7th's Top 100 Horror Film Spectacular (25-1)
Posted by 7th on October 13, 2005

Also-rans are a big money maker in Hollywood. When one lucky writer/director happens across something that works, everyone tries to bounce on the same cock in the hopes of equal pleasure.

1977's Orca (released two whole years after Jaws, all the time they needed to paint Bruce black and white) proves that it rarely works out that way, but at the age of three, I didn't know that. This movie scared me to death when I was little. I had the opportunity to watch it again not long ago, and I was dumbfounded. The film is utter garbage, and is a sort of merger of Jaws and Moby Dick.

Richard Harris is a whaler (Your Captain Ahab/ Sheriff Brody combo) who long ago, killed a certain orca's pregnant mate. And now, many years later, SHAMU IS BACK FOR REVENGE!

The movie boils down to a sort of at-sea duel between Harris and said killer whale, its only redeeming cinematic moment being a key scene when the whale bites Bo Derek's leg off ('cause let's face it, who wouldn't want to see that?) One of the final scenes is a sort of moment of truth where the whale and the whaler lock eyes, and you see the reflection of Harris's face in the whale's pupil. At the age of three, I thought that after the whale had swallowed him, that the whaler was trapped like Jonah from the Bible story, but was able to see out of the whale's eyes like a window.

Of course, that was just my impression at the time. Truth be told, I was a weird kid, and this movie really sucks. And do you know why it sucks? It's not just because it was trying to cash in on the popularity of Jaws (though that does play a factor, including the unneccessary addition of a great white shark attack in the film's already derivative plot.) It's the fact that you see the whale too much in this movie.

Spielberg knew what a lot of great directors have known. If you want to really scare someone, keep them wondering what's under the water, what's under the bed, what's in the closet, who's making those noises out in the woods. You don't SEE the shark in Jaws until well into the film, at which point it ceases to become a horror film and morphs into an updated Moby Dick where Ahab wins. This is why the first half of the movie works so much better than the last half.

Another Jaws cash-in film that does the same thing (and was released around the same time period) was The Bermuda Depths, a film where the strange occurences in the Bermuda Triangle are attributed to a giant sea turtle and its eternally youthful island girl master, both of whom are AGENTS OF THE DEVIL. Sure, the plot is shit either way, but you know going into it that the flick is going to suck because it shows too much fo the damned turtle. And if Jim Henson taught me anything, it's that turtles work best in complete darkness.

So with that in mind, here are my top 25 horror films.

25) An American Werewolf In London

Two friends from America are taking a backpack tour of England when one night, on a dark lonely road, they're attacked by an unseen beast. One is killed, the other survives. He awakens in a hospital and meets the ghost of his friend, his throat ripped open. His specterly companion explains that he's survived a werewolf attack, and shortly will become one himself, and that he should just commit suicide and be done with it.

Naturally, he pays no attention to this and hey, what do you know! One night he falls onto the living room floor and turns into something completely non-human, and goes on a killing spree through the streets of London, before finally meeting his end.

This film isn't really known for its scares because of how much humor has been thrown into it. It's really a sort of dark horror comedy. What makes it memorable in the history of horror films is the make-up. The transformation scene in the living room is still heralded, in this age of CGI effects, as being the greatest werewolf transformation ever produced. And I agree (though I do believe the effects used in The Howling are equally impressive for their own reasons.) Using purely mechanical effects, a man is changed into a wolf, and the effect is very realistic.

A sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, was released a few years ago. It had even more humor than the original, and replaced all the wonderful nuances of the original's beast with CGI werewolves that walked on their hind feet and looked nothing like the original monster. They looked more like the gangly Gollumish werewolf from the third Harry Potter film. Bigger budget, more laughs, shittier film. Get the first one. Leave the other in the bargain bin for those who don't know any better.

Click here To Order An American Werewolf In London!

24) Meet The Feebles

This is NOT, strictly, a horror movie. But its imagery, and the idea that someone would even conceive of such a movie, is pure horror in itself, a joke in bad taste that's stretched to 90 minutes in length, and thus has earned a place on my list.

From the mind of Peter Jackson comes this film, a sort of dark parody of Jim Henson's the Muppet Show. The Feebles are a performing muppet troupe, led by the gruff walrus Bletch, who is quite busy with getting the show ready for the big time (a live television pilot) and sleeping with the feline ballet dancer behind his girlfriend's (Heidi The Hippo, filling the Ms. Piggy role) back.

There's a lot of nasty things going on here, mostly to due with the main characters. they seem normal enough at first. Bletch is a corrupt womanizer, Heidi is neurotic. There's a rabbit who's sort of the Kermit the Frog of the film, who's had sex with every female on the show (male rabbit sex drive, don't you know) and has contracted some strange form of VD that's causing various parts of himself to rot and fall off. There IS a frog on the cast, but he's a twitching drug junkie who suffers from Vietnam flashbacks. Possibly the most bizarre character is a rat who lives in the basement, and lives to direct porno films, one of which involves a love scene between a cow and a giant cockroach.

