The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[knives]

It comes from the show Omnibus according to IMDB and therefore is ineligible. The remake is eligible though.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

That's poop. It's totally stand-alone, unlike a true series (which I'm assuming is the reason no one wants, for example, a series entry like "Hush" from Buffy with its various story arcs). But oh well. A rule's a rule, I guess. [-(

[puxzkkx]

I didn't like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer much at all. I guess this 'deconstruction' of a slasher film was pretty unusual at the time and probably wouldn't have been seen much at all since some of the B-thrillers of the 50s. The idea is respectable but the execution is just amateurish, plagued by 80s-isms and unsure how to balance the tug-of-war between exposition and plain documentation (Henry and Becky's dinner table conversation is probably the worst example of this, and the worst example of the stilted way McNaughton directs character exchanges). Of course the two most dramatically effective scenes - the twice-mediated 'family massacre' and the climactic rape - are the most frequently censored.

The acting runs the gamut from self-absorbed Method (Rooker, who is so inward as to seem constipated, and a terrible scene partner - more good ideas that are never properly pulled off - and Arnold, who tries to manner her character into life but never exudes the naïveté her role needs) to cartoonish (Towles).

And not that it will really matter to anyone other than those with knowledge of the case, but McNaughton slides from hewing relatively close to the real-life events (with two participants' relationship changed) to creating out-and-out fiction in the third act. Kind of strange.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

It comes from the show Omnibus according to IMDB and therefore is ineligible. The remake is eligible though.

What about this exception:

Single episodes of anthology horror series (Tales From the Crypt, Masters of Horror, &c) are eligible.

[knives]

Didn't read that guess it's eligible than.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Fantastic!

[zedz]

That's poop. It's totally stand-alone, unlike a true series (which I'm assuming is the reason no one wants, for example, a series entry like "Hush" from Buffy with its various story arcs). But oh well. A rule's a rule, I guess. [-(

Nope. Standalone TV movies have always been eligible, even if they were originally screened under some loose rubric. Many of the Loach, Leigh and Clarke films that were voted for in the 60s through 80s lists were originally presented as "The Wednesday Play" or somesuch. That doesn't make them episodes of an ongoing TV series. That's like claiming that otherwise eligible British mini-series are ineligible because they were screened as part of "Masterpiece Theatre" in the US.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Yeah, knives and I worked it out. Glad to get a second endorsement, though. Thanks.

[Mr Sausage]

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933, Michael Curtiz) While detractors note that this is as much (feeble) comic relief as horror, I maintain that the two facets complement each other here in the best tradition of horror-comedy, which reached its absurdist height in the 1980s, but has this forebear to thank for some of its conventions. I think the purer mood of House of Wax (1953) convinced fans of the latter that the former was too desperate to offset the terror with humor, but I am more frightened of and moved by Lionel Atwill’s disfigured artist than Vincent Price’s version, and at any rate, Grand Guignol always depended on comedy as much as horror. The makeup in the former is more ghastly, and the two-strip technicolor adds a garish patina to some startling images of wax figures melting in the flames. Also, I love the morgue scene… Still available with House of Wax on a Warner dvd.

I actually prefer the snappy newsroom scenes to the horror stuff. The rest is fine, but (and this is especially apparent if you compare it to the later version) the plotting is bungled, with a lot of necessary information lost within poorly integrated side plots. It's a fun movie, tho', for a lot of reasons, even if I prefer Dr. X.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Yeah, I'm notoriously indifferent to plot holes, so I guess I'm immune to that deficiency (perhaps that should be another caveat mentioned above). At the same time, I do agree that Doctor X is neck-and-neck with its Max Factor/Curtiz/Atwill companion. It's hard to beat the "synthetic flesh" scene (warning: spoiler disclosed in clip) for jaw-dropping insanity.

[knives]

Nope. Standalone TV movies have always been eligible, even if they were originally screened under some loose rubric. Many of the Loach, Leigh and Clarke films that were voted for in the 60s through 80s lists were originally presented as "The Wednesday Play" or somesuch. That doesn't make them episodes of an ongoing TV series. That's like claiming that otherwise eligible British mini-series are ineligible because they were screened as part of "Masterpiece Theatre" in the US.

I know we're past this, but just for the sake of clarity that's not true. As per the rules none of the Wednesday Play or similar films have been voted for according to the masterlists. The closest is Elephant which under the IMDB rules is a teevee movie.

[colinr0380]

I'm glad that you brought up Uzumaki gcgiles - I think that is an example of a film that is almost perfectly cast and is quite impressively weird thoughout, especially in the one sequence ending a 'Chapter' where the heroine faints and the film melts in camera. The plot is relatively simple, involving various people in a town who become obsessed with spirals until they kill themselves and spread their 'infection' further. The smoke of a crematorium from a latest victim turning into a spiral and driving onlooking relatives crazy was a neat touch, and reminded me a little of the way that burning the body parts in Return of the Living Dead just made things worse!

