Horror - The best of the best.

The horror genre has been around practically forever - what are the tales of the Medusa in Greek mythology or the tales of the Bothers Grim except stories meant to evoke fear?

Considering all of history, who is it that makes you leave a light on when you go to bed?

For the purpose of this discussion, I'm not considering ultraviolent films such as Saw and The Hostel. These really belong to an offshoot genre. If you disagree, feel free to state why you feel they belong to the horror genre.

In my own opinion, the mid seventies to the early eighties was the best decade for horror. Films such as Alien, The Thing, Hellraiser, The Howling and more (so many more) set a bar which, I think, has yet to be surpassed. Especially given how remakes and sequels have become so commonplace and so awful.

As to the best of all time, I'd give that honor to John Carpenter. The Thing was the first movie to really, really freak me out. Although there are some blemishes on his record (Escape From LA, I'm looking at you), he'll always be the guy who made me believe paranoia is real.

' The Descent' really creeps me out but then I'm claustrphobic so it gets me where I'm vulnerable.

' Ringu' scared the hell out of me as well

Are we speaking of films only? If not, I think the game "Slender: The eight pages" was pretty intense.

As for films, I'd say nothing was (or ever will be) as scary as Jaws, seen at the age of ten, just before the summer.

Night of the living Dead comes to mind.

I am looking forward SO MUCH to John Dies At The End. And This Book Is Full Of Spiders is failing to disappoint.

People often discount literature in terms of horror value, but some books can really get to me in a way that film and video games have not yet. Short stories like I have No Mouth and I Must Scream are absolutely incredible at delivering short bursts of creepiness, as are a number of Neil Gaiman's short stories. In addition one I found to be kind of horrific and definitely very strange is The House of Leaves, which has inspired so many story ideas of mine.

Only two movies I have ever thought were actually creepy: The Exorcist and the Omen. And the Omen I watched when I was about 13 so I'm not sure at all how it'd hold up to watching as an adult.

For some reason, I often can't deal with stuff generally classified as 'horror'—even the quality pieces seem to be going a bit too much for shock value. That said, I very much like a good bit of creepiness—just not necessarily within the official genre.
Old Horror I always find more interesting—they've got a particular sense of disturbing, and never get into the terror for it's own sake field.
Top examples, for me, would be H.P. Lovecraft (of course) and the original film of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Warning: TvTropes link!)

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Originally Posted by Das Platyvark

For some reason, I often can't deal with stuff generally classified as 'horror'—even the quality pieces seem to be going a bit too much for shock value. That said, I very much like a good bit of creepiness—just not necessarily within the official genre.
Old Horror I always find more interesting—they've got a particular sense of disturbing, and never get into the terror for it's own sake field.
Top examples, for me, would be H.P. Lovecraft (of course) and the original film of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Warning: TvTropes link!)

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+1 for Lovecraft.

Also, The Birds. Haven't watched the movie, but the novelette was pretty good, as far as horror goes.

Novels, comics, manga, music, animation, anything that deals with the genre of horror is acceptable.

It's rare that I find a horror novel that's genuinely terrifying though. Some authors are really good at making my skin crawl, others give a good creep factor, but the written word just can't take the place of the sights from say, The Exorcist. I guess I just have trouble visualizing horrific images. :smallconfused:

As for manga, Parasyte really disturbed me, not the images but the story... again with the "Your fiends and family are not who you think they are" plot. Also one of the shorts at the end of Gyo, I think it was titled Holes or something similar.

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Originally Posted by turkishproverb

Night of the living Dead comes to mind.

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When it was originally released, perhaps. Unfortunately I was not privileged enough to see it until after I had seen more modern horror movies. You have to admit that even the remake was tame compared to movies released around the same time.

Dawn of the Dead, unfortunately, is mostly a gore-fest. Though I do have to admit that even my face turned green at a couple of moments during the film when I first saw it, and I have always been pretty well inoculated against gore from having grown up going hunting with my dad and helping to skin, clean, and quarter deer and hogs.

Village of the Damned. The 1960 original. Creepy kids are always creepy.


I'll also admit that "found footage" films like Paranormal Activity (the first one) and The Fourth Kind freaks me out way more than it really should.


There's also a surprising amount of good horror writing on the internet. And I'm not just talking about "creepypasta", or if I am, I mean the really really good kind. The SCP Foundation for instance is a collaborative horror writing site with a few really good stories sprinkled among the more mediocre efforts. I'm not generally affected by horror writing, but some of them are downright spine-chilling.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4821/sc29vp4.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZzhKqCSNjz...0/gammell1.jpg

Stephen Gammell, illustrator of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.
I absolutely could not read that book alone when I discovered it in primary school. We read it aloud when there's a whole bunch of us together.

For me, it was Night of the Living Dead. At the time I didn't realize why it bothered me so much. No I understand it was being stripped of everything that makes you human, and your forced to just consume. I really was scared that I would be the one bitten, and forced to harm my family.

Dawn of the Dead was another one. Not because of the gore. It made me look at what we want out of life, and how meaningless it all is. I mean they got everything they wanted, money, clothes, all the cool toys and stuff. Yet they where forced to stay isolated. Even if they made it out there was no safe place to go live. In the end that was what was most important. To live without fear. To be free.

And here I thought it was just about how to effectively barricade yourself inside a large base, from monsters outside. :smallsmile:

I love that kind of scenario in movies because I've always been fascinated by that kind of games as a child. :smallbiggrin:

(So yes, I loved Aliens.)

Don't forget the great silent films. Phantom of the Opera, Nosferatu, Le Vampir, Call of Cthulhu, Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc...

About once a year I have a visceral nightmare about the ending of From Beyond. I've seen much more sobering, more graphic, more disgusting films, but that's the only one that's actually made me vomit in my own mouth, and I've never gotten rid of the taste.

Definitely recommended.

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I have No Mouth and I Must Scream

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Duuuude, that story got me. It hits one of my greatest personal fears, right on the head.

House of Leaves is also a good one. I read it in a room out in a remote hostel, and all that separated me from the night, the dark and the woods were a few centimetres of glass. Also, the house was full of people, naturally, but I had to cross a large, DARK hallway to get to them.

The Nothing Equation kinda falls into the same category.

Aside from that, Lovecraft and ole Stephen King are always good for horror.

Films, I have to say Ring, the Japanese movie, frightened the hell out of me, but it could just have been the fact that I was younger then. I also vividly remember the "Conjure of Sacrifice"-record from "The Skelleton Key" haunting me. Just the way it was recorded, man

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Originally Posted by The Second

Also one of the shorts at the end of Gyo, I think it was titled Holes or something similar.

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The Enigma of Amigara Fault. Awesome story. Ito's "Uzumaki" is also worth a read. I do love Romero's zombie films, but not because of the on-screen gore. The appeal is in imagining yourself in those situations, dealing with the characters you see. It's all well and good to say you'd know what to do in a zombie apocalypse, but would you really? How would you REALLY react to the dead rising? His films are not about the zombies, but about the survivors, which is where a lot of other Z films kinda fail.

But literature-wise, of course Lovecraft and House of Leaves. Clive Barker as well...check out Mister B. Gone (to be fair, I'd call most of Barker's work dark fantasy rather than horror). Insidious book if ever there was one. Arthur Machen is pretty creepy too, and Thomas Ligotti.

In terms of film a lot of the more traditional stuff doesn't get to me, though there are a few really creepy Japanese films, like A Tale of Two Sisters. As for American horror one of the finest examples, in my opinion, is Halloween. It's much more subtle than many of its detractors give it credit for, and is one of the archetypal slasher films for a reason.

Actually one of my favorite horrors of the past couple of years is Marble Hornets, that is the first 27 or so episodes, the first season. It's on youtube and there are playlists with everything, it's just a really well done real life horror, even if you aren't scared of the Slenderman there is still a lot of good tension and decent mystery.

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Originally Posted by MLai

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http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4821/sc29vp4.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZzhKqCSNjz...0/gammell1.jpg

Stephen Gammell, illustrator of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.
I absolutely could not read that book alone when I discovered it in primary school. We read it aloud when there's a whole bunch of us together.

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Those pictures scared the hell out of me as a child. Couldn't sleep for a week after seeing those and even to day they give me the creeps.



Best horror? Define best.

Personally, for me, it's always about these:

1. The original, black and white, The Haunting. Scares the tar out of you without anything actually happening. The absolute pinnacle of atmospheric scares.

2. Night of the Living Dead. It's not about the zombies, folks.

3. John Carpenter's The Thing and the Hudson Hawk Thing From Another World back to back. Great movies and still so tense that you could imagine the sound of guitar strings snapping under the strain.

4. House on Haunted Hill. The original Vincent Price version. Not because it was particularly scary, mind, but because it was one that terrified me as a child and to this day gives me a guilty little thrill every year.

For movies, I think The Thing sets the standard. The creature is repulsive, but the movie isn't graphically violent and doesn't use jump scares. It's creepy and horrific, but not disgusting or shocking. That's what I expect of horror movies.

Strangely, I think I saw Alien first at 15 or so and I never thought of it as a horror movie until much later when other people kept mentioning it in horror movie discussions. But then, I practically grew up on Star Trek TNG, which has a couple of episodes with somewhat related structures and concept, so I think I watched it as a more dramatic staging of an already familiar story. That might have taken most of the punch out of it.

One of the greatest things, similar to The Thing, was when I started with manga and wanted to check what I have heard, that there do exist actually scary horror manga. And I have to say, yes, Uzumaki is the proof that it does. :smallbiggrin:
That thing is so damn messed up. That's straight out lovecraftian. And even for Japanese standards it's bizare. A remote fishing village where people suddenly start getting obsessed with spirals and weird natural events and accidents with unexplainable spiral patterns occure. And the one kid that got to go to a university in some big city and is on a visit to his family is the only one who notices that the village had always been strange compared to the outside world.

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Originally Posted by Yora

For movies, I think The Thing sets the standard. The creature is repulsive, but the movie isn't graphically violent and doesn't use jump scares. It's creepy and horrific, but not disgusting or shocking. That's what I expect of horror movies.

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You remember a greatly different film than I did. Just take the chest defibrillation scene, for example; it's very gory and very disgusting.

Ok I know it sounds very silly but when i was a little kid i had two nemesis that haunted my dreams: E.T. the extraterrestrial, and Pinocchio.

E.T: i remember i was scared by the glowing finger

Pinocchio: not the novel in itself, but the specifical tv show that aired in Italy in the late seventies. I was terrified by the wooden puppet, especially when he moved and stared at the camera with his empty eyes. This is a footage of the evil puppet. And this is the tv show (in particular the scene at 04:44 when he burns his feet).
Silly kid :smallbiggrin:

Now i'm not particularly scared, because as an adult i can rationalize deep fears and life taught me by experience that weird things don't happen (as a child you have to build this awareness). If I loose my control i find that i am disturbed by puppets (but i like very much stop motion films), mirrors (because they unnaturally show what's behind you), strange and unnatural movements (like samara, and the vhs footage in the ring). They somehow set my alarm to "hey something weird is happening, run for your life" level.

In the Mouth of Madness.

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Originally Posted by Dumbledore lives

People often discount literature in terms of horror value, but some books can really get to me in a way that film and video games have not yet. Short stories like I have No Mouth and I Must Scream are absolutely incredible at delivering short bursts of creepiness, as are a number of Neil Gaiman's short stories. In addition one I found to be kind of horrific and definitely very strange is The House of Leaves, which has inspired so many story ideas of mine.

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Yeah, I think short stories (including short films, and episodic TV shows, for example) are my horror medium of choice. They have to be dense, punchy, and to the point, and are generally obliged to remain ambiguous and unexplained. They also have more room to be truly bizarre, because it's not long enough to have to make sense. I suppose that's why I really enjoy a lot of good (and Hell, even a lot of the mediocre) creepypasta, as well as a lot of Stephen King short story collections, and other horror compilations - I particularly recommend, especially for anyone interested in both horror and sci-fi, the short story anthology World Zero Minus. It has some of my favourite stories, of any kind.

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Originally Posted by JoshL

The Enigma of Amigara Fault. Awesome story. Ito's "Uzumaki" is also worth a read.

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Yesss, I LOVED The Enigma of Amigara Fault and Uzumaki. I was slightly disappointed with the ending of Uzumaki, but I really enjoyed the live-action movie adaptation of it (although I saw the movie before I read the manga, so I may feel differently about it now). If anyone can point me in the direction of similar works, I'd be obliged.

I am, basically, a complete wuss. I jump at nothing, I get squeamish at the slightest bit of gore, and I have to make a trail of turned-on lights on my way to bed or I start creeping myself out. But I can't actually think of that many movies or books that really scared me. Maybe Jaws and Jurassic Park when I was really little, and what little I watched of Cube certainly got to me. I saw The Woman in White (I think it was called...) a few months ago after having it hyped as being incredibly scary, and I came out... slightly disappointed at how not-scared I was (the biggest jump was spoiled by the trailer, which is very annoying).
It used to be that zombies was a guaranteed way to freak me out. Buuuut I guess it's so overused nowadays, that it just doesn't do it - although seeing someone having their guts clawed out does get to me still.
All of this, mind you, doesn't mean I don't really enjoy scary movies and stories, still. I love monster movies, atmospheric and psychological horror, and J/K-horror - and, as I mentioned, horror short stories.

