What's the best horror film you have seen ?

To me,The Shining never matched it reputation.

It's good no question,and there are a handful of very eerie,chilling scenes,but it wasn't that much more unnerving overall than a number of other horror stories.

As a movie it's also flawed.There is no distinguishing at all between "sane" Jack and crazy Jack.I'm not sure if that was down to Nicholson or Kubrick.

It's also noticeably overlong.Now I have no problem with movies that have a long running time,but this definitely dragged at times.

But like I say,it was a damn fine effort from Kubrick.
 
I agree with that totally, I think I read somewhere that Hooper intended it to be akin to a freakshow in a Southern carnival, which meant deeply unpleasant subject matter wrapped in a bizarrely humourous facade.

And despite it's OTT mannerisms and title, it's a masterpiece of sublety - no gore or violence is shown on screen, and it conveys the sexualisation of the violence without ever needing to resort to showing any nudity or dialogue that even references sex, as opposed to later slashers that required at least one tit shot per character (it was the sexual aspect that ensured it never got a video certificate by the BBFC by the way).

On a technical level, it's also flawless. There's nothing wrong with the acting, as someone said above it's only bad if you expect acting in a film to always be like a scripted Hollywood production, like the Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, the acting in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is carried off in a convincingly naturalistic fashion that's extremely rare to see in movies.

The cinematography, lighting and especially the set design, really highlight how its possible for talented filmmakers to shoot a movie with next to no money and still produce something amazing; there isn't one shot in the entire movie that doesn't display artistic integrity. Even the grainy quality of the film they used because they couldn't afford decent film stock and the use of real animal corpses because they couldn't afford the special effects, work to its advantage.

Nowadays, the Friday 13th/Halloween clones have moved on and evolved into a modern form of their genre while the Texas Chainsaw clones still use the same template set out thirty years ago; there's simply nowhere for the psycho hillbilly genre to evolve, it was perfect in the original. Even the remake added nothing new, it just used a slightly different storyline.
 
28 Days Later

Let The Right One In

Halloween - the original

Candyman

The Ring - original Japanese version

30 Days of Night

Irreversible for the fire extinguisher scene
 
for me it would have to be nightmare on elm street, i tried to watch this once when i was in a house on my own at night and was terrified within the first 10 mins, the music is so chilling!
 
'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and 'Night Of The Living Dead' are my favourite horror films, but for nasty and gory, the castrations, animal slaughter and breast-hook scenes in 'Cannibal Ferox' need mentioning.
 
Men Behind The Sun was pretty f'd up

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093170/

Story of a Japanese terror camp in the end of WW2, where the Japanese are using the Chinese as guinea pigs in terrible experiments to develop deadly bacterial-plagues.

Others:
-The Changeling
- The Evil Dead
- Dead Alive
- Bad Taste
- Guinea Pig series
- Dead Alive
 
being a gore hound since the age of 11, the best horrors are films with the more psychological aspect to them - you can have buckets and buckets and buckets of blood and gore in them - and they could be just be simply interesting to watch or simply crap.

as a child, as i was terrified by The Thing.

but lately, the better horrors i've seen are The Descent and Rec. they actually made me jump!

Wolf Creek made me feel uncomfortable as well.
 
I assume your being ironical in that post? Foreign horror is in a complete and utter different league to hollywood dross and if people won't watch movies because of worRAB at the bottom of the screen then their loss I say!
 
That's more than likely apocryphal urban myth. Publicity for Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox - a producer-fuelled blatant attempt to 'out-gross' CH - made a similarly unverifiable claim it had been "banned in 31 countries"; that's when these kinRAB of things tend to start to spiral out of 'competitive' control, and subsequently get obfuscated in 'legend' as the years pass. Cannibal Holocaust is one of the most profitable Italian films ever, and was an absolutely massive hit in Japan/the far East and South America alone for example. Achieving such success whilst being 'banned' in over a third of the world - quite besides having been distributed/exhibited in innumerable different edits from region to region, and which likely wouldn't have included Africa and the Middle East altogether - isn't really very likely.
 
Back
Top