Horror flicks from the good ol’ days reign supreme

    To be perfectly honest, I have no clue why we love to be scared by movies. Horror films don’t offer the adrenaline rush that your gun-toting action movies, or have the brain percolating effects of your modern drama. They don’t offer the nuzzles of a loved one like romances do, and they don’t seek the intensity of your everyday thriller. In its purest form, horror does the very opposite of what we want any film to do to us: they make our hair stand on end and turn our bowels inside-out.
    This is why the modern horror film finds itself diluted by more marketable genres like action (“Resident Evil,” “Dawn of the Dead” 2004) and suspense (“The Grudge,” “The Sixth Sense”) rather than being injected into the veins of the unwitting public unfiltered. This makes complete sense to me because the majority of the public are not sadists. But then, of course, there are people like me.
    Where do we find the good stuff? Where do we find the undistilled terror that reaches into our throats through our eyes and twists our lungs so we can’t breathe? What are the dark allies of the horror genre behind those films by directors that see horror as a sexual thing (I’m looking at you, Eli Roth) or a new way to be hip (Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez)? What films are actually scary?
    Do you really want to know?
    Stephen King calls true horror “rehearsals for our own death” so if you’re going to start looking in the dark corners of the horror world there is no better place to start than George Romero’s quadruple ode to death which include Night of the “Living Dead” (1968), “Dawn of the Dead” (1979), “Day of the Dead” (1985), and “Land of the Dead” (2005). You might also want to take a peak down the side ally with his “Night of the Living Dead” remake in 1990. Given that the dead returning to life is the oldest gothic device known to man (thanks a bunch, Gilgamesh), Romero deserves considerable props for reanimating the old chestnut. Even in his less distinguished efforts, “Day and Land,” Romero explores the death of society as it relates to racial injustice, commercialism and politics. But most importantly, these are the goriest films ever made, with so much flesh being ripped open and blood-wrenched cannibalism that only we puritans of horror can see through to its belied subtext. The rest of you, just cover your eyes and wait for the screaming to stop. 
    To seek less mutilating films in favor of focus on the mental anguish of death, look to Adrian Lynn’s “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990) about a man who sees terrible demons after facing the horrors of Vietnam. Mary Lambert and Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” (1989) explores a New England burial ground that can bring your dead loved ones back to you. Wes Craven’s “The Serpent and the Rainbow” (1988) is based on the true case of an anthropologist who discovers a Haitian medicine surrounded by voodoo.  In these movies you’ll find the ghosts of sisters with spinal meningitis, horned demons that rape lovers, and frightfully realistic depictions of people being buried alive.
    There are films which explore the nature of evil as an independent entity. William Friedkin’s vision of William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” (1973) is widely regarded as the greatest horror film of all time. Its depiction of the slow deterioration of a young girl who is possessed by the devil lends focus to the emotional anguish of the mother who must bare witness. Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980) is also unflinching in its portrayal of a loving father who turns on his family as the demons of a haunted hotel drive him insane. John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982) documents the destruction of a tight knit group of Antarctic scientists who are assimilated from the inside out by an alien presence.  
    Just as the hedge maze twists and turns for the young boy, Danny, in the final sequence of “The Shining”, so does it for you if you decide to take these first steps into the macabre world of horror films. Many paths you’ll find are dead ends with a range so broad. Be aware of the assimilated like “Hostel” (2005) and “House of 1000 Corpses” (2003).   Do not get lost down Asian-Movie-Mania Lane (“The Grudge,” “The Ring II”), and avoid any and all remakes if you can. But most of all, when you look up unexpectedly and you should happen to find the real-deal: try not to panic. Remember, these are only the most horrifying films of all time.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 1 2007. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry