January 2009

I am just going to come out and say it that I enjoy The Others far more than I do The Sixth Sense. The only reason I feel the need to make this statement is because of the similarity of their shock endings (I didn't give anything away did I?) and the relative closeness of their release dates. Now, don't get me wrong, I like The Sixth Sense, I like it a lot, but The Others is by far a much deeper and thoughtful film and in my mind, a whole lot creepier. For me, it was refreshing to see a ghost story done with such complexity in the aftermath of films such as The Haunting and The House On Haunted Hill, remakes of classic, innovative films that had been watered down into special effects bonanzas without any real substance.

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This entire film seems to be posing us a question, an ugly, disturbing question: If what you are seeing is so terrible, if it is so alarmingly unpleasant, then why do you not look away? Why do you keep watching as these abhorrent things continue to happen? The answer, as we may loathe to find, is simple: Because these things, disagreeable though they may be to our upstanding morality, are shot so beautifully, bathed in such radiant light and we cannot look away. It is all simply too gorgeous.

That is how to perfectly sum up Mario Bava's creepy Slasher opus Blood and Black Lace, which shows up as number 85 on the list of the '100 Greatest Scary Movies'. It is the pinnacle of the 'Giallo' genre as well as the Slasher genre.

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At last we have come to it, the precursor to all American slasher films and number 87 on our list of the '100 Greatest Scary Movies': Black Christmas. For my money, this is the film that truly defined the genre in North America, mixing together all of the key elements that once were so absorbed in such films: A holiday themed plot, numerous co-eds, an unknown, wraith-like killer with perverse motives and a strong female lead who overcomes everything to do what must be done. Black Christmas was directed by Bob Clark in 1974 and he was enamored with the concept of contrasting such a beautiful and joyous holiday with deadly horror.

There are many interesting and innovative things to love about this film and Clark employed clever techniques of camera and sound to convey to us violence and horror in ways that were surprisingly restrained. Every time the killer moves, we become him, the camera swaying back and forth like a lumbering madman.

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American films have rarely been this creepy and odd. Alice, Sweet Alice is number 89 on the list of the '100 Greatest Scary Movies' and I hold the opinion that it should have been ranked much higher. Everything about it, from its ominous use of religious imagery to its strange otherworldly score, is thoroughly unsettling. It feels very much like something Mario Bava or Dario Argento would have been attached to and I do not think I am going out on a limb when I say it owes quite a bit to the Italian 'Giallo' films.

Alice, Sweet Alice is all about mood and suspicion and in true 'Giallo' fashion, director Alfred Sole to a great degree utilized visual motifs to achieve this.

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Bad news for fans of David Fincher's darker work: It seems his next project was going to be an adaptation of a graphic novel called "Torso," but The Hollywood Reporter reports that Paramount let the rights slip for one reason or another. "Torso" follows Eliot Ness as he tracks down a killer dubbed 'The Torso Killer.' I would have been really excited to see this. Se7en has to be one of the most masterfully artistic serial killer films of all time and I would much like to see Fincher's take on this. Supposedly, a script has been written by Ehren Kruger, but until Paramount ponies up, the project will remain in the development stages only.


Now here is something interesting: Bill Hader just revealed that Comedy Guru, Judd Apatow encouraged him to write a screenplay for a 'Slasher Film.' An odd turn don't you think?

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Perhaps it is the presumed innocence, that children should not yet be so callous, but there is something far creepier and unsettling about an evil child. It is a scary thought to think of children to cold, so calculating, and quite powerful enough to subvert to subvert out very will. Village of the Damned is an interesting film, one of the first in the 'evil child' genre and it shows up as number 92 on the list of the '100 Greatest Scary Movies'. I first saw the film on television when I was a child; a local station would show scary movies from the 50's and 60's every Saturday morning right after the marathon of cartoons. Usually the fare would be monster movies, but every so often it would be something far deeper.

Science-Fiction and Horror involving children has always intrigued me; terror through the eyes of a child is always both innocent and surreal and it is amazing to watch how society collapses when the livelihood of their future is corrupted so absolutely.

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When I committed myself to watching all of the films on the list of the '100 Greatest Scary Movies', I knew that I would inevitably come across more than a couple that I did not care for. Pacific Heights is one of those films. I never much cared for the genre that I like to call 'Yuppie Horror' and even such films that are considered great, still fall short of a high opinion by me. But I set out on this project and I couldn't stray from it this early in the game, so in went Pacific Heights, number 94 on the list.

And really? 94? This movie ranks higher than 28 Days Later? That was a savage tome chronicling the end of the world, this is just a Yuppie couple that makes some stupid choices and pay for it. I'm surprised this movie is even on this list, let alone beating out 28 Days Later, but then again, isn't that what is great about art?

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I may be alone in this sentiment and possibly all who differ in opinion will think I am crazy, but I find Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 'revenge of nature' film The Birds to be rather dull. No, scratch that. It is a fine film for what it is and it is genuinely scary; to call it dull is to do it an injustice and the film is iconic, there is no doubt about that. Is there really anyone who is not familiar with the unsettling scene in which the birds amass on the playground? I think not. However, after Hitchcock's long streak of psychological thriller and chilling horror, I find what is essentially a monster movie to be somewhat under whelming. It is an odd thing for me to say because I normally praise the artistic branching of directors, but this film feels beneath the great Hitchcock. It shows up at the rank of 96 on the list of '100 Greatest Scary Movies' and don't get me wrong, it is a marvel of special effects and as a standalone film, it is very suspenseful.

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Coming in at number 98 on the list of the '100 Greatest Scary Movies' is a bit of a controversial pick: Lucio Fulci's seminal gore-fest, Zombie. Released in 1979, Zombie was originally released as Zombi 2 in attempt to cash in on the phenomena of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead which was released in Europe under the title of Zombi. The film, however, had nothing to do with the mythos created by Romero for his Dead films and most recognize it now as a stand-alone film with its own merits and faults.

Reaction to movie by the film community at large was largely negative, mostly because of the excessive gore and violence that permeates it, which was considerable, even for a film within the zombie film genre. It was seen as mostly a rip-off of Romero in general and for the most part cast aside.

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The movie that starts off the exploration of the supposed '100 Greatest Scary Movies' is Danny Boyle's 2002 post-apocalyptic masterpiece, 28 Days Later. Right off the bat I would say that a mere rank of 100 is far too low for this film, especially in light of many of the other entries. As I've said before, the ranking system for such lists becomes rather arbitrary as they increase in girth but still, this movie was one of the scariest movies I had ever seen.

28 Days Later presents to us humanity at its most savage. It both shows us the perils of scientifically delving into matters we have little right to and presents to us the latent savagery we as humans constantly insist on indulging in. The enemy in 28 Days Later , after all, is little more than mankind itself; twisted and perverted though it may be.

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