As the film builds up to the big premiere, more and more things go awry: drug deals gone bad, fights, disputes, and it all climaxes when Heidi walks into Bletch's office and finds him bent over fucking the cat. She snaps, and what follows is a Rambo-inspired bloodbath that would make most modern Hollywood action films seem tame by comparison. This is the 2nd grossest film I've ever seen, so Mr. Jackson should be pleased that his films comprise two thirds of the movies that have come closest to making me puke, and will be a welcome addition to your Halloween Night viewing, especially if you've brought friends along.

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23) Ice Cream Man

This is NOT a good horror movie. It's a bad one, an ENORMOUSLY repugnant piece of direct-to-video cinema; a movie so intrinsically unwatchable that all who were involved in its creation should be publically flogged. And that's exactly why I love it so much.

I enjoy this film in much the same way that people can't help but slow down and look for signs of carnage at the scene of a roadside car accident. I watch it over and over again, and always seem to find a new and exciting moment where someone fucks up. It's like Dr. Giggles, but with less effort put into it (if THAT tells you anything.)

One day, as a little boy is sitting on the curb enjoying the ice cream cone he just bought from the friendly neighborhood ice cream man, two mafia thugs pull up and fill the ice cream man (known in the movie as "The Ice Cream King," the boy's childhood hero) with lead. No explanation is ever given, but we can see from the look on the child's face that he is scarred for life, staring forelornly at his blood spattered ice cream cone.

Years later, young Gregory has grown up to become Clint Howard, the poor child, and wants nothing more than to fill the empty shoes of his dead mentor. But the horror he witnessed has scarred him in ways the community is blind to, so they're completely taken back when people begin vanishing all over town.

Hollywood has-been Jan Michael Vincent phones in a role here as the police officer investigating the murders. One particular scene where they visit an insane asylum that the Ice Cream Man spent a good deal of time in shows just how much Vincent thought of the production. He walks through this entire scene staring through his sunglasses straight at the camera with a smirk on his face, giving no reaction to the idiocy going on around him, as if to say "Just give me my goddamned check so I can go home and drink myself to sleep watching re-runs of Airwolf."

Eventually, he tracks Gregory back to his ice cream lair, wherein lies one of the most accidentally (or possibly intentional, it's impossible to tell with this flick) hilarious scenes in any horror movie I've ever sat through. Gregory stands up from behind a wrecked car and has in each hand the severed heads of two cops impaled on ice cream scoopers. He uses the scoop triggers to make the mouths move (something I doubt is anatomically/mechanically possible, but what the hell, Clint Howard is a serial killer who leaves globs of worm-infested ice cream in people's shoes on the front porch as a warning of their impending demise, hence implausability is out the fucking window.) He proceeds to have an impromptu "puppet show" with the two heads, and the cops are too stunned by it to shoot him, even though he's standing in plain view.

But nothing tops the ending, which I have no problem with revealing, because I doubt any of you will be willing to sit through this shit after having read this plot synopsis. Long story short, old Gregory gets shoved into one of his own machines by a little boy he was holding hostage, fulfilling a life long dream of mine: to see Clint Howard dismembered by an industrial ice cream churner.

Click Here To Order Ice Cream Man!

22) The Eye

God bless Asian Horror! The Eye reminds me in ways of the Chris Walken film The Dead Zone, based on the Stephen King novel (and currently the subject of the USA tv series starring Anthony Michael Hall.) A young woman blind from birth is given a cornea transplant. Immediately, she begins to see strange things, shadowy figures that seem to foreshadow impending deaths. She sees the reflection of the dead woman the corneas came from in her mirror.

It soon begins to tear at her sanity, so she is forced to go to the dead woman's home and try to unravel the truth behind the strange visions she's seeing, and hopefully avert the horrific disaster they seem to be leading up towards.

The film is the work of the Pang Brothers, and the feel is highly reminiscent of films like The Ring or the 6th Sense. A sense of foreboding and inevitablility stays at the forefront throughout the winding plot, and doesn't let up right till the end, which is just too damned good for me to reveal.

And naturally, an American remake is under works, planned for release some time in 2006. And Tom Cruise is somehow involved. Expect the young girl to be rewritten as a young Scientologist who uses his gift to see inside himself and find Benu (or whatever the alien overlord's name is), and hence, become a Free Clear (for those who'd like to actually get that joke, feel free to click here and read a free online book entitled "The Bare Faced Messiah" on the complete and utter fraud that was the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, the conclusions of which is a horror in itself, when one stops and thinks about how many millions of people have bought into this shit.)

21) Onibaba

I like to think of this film, a work of genius by director Kaneto Shindo (screenwriter of the 1987 International cult hit Actress) as a sort of Japanese take on a Twilight Zone plot. Set in medieval Japan, the story centers around the starving wife of the great warrior Kichi and mother, who are slowly withering away while they wait for him to return from war. In order to survive, they resort to luring wayward soldiers into the tall grass and killing them, selling their armor and supplies for food money, and hiding the bodies in a nearby cave.

The mother soon learns that her son has been killed in battle. Realizing that she won't be able to survive on her own, she concocts a plan to frighten her daughter-in-law into staying with her. She murders a soldier wearing a hideous demon mask (to cover his equally hideous scarred face) and uses the mask to frighten her daughter-in-law as she is on her way to her new lover's home.

