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William Malone
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Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
OK Somebody asked me to give them a list of what I think are the greatest Horror films ever made... so here they are. I love to see what your list is... so bring it on....
Malone’s Top Ten Horror Pictures
Not in any particular order...
1. The Black Cat - (Universal 1934) Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi -
This is truly a strange movie. You’d have a hard time getting this movie made even today. I love the weird tone of sick sexuality that pulls you in. Karloff is actually skinned alive by Lugosi in the end of this movie.
2. Creature from the Black Lagoon (Universal 1954) - To my mind the greatest monster movie ever made. The creature’s dreamy world underwater is so compelling and evocative. The creature’s design and construction borders on fine art. It’s the only monster that can stand up to being seen in broad daylight. Julie Adam’s character ruined my life. I grew up thinking that girlfriends were supposed to be that kind and understanding.
3. Alien (Fox 1979) - A masterpiece of film making. The original release cut of the is film is virtually flawless artistically and technically. Giger’s monster is brilliant.
4. Frankenstein (Universal 1931) - So much has already been said about this film. The fact that is plays without a musical score adds to the nearly documentary quality that makes it one of the most frightening films ever made.
5. Nosferatu (Prana Films 1922) - One of the very first horror films. It still holds up as a horrifying nightmarish vision. F W Murnau must have prayed hard at Our Lady of the Virgin Film Stock church. Murnau is God!!
6. The Grudge (the Japanese version) - This is the only modern film that creeped me out. I always thought kids were disturbing.
7. Vampyr (Gelma-Film 1932) - This film is neither a silent nor a sound film but exists somewhere in-between. The characters also live in that dim twilight world of neither alive nor dead. Dreamy and drenched in atmosphere... this is a classic that anyone interested in film must see. Sybille Schmitz you can bite on my neck anytime.
8. Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (Decla-Bioscope1919) - The first complete horror film ever made... and what a Duezy! Filled with great images and real thrills. Conrad Veidt as the somnambulist Cesare is truly chilling and was the blueprint for Boris Karloff’s portray of Frankenstein a few years later.
9. Eraserhead (1977) - To my mind the only truly original film in the last 50 years. The images wash over you with stunning brilliance.
10. House of Dark Shadows (MGM 1970) - A strange choice to be sure but a very cool vampire film in the gothic tradition. They took three years of plot from the soap opera and compressed it into 100 minutes. Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins is very creepy. When he’s suddenly turned old and puts the bit on Kathryn Leigh Scott, it is truly is one of the creepiest moments in cinema. It rocks!!!
Last edited by William Malone, 6/12/2006, 3:24 pm
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6/10/2006, 4:50 pm
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Matty Budrewicz
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
I think my all time favourite horror film would be Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street closely followed by Re-Animator.
I also really love Hellraiser (it was the film that really got me into horror) and Brian Yuzna's Society. I guess it shows I like a bit of splatter haha...
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6/27/2006, 4:48 am
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William Malone
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
I'm with you. Those all are great horror films. The first "Nightmare" I thought had a really cool surreal quality that elevated it beyond the normal horror fare.
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7/3/2006, 1:57 pm
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Monte83
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
My favorite horror movies wouldn't surprise anyone. Probably a tie between "Halloween," "Alien," "Psycho," and I dunno, a bunch of others. Including virtually all of the old ones from the '20s and '30s like the previously mentioned "Nosferatu" and "Caligari" (which has a lot to do with why I'm such fan of yours, Mr. Malone).
I admit, though, that I grew up on the slasher cheese of the '80s. And in fact I still get a kick out of watching Jason chop up stupid teenagers, despite none of it being scary in the least.
Also, this isn't horror, but "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was very scary to me when I was little, especially that damn boat ride.
Last edited by Monte83, 7/5/2006, 9:30 pm
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7/5/2006, 9:25 pm
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wmmvrrvrrmm
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 Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
Okay here is my list!
1. Quatermass And The Pit (1967) - This is British Scifi-Horror movie that with the TV series version of it about a decade earlier (both scripted by Nigel Kneale) has been an influence on a number of scifi and horror films such as Alien. I think that the reason the movie was so horrific was because it captured the imagination in a recognisable world and also for me, it gave me the worst nightmare that I have ever had in my entire life when I was about 12 or so, it frightens me to think about the nightmare I had from then still so maybe I still haven't quite got over it yet. And there wasn't any blood or gore in this movie either. Perhaps because it managed to blend the idea of buried ancient martian remains connected with the idea of the devil quite marvelously. If the actress who played Barbara Judd in the TV series had played the role in the movie later, it would have been maybe a much better movie. The creature design from the TV series for the Martian bodies stands up still after all these years for me.