Yet it is also a film which pales considerably in comparison with its original manga by Junji Ito (he also created the manga for Tomie, which was also turned into a long running series of horror films, along with the fantastically disturbing and grotesque epic manga in its own right, Gyo). It blends a few of the early chapters together in an interesting way, and creates a similar sense of futility in the final jerky freeze-frame pans over horrific imagery, and most of the main characters meet similar fates, yet the manga deals with this material in an incredibly epic manner compared to the more intimate scale of the film.

Likely this would have been for budgetary (and running time!) reasons causing the need to create an apocalypse on a much smaller scale and confine the film to the events in the first third or so of the manga series - i.e. before a series of giant hurricanes devastate the town and cause the insane residents to re-build an interlinking spiral of connected row houses in which they pack themselves (in the sense of merging together into one fleshy blob), and before the heroine and the few remaining friends discover at the centre of the circle of re-fashioned spiral houses a giant cavern into the underworld in what was the bottom of the local lake from which evil forces arise on a regular schedule and cut off and consume the inhabitants of the town as sacrifices.

As you might guess, without that later epic scaled 'context' the film sadly peters out a little without any particular explanation. Plus a lot of the more evocative mini-stories that spin out from the main thread of the film (the lighthouse; the particularly horrific section of the babies turning their mothers into vampiric hosts in the hospital and then wanting to be surgically re-implanted back into the womb; the astronomy and spiral galaxy episodes - much as Poltergeist III does every possible gag involving mirror imagery, so the manga of Uzuamaki tackles anything spiral related!) get understandably removed from the film, although the film does deal with the clique of bitchy girls with their leader turning into a spiral-haired harpie, along with the other subplot about certain students in the school slowing down to a stop and then turning into spiral-shelled snails! Though the snail subplot also does not get the resolution of the manga, in which after the town is cut off from the rest of the world by the hurricanes and the inhabitants go insane, the snail-people become seen as the best source of food! With one of the main members of the group getting a particularly moving scene of turning into a snail and, during a futile attempt to cross the mountains to escape (before the remaining members fatalistically decide to turn around and walk straight into the centre of the spiral), ends up sacrificing himself for them.

So anyone familiar with the manga might end up being pretty disappointed with the film (it is the reason why I'm not placing it in my top 50), but even so I do have to commend the film for capturing the spirit of the events to the extent that it did.

[swo17]

Nope. Standalone TV movies have always been eligible, even if they were originally screened under some loose rubric. Many of the Loach, Leigh and Clarke films that were voted for in the 60s through 80s lists were originally presented as "The Wednesday Play" or somesuch. That doesn't make them episodes of an ongoing TV series. That's like claiming that otherwise eligible British mini-series are ineligible because they were screened as part of "Masterpiece Theatre" in the US.

I know we're past this, but just for the sake of clarity that's not true. As per the rules none of the Wednesday Play or similar films have been voted for according to the masterlists. The closest is Elephant which under the IMDB rules is a teevee movie.

zedz oughta know, he was running the show! To clarify, those films have always been eligible but haven't necessarily received any votes (or enough anyway to place on the masterlists). Similarly, for the '50s list, all the "Golden Age of TV" films are eligible even though none appear to have received a vote in the last round.

[knives]

I must have misunderstood the rules because I thought they were ineligible under the television series rule. Is there any sort of length or something like that that applies that exception where other anthology series normally don't have that exception?

[colinr0380]

Yeah, I'm notoriously indifferent to plot holes, so I guess I'm immune to that deficiency (perhaps that should be another caveat mentioned above). At the same time, I do agree that Doctor X is neck-and-neck with its Max Factor/Curtiz/Atwill companion. It's hard to beat the "synthetic flesh" scene (warning: spoiler disclosed in clip) for jaw-dropping insanity.

Gosh, that Doctor X scene still gives me chills every time I see it! I think part of the disturbing effect is the strange detachment of that scene with what seems like a voiceover saying lovingly yet menacingly "synthetic flesh", along with the the strange dreamy dissolves and the face on framing of the application of the goop.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

So anyone familiar with the manga might end up being pretty disappointed with the film (it is the reason why I'm not placing it in my top 50), but even so I do have to commend the film for capturing the spirit of the events to the extent that it did.

For the record, my top-50 wouldn't include Uzumaki, either. But in the ever-shrinking genre of "cochlear horror," it ranks right up there. I really need to read the original manga...
As for "synthetic flesh," yeah, it's an unnervingly beautiful scene. Two-strip Technicolor really helps the mood, as well. It would make a great double feature with Videodrome. Vive la nouvelle chair!