The real horror begins when the mother discovers that the mask is permanently stuck to her face, and she realizes how the face of the soldier she stole it from became so mangled.

Click Here To Order Onibaba - Criterion Collection!

20) Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter

Though the title would prove to be a lie that has stretched to over a decade in length, I hold this sole film of the series in high regard, as it seems to be the one that gets it right.

You all know the plot and the players by now. Hell, even uuber weirdo Crispin Glover has a part in this flick, not to mention Corey Feldman's turn as the eventual hero of part 6, Tommy.

More teenagers go to the lake, and more teenagers buy it at the hands of Jason Vorhees, who eventually buys it at the hands of Tommy, a young boy with apparent issues of his own, a child who's obsessed with horror films and goes into epilleptic seizures whenever he sees teenagers fucking. I'm not making that up.

One of the bloodiest (and boobiest) of the Friday films, part 4 was meant to be an end to the series, insofar as being about Jason. We all know how that turned out, but I view it as a good and proper ending to Jason, a troubled, disfigured man brought low (in an ending that's unusually clever for one of these films, mirroring the ending of part two where a camper dons the sweater of Jason's mother) by a troubled, inwardly disfigured boy. That's about as deep as one can go with this flick, considering it is a film about a guy in a hockey mask who chops up horny teenage boozehounds, but the subtext still manages to come across.

(Of Note: watch for the Tom Savini cameo, playing a creepy neighbor who seems to have more interest in Tommy than an adult man should.)

Click Here To Order Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter!

19) A Nightmare On Elm Street

Dear old Freddy Krueger, child molester and killer, found and murdered by the parents of his victims. Forget all the "bastard son of a thousand maniacs" crap that was added to his character after this film. In fact, forget every other Nightmare film (though I do have a guilty pleasure in Part 3, because I have an unabashed love for the theme song performed by Dokken.) This is the film with all the goods. Everything you really need to know about or see of Freddy is found here.

As mentioned above, Freddy was killed by the parents of his victims. New children were born, and it was all swept under the rug. But now, kids are dying again. Nancy, a teenager who is forced to sit and watch her friends die one by one in their sleep, does some research and discovers the truth: Freddy's spirit is killing teens in their nightmares.

Nancy figures out that the only way to fight him is to force him into the real world, where he can be hurt. So she concocts an elaborate plan to fight Freddy on even ground and bring an end to the nightmares forever. Of course, the thing about nightmares is that they may end, but they just as easily come back the next night.

I love this movie. I thought of it as THE scariest film when I first saw it back in'84. And while its effects haven't held up so well, the aura of creepiness, due in large part to the disturbing sing-song soundtrack, is still prevalent. I do have problems with the ending though. The effects in both Freddy's final moment and in the shocker surprise ending are beyond awful (though I never thought I'd see a blow up doll used in a horror film quite like that.) I wish Craven would do something worthwhile and give this film the George Lucas treatment instead of making crap like Red Eye.

(Of Note: This was Johnny Depp's debut film.)

Click Here To Order A Nightmare on Elm Street!

18) Day Of The Dead

Gotta love Romero. Of the original trilogy, this is my least favorite (keep in mind, I have not yet seen last summer's Land of the Dead, though I've heard good things.)

This, the third film of the series, begins at a time where the dead have overtaken the planet, outnumbering the living 400,000 to one (a number that sounds excessive to me, considering the current population of 6+ billion people on this planet.) A small group of survivors are hiding out in an undergound missile complex in Florida (oh great, my state is last stand against the war of the dead, with the old to young ratio here being 70-30... I'm doomed!)

Among the surviors is a scientist trying to find an anti-agent to whatever is causing the dead to rise, and a nutty psychologist who wants to train the dead to be domestic servants, his experiments being conducted on a strangely sweet and rather docile zombie known as "Bub." (a plot point mocked by the ending of Shaun of the Dead.) Soon what's left of the U.S. military barges in to take over their research, and all hell breaks loose.

This is my least favorite of the series because it's too damned preachy. There's a lot of arguing and unneccessary chatter that goes on in this film when there should be people getting their faces eaten off. Damn it George, If I wanted endless plot and little action I'd read a goddamned Tom Clancy novel. GET ON WITH THE KILLING ALREADY!

Click Here To Order Day of the Dead (Divimax Special Edition)

17) Last House On The Left

Wes Craven's first horror film, this classic pushed a lot of boundaries. Similar in many ways to Ingmar Bergman's 1960 commentary on the horrors of medieval rape, The Virgin Spring, the plot is simple, following a group of party going teenage girls looking for a good time who unfortunately hook up with a group of dopeheaded fiends and end the night being brutally murdered. The killers then meander their way to the home of one of the victims, and her parents take a gristly but well deserved revenge.

The film was known for going places previous films hadn't gone before, much like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Night of the Living Dead before it. This not only prompted a closer examination of what Hollywood would allow to be put on film, but spawned numerous lackluster and inferior copycat films, most notably I Spit On Your Grave and this year's Chaos, a film so almost pornographic in its violence and hatred that Ebert gave it zero stars, and seemed to imply in his review that he'd give it a negative star review if such a thing were possible.

