I realize it's still early in the month, but I just love Halloween. It's always been my favorite holiday. (is it classified as a holiday? If not, what is it exactly? People don't get the day off from work, or school, so I'm thinking no. They should, though.) I get so excited every year, looking at the costumes and decorations, and now that I'm a mother, I also get to live vicariously through my daughter, helping her pick out her costume (what does she want to be this year, I asked her? Her response? Does she want to be a fairy princess, a ballerina, some generic cartoon character? Nope, she wants to be a vampire. That's my girl.)
One of the ways I celebrate the season, is by watching horror movies. I do this all year round, but during October, it's easier, and somehow more socially acceptable to watch them than it is to watch them at, say, Christmas time. So, taking my love of horror movies, AND my well-known love of lists into account, last night I did some searching for a LIST of HORROR MOVIES. I'm so predictable.
It's hard to find a decent list of horror films. Even Wikipedia, who has a list of what is supposed to be every horror movie ever made, is woefully incomplete. Then, you have the ones that some random so-and-so puts together, which is what I'm posting today. (I might make up my own at some point this month-believe me, you haven't seen the last horror/Halloween related post from me.)
This list is kind of..Blah. There's 100 movies on it, and an inordinate amount of them are sequels. I'm also thinking this isn't in order of what's scariest: Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer comes in at #100, and that movie gave me the heebie-jeebies more than any other movie on this list. Not too many foreign horror films made the cut (wherefore art thou, Cannibal Holocaust?) and the top 20, which is what I'm posting, is like if the AFI made a list of horror movies.
Why am I posting a list that I don't really agree with? Oh people, one of the great things about a list, is picking it apart, and mocking the parentage of the person who made the list. Have I taught you nothing?
20. Child's Play (Pffffffffft!)
19. Alien (Is this considered a horror movie? It's a great movie, don't get me wrong, but where exactly does the line fall between horror and science fiction?)
18. Dead Alive (Features one of the best lines in film history:"I KICK ASS FOR THE LORD!")
17. Friday the 13th 2 (Ok, help me out here: In the first one, the killer turned out to be Mrs. Vorhees, all dressed up for an Indigo Girls concert, and avenging her dead son. This is the one where Jason is actually introduced. Was he supposed to have died, or did he live, and he just grew up fending for himself in the woods around Crystal Lake? I'm still a little foggy on that.)
16. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (That's the one where Heather Langenkamp plays herself, correct? S'okay, I guess. Different.)
15. Evil Dead 2 Dead by Dawn (OK, a little back story here: I love the Evil Dead series, with all my heart. I lap up any information about it as though it were candy and heroin, all mixed together. I even have a semi-crush on Sam Raimi. I'm a big nerd, yes, I don't care. This is my favorite of the three films. Is it scary? NO.)
14. Scream 2 (I don't think I even REMEMBER Scream 2. I know I watched it, but other than that, I couldn't tell you anything about it.)
13. Halloween 2 (Want a good time? Watch this while you're in the hospital.)
12. Dawn of the Dead (I've wracked my brain, and I don't think I've ever actually seen this. I saw the remake, but I never got around to this one. I'm filled with shame.)
11. Evil Dead (I've covered this. But I will add, that the first time I TRIED to watch this one, at the whopping age of 8 years old, it did scare the bejesus out of me. I finally gave it another try at age 16. It's gory, but not as scary as I'd made it out to be in my mind. Now I watch it at least three times a year.)
10. Hellraiser (I hated all the characters in Hellraiser, and it tickled me when Pinhead eviscerated them. I have anger issues.)
9. The Shining (I love the Shining. It's claustrophobic, and isolated, and it's also set in a cold location. For some reason, those three things are very unsettling to me. Plus, little Danny is cute, and I didn't have the urge to smack him, which is a rarity for me when I see kids in movies.)
8. Night of the Living Dead (I ♥ Johnny)
7. The Exorcist (I once started watching the Exorcist one morning before school, and I stayed home just to finish it. It's a good movie, but it didn't really frighten me. HOWEVER, when they re-released it with added footage, the scene of Regan doing that back-bend walk thing down the stairs was very....UPSETTING.)
6. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (I. Hate. Franklin. To this day. If I ever met the actor who played him, I would kick him in the nuts. I'm not kidding.)
5. Psycho (Suspense film, not horror. Just try and convince me otherwise.)
4. Friday the 13th (Ah, Kevin Bacon and his reverse tracheotomy. Good times.)
3. Scream (Am I the only person who didn't really like Scream? I just found the whole pop-culture awareness thing really tiresome.)
2. Nightmare on Elm Street (This is another "Scared the shit out of me at the time" movie. I watched this with my cousins when I was in the 4th grade. I slept about 2 hours that night, and I spent the rest of the night watching tv, including Dog Day Afternoon. An odd choice for a kid, but that was me:Odd. It doesn't scare me now, except Johnny Depp's poofy hair; THAT'S a little unnerving.)
1. Halloween (Good movie, scary, and it doesn't have the need to show you everything, great score, too. If you've got a 5 year old nephew, watch it with him-it's a comedy goldmine.)
List-by-some-other-guy-but-reposted-on-the-BMR
2 hours ago
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