For monster movies, I particularly like... the Alien and Predator franchises, obviously (all of them, except the AvP ones, which were deeply disappointing), The Birds (does that count as a monster movie?), The Host, and Cloverfield. Has anyone watched the prequel/remake of The Thing? I'm curious to see what it's like.
I can't think of many atmospheric/psychological horror movies at the moment... Mostly classics like Cape Fear, and slightly odd ones like One Hour Photo.
A friend and I went on a big J/K-horror kick for a while. Ringu, Tale of Two Sisters, Dark Water, The Eye, The Call... I love all of them. The Call is particularly silly :smallbiggrin: (a girl decapitates herself with her own arm!). I caught the second half of a prequel to Ringu, which I found deeply disturbing - not for the supernatural aspects, but for the human ones. I think, if I watched it properly from the start, that might be enough to properly scare me. But anyway, of that particular genre, I particularly recommend Hansel and Gretel. It was a very weird, "who's the real monster?!" sort of a movie.
Doesn't really fit into any particular category, but one movie I'd particularly like to recommend (especially with Halloween coming up) is Trick'R'Treat. It's sort of 4 or so semi-interlocking Halloweeney stories, each of a different kind. It's pretty funny, quite weird, and very dark. Worth checking out.

Aaaaaand now I wanna watch some horror, but I'm all alone in an empty house so it's probably really not a good idea :I

For inexplicable reasons, I still havn't read Gyo.

I just watched Hansel and Gretel again, and now I'm not even totally sure I'd class it as horror. Does get quite dark towards the end, though.

It seems a lot of people are mentioning The Thing. No surprise there, it is definitely one of the best horror movies ever. Nothing more really needs to be said.

The prequel, which came out around a year ago, was also surprisingly good. Certainly not as good as the first, but that would be all but impossible. Despite the high expectations set forth, it still did pretty well. Honestly, the creature was even creepier in the first, having the most grotesque and disturbing scenes of body horror in any movie ever. Definitely worth seeing.

As for films that actually frightened me, they all seem to be ghost stories. My favorite is probably Ghost Story, a 1981 film with Fred Astaire. This is probably the most frightening movie I've ever watched, although perhaps that's just me. There are images from that movie that will haunt me forever, though.

A more recent film is The Woman in Black, also featuring a vengeful ghost. I personally thought that it was fantastic. It has a great atmosphere in it, and the bleak tone really sets the tone for the scares. The end totally threw me for a loop as well, and the ghost was just terrifying.

Oh, one last one. It turns out Ghost Story isn't the most frightening thing I've ever watched. Ever heard of Kwaidan? It's a Japanese film based on the book by Lafcadio Hearn, and it roughly translates to Strange Things. It is a collection of four short movies, each of them a ghost story. Most of them are based on old Japanese legends and have a good dose of history in them, and they're just fascinating to watch, if not frightening. One of them, however...It's called The Black Hair, and it is by far the most frightening thing I have ever seen. Again, maybe it's just me. But God, that was freaky. It gives me chills just thinking about it.

Oh, and that's just movies. If I included books, my already long post would be twice as big.:smallbiggrin: Maybe some other time.

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Originally Posted by Sneaky Weasel

The prequel, which came out around a year ago, was also surprisingly good. Certainly not as good as the first, but that would be all but impossible. Despite the high expectations set forth, it still did pretty well. Honestly, the creature was even creepier in the first, having the most grotesque and disturbing scenes of body horror in any movie ever. Definitely worth seeing.

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I respectfully disagree. I will first state I went into the film expecting not to like it so that may have colored my opinions slightly, but everyone (10+ people) who was watching it with me dislike it as well. It did a weird thing where is was somewhere between a remake and a prequel. It had a lot of the same set-pieces from the original, but was set in the Norwegian camp, though everyone spoke English making kind of a plot-hole for the original.

The creature was essentially a Necromorph from the Dead Space games. Large, lumbering, and overly reliant on jump scares. It was also made with CGI which just didn't look great, in fact in my opinion it looked worse than the original. There was also a female protagonist who really should have died but didn't because she was a protagonist, the film was obvious about this. Essentially she was cornered in a room with it and she managed to run away, that scene said everything I needed to know about the film.