Click Here To Buy The Last House on the Left!

16) Army of Darkness

The conclusion to the Evil Dead Trilogy, also known as The Medieval Dead, where Ash, the ultimate anti-hero, wages war against the deadites in an attempt to find his way home (ie Quantum Leap with demons.)

While this film has a lot of horror elements, it's really a slapstick comedy, evidenced by the numerous pop culture references ("KLAATU VERATA NECTO!"), double entendres, and out and out sight gags, such as the skeleton who runs past the camera screaming "LET'S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"

As we all know from watching Evil Dead 2, Ash opened a sort of worm hole in the space/time contiuum to suck the Evil back to the other side. But not knowing how to close it, he himself was sucked in with it, zapping him back to medieval England (though it looks a hell of a lot like California to me) to again wage battle with the undead. He gets some new power ups here (for all this film really seems to be is a video game brought to life) by way of replacing his chainsaw with a highly unlikely robotic hand that he designs and constructs from 11th century parts. His car was sucked in also (the infamous "classic" seen in every Sam Raimi film) so he takes it apart and redesigns it into the "death buggy," a sort of medieval giant sized lawn mower.

Meanwhile, thanks to an unfortunate fuck up on his part, an evil version of himself is out to get him, the Necronomicon, and Ash's girl (whom he himself just met.)

It's one cluster fuck of a movie plotwise, but somehow, it all manages to come together in one of the most beloved horror comedies ever made (thanks in most part to the real star of the movie, Ash's oneliners, some of which have gone on to be used in video games such as the Duke Nukem series.) It's not my favorite of the trilogy, but it's the one I tend to watch the most.

(Of Note: For those who haven't already seen it, be sure to watch the alternate ending, which in some ways, I wish they'd gone ahead with.)

Click Here To Order Army of Darkness - Director's Cut!

15) Evil Dead

Yeah, the effects look like cottage cheese and Kayro Syrup (that's because they are.) Yeah, some of the acting comes across as really hokey (thats because it is.) Still, this film scared the shit out of me the first time I saw it, sitting in my neighbor's basement in the dark at the age of 9. The humor of the other two films in the trilogy won't be found here, but the utter hopelessness of the situation leaves no room for it anyway.

A bunch of teenagers head out to a cabin to smoke some weed, get laid, and generally have a good time. While there, they find an old reel to reel recorder, and a tape of an archaeologist documenting his find of the book of the dead (the name of the book is eventually changed in part two to the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, a title borrowed from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Contrary to popular belief, the concept of the Necronomicon came purely from Lovecraft's imagination. If you find a book online called the Necronomicon, it's a book that was written in the 20th century, not an ancient book of the dead.)

As the tape plays, and the voice of the doctor recites the incantations, something evil awakens in the woods, and proceeds to possess the college crowd one by one. From there, it becomes a struggle to survive, and somehow stop the Evil Dead.

Yes, for those of you who haven't seen it, Ash is in this film, only he's known as Ashley here, and is not the one-liner cracking cowardly tough guy from the next two films. Here, he's just a sweet guy who wanted to propose to his girlfriend, and ended up beheading her instead.

(Of note: Sam Raimi and Wes Craven spent several years throwing little hidden "hellos" into their films. A poster for The Hills Have Eyes can be seen in the basement in Evil Dead. Footage from Evil Dead was playing on the TV in Nancy's room in Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy's glove is hanging from the ceiling of the tool shed in Evil Dead 2, etc.)

Click Here To Order The Evil Dead (Book Of The Dead Limited Edition)!

14) Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn

A lot of fans have mistakenly thought of this sequel as a remake because of the new beginning, where the story is retold as Ash bringing his girlfriend to the cabin sans other friends and finding the book and the tape recorder.

NOT TRUE.

Basically, there was so much time between the first one and the second one, Raimi felt the audience would need to be brought up to speed on what had happened so far. Problem is, the rights to Evil Dead had been bought by a division of HBO films, so they couldn't include scenes from the first film without having to pay out hefty dividends. So instead, it was decided that they would re-eanact the entire first film in the first 20 minutes of the sequel. To save money, the characters were whittled down from a carload of teenagers to just Ash and his woman. From opening credits to when Ash is picked up and thrown into a tree, you're watching a re-enactment of Evil Dead One. From the moment Ash wakes up possessed, you're watching Evil Dead 2.

So, Ash is trapped alone with a house full of demons. Conveniently, the daughter of the archaeologist who made the recordings shows up with missing pages from the Necronomicon, pages that not only include an incantation said to banish the evil back to the other side, but a prophecy concerning a hero who destroys the evil for good, which includes a picture of said warrior, standing before a castle holding up a rather wide-bladed sword.

Of course, Ash's hand becomes possessed (the most famous plot point of the film) and he chops it off, replacing it with a chainsaw. He goes to battle the evil, unaware that it is he who is the foretold hero. The portal is opened, and he's sucked in along with the evil spirits, and finds himself standing before the same castle pictured in the prophecy, and he realizes to his horror what that implies.

This is easily my favorite of the three. It has the gallows humor of the third film, but doesn't sacrifice the horror element to the extreme that Army of Darkness does. It maintains the creepiness of the first film, while still managing to include several laugh out loud moments. The effects are also FAR better than the original (though the monster at the end bears a striking resemblance to "The Beast" creature from Poltergeist.) Overall, it's the best of both worlds, and is definitely a must-view on Halloween night.

Click Here To Order The Evil Dead 2 (Book Of The Dead Limited Edition)!

13) Amityville Horror (1979)

For many, this is THE haunted house film. I don't think it's THE best, but it is certainly one of the most beloved. Supposedly based on a true story (which was later proven to be fraudulent, though the family in question continued to allow their lives to be documented in successive books, in which the "evil" from the house supposedly follows them wherever they go), the movie concerns the plight of the Lutz family, who move into a new house in Amityville, unaware that a gruesome multiple murder took place there several years before.

Soon the house is spitting out local variants of the biblical seven plagues, the children are hearing voices, and father James Brolin is slowly going nuts.

I think this film has a great build up, but the climax (which involves some pre-Ghostbusters green slime and a rather less-than-impressive doorway to hell) leaves you wanting. Don't get me wrong, this movie kept me hiding my face under the covers when I was a kid (have you started to wonder why my parents would let a child under 10 watch these kinds of movies yet?) but the ending just does live up to the build up.

I watched it again several months ago when the remake starring Van Wilder was in the theaters. I noticed a lot of incoherence that I didn't notice as a kid, mainly that in some scenes, it appears that one actor was filmed on one stage, while the other actor's reactionary shots were filmed somewhere else. These are flaws that can be easily overlooked, but they did keep this film from ranking much higher on my list, that and the lackluster ending. Still, in many horror movies, it's not the ending that makes the film, but the tension you go through to get there that's the fun part. Such is the case here, so it's spot is well-earned.

And no, I haven't seen the remake yet, so I can't tell you much on that. I can tell you that there were two "official" sequels to the film, Amityville: The Posession (which admitedly has some legitimate scares, but more or less is just an Exorcist rip off... it IS curious though, as its actually a prequel, telling the supposed story of the real life DeFeo murders that took place there in 1974, yet the cars are all 80's models, one of the kids has a Walkman, etc etc. Many consider it superior to the original because of the additional gore, and the increased tension, what with the exorcism, the child abuse, and the possessed brother getting some ass from his own sister (which casts actress Diana Franklin, aka Monique the French exchange student from Better Off Dead, in a whole new light) but I don't see it that way, since they didn't even bother to try and make it look true to 70's, and how many films it rips off from... rumor has it this sequel inspired Ringu, but I don't see the similarity folks) and Amityville 3D, which is better left unmentioned.There's been plenty of further "unofficial" sequels concerning various items from the house... a haunted doll house, granfather clock, etc. They're all shit. Stay away.

(Of Note: This is the first film to use the "Just keep telling yourself... 'It's only a movie!... it's only a movie!... it's only a movie!'" campaign.)

Click Here To Order The Amityville Horror (1979)!

12) Twitch Of The Death Nerve

Also known as Bay of Blood, this is yet another fantastic Italian horror film from the mind of Mario Bava. Many credit Halloween as inspiring the slasher movie phenomenon in America. In some ways this is true, but one cannot deny this 1971 film's influence, as many of the murders committed in this film were directly and completely copied frame for frame in Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th part 2.

The plot is pretty inconsequential. Some family members are fighting over a piece of inherited real estate. Meanwhile a group of hippies just kind of shows up and decides to camp by the lake. The killer dispatches the other pesky relatives, then commences to lay waste to these teenagers who are just having some lakeside fun. Hmm... unseen killer stalking teenagers by a misty lake... predates Friday the 13th and Halloween by 6-10 years... do the math.

In the course of this film, you will see (now see if any of this sounds familiar to you): a cripple in a wheelchair that is brutally hanged, a teenager who gets a machete to the face, a girl who goes for a naked swim before having her throat hacked open by aforementioned machete, and last but not least, two teenagers shish-ka-bobbed with a fishing spear while having sex, a murder that is found shot by shot in Friday the 13th Part 2.

This film may not have the most interesting plot to it (there's a definite Scooby Dooness to it all) but it has earned its place this high on my last, standing as the TRUE father of the modern slasher film.

Click Here To Order Twitch Of The Death Nerve (a.k.a. Bay Of Blood)!

11) Carnival of Souls

Nothing like an oldy but a goody, this one being the brainchild of William Castle contemporary Herk Harvey. A drag race ends with three young women being thrown into a flooded ravine and presumed dead. One alone, Mary, survives, with no memory of how she escaped a car completely submerged in dark lake water.

After a brief time of recovery, Mary chooses to go ahead with her plan to move to Utah, where she's accepted a job as the church organist. She is not a member of the religion in question, and so has to constantly fend off requests that she join in the worship (Pesky Mormons.) She has enough to worry about as it is, what with the strange visions she had on the drive to Utah: a ghostly old man staring at her through the windshield. She also passed by an abandoned carnival that she almost left the main road to visit, though she couldn't say why. It was if the place was drawing her towards it.

