My spoler alert: is only in regard to any who may have never seen these old movies below, and plan to see them at some point in the future. (It's particularly in regard to the movie Saw, if you've never seen it)
In order to understand my love affair with horror movies, it is beneficial to start with my first real horror movie experience. When I was around 8 years old, I was--like most 8 year olds who were born in the early 1980s--terrified of Freddy Kreuger. For any Nightmare on Elm St fans among us, the year I was 8, and heading toward 9, was the same year that Freddy's Dead, the supposed final film in the series, came out. It was also the year that Child's Play 3 hit theatres and eventually old VHS tapes.
Well, I tell you this to tell you this story: my older sisters were true devotees of most of the 80s horror franchises; Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm St., and Child's Play were just some of their favorite things to watch on Saturday nights in our sleepy little Houston suburb. One Saturday night, when I was only 8 years old, my sisters forced me, my younger cousin, and two of my neighborhood friends to watch both Child's Play 3 and Freddy's Dead. As a grown man, sitting here typing this, I tell you that at my current state of maturity and advanced age, the only thing I can see in either of these movies now is comedy gold, but when I was only 8, they terrified me. But after that dark, stormy Saturday night, I fell in love with horror movies, and have been a loyal fan ever since.
As a devotee, by inheritance, of the more popular horror franchises of the 1980s, I am waiting with an odd mix of nostalgic glee and cynical trepidation for the "re-imagining" of Friday the 13th scheduled for release the day after tomorrow. And I thought with the crippled state of our economy, and a hundred seperate crises swirling around the world, what better time than now to take a moment of pure silliness to reflect on some of my favorites from the genre that brought us Fred Kreuger and Jason Voorhees, and I invite you all to add your own in the comments.
Below is my list of some of my favorite horror movies, in order from least favorite (for lack of a better term) to most. (At some later date I will probably compile a list of the worst horror movies, just to vent about them).
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005): I have to list this movie simply because, even though I'm very nonreligious now, I was raised by a very religious black woman, and she kind of instilled in me a lifelong fear of the devil. This is one of the few movies I've seen since I finished puberty that scared the hell out of me. For those who remember the movie, this should indicate how much it freaked me out: The night I saw it, I couldn't go to sleep until after 3 a.m.
Saw (2004): In all honesty, I'm not the biggest fan of gore, and I actually think gorey, bloody violence has become too much of a crutch for many directors and writers in this genre; it seems half of the time, if the director realizes the story sucks he just asks for more blood to be strewn across the set. That said, Saw is one of the gorier movies in recent memory, but it's also one of the best plotted horror movies I've yet seen. Anybody who didn't scream "oh, shit!" when Tobin Bell got off that floor at the end is just too crynical for me.
Candyman (1992): Clive Barker and Tony Todd broke a huge barrier here. Namely, they created a black horror icon in a world where none had existed before. To this day, you'll never catch me saying crazy shit into a mirror. In my mind, one of the scariest things about this movie is that you never really know if Candyman is real, or if Virgin Madsen is simply losing her mind. The sense of slow-building dread is masterful. In my book, this movie is--hands down--one of the scariest horror movies to date.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): This gritty, terrifying indie is still one of the greatest horror feats of all time. Without a lot of money, but with a preponderance of creativity, Tobe Hooper created one of the iconic characters of world cinema, and managed to convince many people that this was based on a true story (I am still amazed at how many people think the events depicted really happened.)
Scream (1996): Kevin Williamson did something in this film that few thought could be done at the time. He basically rebooted the horror genre. In a smart film that was, in my opinion anyway, more about the drama and mystery aspects, rather than the scare aspects, Williamson, Craven and the cast, turned out a film that poked fun at itself and at, what seemed at the time, a tired genre; they also produced a mega-blockbuster that spawned serveral copycats (several of which Williamson wrote).
A Nightmare on Elm St. (1984): Wes Craven is one of the great ones. And the biggest reason Craven is considered one of the greats is because he invented Freddy Kreuger, and in this first film of this long series, made many a teenager afraid to go to sleep. The reason I know this is one of the iconic movies of all time is because you can walk into any Wal-Mart in America and whistle the tune from "one-two, Freddy's coming for you," and someone, if not everyone, will look at you funny. Of course, down the road, the character became a wise-cracking psycho who spent more time making jokes than bringing scares, but the first film is still one of the greats.
Halloween (1978): I hate Rob Zombie. He took one of my favorite movies, and what is probably one of the great movies of all time, and turned it into a study in how to fuck something up royally. The original Halloween is, in my opinion, a tour-de-force, and it isn't so much that it's constantly "scary," but that it builds a suspense and a feeling of horror that doesn't relent throughout the entire movie. This movie is at the top of my list because it really was the model for the following 30 years. The killer stalking the babysitter is really the basic formula for most horror movies, even today. The killer may be stalking someone other than the babysitter, but the basic structure is largely the same. Freddy, Jason, and Ghostface were all just different personifications for the archetype expressed so well in Michael Myers, and for that reason, it holds a special place in horror movie history.
I've obviously left some great movies off (time constraints), some time in another diary, I'll come back and add more.
So, those are my picks, what are yours?