[colinr0380]

Ah yes, the other 'cochlear horror' film that comes to mind at the moment is that rather bad taste sequence from Freddy's Dead in which the deaf teen has his hearing aid turned all the way up and, in a Looney Tunes moment, finds Freddy Krueger dropping all manner of pins onto the ground, which makes such a cacophany that it causes his head to explode!

I suppose it is also a key film in 'Washing Machine' horror! Or at least is up there with Ruggero Deodato's The Washing Machine (which could perhaps be classed as a 1990s giallo but which more falls into the Basic Instinct erotic thriller cycle) and Tobe Hooper's The Mangler!

[domino harvey]

Re: Horrific ear moments, there's always this

[puxzkkx]

For the record, my top-50 wouldn't include Uzumaki, either. But in the ever-shrinking genre of "cochlear horror," it ranks right up there. I really need to read the original manga...

The manga is incredible.

[zedz]

Re: Horrific ear moments, there's always this

This is the first thing that sprang to mind for me. Start at about 3 minutes in.

[swo17]

I must have misunderstood the rules because I thought they were ineligible under the television series rule. Is there any sort of length or something like that that applies that exception where other anthology series normally don't have that exception?

Well, generally, TV movies, specials, and miniseries are eligible, while TV series or episodes from series are not (though in the case of this horror list, an exception has been made and individual episodes from anthology horror series are eligible). I suppose some titles might exist in a gray area between "TV special" and "episode of TV series" in which case, whoever is running that particular list project would have to rule on a case by case basis.

Also, serious question: Is My Pen eligible? (As a short film?) Truly horrifying stuff.

[domino harvey]

As a self-contained unit of a non-character based or serialized series, I'd probably allow it under the anthology backdoor (though I suspect you are not in fact serious)

[colinr0380]

For the record, my top-50 wouldn't include Uzumaki, either. But in the ever-shrinking genre of "cochlear horror," it ranks right up there. I really need to read the original manga...

The manga is incredible.

I'd love to imagine that in some parallel universe somewhere there is a Twin Peaks-style TV series of Uzumaki available! The manga has that wonderful episodic feel at the start (my favourite 'standalone' episode would be the corrupted lighthouse one) yet then turns into one huge apocalyptic, Lovecraftian ongoing narrative at the point of the hurricane strikes, another way that the universe breaking down is starting to affect the structure of the narrative itself.

While it is nothing to do with horror films, I also have to put in a word for the manga of Gyo as perhaps even more shocking and grotesque than Uzumaki. What seems to have been inspired from the amusing premise "what if a shark grew legs and started attacking people on land?", with a fantastic scene of our hero being chased through the narrow corridors of his beach house by the aquatic carnivore, turns into a strange twisted explanation of beings from the deep which attach themselves to other animals, bloat them up with gasses and turn them into a kind of fuel source. And they've now reached land and are attaching themselves to human beings!

The hero's girlfriend, who hates smelly things, gets a particularly horrible fate of bloating up with gasses (causing a suicide attempt due to her new appearance), going through a strange extremely painful mangling experiment to pump the gasses out and eventually becomes a kind of sentient zombie figure which motivates our hero through the last half of the narrative to travel through the devastated landscape to reach her and put her out of her misery. All the while the creatures are growing and consuming more and more (much as they had progressed from the smallest fish to the largest sharks in the sea), moving from one human being powering each creature to enormous grotesque configurations of interlinked groups of human beings. I suppose the creatures at the end could best be described by envisioning The War of the Worlds crossed with the Human Centipede, although by the end of the narrative the Human Centipede films have nothing on the images on display here and we have moved far, far beyond the rather knockabout fun of being chased by sharks with legs at the start!

[puxzkkx]

Veering a bit off-topic, but while I find Ito can do wonders with unusual premises (Uzumaki, duh) I think Gyo is just quite silly, although I found that shark attack sequence pretty well-done.

One short he has done that I would love to see adapted for a short film or a television special would be the deeply unsettling The Mystery of the Amigara Fault.

[Felix]

Yet it is also a film which pales considerably in comparison with its original manga by Junji Ito (he also created the manga for Tomie, which was also turned into a long running series of horror films, along with the fantastically disturbing and grotesuqe epic manga in its own right, Gyo). It blends a few of the early chapters together in an interesting way, and creates a similar sense of futility in the final jerky freeze-frame pans over horrific imagery, and most of the main characters meet similar fates, yet the manga deals with this material in an incredibly epic manner compared to the more intimate scale of the film.

Really loved the film which I only discovered idly flicking through Exploited Cinema's catalogue years ago so your comments about the Manga interest me. Is the three book version Amazon advertise complete? And in colour (the version on Mangashare is. or starts out that way)?