As time goes on, and she continues to avoid the pastor's requests that she become an official member of the congregation, she continues to have these visions, among other oddities. For example, she randomly seems to become invisible to people passing on the sidewalk. After increasing weirdness after increasing weirdness, she decides that whatever is happening to her has something to do with that abandoned carnival. She seeks it out, hoping to find out what has happened to her, only to find that the truth is more gruesome than she can live with.

This dark, almost noir film has a style and flow to it unlike any other horror movie of its era. It has the feel of a drug-induced dream, a sort of haze flowing around everything, though in some ways, the imagery seems almost too crisp, like stepping out into noonday sunlight after having spent the entire morning sitting awake in a cool dark room. Just the atmosphere enough is disturbing, much less the revelations found therein. But possibly the most haunting aspect of this film is actress Candace Hilligoss, whose portrayal of Mary is downright disconcerting. She has these huge, haunted eyes that seem to reach out of the screen at you. Give this one a try, and see if you don't sit for a while in silence afterwards, unsure of how to take what you just saw.

Click Here To Order Carnival of Souls - Criterion Collection!

10) Rosemary's Baby

This film is really more of a political satire than a horror flick, touching on themes like religion, abortion, and the elderly. Much like several films on my list, I know most of you have either seen this film or are familiar with it's plot, so I won't bother to recap it.

I think the creepiest aspect of this film is not the ultimate choice that Rosemary makes, but the fact that Satan's minions on earth are old people. Withered, frail, wrinkled, old people.

I live in Florida.

They're all over the damn place down here, dressed in Bermuda shorts or nylon jogging suits, reeking of cigar smoke and vegetable soup, that "old woman" smell that permeates the homes of every grandma in America. When I come in contact with one of these elderly folks, no matter how friendly or sweet, I keep hearing the old man from this film shouting "praise Satan!"

Then I go home and look in my bathroom mirror, count all the new silver hairs that have sprouted in my sideburns, and realize that soon, I'll have to trade in my Sketchers running shoes for sandals and black socks. THAT, my friends, is horror.

Click Here To Order Rosemary's Baby!

09) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Now I KNOW you all have seen this one. Every kid in my school had seen it before we made it out of the 6th grade. Yet another film supposedly based on a true story (technically accurate, since Tobe Hooper based the Sawyer clan on the acts of Ed Gein... if any idiot tells you there was an actual clan of cannibals slaughtering tourists on Texas highways, slap him with a copy of Cliver Barker's A-Z of Horror and go on with your day) the movie has a meandering, 70's documentary feel, a sort of stark reality that makes it all the more unbearable to witness.

Here's the weird part though. Fans who haven't seen it in a while will tell you how bloody and gory this film is. Not so. There are obvious killings going on, but short of a few limbs seen in the meat locker, there's hardly any blood in this film at all, less than half of what is seen in the 1987 sequel. But ask any person who hasn't seen it in a few years, and they'll swear to you that the movie is a virtual bloodbath.

(Of Note: Avoid the remake like there's no tomorrow, unless you have a desparate need to see AintItCoolNews.com webmaster Harry Knowles beheaded, as he has a torsoless cameo down in the basement.)

(Of Further note: If you want to see a real case of plaigarism, watch this film, then watch House of a Thousand Corpses. Then wonder in amazement at the fact that Tobe Hooper hasn't beaten Rob Zombie into twitching gnu-metal chunks yet.)

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08) Dawn Of The Dead

Zombies take over the town and lay siege to a shopping mall. That's pretty much all that needs to be said of this grim George Romero sequel. It stands on its own merits in the annuls of brain munching zombie history.

The government has declared martial law since the outbreak of undead. An army troupe is sent into Pittsburg to wipe out an infestation, but is soon holed up in a shopping mall when they are overwhelmed. It seems as though they'll be able to ride it out there, when their safety is threatened by a gang of marauding bikers, bringing the third act into a three way battle between the army, the bikers, and the undead, who seem in this film to poke fun at the American obsession with malls, wandering almost happily through the stores, admiring the wares in shop windows.

Last year's remake is good in its own way, but they've mostly eliminated the military from it in favor of a mostly civilian cast. It's not quite as gory as the original either, so really, you're better off watching the original.

(Of Note: Watch for effects make-up artist Tom Savini's cameo as one of the evil bikers.)

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07) Night Of The Living Dead

"They're coming to get you, Barbera!"

That line alone brought the genre of horror into the new era, and heralded a level of realism and respect to the horror film rarely seen prior to the release of this independent wonder, Night Of The Living Dead.

You've all seen it. You've all been scared or disgusted by it. There's little I could say that hasn't been said before. It's a classic with that same "documentary" feel that Texas Chainsaw Massacre would come to mimic 6 years later. It is the king of all zombie films, and deserves even more respect than it gets already.

Be forewarned. There is a "30th Aniversary" edition floating around out there that has both scenes removed and newly filmed scenes added that change entire plotlines around and basically fuck the whole movie up. Harry Knowles wrote a commentary on this version on his website if you want to look it up that explains scene-by-scene what all has been changed, but I suppose the point here is not to buy the "30th Anniversary Special Edition" of this film. Get the original, and for Christ's sake do NOT buy the 1991 color remake that changes the entire ending. Just stick with this one, you'll be fine.

