I thought I'd make this thread kind of as a warm-up to the upcoming horror re-do in order to spark interest a little early. This will also be a nice place for me to come ramble about the genre for years to come.
I made a new Letterboxd account because I'm totally revamping my ratings system. Over the last couple days I've went through and rated every "horror" film I've seen, minus a few that surely slipped through the cracks. There are a few movies that are oddly not labeled horror on that site that I've rated as well, but so far that's all I've done. So if you want to get a good idea of some films to seek out, check it out and sort it by rating. I think I've only got 8 five star films, and 36 rated 4.5. That leaves like 136 at 4 stars, so my top 100 is gonna be difficult to make. Also it should be noted that my ratings system changed. While the old system is based on "greatness" I've soured on that concept thanks to too many arguments and now base my ratings on enjoyment. So this is what they mean:
5 - Obsessed with it
4.5 - In love with it
4 - Love it
3.5 - Really like it
3 - Like it
2.5 - Indifferent
2 - Dislike it
1.5 - Strongly dislike it
1 - Hate it
0.5 - Hate it with a passion
I've watched almost nothing in the past year, but when I was still religiously watching horror movies, I started to realize how many plots of the schlocky 70s and 80s films were eco-horror. Toxic waste and pollution creating some giant version of a small animal or a mutant was all the rage.
Alligator (1980) is another one, written by John Sayles. He manages to condemn chemical dumping and animal experimentation all in one premise. Not quite as good as the original Piranha (Sayles co-wrote, Joe Dante directed), but still amusing. Though Piranha isn't eco-horror per se, you got animal experimentation and a little jab at the Vietnam war too.
badseed, sure I'll follow your new LB even though there's nothing wrong with your current one. Is your new one exclusively for horror films? Anyway I'll try to contribute to this thread even though horror isn't really my thing. Although, speaking of creature features, I have to admit The Black Scorpion (1957) was pretty enjoyable. Just saw it recently along with the MST3K commentary.
Purple- Alligator is lots of fun. Probably my favorite killer animal movie after Jaws.
Street- I'm probably gonna do away with the other Letterboxd because I'd rather re-rate everything from scratch than go through and change the ratings for over well over 5000 films. Again I emphasize how my ratings have changed, so nearly every movie will change. I'll eventually do nonhorror as well; just thought it would be fun to start with horror so I could look at the scale. I find it interesting that while I only give 8 films a perfect rating, there are 22 that get my lowest possible rating. I wonder how that ratio will change once I start to include other genres. It will probably level out, as I don't generally go out of my way to see a film of any other genre if it's universally considered a turd, while I make a point to watch every Children of the Corn and Amityville Horror sequel and reboot regardless of how shitty they are. But this isn't about quality. So it really just depends how much I'm hating Fight Club or Crash when I decide to rate them. They could be a 2, or they could be a 0.5. _________________ Hey! I made a country music chart. Check it out!
When we do the list, I'm not setting any rules about what is and what isn't allowed. With that said, these are my specific thoughts when it comes to certain questionable movies...
King Kong (1933); Jurassic Park (1993) - Very questionable, which is why you rarely see it on "greatest horror films" lists even though it generally outranks almost any horror film on a general "greatest films" list. They really come across as adventure films due to their style and generally upbeat orchestral soundtracks. I personally do NOT consider these horror.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and other Hannibal Lecter films - Thrillers, straight up. I'll argue this til the day I die. Since Silence is the one that gets all the love I'll once again reiterate my points. It follows the exact formula as just about any other basic detective thriller of the 80s and 90s. The main character spends 95% of the movie investigating stuff. There's like one scene that is scary, and again lots of police flicks have a scene where cops get attacked. But nobody cares about those characters. The only characters you're made to feel any kind of sympathy for are Clarice (police woman just doing her job), her friend (forgot her name, but she's really nice and doesn't deal with any horror at all), and the senator's daughter. She goes through a couple small scenes of distress but she turned out alright. The one time she actually gets hit you can't see it because of a well placed van. So yeah, this isn't a fucking horror film. If it is, so is every Tom Clancy movie, so is Die Hard, and so are all those crappy Morgan Freeman movies like Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider.