The whole thing was just unnecessary and added nothing to the original. Of course the original was based on The Thing from Outer Space, so it proved that a remake can be good, it can add and expand on the original but the recent one really did not, and was just more evidence against modern remakes.

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Originally Posted by Serpentine

I just watched Hansel and Gretel again, and now I'm not even totally sure I'd class it as horror. Does get quite dark towards the end, though.

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Difficult to find a movie by that name that is Horror. All I find is about 400 adaptions for children. Which one are you thinking of?

Aw. I just finished This Book Is Full of Spiders.

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It's pretty alright. It's not as unique as John Dies At The End. The villain is ultimately the same, but when the confrontation finally happened it didn't even resolve anything. Not that I expect them to ever be beaten, but the unsatisfactory resolution makes me crave a third book.

John Dies At The End is great comedy/horror. Its sequel is less so, or at least I found it to be less good, but it still works.

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Originally Posted by Eldan

Difficult to find a movie by that name that is Horror. All I find is about 400 adaptions for children. Which one are you thinking of?

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try looking for "Hansel and Gretel korean movie" on YouTube (the subtitles are terrible on the one I eatched, though).

In general I prefer slow, creeping horror to "gotcha" scare tactics.

I find that I've had better luck with Japanese horror films than others for this kind of horror.
Ring was good. Hollywood's remake was significantly less so.
Kakashi was good, and plays to a particular paranoia of mine, i.e. things that aren't alive and should not be moving around coming to life and moving around with murderous intent, inexorably and inevitably.
Much as I love a lot of things about Japan, sometimes I get really skeezed out by the things that have been produced by Japanese media.

Also, zombie movies (yes I'm serious):
Return of the Living Dead is comedic, but also horrific in its way.
Biozombie is a movie out of Hong Kong, also comedic and horrifying.
I consider them horrifying in a similar vein to fridge logic: not so much at the time, but you really get it after it stews for a bit in the back of your mind. For me the horror is seeing what happens to people trying to survive, but ending up losing their humanity anyway. Hope is a delusion, but without it, there's only death to look forward to. And you can keep fighting and running but eventually you'll beg someone to kill you before those things tear you up and/or make you into their latest recruit. Also tip of the hat to The Walking Dead for similar reasons.

For me, the scariest things is when the implied message is "This could happen to you, it's very real".

So for things that keeps me awake at night, Threads.

What would you say are good horror movies/books/something that work without the characters obviously doing stupid things because the writer had no idea how to keep things dangerous in other ways?

Again, I think The Thing is a strong contender. Lots of people are having bad ideas, but at least most of those are rational plans where you can understand why they thought it was the best thing to do.

I always doubted the medium of paper as being effective at horror. I've lots of Stephen King, James Herbert the Dean Koontz here and there and while some were a little creepy, never to the extent that I slept with the light on.

Then some complete (unkind person of questionable parentage) linked me to the Engima of Amigara Fault and I literally could not sleep for a week. :smalleek:

I've always liked creeping horrors, such as Ringu, Ju-On and The Eye. Ringu will always be my "favourite" though, if by favourite I mean "method of combating narcalepsy". Hell, just think about it makes my spine crawl at times.

For this Halloween though, I'm going with something less "scary" and more "awesome" - I'm going to have an Evil Dead marathon. =D

Ah, horror - probably one of my favorite genres. To clarify my post, I think I should say that I like two separate types of horror for distinctly different reasons. The first group consists of things that actually deeply frighten me, and the second is mostly just things which I enjoy because they're darkly atmospheric, although they don't make my skin crawl.

That said, some things from the first group:
"The Color Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft (Wells, man... wells...)
The Ring (I have a long-standing fear of the Children That Aren't Children device)
Event Horizon (The possession angle was what got to me most, I think)
Marble Hornets (The paranoia and sense of inevitable doom is great)

From the second:
Alien (Fantastic, but not skin-crawling)
Most of the rest of Lovecraft
Halloween (Arguably one of the epitomes of slasher horror)
The Shining
Arthur Machen's stories

I'd also like to add The Thing, but I can't seem to settle it into a single category. It has some very creepy things, but I don't know if it's quite as heart-stoppingly terrifying to me as some of the others on the list.

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Originally Posted by the_druid_droid

"The Color Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft

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Look up a german movie called "Die Farbe". It's an adapation of this story.

The Birds.
Good old Cabinet of Doctor Kaligari.

And F. Paul Wilson's Adversary cycle.

A new one: the HP Lovecraft Historical Society has done a black and white adaptation of The Whisperer in the Darkness and it is good. Really good.