By the Pricking of Our Thumbs...
For the longest time, I didn't quite think I was a big horror kid but, looking back, it was always there. In the basement, we had bookcases lined with VHS tapes of classic horror, proto-grindhouse 1950s drive-in fare, the gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows. This was the relatively early days of basic cable too, so I would catch movies I probably shouldn't have while my parents were at work or running errands. Horror, I think, more than just riding that cheap thrill celluloid, offers us the chance to confront some of the fears and anxieties we have through cinematic proxy; at least, it's how I kind of approach it. And sometimes it's just fun to paint with darker colors.
Normally in October, I go for lighter, more comedic movie to alleviate and punctuate the proceedings; at the end of the day, this is all supposed to be fun, right? But this is also 2020 so this year I wanted to go darker and take away that safety net a bit. That meant there'd be no Ghostbusters or Monster Squad swooping in to save the day, Abbott and Costello wouldn't be meeting Frankenstein this year, Shaun of the Dead wouldn't head over to the Winchester for a quick pint to wait for this all to blow over -- within reason; I'm not a big gore and body horror guy so leave all that David Cronenberg/Eli Roth viscera to the Grand Guignol. Here's what I watched and why I picked them.
1. Dracula (1931)
At the very start of this, I thought it'd be cool if I did this in chronological order so you'd start with the Universal Monster Movies in the 30s and 40s, the Hammer Horror/William Castle flicks of the 50s and 60s, the prestige horror era of the 70s, the low-fi video store staples from the 80s, and whatever the fuck happened to the genre in the 90s leading to its renaissance today. This is my typically long-winded way of saying that I was going to start at the beginning and that beginning was 1931's Dracula starring Bela Lugosi.
I was acting out this guy's Hungarian accent before I could tie my shoes and it starts out as a relatively faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's original novel but there are plot threads that are introduced that are never addressed ever again, Lucy Weston rising as a vampire and never seen again being chief among them. Still, the film has atmosphere to burn and there's a reason why Lugosi is regarded as the definitive Count; his performance still holds up nearly 70 years later.
2. Frankenstein (1931)
The 1931 Frankenstein was actually the Universal Monster Movie I saw first and maybe the one I enjoy the most? I definitely like it better than Dracula. There's something genuinely more creepy about the whole thing, Victor Frankenstein and his assistant stealing bodies of the recently deceased to create their monster. If Dracula personifies a fear of an old world, foreign evil invading England, Frankenstein was all about the perils of hubris; Victor thinks he can create life from death and play God, no matter the consequences, and that all comes to play here.
3. Bride of Frankenstein
The debate I always have is if the original Frankenstein or its 1935 direct sequel Bride of Frankenstein is the superior film. Bride of Frankenstein certainly goes bigger and more bombastic, with more ambitious set pieces and certainly more for Boris Karloff's monster to do as he gains intelligence and decides to demand for a mate. Most of it works but there's just two things that always hold it back for me: An extended weird scene where the effective new antagonist Doctor Septimus Pretorius shows off his miniature homunculi and the villager Minnie who shows up throughout the film. Still, it's a great sequel and I knew I was going to stop Frankenstein there despite the many sequels and reboots that followed.
4. The Wolf Man (1941)
My father's favorite Universal Monster is The Wolf Man and it's a gorgeously rendered piece, full of foggy forests and revolutionary transformation effects for their time. I find it to be the most tragic of the Universal Monster movies, with poor Larry Talbot stumbling across a supernatural menace that will curse him beyond life and death. And while Lon Chaney, Jr.'s Talbot would resurface in crossover movies, this original movie never got its own line of derivative sequels and I think that's ultimately for the best.
5. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
I'm not really the biggest slasher movie guy; I think they can come off as derivative, formulaic, and rely too heavily on jump scares. I'm not entirely against jump scares as a filmmaking technique -- there's a couple entries on here that employ them very effectively, largely because of how sparingly they're used -- but slasher movies tend to use them as their only major trick. So you won't be seeing any Fridays the 13th or Screams here, though a couple other slashers do make an appearance.
But Freddy Krueger never felt quite like a standard slasher because he would always create this imaginative dream worlds to stalk his prey. Yeah, the dude has knife fingers but they weren't the only weapon in his arsenal. And there's something quintessentially 80s about the first several films in this franchise, right there from the 1984 original.
6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
That said, the real Nightmare on Elm Street movie I wanted to get to was the third one; that's my favorite. It's the perfect balance for the series before it veers into camp and the formula and seams really start to show. That's clear right from the opening nightmare in the prologue, with just how creepy it is, and that balance is maintained throughout the movie (If you can stomach the puppeteer nightmare). Just a really solid, 80s horror movie and easily the best installment in the franchise.
7. It (2017)
I remember the first time I had heard of Stephen King was in first grade, with the memories of the original television movie adaptation of It and Cujo being among his first works that were introduced to me. The 90s were ripe with not-great King adaptations, often made-for-cable usually on the Syfy Channel and that's probably the most enduring association I have him (I've read and enjoyed many of his novels since).
It is a fun ride, man. Maybe the most fun Stephen King adaptation and buoyed largely by its young cast; you root for these kids as they learn what they're up against and team up to take It down. It's got ghouls, a haunted house, zombie kids, and, of course, plenty to keep a coulrophobe up at night.
8. It: Chapter 2
Is It: Chapter Two as good as the first installment? No, not all. Does it have to be three hours long? Also, no. But this overindulgent sequel is still a relatively good time. Similar to the first, a lot of that is derived from the main cast, with Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain, and James McAvoy, in particular, doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Still, the sequel was perhaps too emboldened by its predecessor's runaway success could maybe have used just a little more restraint in closing out this story.
9. The Shining
I think a lot of King's criticisms are well-founded but, if you can separate yourself from that and the knowledge of the original text, The Shining still holds up decades later as one of the best movies Kubrick ever made.
10. Doctor Sleep
I've occasionally had the debate if Doctor Sleep is not just on par with The Shining or even a tad better. It's certainly more faithful to the original source material and somehow filmmaker Mike Flanagan pulled off the incredibly tricky feat of adapting Stephen King's novel -- which goes out of its way to firmly repudiate the plot deviations from Kubrick's film -- but also manages to be still be a sequel to that film. I would also argue Flanagan's follow-up is better paced and just a genuine good time if you can get through one particularly harrowing set piece in the middle.
11. Halloween (1978)
The original Halloween was the only movie my father ever walked out on in theaters; he would cite the finale as The Shape stalks Laurie Strode in two houses as the thing that broke him. What I love about this flick is that the actual on-screen violence is at a relative minimum, it's not gory at all. John Carpenter made a genuinely great movie that brought the slasher sub-genre into the Hollywood mainstream. While its legacy may be tainted a bit by a wave of endless sequels, reboots, and reimaginings -- Halloween has been reinvented three times in my lifetime with a soft reboot in Halloween: H20 (Halloween: Water?), the Rob Zombie movies, and the 2018 revival -- this first one is the one that I prefer overall.
12. Halloween II (1981)
John Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill never intended to make a sequel to Halloween, the open-ended finale to the original movie was meant as a last evocative moment. And yet, sequels were finally starting into vogue again so they were brought back to close out the story of The Shape and Laurie Strode. Even though Carpenter only directed some pick-up shots, the big thing that I love about this movie, really weak supporting characters and terrible plot twist aside, is that stylistically it does feel like a direct sequel to the original movie.
13. Halloween (2018)
14. Dracula (1958)
Hammer Horror really helped propel British cinema into the global consciousness, diverging from the staid period-piece dramas that had long-defined it. Among the films leading the charge was a 1958 adaptation of Dracula -- retitled Horror of Dracula for its American release to distance itself from the Universal Monster movies. And what a shock this must've been for audiences in 1958 to suddenly see vibrantly red blood and stakings on screen compared to the relatively tame Universal films. The games would go on to inspire Konami's Castlevania video game series and make stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to audiences worldwide. I find that the Hammer Horror flicks generally get worse as they go on so I kept it just one.
15. Nosferatu the Vampyre
The original 1922 Nosferatu set the template for horror cinema and still holds up nearly 100 (!) years later; it's actually a miracle it survived because the Bram Stoker estate successfully sued to have all prints destroyed for shamelessly infringing on the Dracula copyright, with private collections preserving the film until the rights to the novel went in the public domain. Believing Nosferatu to be the greatest film to come out of Germany, Werner Herzog decided to put his own spin on it in 1978.
Werner Herzog made a vampire movie. I mean, that's all the motivation I needed. Nosferatu the Vampyre isn't scary, per say, but it is creepy and truly unsettling at times; Herzog has a detached, sinister approach to making most of his films and that definitely comes off here. If you wanted an arthouse vampire movie, this is probably as good as it gets.
16. Sleepy Hollow
While there's always been a lot of horror sensibility in a lot Tim Burton's work, he hasn't really done that many full-on horror movies. The biggest showcase of why he should do more is in the 1999 flick Sleepy Hollow, which kind of served as his love letter to the Hammer Horror movies he grew up on, especially given the art design. And what a gorgeous film this is, right down to the desaturated film quality he's using and prodigious fog machines to create this haunting vision of late 18th century New York.
17. House of Wax (1953)
Another staple from childhood and, surprisingly, the only movie I watched this past month with horror icon Vincent Price. Originally filmed in 3D, during the format's first major cinematic boom in the 1950s, House of Wax is a great, lightweight thriller about a wax museum proprietor who secretly coats the figures throughout his attraction around cadavers of his victims. Watching this definitely brought me back to that basement I grew up in.
18. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
This was actually the first time I saw Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in its entirety. I had seen clips from it while covering it for the site and I own those first-print, black-bound paperbacks with the absolutely terrifying illustrations that this ostensibly adapts but I had missed catching this one in theaters. And it's fine, solidly made if more memorable for its creature effects and set pieces than the story itself.
19. Poltergeist (1982)
Poltergeist is one of those movies I watched maybe a bit too early than I should have; I vividly remember watching a character menaced by the haunted clown or another hallucinate that he can rip off his own face or the coffins of the disturbed dead rising from throughout the house. The genius of Poltergeist is that, as a movie produced, co-written, and ghost-directed by Steven Spielberg, it feels like a lot of other Spielberg movies from that era; Poltergeist looks and feels like E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind...until it doesn't. A haunted house movie doesn't have to take place in a traditional derelict estate, sometimes it can take roost right in the heart of suburbia. And that's why it all works.
20. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Coming off watching a lot of B-movies from the 1950s, the original Night of the Living Dead starts out pretty much the same stylistically, with its black-and-white cinematography and low production budget. But by the last 25 minutes, if that, it veers into something much darker and visceral as the body count suddenly and dramatically increases with a level of brutality that catches everyone off-guard. Romero's follow-up Dawn of the Dead would create modern zombie fiction as know it today. Night of the Living Dead is what laid that grim, nihilistic foundation.
21. House of Dark Shadows
Like I was saying in that intro, we had literal bookcases full of Dark Shadows VHS tapes; three bookcases, if my memory serves. The gothic soap opera ran from 1966-1971, with the Collins estate in New England haunted by everything from ghosts and vampires to werewolves and phoenixes (?). So that was the environment I grew up in and it informed a lot of those horror sensibilities; I remember whenever I had friends over they would invariably wonder what the fuck all those Dark Shadows tapes were.
Anyway, the TV show was so popular it got a spinoff movie during its initial run, filmed concurrently. That means certain characters were temporarily written out of the proceedings to accommodate their appearances in the movie and, with those logistical constraints, this thing really moves. It's just over an hour and a half and there are no less than four different vampires that menace Collinwood over the course of the film. Like, this movie is relentless and that definitely works towards its benefit.
22. The Exorcist III
The Exorcist III got the nod before the original film because I wanted to keep that one in my back pocket for just a little while longer. The Exorcist III is deliberately paced -- my polite way of saying it's slow -- and more cerebral than, I think, a lot of people are expecting but it's still a competently made sequel and exponentially better than The Exorcist II: The Heretic. Also, it has one of my favorite jump scares of all time; I really only like them when they feel earned.
23. The Thing (1982)
Is The Thing a better horror movie than Halloween? I'm not sure but John Carpenter delivered some absolute show-stoppers with both of them. Befitting its remote, Arctic setting, The Thing is as bleak as they come and the closest to outright body horror that I care to stomach. And apart from Kurt Russell having cinema's greatest hair/beard combo, he also has one of my favorite lines ever as he confronts the extraterrestrial creature in a fiery showdown.
