A Celebration of Shock-Horror

[Film Student]

My love of horror grows exponentially with each passing day, as does my hatred for fucking major studio-backed PG-13 rated americanized Asian and "psychological thriller" bullshit.   From now on I'm boycotting all remakes and "spook" thrillers on principal (with the possible exception of Alexandre Aja's upcoming "Hills Have Eyes" remake).   That means that Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures is totally out of the picture.

So, in this thread I would like to call out and recognize truly great shock horror.  I'm not talking about studio prestige horror like "The Shining" and "The Exorcist" (although they're great movies), I'm talking about the down-and-dirty shockers that occupy the annals of the mom-and-pop video store shelves.   Movies that take sick pleasure in prosthetic make-up and practical gore effects, movies that want nothing more than to punish the sick audience that pays money to watch.

A few titles that come to mind right off the bat are some Italian movies:  Dario Argento gets a well-deserved-but-obvious shout-out (Suspiria, Deep Red, and Phenomena are my favorites)...  but Lucio Fulci's films really take the cake for me.   "Zombie" and "The Beyond" are sick little flicks that get better with each viewing...   Lamberto Bava's "Demons" is one of the first and best postmodern horror films (members of a sneak preview audience start to turn into demonic zombies as they watch a horror film wherein people turn into demonic zombies; Scream 2 jacked its opening scene from this movie), it's also one of the most beautifully shot and is beyond disgusting...

On the American front, the rape-revenge films "I Spit on Your Grave (AKA 'Day of the Woman')" and "Last House on the Left" are two of the most depraved pieces of celluloid garbage that I've ever had the (mis) fortune of laying eyes on...  

David Durston's "I Drink Your Blood" is ridiculously campy but has a log line that sells itself (rabid, acid-dropping, satan-worshiping, ethnically diverse hippies terrorize and lay waste to whitebread smalltown America... this film could've very well been a Reagan-era PSA).

Any Herschell Gordon Lewis will do ("Blood Feast", "Wizard of Gore" and "2000 Maniacs" are the best, with their animal-entrails-for-human-entrails practical effects), and anybody seen "Last House on Dead End Street"? Supposedly it's so disturbing and realistic that the filmmakers went by pseudonyms and for years people wondered if it was actually a snuff film.

Slasher-wise, the "Sleepaway Camp" trilogy outdoes both the Friday the 13th and the Halloween movies in every respect.  More gore, better make-up, more nudity, better comedy... Skip Michael, Freddy and Jason and watch these instead.  

"Texas Chainsaw 2" doesn't get nearly enough credit; it's more shocking than the first one, but also funnier... it approaches the story from a completely different angle and manages to inject some gender-roles discussion material into the mix.

As far as more contemporary titles go,  I think "Cabin Fever" is the best horror flick of the last fifteen years, but the one that gets me for sheer mean-spirited disgust is "Haute Tension", yet-to-be-released.  This is the first movie that I was actually whimpering at and wondering when it was going to end.  I was curled up in a fetal ball, half-covering my wide eyes on the fourth row of a midnight screening at the Laemmle Sunset 5 with a sold out group of whackos and freaks, and I could hardly take it.  This is one of those movies that would NEVER be made in America... A super-slick, very professional production with top-notch everything (performances, cinematography, editing, sound design, make-up effects), and one of the most relentlessly cruel movies you will ever see.

Upcoming flicks I'm excited about are "Wolf Creek" (if Dimension doesn't pull a "Cursed" and edit it to PG-13), "2001 Maniacs" (I know, I'm breaking my remake rule again, but anyone with the guts to both remake an H.G. Lewis movie AND try to one-up him on depravity gets my vote of confidence), and "Silent Hill" (I hate video game movies, but with Christophe Gans directing and Roger Avary scripting, how bad can it possibly be?)  

Anyhow, that's my sick hat in the ring... time for you all to chime in.

[Film Student]

I see how it is... everyone just ignore me...

[ono]

http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=1274

[Pedro]

http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=1274

you dick

[Film Student]

http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=1274

I'm not talking about studio prestige horror like "The Shining" and "The Exorcist" (although they're great movies), I'm talking about the down-and-dirty shockers that occupy the annals of the mom-and-pop video store shelves