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Post by kds on Oct 25, 2021 1:18:59 GMT
A couple ghost movies warrant a mention before moving into the 90s.
Ghost Story is an overlooked early 80s gem. Although, the flashback sequence in the middle of the story takes up a surprisingly large amount of it.
The Entity was based on an actual paranormal investigation, but takes a really odd sci fi ish left turn in the third act. There's potential for a great movie, but I think the third act keeps it from hitting said potential.
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Post by kds on Oct 25, 2021 15:21:48 GMT
1990s
The 1990s are often thought of as a lean decade for horror. I don't think that's fair, as there are a lot of gems released in the 1990s. I suspect that opinion is shared by fans of the slasher subgenre. The original run of slashers was fizzling out by the 1990s, with the original franchises of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street on their last legs. And the slashers that followed in the late 90s - Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, etc - do feel a little toned down. That said, I do think the original Scream movie is quite clever, and the first appearance of Ghost Face is actually pretty scary.
Probably a little more supernatural than slasher, even though it contains some elements of the latter, 1992's Candyman is a very effective take on various "Bloody Mary / Black Aggie" type of urban myths.
While the horror icons of the 70s and 80s were winding down (for now), 1992 saw the return of one of the genre's greatest icons with Francis Ford Coppola's visually dazzling version of Dracula. Had the movie only been unique visually, it would've been gimmicky, but the movie and cast back up the truest filmed adaptation of Stoker's novel.
Speaking of great gothic horror adaptations, Tim Burton's version of Sleepy Hollow (1999) is a throwback to the Hammer Horror movies of old (even featuring Christopher Lee in a small role). The movie actually makes me wish that Burton did more horror movies. Speaking of Burton, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas from 1993 is the type of "gateway horror" movie that kind of fizzled out as the 1990s went on.
It's probably more of a suspense / thriller than horror, but Silence of the Lambs (1991) warrant a mention here, as Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Hannibal Lecter gives us one of cinema's greatest characters. The movie does have horror elements, and it's pretty cool to see a movie like that win a Best Picture Oscar.
Also in that "not quite horror" category is 1990's Jacob's Ladder. Some of the visions Tom Robbins' character has in the film are terrifying, and some of those techniques would be repeated in the 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill, which is IMO quite good for the first hour before turning into a CGI mess in the third act.
Speaking of CGI messes, I really think 1999's The Blair Witch Protect was released almost as an antidote to big budget CGI horror. And the low budget / found footage aspect has rarely been done better. To be honest, the first time I saw Blair Witch, I was disappointed. A fake documentary that aired on the Sci Fi channel was creepy as hell, and all of the "scariest movie since The Exorcist" hype might've gotten my expectations too high. But, I watched it again a few years later, and found it to be far better, a few years separated from such hyperbole.
Wow, 1999 was actually a really solid year for horror. One of the better ghost movies from the 1990s is 1999's Stir of Echoes. The movie unfortunately was released around the same time as The Sixth Sense, so it got a little overshadowed. But, while I enjoy both movies, I feel like Stir of Echoes is a better ghost / haunting story.
Speaking of ghosts, 1998 saw the release of Ring (or Ringu) in Japan, one of the scarier (IMO) horror movies in recent decades. An almost equally effective American remake will be discussed in the 2000s section in a few days. But, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 25, 2021 15:37:28 GMT
Speaking of CGI messes, I really think 1999's The Blair Witch Protect was released almost as an antidote to big budget CGI horror. And the low budget / found footage aspect has rarely been done better. To be honest, the first time I saw Blair Witch, I was disappointed. A fake documentary that aired on the Sci Fi channel was creepy as hell, and all of the "scariest movie since The Exorcist" hype might've gotten my expectations too high. But, I watched it again a few years later, and found it to be far better, a few years separated from such hyperbole. I wasn't a big fan of this movie (or even a small fan of this movie), but I think--I think--it was the first handheld camera, shaky footage, faux documentary to really break through in a big way. I've always thought that this, coinciding with the prominence at the time of omnipresent reality TV, was what really kicked off the trend ... in comedy. It wasn't long before we had The Office and other similar approaches to TV and movies in other genres, with cast members looking into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, whether explicitly acknowledging the cameras in the guise of a documentary or home movie or other similar project, or implicitly doing so, giving that impression.
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Post by kds on Oct 25, 2021 16:03:58 GMT
Speaking of CGI messes, I really think 1999's The Blair Witch Protect was released almost as an antidote to big budget CGI horror. And the low budget / found footage aspect has rarely been done better. To be honest, the first time I saw Blair Witch, I was disappointed. A fake documentary that aired on the Sci Fi channel was creepy as hell, and all of the "scariest movie since The Exorcist" hype might've gotten my expectations too high. But, I watched it again a few years later, and found it to be far better, a few years separated from such hyperbole. I wasn't a big fan of this movie (or even a small fan of this movie), but I think--I think--it was the first handheld camera, shaky footage, faux documentary to really break through in a big way. I've always thought that this, coinciding with the prominence at the time of omnipresent reality TV, was what really kicked off the trend ... in comedy. It wasn't long before we had The Office and other similar approaches to TV and movies in other genres, with cast members looking into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, whether explicitly acknowledging the cameras in the guise of a documentary or home movie or other similar project, or implicitly doing so, giving that impression. In terms of comedy, that approach had been done before with Spinal Tap, and the movies of Christopher Guest that followed that mockumentary formula. Blair Witch was indeed the first horror movie to really make a dent in mainstream culture. I think 1980's Cannibal Holocaust was the first to use the technique, apparently so well it prompted a criminal investigation, but that movie hardly had the effect on pop culture that Blair Witch had. Of course, studios fell in love with the concept because it was cheap and profitable, and Blair Witch led to a ton of imitations.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 25, 2021 16:36:30 GMT
Right, the mockumentary had been done, but it wasn't everywhere. It seemed like after Blair Witch, it got more common. Like how Eddie Van Halen didn't invent two-hand tapping, but it blew up when he did it.
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Post by kds on Oct 25, 2021 16:52:41 GMT
Right, the mockumentary had been done, but it wasn't everywhere. It seemed like after Blair Witch, it got more common. Like how Eddie Van Halen didn't invent two-hand tapping, but it blew up when he did it. Ah, gotcha.
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Post by kds on Oct 25, 2021 17:00:53 GMT
Actually, I said earlier that I couldn't think of a movie that scared me when I was a kid.
I was wrong. I just saw a list of the top rated horror movies from the 1990s per Rotten Tomatoes, and Arachnophobia (1990) cracked the list. I've never liked spiders. But, renting Arachnophobia thirty years ago was a horrible mistake. There was a shower scene with a spider that had me taking baths for a good few months after I saw the movie. I could never bring myself to watch the movie a second time.
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Post by The Cincinnati Kid on Oct 26, 2021 23:35:52 GMT
The 90s are my least knowledgeable decade for horror. A lot of the films never really appealed to me. Dracula always seemed boring to me when it used to be aired on AMC all the time, now I can never find it on TV. Speaking of AMC, I finally saw Candyman for the first time last week. I liked how it made me wonder if the Candyman really was real throughout the film.
There were two Halloween films this decade. Halloween 6 (1995) is the final film in the original Laurie Strode/Jamie Loyd storyline. It gets pretty bad reviews, but I enjoy it as Donald Pleasance's last appearance in the series (although there are references and even "new" parts in later films). Halloween H20 (1998) retcons 4-6 as Michael follows Laurie out to California. Fans usually regard it as a decent film ranked somewhere in the middle of the now 12 films.
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Post by kds on Oct 27, 2021 12:32:36 GMT
The 90s are my least knowledgeable decade for horror. A lot of the films never really appealed to me. Dracula always seemed boring to me when it used to be aired on AMC all the time, now I can never find it on TV. Speaking of AMC, I finally saw Candyman for the first time last week. I liked how it made me wonder if the Candyman really was real throughout the film. There were two Halloween films this decade. Halloween 6 (1995) is the final film in the original Laurie Strode/Jamie Loyd storyline. It gets pretty bad reviews, but I enjoy it as Donald Pleasance's last appearance in the series (although there are references and even "new" parts in later films). Halloween H20 (1998) retcons 4-6 as Michael follows Laurie out to California. Fans usually regard it as a decent film ranked somewhere in the middle of the now 12 films. Despite being a big Drac fan, I had zero interest at the time the Coppola movie was released. The trailer, showing an old man with weird hair just did not appeal to me at all. Where was the cape? Where is the slicked back black hair? It wasn't until I finally read the book in my 20s that I really had any interest in watching the movie. And, as I did often in the 2000s in October, used my Best Buy Reward Zone points to buy that, and a few other, DVDs. Halloween 6 is probably my least favorite of the original run of movies, still not had though. I think Halloween took a noticeable drop after Halloween 4. I thought H20 was a pretty lame attempt to jump on the new wave of slasher bandwagon, and I really didn't care for it. That's actually the last Halloween movie from the original franchise that I've seen, opting to skip Halloween Resurrection. I'll probably check out the new ones at some point, but I'm in no real hurry.
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Post by kds on Oct 27, 2021 18:32:52 GMT
2000s
There seemed to be an explosion with horror in the 2000s, with the uprising of new studios and new ways to distribute movies.
Although, there probably weren't quite as many ideas as there were outlets, so the 2000s saw an increase in remakes. Some are quite good. This may sound blasphemous, I think the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead actually come pretty close to matching their originals.
Speaking of Dawn of the Dead, that was part of the resurrection of the zombie subgenre in the 2000s, which was kickstarted by the surprise 2002 UK hit 28 Days Later. Following on the heals of this and Dawn of the Dead '04 was the brilliant horror comedy Shaun of the Dead. George Romero even brought back his dormant Dead series with 2005's Land of the Dead.
Speaking of zombies, musician Rob Zombie House of 1000 Corpses in 2003. The movie isn't really original, or even that suspenseful, but it's a really fun tribute to 70s horror. The 2005 sequel The Devil's Rejects has a much more serious tone, and had a grittier feel. It's probably the better movie, but for escapist entertain, I usually return to House.
The early 00s movies like the zombie movies and the Zombie movie pushed the boundaries of blood and gore in horror. Those boundaries would be pushed in the 2004 movie Saw, a pretty smart horror movie that introduced Jigsaw, one of the 21st century's first horror icons. Unfortunately, the movie became a franchise that would devolve into an overly serious version of Final Destination. And, the Saw series are generally credited (or blamed) for the rise of what's cynically referred to as "torture porn." Other movies like Hostel would follow.
Oddly enough, Saw's director, James Wan, would distance himself from the gore / "torture porn" aspect of horror and release some very effective supernatural horror movies, like the vastly underrated Dead Silence (2007). More would follow in the 2010s.
The 2000s was actually a pretty good decade for supernatural horror. The 2002 US remake of The Ring is just as effective as the Japanese version. From a personal perspective, there's an early scare in the movie that's actually a cutaway jump scare, and it scared the shit out of me when I saw it in theaters. I'm a little surprised this technique isn't used more. But, The Ring is more than jump scares, there's a feeling of dread that exists for the length of the movie. The 2001 Japanese horror movie Ju-On would get a US remake in 2004's The Grudge. Both are pretty creepy movies.
One of my favorite ghost movies from the 2000s is a direct to video movie called The Gravedancers (2006). It builds suspense through the movie, and while the ending comes up a little short (they got a little CGI crazy at the end), the movie itself is quite good.
Another movie would prove that "direct to video" isn't always a negative. Produced in 2007, and not released until 2009, Trick R Treat is (in my opinion) the ultimate Halloween horror movie. It's an anthology movie with four interwoven stories that occur on Halloween night. It's got everything you'd want in a Halloween movie - trick r treating, urban legends, ghost stories, Jack O Lanterns, young girls in skimpy costumes (wait, what?), and other things that go bump in the night. The movie just oozes Halloween, even more so than Carpenter's 1978 movie of the same name. I don't often get a lot of chances to watch horror movies in October like I used to, but Trick R Treat always get a watch. The 82 minute runtime helps.
