Is our last list of October, which means we're morally and
contractually obligated to drop everything we're doing and focus on horror.
It's just the law, and because we are good upstanding citizens here at CineFix,
here are our picks for the top five horror films of all time.
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Top 5 horror films, let's see, Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Alien, Silence of the Lambs, the 'The Shining' and 'Psycho'.
Throw in 'The Exorcist', 'Halloween', 'Night of the Living Dead',
'Nightmare on Elm Street', 'Friday the 13th', and 'An American Werewolf in
London', and some honorable mentions, and you've got yourself a list.
Whoo, there you have it.
Not our toughest list I've got to say.
It's actually pretty fascinating.
Horror as a genre has an abnormally strong center.
These staples seem almost inarguable.
You look at them and you say, well, that's just about right, couldn't replace
any of those, because the classics here are almost classicker than usual.
So to try and fill a list with anything else,
we'd either have to be willfully dishonest about the classics not being the best or
spend ten minutes of your time rehashing tired praise.
So instead of doing either of those,
we're going to stand by those classics as the best of the best.
But, spend the rest of our time giving you an alternative universe top five horror
film list where we pretend the entire classic canon of horror never existed, and
we get to rewrite it with lesser-known films.
Ready?
Here we go.
First up, we've gotta reestablish the slasher film in our brave new world.
There's no more Freddy, no more Jason, no more Leatherface, but
somebody's gotta murder all these sex-having teens.
But who will step into fill their murderous shoes?
Maybe the masked man of 1979’s 'Tourist Trap' or the vengeful Mr.
Cropsy of 'The Burning'.
Ooh, maybe Bob Clark's genre-defining just below the cusp of classic 'Black
Christmas'?
No, with the slasher film so suddenly gone we have an opportunity to
rewrite the classics with a well-deserving substitute.
The giallo film, the stylish Italian slasher analog that birthed the genre.
And while we can't pick 'Suspiria' because that's surely far too canon to exist in
our new universe, we can pick the very worthwhile 'Blood and Black Lace'.
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Aah!
- As early as 1964, 'Blood and Black Lace' was doing something frighteningly similar
to what was called revolutionary in the 70s and
80s with 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'Friday the 13th', and 'Halloween'.
It's a brilliantly confounding collision of the hyper-colorful,
high-art beauty of fashion with the deep, shadowy, low brow depravity of murder.
As essential an Italian giallo film as there ever was.
A complicated story of the masked murder of scantily-clad
fashion models in an Italian fashion house.
The precocious camera work is an eerie predictor of scares to come.
Its twists and turns of the plot tropes we've grown used to seeing, and
its focus on the brutality of the act of killing itself.
The perfect predictor for
every slasher film to come in a way that makes this an instant classic.
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With Alien out of the picture, we need a sci-fi horror film that will take its time
to slow burn scare the hell out of us.
And it's not going to be 'The Thing'.
Lord knows we lost that one in the metaphorical fire.
Same with 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.
But beyond that, 'Alien' gets hard to replace.
'Event Horizon' gets the scares in space right, and
'Sunshine' absolutely nails the desolate tone.
'Cube' feels like it should get more attention in this universe,
although that's a more apt replacement for 'Saw' than 'Alien'.
And even though 'Under the Skin' has very little in common beyond
an extraterrestrial origin,
we hope it gets some play in this terrifying new world.
No, if we had to replace 'Alien' in the echelons of horror,
we actually think 'The Descent' is the only film that can do it.
(Sound) - Aah!
- Despite the fact that 'The
Descent' takes place in
pretty much the opposite
location as outer space,
it bears a striking
resemblance to Alien.
A group of explorers find themselves out of reach of rescue and
trapped in an enclosed location with an unknown, hyper-violent creature, and
they're whittled down to one in search of survival.
The scares are claustrophobic.
The environment is just as harsh as the monster.
There are smart character dynamics, there are moral quandaries,
there are lies amidst the living.
Both even have utterly captivating sequences staged around a single source of
light, and it's damn good.
'The Descent' is smart and well-shot and ever so scary, filling a niche for
things that go bump in the night from the world beyond.
And a more than venerable enough classic filling some very big shoes.
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In the absence of 'Silence of the Lambs',
we're forced to promote up a serial killer horror from the less-seen ranks.
Something chilling.
Something psychologically complex.
Something that shows us what it's like to look into the eyes of a bad bad man.
Initial candidates for the role might be 'Frailty', of the early oughts, or
the more recent 'I Saw the Devil', out of Korea or maybe even 'Frenzy'.
However, for this slot, our choice is clear.
Without 'Silence' to contend with, 'Henry: Portrait
of a Serial Killer' is probably the scariest movie of its kind.
(Music) - Now wait a minute.
I'm not kidding.
(Music)
- Susie.
Susie.
- Gone here is the confusingly hypnotic charisma of
Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter replaced instead by the cold, sadistic,
and utterly genuine hateful glare of Michael Rooker.
It is terrifying, to be sure.
To the extent that it is the experience of coming face-to-face with true
evil in a way that is rarely presented so thoroughly, and yet simultaneously,
so believably.
It is not enjoyable in any real sense.
It is a harrowing experience with violence presented not as fun spectacle or
set piece, but abruptly and unflinching, but that is where the real fear is.
In a confrontation with the kind of person who might just really up and kill you.
Next up we're replacing the irreplaceable likes of 'The Shining', and
yes we're very, very sad about it.
But how do you replace something as utterly unique as the virtuoso atmospheric
horror of Kubrick's is it or isn't it a ghost story masterpiece?
You might first look at the Polanski-directed 'Repulsion' or
'The Tenant' to see if they've survived the culling.
They're certainly on the cusp.
Next, you might consider a more recent Spanish entry, 'The Orphanage',
for a terrifying mood piece that never really succumbs to cheap scares or
definitive answers.
However, gun to our heads,
our nominee here is going to have to be 'The Innocents'.
Flora.
(Sound)
Flora.
- Somebody's walking in the garden.
- 'The Innocents' is a loose adaptation of James's 'The Turn of the Screw'.
And a brilliant one at that.
Full to the brim with the same kind of gradually accumulating sense of
the uncanny that culminated into an oppressive climax in The Shining.
'The Innocents' replaces the art deco carpeted overlook with the more
traditionally Gothic, and then piles on the creeps.
It follows a new governess as her two young charges begin to
misbehave in the strangest of ways, and as the unusual occurrences stack up,
she becomes sure that they've been possessed by ghosts.
But have they?
The only person who ever sees them is her.
Are the ghosts the threat, or is the governess?
'The Innocents' never allows us to detangle supernatural from delusion,
which is why it gives us the exact same kind of the creeps as 'The Shining'.
(Sound) Last but certainly not least,
we've gotta fill the hole in the horror genre that might be left by a sudden
vanishing of Hitchcock's psychological horror masterpiece 'Psycho'.
In it's place we might recommend 'Psycho II' which would cease to pale in
comparison and get an opportunity to finally shine on its own merits,
despite what would become a very confusing title.
Or 'The Bad Seed', which takes the dysfunctional parent-child
relationship in an equally terrifying direction.
However, for this slot,
we think 'Peeping Tom' could be the new classic we're all looking for.
- Do you know what the most frightening thing in the world is?
It's fear.
So I did something very simple.
Very simple.
- 'Peeping Tom' is pretty much the perfect psycho surrogate.
A mild mannered young man who turns out to be the serial killer?
Check.
An oddly Freudian focus on sexual spectatorship?
Check.
Deeply disturbing parental back story?
Also check.
Hell, they even had the exact same year of release.
But it was initially panned as controversial and perverse,
which prevented it from achieving the ubiquity that it probably deserves.
But it is complex, perceptive, and brilliantly made.
Turning its lens on the audience in the same way the serial killer
does his victims.
And it's also terrifying.
Which is why we think it's one of the best horror films of all time.
On a slightly different timeline.
In an alternate universe, where the, really the best ones don't exist any more.
We covered that up front, I think we're done.
What do you guys think?
Disagree with any of our alternate picks?
Disagree with any of our original picks?
because, phew, you guys are a tough crowd.
Let us know in the comments and you should subscribe to CineFix for more movie lists.