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06) Halloween

While we've established that Halloween is not the father of the slasher genre, it is the father of the American slasher film. You've all seen it and its abomidable sequels, so you all know the plot with Michael Myers stalking Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter's addictive and creepy theme music, the freaky facts behind the film (such as Myer's mask being a Captain Kirk mask painted white) and so on. There's nothing I can add to how wonderful this movie is, a film that takes something so well known and loved in America of that age, the suburban neighborhood, and turns it into a frightening, claustrophobic maze of horror. It has every beat just perfect, has aged amazingly well, and still stands as the most profitable film in movie history based on box office versus money spent. No slasher film will ever surpass it, and no sequel will ever do it justice, no matter how much they try to repackage it.

However, if you MUST watch a Halloween sequel, just watch Halloween 2 and ignore the rest, ESPECIALLY Halloween 3, which has nothing to do with Myers at all, but instead concerns evil Halloween masks that have pieces of Stone Henge imbedded in them, which somehow, when combined with a special "Silver Shamrock" tv broadcast, turns the heads of any children wearing them into piles of mush and bugs. I mean, come ON! Why the fuck would a Halloween mask company want to WILLINGLY kill off their clientele? Who CARES if they're witches! They're commiting financial suicide! You can't buy a new broom if you're homeless!

It's memorable only for that insipidly addictive theme song. "Happy Happy Halloween! Silver Sham-Rock!" but is still a film I cannot, in good conscience, encourage you to watch.

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05) The Thing

Yep, two Carpenter films in a row. Call it a sci-fi film if you like, this one is downright creepy. A remake of a 50's horror flick that starred a then unknown James Arness as the creature, the film stars Kurt Russell as a worker at an isolated far north research lab who, while out on expedition, finds a long buried space ship. Inside, they find something they assume to be a dead alien life form and bring it on board. Soon, it becomes clear that the creature is not dead at all, as it kills a crew member, shape shifts into his form and goes about slaughtering the rest of the cast one member at a time.

This film is infamous for its mind-blowing special FX. My favorite is when the creature, disguised as a human corpse, breaks off from the rest by beheading itself, sprouting legs, and wandering off down the hallway (this scene planted a seed in my head that eventually became my short story "The Mind Wanders.")

The first time I saw this movie, I hadn't yet been exposed to a film like, say, Dead/Alive, so at the time, it was the goriest thing I'd ever seen. The fact that it leaves so many questions unanswered, and an ending devoid of any hope, just adds to my respect for this tremendous film. In my mind, it's the best movie Carpenter's ever made.

(Of note: on the special edition DVD, there are some deleted scenes of an underground tunnel where the creature attacks Russell that was deleted because of the hokey Harryhausen style stop-motion effects they tried to use. Unintentionally hilarious.)

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04) The Shining

"Come play with us, Danny."

I could watch this film over and over again. And when I was a teenager, I did. I had it on VHS, recorded off of WGN out of Chicago, and I'd just pop it in the VCR and let it run in the background while I worked on other things. It was just one of those films. I loved the hotel, both the real lodge, and the sets.

Of course, the real star of the show is Jack Nicholson. People can point to Chinatown, Easy Rider, and others, but THIS is the film that made him.

The plot is more or less the same as the mini-series that appeared far up in my list, but there are differences. This version omits the truth behind the mysterious Tony, relegating him to a sort of imaginary friend Danny uses to express his visions. The chef Halloran is killed in this film. He survives in the book. In the movie, Jack freezes to death chasing Danny through the hedge maze with an axe. In the book, there is no hedge maze, only numerous animal topriaries that come to life, and Jack dies when he gains enough of his senses back to make Wendy flee with Danny before the hotel explodes. Lots of changes from the novel, but director Stanley Kubrick makes up for that with sheer atmosphere, and several surreal moments that are never really explained, things that are also taken from the book, but so much of their back story is ommitted that it makes their appearance here completely non-sensical, and hence creepier, such as the man in the bear costume.

Overall, I think my favorite scene is between Jack and the ghost of the bartender in the bathroom, when he speaks of having to "correct" his family. There's something in the way this actor speaks of these events that seems utterly convincing; something about the tembor of his speech that just seems, somewhat off-kilter. "I...cor-RECTED them, sir," with a roll of the tongue on the double "r", as though the act of murdering his family as akin to enjoying a rare vintage wine.

(Of note: On the dvd is a fantastic feature length documentary about the making of the film that has exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and other goodies. It's almost as fun to watch as the film itself.)

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03) Don't Look Now

I can't help but think, whenever I endure one of M. Night Triptophan's films, that this movie is his repeated inspiration. The shocker ending this film closes with, an ending that hits you in the stomach like a sucker punch from a six-foot tall Canadian Logger named Iron Knuckles McDougall, is right up his alley (though far more clever in its execution.)

Donald Sutherland is John Baxter, a man who takes his wife and flees to Venice after the mysterious and tragic drowning death of their young daughter. There, John is overseeing the restoration of an old church (that he soon proves to be a grand fake.) Meanwhile, a series of murdered corpses start popping up all over Venice. John and his wife meet a psychic who promises to contact their dead daughter. John has his doubts until he starts to experience episodes where he catches glimpses of a mysterious figure in a red coat similar to one his daughter once wore.

