Serious Horror Films

[Polybius]

Off the top of my head I would name My Little Eye and John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness.

I'll also join the chorus for Safe.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Off the top of my head I would name My Little Eye and John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness.

Nice call on the Carpenter film -- one of his best and a nice little nod to Lovecraftian horror ta boot...

[The Invunche]

I love the first half of Prince of Darkness. The suspense is great. Once the contents of the vial in the basement is revealed it all goes downhill.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

I love the first half of Prince of Darkness. The suspense is great. Once the contents of the vial in the basement is revealed it all goes downhill.

How so? I have always found the final showdown where the heroes narrowly close off the portal was pretty effective and creepy.

[The Invunche]

I don't know. The setup part simply works better for me.

[blindside8zao]

Prince of Darkness, eh... Didn't work for me.

[Mr Sausage]

I love the first half of Prince of Darkness. The suspense is great. Once the contents of the vial in the basement is revealed it all goes downhill.

I had much the same reaction to Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness, which I thought was very intriguing and thrilling for the first half, up until they actually arrive at the mythical town. After that, things became either routine or nonsensical, and little was made of the inventive premise. Up until that point, tho', the movie really worked.

[kieslowski_67]

Why not try some of those Italian giallo movies released by Anchor Bay in the last 3-4 years?

[Gregory]

blindside8zao, I find that the giallo films I've seen have far less serious content and subtext than the best U.S. horror films of the 1970s by people like George A. Romero and Brian DePalma. So, you're not going to find a coherent set of recommendations on this forum, not that such a consensus should be implicitly trusted anyway.

[blindside8zao]

"The upcoming year is a busy one for Burstyn. She is co-starring with Hugh Jackmans in Darren Aronofsky's new film “The Fountainâ€

[anvilscepe]

My vote is for The Changeling and Final Destination. Some of the Guinea Pig releases are quite thrilling too.

[Jem]

Would you call "Suspira" a slasher film? Eitherway the music alone gave me the creeps.

Obvious choice:
The Shining

[blindside8zao]

for some reason the devils expirement and flowers of flesh and blood didn't really do anything for me. I thought the first was very obviously fake when it came to the beating. Very fake punches, slaps, etc... Suspiria is what I'm talking about. I might have to check out the changeling. Shoot, all these movies and school has me too busy to watch anything at all.

[Jem]

Haven't seen it, but by all accounts "Wolf Creek" is pretty horrific.

http://www.wolfcreekthemovie.com/

(btw. Great site)

[zedz]

Getting back to more genre-marginal fare, you could check out Paperhouse, by Bernard Rose. This insidious film is based on a great children's book called Marianne Dreams and has a killer premise. Marianne is a sick child, confined to bed. She's given a book to draw in, but every time she goes to sleep she dreams she's in the world she's drawn. Problem is, when she wakes up, she can't erase her drawings, she can only add to them. Thus, when she falls out with the crippled boy in the dark house (he's crippled because she didn't draw any legs on him) and draws monsters surrounding the house, she finds herself trapped inside. And so she draws in her absent father, armed with a hammer, to battle the monsters. But she's not happy with the way his face came out (he looks angry and deranged), so she scribbles it out. Bad move.

When I was a kid, I saw a terrific TV serial based on the book (Escape Into Night) which scarred me for life. This later movie is pretty good: there's one absolutely classic, gratuitous, leap-out-of-your-seat shock and a very creepy subtext (that I'm not sure was in the original book) about the daughter-father relationship (just what is Marianne so afraid of?)

Krautrock fans (I know you're out there) will be disappointed to hear that, despite the title, there isn't a Can soundtrack.

[blindside8zao]

thanks, I checked out experiement and found it to be a great movie. It did not scare me but I definetly felt very uneasy about how feasible it all seemed and how everything very quickly went out of control. My only beef is the sideplot with the woman. I felt it was not incorporated enough into the plot. It seemed instead an easy way to give the movie a somewhat light note to end with. She seemed like a loose thread, an unsophisticated part of the narrative. Anyone else feel this way?

Also, I rented wicker man but it turned out to be an 84 minute version, so I didn't watch it. I found I Spit on Your Grave for 9 dollars, the millenium edition, so I'll be watching that soon.

Also watched Argento's newest film, The Card Player and found it to be severely dissatisfying on almost all levels. I will still give him a chance and try Deep Red and Inferno though, given my love of the visuals in Suspiria.

Also watched the Omen III and wasn't all that thrilled. Only part I really liked was...

Spoiler

when the child looks up at him as he smears his cheecks with wolf's blood. The subtle facial expression the child gives is very creepy.

I watched I Spit on Your Grave and found it to be very delightful as far as the quality.

I don't see how Siskel and Ebert can give the reviews they did of the film. I found it to be obviously anti-rape and did not at any time feel supportive towards any of the male characters. I believe the goading of the male theater audience was most likely a result of immaturity, which still pervades todays theaters, unfortunately. Ebert also mentions there isn't one iota of artistic worth in the film.

I found the following two shots to be wonderfully effective images, when Jennifer on the rocks in the woods, and Jennifer crawling on her red carpet to the phone.