Seven (1995) - see above. Yeah, its creepy at times, but you never see anyone get murdered and aside from skinny dude on the bed nobody even suffers on screen. It's a run of the mill detective thriller.
Aliens (1986); Predator (1987) - These are action films. But are they horror? They face the same issue of all the films above in that they're generally considered better than most horror films but don't always appear in horror lists and conversations. But many people consider action horror a subgenre of horror and it's hard to disagree. So do these fit in that category with the Resident Evil and Underworld films? You be the judge. I don't have a problem with them being called horror but personally they probably won't make my list.
Shaun of the Dead (2004); Zombieland (2009) - There are lots of other zombie comedies but unless you're a hardcore fan these (along with Jim Jarmusch's latest) are likely the only ones you're familiar with. A lot of horror buffs spit on these films for some reason and classify them as spoofs. But the horror is real. Unlike in Young Frankenstein, for example, where the audience is never told to be afraid, these flicks are scary when they want to be. Despite all the jokes, when the zombies appear on screen, there's a chance a beloved character is going to die. That's horror.
Under the Skin (2013) - This movie isn't labeled as horror in most places. That's strange to me. This is chilling and creepy as hell.
I'll likely add on to this list as time goes on. If anyone else has any worth mentioning or questioning let me know.
Edit: Along with a few of the above films, neither What Have You Done to Solange (1972) or They Live (1988) are listed as horror on Letterboxd. They Live used to be, I know that. They change stuff randomly and sometimes it doesn't make sense. I can understand the argument for that one; lots of sci-fi action flicks like this. Solange I don't get, as to my knowledge it's the only Giallo I've seen that isn't listed as horror. I could be wrong though and now I need to check. Anyhow, yeah, both of these are horror and have a good shot at making my list. Thats another benefit to this new LB; searching by genre doesn't always work so as of now I can see everything both myself and Letterboxd consider horror on the same page. _________________ Hey! I made a country music chart. Check it out!
Last edited by badseed on 06/30/2019 06:48; edited 1 time in total
I also urge everyone to check out They Shoot Zombies, Don't They? Although it's far from my own opinion when it comes to ranking the greatness (and horror-ness) of many films, I think it's the most complete and authoritative list possible. If that's what you like when looking for recommendations, look no further. _________________ Hey! I made a country music chart. Check it out!
Anyway I'll try to contribute to this thread even though horror isn't really my thing.
For a long time, horror was just one of the many genres I watched as I got deeper into classic film and good films in general. As I hinted in another thread, I had a little resistance to slashers -- for some reason I didn't like seeing knives and needles graphically slashing/puncturing skin -- though I'm fine with other kinds of gore, and that led me to missing out on a lot of 80s-and-onward horror for a long time, except for the ones everybody's seen, like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Scream and The Blair Witch Project, and the artier ones like The Vanishing and Let the Right One In. But I did have a desire to at least fill in the blanks when it came to classic and the better contemporary horror films. When the Best Films of 2018 poll ended, I had an urge to keep watching thematically, but the Director-Actor Team poll didn't lend itself to watching a lot of movies, so I decided to start leisurely viewing movies for the upcoming Horror poll, mainly so I could get in everything I wanted to see and wouldn't have to binge out in the last week like I often do with movie polls. I've watched 26 so far (while also taking advantage of the Criterion Channel and the TCM app), and will reach 45-50 by the end of the poll. I could make a 100-film list now -- but I still have no interest in seeing Saw or some of the lesser recent franchises.
One thing I learned is that when watching gory horror movies from the 70s and 80s, the special effects just aren't realistic enough to be really disturbing most of the time. I'd never seen Friday The 13th before, but it was no big deal. It has a lot of problems, including the pacing and lack of suspense, but I thought the depiction of a summer camp getting ready for the season and the young counselors was actually pretty decent up to a point. Just saw Zombie (Zombi 2; 1979), which is considered very gory, but the special effects were unrealistic enough they were more entertaining than stomach-turning. Assume they were pretty disturbing at the time.
StreetSpirit, I noticed you had Hereditary and the Halloween remake on your 2018 list -- so it doesn't seem like you're totally averse to horror or anything like that. Maybe you're like I was, seeing the ones most others have seen and the older classics and art films.