The film is infamous for an extremely (for the time) graphic sex scene between Baxter and his wife, a sex scene that inspired the sex scene in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight. But what makes it is the disjointed way in which the director weaves all the clues, to the point where, when you finally reach the bloody conclusions, you understand everything that has been shown to you and how it fits, but you're still unsure if what you THINK you saw, is really what you were MEANT to believe. The ending can be interpreted in a number of ways, and that alone makes it a puzzle worth watching over and over. I love this film immensely.

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02) The Exorcist

Many will say I'm copping out by having this film in my list, considering how it's universally hailed as the scariest film ever made. Even more will say that it SHOULD be my number one, considering the fact that it's the only film in history documented to have caused mass heart attacks, misscarriages, and psychotic episodes in the theater.

Yes, it is one of the scariest films ever made, to be sure, especially the director's cut with the infamous "walk down the stairs" scene. The story is too well known for me to recap it, so I won't bother. Suffice it to say, this movie affected people in a way no movie before or since ever has. Church visitation is said to have rose by over 10 percent after this film was released, which I'm sure pissed off whatever devil exists out there, because of a little trick the sound designers pulled.

You see, they acquired audio tapes of actual exorcisms and incorporated the screams, moans, grunts, and curses from those tapes into the soundtrack. When you watch The Exorcist, as many believe, you are at several points in the film hearing the voices of demons, or in the atheistic view, the actual voices of mentally disturbed individuals, which is just as creepy. (Of course, if they ARE demons, this means the devil helped increase church attendance in the 70's. Perhaps this explains the existance of Disco.)

This alone is reason enough to include it here, but the underlying motif of it all, that the devil could not actually be defeated without a sacrifice, is the very message of Christianity itself, yet seems so depressing and hopeless as the credits roll. It brings ones faith into question, and in that, is more emotionally crippling than even its creators intended.

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01) The Haunting

Directed by Robert Wise (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Sound Of Music, West Side Story), and based on "The Haunting Of Hill House," a novel by the irreplaceable American horror novelist Shirley Jackson, this movie gets it right better than any other horror film made before or since.

Following the death of her mother, Eleanor Vance is invited, as a sort of therapy, to investigate the supposed haunting of Hill House, along with anthropologist Dr. Markway, heir to the estate Luke Sanderson, and ESP expert Theodora.

As the time goes by, the mythical stories told about the house prove to be inadequte in properly expressing the power of whatever lives within its walls. As things grow worse and worse, it seems as though no one in the house will escape its hold alive.

Filmed in black and white in an age of color (the starkness of black and white is a wonderful medium for horror, especially for an older film like this, as it goes a long way to masking the minimal special effects at play here), the movie drives along at determined pace, putting us right in the middle of the house along with the rest of the unfortunate guests.

There is no gore, no blood and guts, no visible ghosts or creatures of any kind. The closest the film ever comes to showing us anything is the numerous exterior shots of the mansion, in which the windows seem to be eyes following the camera.

There are doors that bulge in their frames, door knobs that turn on their own, and loud, booming noises coming from unseen areas of the house. The film constantly drives the idea that something horrible and deadly is right around every corner, hidden behind every door, every cutrain, every drape, but nothing is ever seen. Still, the horrors abound.

Example: Theodora and Eleanor hold each other as pounding noises draw closer to their room, only to stop, silence filling the room. Later, Eleanor and Theodora are again in their room when the noises start again. Eleanor grabs hold of Theodora's hand as it draws near, until finally sounding as though it's right outside the bedroom door. Unable to stand her own terror, Eleanor screams and awakens Theodora, who was lying halfway across the room the entire time. So whose hand was Eleanor holding?

This is why people who have not been turned off by its age and have experienced it will tell you that it still frightens them, over 40 years after its initial release. Wise knew the truth that men like Spielberg play with, but never fully embrace. We fear most what we cannot see, we cower most from that which we do not know.

In movies like Halloween, or Nightmare on Elm Street, or even the Exorcist, once the evil is exposed and in plain view, all mysteries are known. The evil's abilities, and limitations, have been established. For the most part, the audience knows everything it needs to know to make it through to the end.

Not so with Hill House. It is never revealed what is going on, what is causing it, or to what extent it can continue to do what it does. Thus, no limits are ever established. This unseen force, this demon or spectre or whatever it may or may not be, is seemingly without limits... so the inevitable question arises: how do you escape from a foe (or foes) who have no limits to what they can do, or what they can do... to you?

This is the heart of fear, the soul of terror, and for that, for being the one film I've seen that knew it and followed that idea through to the end without eventually dangling a ghost or monster in my face destined to not live up to the 90 minute build up, I give The Haunting my number one spot. It's my pick as the best horror film ever made, and I urge you all to experience it.

(For proof of what I say, watch it, then watch the 1999 remake, and notice the difference seeing versus not seeing makes.)

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That's it. I'm finished. Wore out. Exhausted. Spent. Stick a fork in me, I'm done!

...See you next week.