kind of hero despite being mentally unhinged, we’re left with a sense of the nihilistic hopelessness of life as Martin Scorsese saw it.

Eric - Bloody Good Horror

You know, most people don’t give the original “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” credit for how god damn scary it is. The scene with the clown surgeons destroying Pee Wee’s bike is at the top of the list of things that made me have trouble sleeping when I was a child. It should have been obvious by that film that Burton would go on to be a mad genius. Tequila!

Dave - Rue Morgue’s The Abbatoir

The documentary Jesus Camp scared the hell out of me. It’s about the absolute bat-shit craziest Red State fundamentalists who brainwash their kids at these retreats where they learn about the “lie” of evolution, pay homage to a literal two-dimensional cut-out of George W. Bush and participate in these hysterical, guilt-filled prayer meetings where pre-teens are encouraged to talk in tongues. Few things are more twisted than sanctioned child abuse.

Sean - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat

Hmmm. Most of the movies I can think of along these lines, I wouldn’t say that they’re “more terrifying than most horror films,” because I consider them to be horror films themselves: Barton Fink, Lost Highway, Eyes Wide Shut, Eraserhead, Heavenly Creatures…One movie I don’t consider to be a horror film but found very tense and frightening in a horrific fashion (as opposed to a thrill/suspesne fashion) is There Will Be Blood. It had the best promissory title since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, that’s for sure.

Bill - Pulp 2.0

When Harry Met Sally.

Nathan - MicroHorror

Steven, I’ve been waiting for you to ask this question. You see, there is one movie that I rank as the scariest I’ve ever seen. I watched it when I was young, having no idea what I was in for. After one certain scene, I shut the movie off, terrified to my very core. I suffered from nightmares for years. About a decade later, as a grown man, I watched the movie again. This time, I was able to watch the whole thing, but my god, that one scene is still scarier and more traumatic than any horror movie I’ve ever watched.

The movie, in case you have yet to guess, was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The scene, of course, was the saga of Large Marge. Relive it here, if you dare.

Curt - Groovy Age of Horror

I think the conventionalized, often fantastic horrors of horror movies are so different from the more philosophical or real-world concerns a non-horror movie might try to evoke that I see little point in drawing such comparisons. To claim that the latter are “more terrifying” just because they’re realistic is completely to misunderstand the kind of experience so many horror movies aim to deliver.

JA - My New Plaid Pants

Well the first example I thought of was Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For a Dream. Most people, I suppose, don’t consider it a horror movie. Even though Aronofsky’s called it such himself, and I 100% consider it as such.

My second thought was of John Travolta in Hairspray. Scariest thing put on celluloid in 100 plus years. Travolta’s Edna Turnblad would snack on Max Schreck’s Nosferatu as an after-dinner mint.

Unkle Lancifer - Kindertrauma

Gasper Noe’s IRREVERSIBLE kicked my ass, stole my popcorn and chased me home from the theater. The opening credits alone were enough to have me wondering if I should just go home and hide under the bed. I remember reading somewhere that there are subliminal slaughter house pig cries incorporated into the opening music which I find very easy to believe. The whole movie just reeks of concentrated fatalistic dread. It’s brilliant as hell, genius even, but I doubt I will ever watch it again.

Kimberly - Cinebeats

Frederick Wiseman’s 1967 film Titicut Follies. Wiseman’s incredible and deeply disturbing documentary takes viewers into a state run hospital for the criminally insane. It presents a rare view of a terrifying place that most people will never see and never want to see, which explains why it was banned for so long. It’s a horrifying film because it’s real and contrary to popular belief, conditions in state run hospitals have not changed much in the past 40 years.

Retropoliltan - Tales To Astonish

I always thought Steve DeJarnatt’s 1988 “Miracle Mile” was pretty indicative of the kind of non-horror horror movie that scared me. It’s about a guy who gets “a chance phone call telling him that a nuclear war has started and missiles will hit his city in 70 minutes,” and while he’s desperately trying to get his girl and get out of the city, panic slowly spreads and chaos erupts. Maybe it’s because I live in a city of 8.3 million people, but I’m a sucker for mass hysterica flicks.

Arbogast on Film

When I was a kid a saw a movie at my local drive-in called BLOODY FRIDAY, which was part of a double or triple bill. I still remember the tiny ad that had been in my local paper and the chilly phrase “The survivors would remember it as… BLOODY FRIDAY.” It was one of the first movies I ever saw in which, clearly, all bets were off. The violence in this thing was just horrific and the behavior of the characters (to my 10 year old brain) so inexplicable. The image of a uniformed policeman throwing himself down on top of a hand grenade (to protect a crowd of pedestrians) and being blown up stayed with me for the thirty-odd years before I could catch up with it on video. It turned out the thing was an Italian-West German coproduction and actually called BLUTIGER FREITAG, although the title was changed to VIOLENT OFFENDER when it was released on video. It really is primarily a crime film whose second act is a bank heist gone wrong in the tradition of DOG DAY AFTERNOON (although predating it by a few years) but there’s stuff in there that is beyond the pale, such as the rape of one hostage that is intercut with slaughterhouse stock footage and a downbeat (or not, if you’ve hated the characters all along) climax in which the protagonists go down in a Peckinpah-like slow motion machine gun bullet ballet.

Nope, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

What a great set of recommendations. Show this week’s participants some love by visiting their respective sites, won’t you? And if you have an opinion on this week’s question, please let us know in the comments below.