I recall we had a good discussion on the first horror poll from Oct 2016 when we talked about the key elements of the genre, genre purity, what movies should and shouldn't have the horror label, etc. Some of the points from this thread are bound to come up again:
After skimming through this old thread, my positions haven't changed since then. Some horrors are purer than others, and I'll take that into account when it comes time to make the list.
@badseed, I follow both your LBs now. I'll know when the other one has been deactivated or abandoned. As for the films you listed above, King Kong, Jurassic Park, Under the Skin, Aliens, Silence of the Lambs, and Se7en are not horrors in my book. Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland are for reasons already mentioned. I'm not sure about Predator at the moment. I have to give it some thought.
@PurpleHazel, Saw is pretty good. I recommend. I don't know about any of the sequels because I haven't watched any. From what I've read, and heard from peers, the first Saw is the only good one. Thus I never pursued the others. But again, the first Saw is def worth a watch. Anyway if you're gonna devote a lot of time to horror for the poll, great. Hope your list knocks it out of the park. Criterion is my main source of viewing now, but they don't have a large number of horrors at the moment. Hopefully they'll add more as we get closer to the poll. (Speaking of Criterion, they have a volume of noirs expiring today and I still need to see two more before the day's over.)
PurpleHazel wrote:
StreetSpirit, I noticed you had Hereditary and the Halloween remake on your 2018 list -- so it doesn't seem like you're totally averse to horror or anything like that. Maybe you're like I was, seeing the ones most others have seen and the older classics and art films.
Yeah, pretty much. Mandy also made my 2018 list. So did A Quiet Place, which has the horror tag on LB but it's definitely not a 'pure horror.' But sure I guess I would call it part horror. Anyway, the point is you are correct to say my interest in the genre is mostly on the surface level. I see the ones that get a lot of buzz, as well as classics. But I only dive deeper into the genre in October, when tis the season of friends challenging me to watch 31 horror movies in the month, which I never do, but I usually get to around 15 titles. But for the other 11 months of the year, I rarely watch horrors [shrug]. I want to make more effort though.
Enjoying the discussion thus far. Here are some points and experiences in relation to the above comments:
Purple - Glad you're watching a lot. Hope you enjoyed Zombie; it's certainly a favorite of mine. The shark scene and the eyeball scene are an absolute hoot, and I love the finale. Zombies are probably my favorite subgenre (though I've grown a stronger love than ever for vampire flicks as of late). Also absolutely love just about any kind of Italian horror so it gets bonus points for that too. You'll see a lot of all of the above on my list. Probably even more than last time.
I also only watched the "big" horror films every year during my peak filmwatching years (2002-2014) but I have the benefit of being a hardcore horror buff both before and after that period so I'm pretty caught up. An average of like 15 films a year over a century (1920-2019) isn't too shabby but I know guys online who actually own 4 or 5 times more than that. Crazy.
Regarding the Saw films, there is a LOT of skin puncturing so you might not like them. As for the franchise, without taking away credit for it being the top horror franchise of the 21st century, it's overrated. If you see my Letterboxd ratings you'll see it's one of those franchises that in my opinion gradually gets worse, except I did actually like the last one (Jigsaw) because instead of further dragging and twisting the story out further it's kind of like a reboot or greatest hits; it actually tries to be fun which I don't recall seeing since part 3. But yeah, I wouldn't rush to watch them (and really do not recommend trying to marathon them - possibly the worst franchise to do that to not because they're the worst made but because they just keep getting more boring and ridiculous) when you surely have plenty of better films to see.
Street - Don't take much that I said in the old poll as my opinion today. I've looked back on it a couple times before and have seen drastic changes in my opinions, both on what is and isn't horror, and on the quality of certain films. I was fresh back into the genre and hadn't quite grasped it like I have now.
Under the Skin, no pun intended, gets under my skin. I'm open to the idea of it possibly not being horror (it's a film that can be interpreted in different ways), but I'd need a paragraph or two of very reasonable convincing to convert me on that one. _________________ Hey! I made a country music chart. Check it out!
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