And I have begun a month long quest to watch at least one horror movie a day. So far I have watched:
The Scream Trilogy
The Descent
Dog Soldiers
The Howling
I am planning on watching the following films:
The Thing
Suspiria
Dracula (the one with Bela Lugosi)
Alien
Friday the 13th parts 1-3
A Nightmare on Elm Street
House on Haunted Hill (with Vincent Price)
Hatchet
The Shining
Sleepaway Camp
Se7en
Now I need everyone else's help! Give me horror films I should spend the month watching! I want lots of different movies, slashers, vampire flicks, psychological, w/e.
On Halloween I will be watching both Halloween and Halloween II to cap the month off.
So what are people's suggestions?
If you can watch the original b/w film of
The Haunting alone at night in a dark room without ever turning to check if something is creeping up on you, then you're a lot braver than me. That is absolutely the scariest movie I've ever seen, and there's not a monster in sight! Another favorite from my childhood that used to give me nightmares was
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Even though you
know Costello isn't about to get killed as the star of a comedy, the scene where Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman follows the chubby comic through a seemingly empty apartment is one of the most suspenseful bits ever filmed.
My third pick from my youth is the original
The Thing From Another Planet, aka
The Thing. The script has some really snappy dialogue that sounds like real conversation and there are surprisingly good performances from an ensemble that seldom got beyond B movies. With James Arness making his movie debut in the title role. There's one scene when an increasingly noisy geiger counter leads the group of soliders and scientists searching for the alien monster to a large wooden bin. What happens when they fling open that bin triggered a popcorn blizzard when about 200 of us pre-teens jumped with excitement back in the 1950s,
I've recently seen on TV a series of some fun horror films from the '50s--
The Creature from the Black Lagoon (originally shot in 3D),
Return of the Creature, and
The Creature Walks Among Us. The quality of the filmscripts taper off progressively through the series, but they're interesting to watch, especially in series.
Another fun film from the 1950s is
Them! with Academy Award-winner James Whitmore and James Arness fighting giant ants. There's also an early appearance of Fess Parker. Reminds me in some ways as a serious precursor to the much later and more comic encounter with underground lifeforms in
Tremors. Reba McIntire and Michael Gross were a hoot in the original film.
A fun offbeat Sci-Fi flick is
It Came From Outer Space. And some of the mid-night movie fare from the 1950s included Michael Landon in
I Was a Teenage Werewolf. That was followed by a forgettable cast in
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. A much better teen horror midnight show was the original
The Blob with Steve McQueen in his first starring role on the Big Screen.
For more recent sci-fi, I like
Mars Attacks!