EDIT re Trick R Treat, the movie was released on DVD in 2009, but was screened at various horror film festivals in 2007 and 2008.
But, while it took a few years to really catch on, it's gained quite a following.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 27, 2021 18:50:24 GMT
Another pop-in from the movie-ignorant me, to comment on one of these subgenres of horror movies that had a HUGE impact on pop culture in general: zombies.
I didn't, and still don't quite, get it. But as you know, zombies went from just one of many "monsters" of horror movies to seemingly all over the place. And they weren't just movies, but events like "zombie pub crawls" started popping up by the mid-00s. And somehow, there are still zombie-themed things quite regularly. I have heard it said that zombie themes become popular when times are uncertain, so things like 9/11, the 2008-09 economic crash, etc., might be relevant to the boost. But I don't know ... maybe the undead are just an interesting idea for people of every era.
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Post by kds on Oct 27, 2021 19:05:26 GMT
Another pop-in from the movie-ignorant me, to comment on one of these subgenres of horror movies that had a HUGE impact on pop culture in general: zombies.
I didn't, and still don't quite, get it. But as you know, zombies went from just one of many "monsters" of horror movies to seemingly all over the place. And they weren't just movies, but events like "zombie pub crawls" started popping up by the mid-00s. And somehow, there are still zombie-themed things quite regularly. I have heard it said that zombie themes become popular when times are uncertain, so things like 9/11, the 2008-09 economic crash, etc., might be relevant to the boost. But I don't know ... maybe the undead are just an interesting idea for people of every era.
I know that Romero's zombie movies were written as a reflection of their respective times. Growing up, I used to think zombies were just silly movies with animated corpses, and really didn't have any interest in them until I was persuaded by some friends to go see the Dawn of the Dead remake. But, there seem to be more layers. I think the zombies in pop culture peaked at the beginning of the following decade, with The Walking Dead TV show. Backtracking a tad, I want to go back to the 1990s for a moment. Rob Zombie was not the first musician to write a horror movie. In 1998, the Dee Snider written Strangeland followed a villain played by Snider who used chat rooms to lure victims to his lair. It was really the first horror movie to use the internet as a plot point.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Oct 27, 2021 19:32:22 GMT
Speaking of zombies, musician Rob Zombie House of 1000 Corpses in 2003. The movie isn't really original, or even that suspenseful, but it's a really fun tribute to 70s horror. The 2005 sequel The Devil's Rejects has a much more serious tone, and had a grittier feel. It's probably the better movie, but for escapist entertain, I usually return to House. Those Rob Zombie movies are sick, but I gotta admit, whenever I come across one on cable TV, I usually stop and watch it. Sid Haig...what a character actor.
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Post by kds on Oct 27, 2021 19:41:05 GMT
Speaking of zombies, musician Rob Zombie House of 1000 Corpses in 2003. The movie isn't really original, or even that suspenseful, but it's a really fun tribute to 70s horror. The 2005 sequel The Devil's Rejects has a much more serious tone, and had a grittier feel. It's probably the better movie, but for escapist entertain, I usually return to House. Those Rob Zombie movies are sick, but I gotta admit, whenever I come across one on cable TV, I usually stop and watch it. Sid Haig...what a character actor.
Captain Spaulding was such a great character in those movies. It's a shame that Rob didn't decide to make a third movie sooner, as Sid was in very poor health by the time 3 From Hell (2019) went into production. He's included in the movie, but his role had to be cut short, and he passed before the movie was released.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Oct 27, 2021 20:18:14 GMT
Just a couple more things on Sid Haig...I checked out Wikipedia and found out that Sid was 6'4''; I never realized he was that tall. Also, Sid was a drummer with a group called The T-Birds who had a No. 4 hit with "Full House" in 1958.
This is a photo of Sid's last day on the set of 3 From Hell. Obviously he was in poor health:
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