Both really struck me. The use of symbolism in the film is also thoughtful; there are phallic symbols spread throughout, and the employment of them in terms of plot development is fairly interesting. I think theres a lot more to say for this film in terms of artistry compared to most of the horror that is released today. Also, Joe Bob Briggs is really funny. The commentary made me crack up. Amazing how you can be so stern and sick at the first viewing and then crack up with Briggs making jokes.

[Penny Dreadful]

My only beef is the sideplot with the woman. I felt it was not incorporated enough into the plot. It seemed instead an easy way to give the movie a somewhat light note to end with. She seemed like a loose thread, an unsophisticated part of the narrative. Anyone else feel this way?

I agree that the romantic side-plot could have been integrated a little bit better, but at the same time the film needed SOMETHING to contrast with or provide a momentary relief from the horrors within the prison. At first I didn't buy the fact that the man and the woman were strangers who fell in love arbitrarily in the very first scene, but looking back, I think it works. The movie is about what happens when random people are thrown together, and as we see, there's a chance for violence and a chance for love.

[denti alligator]

I'm bumping this thread not because I'm interested in "serious" horror films, but I'd like some recommendations for truly frightening "horror" films. I'd like to be scared by a horror film, for once, and can't remember the last time this happened.

Anyone?

[Murdoch]

Being a horror aficionado I feel compelled to respond to this:

First off there is Polanski's Repulsion which is fairly well-known but it is probably the most disturbing showcase of a woman falling prey to insanity.
Also see Rosemary's Baby.

Being a Criterion forum I can't not recommend Eyes without a Face or the Face of Another, I actually prefer the Teshigahara.

Also, I always found M to be really creepy largely due to Lorre's performance, but who on this board hasn't seen it?

Closet Land is also great. It is very psychological and Alan Rickman gives one of his best performances in it as a despicable interrogator of an incarcerated author.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is the Sunset Boulevard of horror movies and acts as both a frightening indictment of Hollywood decadence and satire of fame.

The Wicker Man, original of course, is possibly the most surreal and unique horror film ever made. Is it a musical? A thriller? A kidnapping story? Actually it's all three, and at the end it finally gives up and becomes an all-out horror.

And some more: Kaidan, Freaks, Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Virgin Spring, and this is kinda lowbrow, but I liked the Descent a lot, it was a great escape from the excesses of torture porn and slasher flicks.

[denti alligator]

See, these might all be "serious" (whatever that means), but none of those is in any palpable or visceral way frightening. C'mon, folks, gimme a movie to make me shriek with fear!

Note: The Descent I have mixed feelings about, since it used old tricks to 'make you jump' that didn't really work, though parts of it were, I thought, very unnnerving, especially the way claustrophobia was tapped into to generate fear. I liked that. But I want something scarier.

[domino harvey]

You sound like me: I don't find monsters or ghosts or murderers scary, so I'm not scared by a film containing variations of these elements. A film can be tense or spooky but I don't expect a film to produce a response counter to my own normal reaction.

Personally, the idea of nuclear war is the scariest thing to me, so something like the mushroom cloud scene in the Sum of All Fears was scarier than anything I'd ever seen in any horror movie-- I know it's a pretty whatever film but I nearly threw up during that part.

[Cold Bishop]

Outside of children, who the hell actually gets scared by horror films? Depressed, disturbed, unnerved, disgusted... sure, but "scared". I haven't been scared by a film since seeing It when I was five, and has anyone seen It lately? It's a terrible film.

[luridedith]

See, these might all be "serious" (whatever that means), but none of those is in any palpable or visceral way frightening. C'mon, folks, gimme a movie to make me shriek with fear!

In A Glass Cage is the most harrowing film I ever seen. It was so horrific it actually brought me to tears. Then again reviews online from typically jaded gore-hounds call it "boring" (actual review: "I bought the DVD and eagerly anticipated a glut of horrible child murders. WAS I DISAPPOINTED!! Only 2 boys R killed") so who knows if it'll affect you.

Last House On Dead End Street was another one that really disturbed me. Its crudely made with amateurish acting and a pretty much incomprehensible plot but its sleazy, surreal imagery and dingy set pieces really freaked me out. The first half of it is rather meh but when it picks up it really works as just an completely insane assault on the senses.

To me most Lynch films (specifically Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway and Inland Empire) do this to me - Robert Blake in kabuki makeup and the distorted, clown-like image of Laura Dern's face gets under my skin much more than Jason or Freddy.

The only horror classic film to truly terrify me and push me out of my comfort zone is the bizarre (almost otherworldly) family dinner scene in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

[sidehacker]

Yeah, the dinner scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is actually bizarrely hilarious but still fairly disturbing.

[Murdoch]

I'm not sure what "frightening" entails, when I watch horror I want something resonant. The only things that truly disturb me anymore are those based on true stories or so grounded in realism that the things depicted actually happening to me is so plausible I don't want to think about it. But whatever, this is still serious horror, when I want to be scared I watch the original Texas Chainsaw, doesn't work for everybody, but it works for me.