2. Alien (1979) - I have developed a very powerful obsession about this movie, the ideas within the movie and also the ones left out of it, and have been going through the experience of wishing to be able to somehow dream up my own version of the Alien movie or work out a way to continue the creature's life cycle, it's something that i am continuously trying to exorcise out of my system or on another level maybe I am eternally trying to integrate every little experience that there is to be had from the movie into my conscious mind and well there is a huge amount to think about.
3. Frankenstein (1931). This was the Boris Karloff film I saw on TV as a child but never since but loved my impressions of it from then
4. Dracula (1931). This was the Bela Lugosi film I saw on TV as a child but never since, and again, I loved my impressions of it from then
5. The Wolf Man (Universal 1941). This was a film I saw on TV as a child but never since but again loved my impressions of it from then, and I wonder if it has had quite a weird influence on my shadow self
6. The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971): I found this to be a very wonderfully surreal macabre tale of revenge, and I enjoyed it's sequel very much too in conjunction with it
7. Theatre of Blood (1973). Another Vincent Price movie about weird revenge murders by a hammy actor.
8. The Innocents (1961). A ghost story that didn't have any blood or gore in it, but remains something that haunts my memory
9. Eraserhead (1977). I was never quite horrified by it as such but very mystified by it, and I am sure that a part of my mind has been severely squashed in several different ways by the experience of watching it, but the small chickens pumping blood like matter will always be there to haunt me
10. Company Of Wolves (1984), for the sheer surrealistic imagination behind the movie, even if none of the werewolf transformation sequences looked in the slightest bit realistic and even if the girl who played the Little Red Riding Hood figure never seemed as if she were going to become a great actress, however the film becomes much better in my distorted memories
I've liked Ringu very much , the Hellraiser movies and the Grudge, but haven't included them in my top ten, which are not in any particular order of the most liked.
I also liked Francis Coppola's Dracula for the costumes, makeup and sets and the performance of the actor who played Dracula, but it didn't get into my top ten probably because of some of the other actors in it. I liked American Werewolf in London for the transformation scene, that ought to have been in my top ten as well.
I haven't seen The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari yet, but I like the photos which I've seen from it. I barely remember the Black Cat, but am sure that I liked it. I have not seen Nosferatu, Vampyr or House of Dark Shadows either, but one day will.
Dom
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8/7/2006, 3:52 pm
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William Malone
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
Quatermass really is a cool movie. I saw this movie first on TV when I was a little kid. The astronaut who smashes his hand into the cactus is REALLY creepy. I love films that leave you with something weird that you can't put your finger on and this one has it in spades.
Alien (1979) is a near perfect film in my estimation. Cameron's follow up was extrememly good but the first one was high art. Alien 4 may well be the worst movie ever made. It makes "Plan 9 from Outer Space" look like a masterpiece. I haven't seen AvsP and I don't want to. To quote Dr. Frankenstein: "Fritz, come away from there. Leave it alone".
I'd start a worst movie list but I'm afraid some of my films might wind up on it. (LOL)
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8/29/2006, 7:17 am
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wmmvrrvrrmm
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
I guess that Alien has been a movie that has sent my imagination far overboard since it came out even though
and I'm still trying to swim ashore since the time it came out. I didn't finally get the chance to see it until I saw it on TV somewhere halfway through the 1980s. Alien 4 only interests me in terms of the ideas relating to the lighting because the cinematographer is an interesting talented character by my estimation, and also I liked the idea of the designs used the concept of negative spaces to allow the "Godlight" to flow through, but the script and the monster design and the amount of humour in it led nowhere for me. I'm not sure what I could do in my own imagination to reconstruct a better version of it, but some people might state that if Jeunet's usual co-director Caro had been involved, it might have been a very different movie with more substance to it's unusuality.
In that series, Alien 3 has remained something of interesting thing if one blurs out many of the alien monster's appearance, I liked the comparison once made to it being like an opium fueled Tarkovsky movie.
I like the odd things that pop up in there such as the man at the end who it's impossible to state whether he is an android or not despite the side of his face hanging off, and how the egg with facehugger get on board the ship and infect whoever got infected and the impossibility of it all. As if the script was constructed out of a series of what Hitch**** referred to as McGuffins, and then there were things such as the confusion about the cryotubes changing design, as if the stylised confusion being delivered was offering up a guide to navigating uneven confusion to be experienced in what I understood I was seeing in the footage of the 9/11 incident
Aliens was a fine film for the first time I saw it but it doesn't interest me to rewatch it and the creature suit designs didn't interest me, and the queen's design needed to be severely altered in my estimation although it had possibilities, but I prefer actually the Giger's Alien Monster IV painting that it was obviously loosely inspired by, which in turn was inspired by Jean Delville's Treasures Of Satan. I keep wondering how one can adapt a better creature design from that painting so it that might be used as a movie creature.
I couldn't recommend Alien Vs Predator to anyone, although it seems that Dan O'Bannon enjoyed it and maybe it was a good thing that they avoided his enthusiastic advice about an alteration to the story. However a good thing about the movie is that you could hardly see the alien creatures so much as in previous movies so the alterations to the designs didn't remain in the mind so much.
I think that all the Quatermass films and the earlier TV series from the 50s too are very important in the way they have inspired the language of scifi and horror in the last five decades
I think though that there are many terrible movies but they probably ought to often be partially honoured because some might have a fragment of an interesting idea somewhere that ought to be taken notice of. It might seem like a stupid waste of time sifitng through movies for that reason but sometimes it does interest me.
Schrader's Exorcist prequel movie holds up for me as a movie but I would have great difficulty wanting to recommend it to anyone who might be an Exorcist fan. There were fragments of the other version of the prequel that held my interest but I'll never watch it again.
A recent horror movie that has been very very interesting to me is Silent Hill by Christophe Gans and I think it is good from my perspective. There are some scenes that make me shudder, probably because some of my own nightmares as a child come close to some of the images in the movie and for me it is a movie that's a breakthrough in terms of use of CGI, well at least it works for me and many people have said good things about the movie, although it might be better understood in view of it taking place in a world that has been adapted from a computer game which I admit that I have not played since I don't play them.
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10/1/2006, 5:45 am
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Larry Schober
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
quote:
Schrader's Exorcist prequel movie holds up for me as a movie but I would have great difficulty wanting to recommend it to anyone who might be an Exorcist fan. There were fragments of the other version of the prequel that held my interest but I'll never watch it again.
The 2004 prequel? I could hardly stand that one. The biggest reason is probably because the director completely redid the film set so it looks nothing like the original film, he completely lost the atmosphere of it in the process - the writing and directing style was nothing like its predecessor.. As a rule I generally try to avoid prequels, spinoffs, and the like, but compared to what I've seen, that film was sub-par.
Last edited by Larry Schober, 10/2/2006, 6:55 pm
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10/2/2006, 6:54 pm
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wmmvrrvrrmm
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
Well, Larry, I think the reason you disliked Schrader's Exorcist prequel is exactly why I liked it., so I thank you for sharing your words.
I personally don't think that the original Exorcist movie is something that should have been given sequels since no one has quite worked out what to do with the demon in the movie. I wasn't exactly too interested in Blatty's own sequel either although it was the most decent and popular of the sequels. But the reasons I can have for approving of various movies can be very very isolated little reasons that are very hard to verbalise and seemingly pointless, and indeed I couldn't be bothered to try to get anyone interested in seeing Schrader's Exorcist prequel, and certainly I wouldn't try to get an Exorcist fan to take a look at it, but never the less I liked it as an honest movie and I know that there are some out there who appreciated it too even if at times it was almost little bit of a serious and boring sort of movie. I appreciated the screen presence of the actor who played Father Merrin in the prequels too.
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10/7/2006, 3:13 am
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Beezus81
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Re: Greatest Horror Films Ever Made!!!
I adore House On Haunted Hill.I saw the remake at age 18 and it gave me an excellent excuse to review some of Castle's films.Got my compare/contrast on,so to speak.Castle's scares were mild.I found Malone's approach to be more my speed.The character driven feel.Gore used when and where necessary.Something amazing..paying homage without being overly derivative!
My Mum is 56,and she claims to have been scared,quite literally,poo-less by the original.
Chalk it up to desensitization.What I enjoyed about the original was the wife..the duplicitous wife.Classic ice-queen/ball buster.That's horrifying in it's own right.The concept of beauty without soul,no warmth or kindness.
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4/29/2007, 4:52 am
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