24. The Omen (1976)
Fresh off The Exorcist and its critical and commercial studio, every major studio wanted their own prestige horror flick to capitalize on that. Probably the most notable of all of The Exorcist's immediate successors was The Omen, following the birth of the Antichrist. Director Richard Donner said he intentionally made the movie to keep it ambiguous if Damian was actually the Antichrist but, let's be fucking real: It's clear throughout exactly who and what that kid is. I think this is one of those movies that maybe is starting to show its age, it doesn't hold up quite as well, but there are some genuinely good moments.
25. Suspiria (2018)
I didn't have any giallo movies, that influential sub-genre of cinematic horror that sprung from Italy in the 60s and would proliferate until the 80s. If there's a definitive -- or at least most well-known -- giallo film it's the original 1977 Suspiria by Dario Argento following a coven of witches running an all-women private dance studio in Germany. I had been doing a lot of older movies and decided to do the 2018 remake by Luca Guadagnino. It's beautifully shot and scored but not particularly scary, just unsettling at moments, with a bloody finale being perhaps the standout. Also, why does this movie have to be over 2.5 hours long?
26. Silent Hill
I watched Silent Hill, the cinematic adaptation of Konami video game series of the same name, because I had just watched a 2.5-hour arthouse film that wasn't all that scary. I wanted some cheap thrills after that and Silent Hill miiiiight be my favorite video game movie? The atmosphere, the art design, so much of it feels like it's from the first two games -- and best two games. It's faithful, entertaining, and has some deliciously spooky sequences and maybe as good as a movie could be made from the original source material.
27. Session 9
Session 9 is something that had been recommended to me and I hadn't ever watched it before so I gave it go. It's very low budget, despite having both Josh Lucas and David Caruso, and that low-fi feel definitely works for it; it was also the closest I wanted to get to having a found footage style horror movie in this though it isn't actually a found footage movie at all. I love the atmosphere, all which came from filming on-location at the Danvers State Asylum -- a sequence of a character with a deep fear of the dark running down a hallway as its lights go out being a favorite -- but its pacing and characters are all just a bit too erratic to make live up to its potential. Also this.
28. Get Out
If there was a film that signaled beyond a shadow of a doubt that horror movies were back in the Hollywood mainstream in a big way, it was Get Out. There had plenty of indie horror movies that were quietly bringing it back, like The Badadook and It Follows, but Get Out was the flick that was nominated for Best Picture, that made Jordan Peele an Academy Award winner. I hadn't watched it from top to bottom in awhile so Get Out got thrown into the mix, with it not necessarily terrifying but certainly very unsettling and timely.
29. Alien
Ridley Scott's Alien got the nod because I didn't really have any science fiction horror -- everything else on here was, more or less supernatural or heightened thrillers. And I do like it when those two seemingly disparate colors blend, it makes for a great juxtaposition. I think a lot of people forget how tense and scary this original movie can get; there's no space marines, power loaders, and giant machine guns this first time out; just a ragtag crew armed with a couple flamethrowers trapped in claustrophobic ride with a terror beyond their imagination.
30. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
That image up there is the first thing you see and, yes, in the opening titles "chain saw" is two words and not a compound one for whatever reason, though posters would later bill it as such. And for a movie with its gruesome title and premise, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't all that gory but it is supremely unpleasant; it's probably the most unpleasant movie that I watched this past month and it's a movie so grisly and lurid that you can practically smell it.
31. The Exorcist
I always wanted to close out with the original Exorcist. That kind of stemmed from me not having watched the movie for a long time and since my Halloween plans were local because of the pandemic, I wanted to take the opportunity to revisit one of the biggest local horror sites on the actual holiday. So I did.
If we're talking about movies I saw way too young, The Exorcist is certainly one of those films that qualifies for me but, in the years since, I've been able to revisit it head-on without any relative problems; the damage is already done.
Epilogue: Summer of 84
I like to have something on the background as I write and, as I was putting this together, it was Summer of 84. The first time I had ever seen it and quickly found myself stopping what I was doing to follow intently along. I've had people ask me if I consider serial killer movies horror movies or thrillers and the answer is they can be both. I always cite Michael Myers: In that first Halloween movie, there's nothing overtly supernatural about The Shape and he only kills five people (One off-screen), yet, it's considered a definitive horror movie. Summer of 84 works the same way even if it is more about a coming-of-age/end-of-innocence tale in the most chilling way. Also, I've interviewed Judah Lewis and if I knew I was going to dig Summer of 84 so much, that's all we would've talked about.
