Best Horror Movies of All Time

[Bohandas]

Friday the 13th part 1 is particularly scary because (soiler alert) (and in stark contrast to its sequels and to most other slasher films in general) the killer is someone I could imagine actually existing. A figurative monster like Pamela is all too plausible, an actual monster like her son not so much.

Also the fact that she is genuinely unlikeable adds to the tension. I could imagine myself hanging out with Freddy or Pinhead or Frank N. Furter, but not with Pamela Voorhees

Same goes for the Saw series. Like Pamela Voorhees, Jigsaw is a sanctimonious prick and that makes him more powerful as a villain.

This is also part of the reason why in the case of Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera the novel is so much more powerful than the movie and musical (respectively). The adaptations tuned down the villains' self-righteous self-pitying personality disorders to such a degree that their horror is entirely lost

 

[Epic Meepo]

Friday the 13th part 1 is particularly scary because...

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen the original Friday the 13th.

 

[jdrakeh]

Are these zombies light sensitive?

Yes! That's pretty much their only weakness, in fact.

 

[Bohandas]

Wait. There's more. Spooky season is NOT over. This year's election promises to be more frightening than a hundred Halloweens. For Election Day I've saved the movie In The Mouth of Madness, John Carpenter's tale of mass insanity, and a world where sane and insane have switched places.

As a digestif I've saved Brain Drainer the tale of a mindless politician whose body is taken over by an evil rock from space, as well as of several vilains whi wish to harness the power of the rock

 

[CleverNickName]

I enjoyed In the Mouth of Madness, but let's not fart up the room with talk of politics. This is one of the few corners of the Internet where we can escape that nonsense.

 

[Bohandas]

I'm struck with the (probably meaningless) concordance between the speech about Hell from Jacob's Ladder and some of the tenets of the Hellraiser universe, with the whole demons-to-some0angels-to-others thing and the idea of the distinction between torment and bliss being a matter of perspective

 

[Autumnal]

T h e difference being that there doesn’t appear to be any joy beyond the Schism, where the Cenobites live. The pain of the angels in Jacob’s Ladder lasts only until you accept the reality of where you are; in the Labyrinth, that’s more like the beginning of torment. (I’d have to check, but I don’t think there’s endless torment in Meister Eckhart, not that the movie would be obligated to use it if there were.) So they’re almost mirror images. Which is interesting.

 

[MGibster]

Dracula isn’t exactly scary but no one would claim it isn’t horror.

It was scary when original published in 1897 with at least one reviewer arguing it included too much horror. In some ways, I think horror is a bit like comedy in that it ages poorly. There are still some old comedic gems out there, 600 hundred years later and "The Miller's Tale" by Chaucer is still hilarious for example. But Dracula has never been particularly frightening to me because I don't have the same anxieties Victorians did. Plus it's hard to be frightened by something when it's so familiar. Freddy Krueger used to be scary, but by the third movie he was just a burnt up bad comedian.

 

[MGibster]

There are some movies (such as The Road) that are great movies, and that are worth watching, and yet ... I don't need to return to.

It makes for a great dinner and movie date night.

There's also nothing supernatural about The Human Centipede, or The Phantom of the Opera.

Another good movie for date night.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The adaptations tuned down the villains' self-righteous self-pitying personality disorders to such a degree that their horror is entirely lost

To be fair, I don't think the Phantom Musical was aiming for horror.