My Top 25 Horror/Monster Films, Part I (25 - 21)

There are two types of people out there: those who absolutely loathe horror and those that can’t get enough of them; I definitely fall in the latter category as a good portion of my movie collection is of the horror genre.  If you ask any person what their top ten horror films are, you would probably get a different list each time. I have done better, rather than list my top ten horror films; I have opted instead to list my top 25 horror films.  I initially was going to do a top ten list, but the more I thought of it, the more I realized that there were so many to choose form that ten just would not do. This is by no means a “GREATEST” horror films list; in fact many films on this list are more guilty pleasures than they are high quality film making  When all is said and done movies are a form of entertainment, and each of these titles are entertaining in their own sick and twisted ways. I’m a big fan of old school horror and it’s fairly apparent when you read this list; all the films were made prior to 1990. It’s not to say that there hasn't been any worthwhile horror films in the last twenty years, it’s just that very few have been memorable.  Scream is the exception, but I find it tad bit overrated. It got rave reviews by the critics for the way it “sent up” the horror genre, but it was hardly the first film to do so. Practically every a decade has a horror film parodies the conventions of the time. The little loved The Mummy’s Ghost has a scene in which a security guard is listening to a horror program on the radio, unaware that it is foreshadowing his soon to be demise.

25. Friday the 13^th, Part 2 (1981)

Dir: Steve Miner
Running Time: 87 min.

The Friday the 13^th series is one of the most critically maligned franchises in the history of cinema and justifiably so.  They are horribly contrived, extremely unoriginal in their execution, and often are cluttered with one dimensional characters that have no narrative function, except to be killed in many horrible and gruesome ways. Yet, despite all this, I absolutely love the first four Friday the 13^th films. My inner critic tells me this is wrong, yet I enjoy them nonetheless.  They are horror at its most basic: Teenagers isolated in the woods being stalked by an ax wielding maniac. It doesn't get any simpler than that and the first four Friday the 13^th films exploit this to great effect. The later entries tended to be ridiculously over the top with Jason becoming more super human as the series progressed.

  Part 2 is my favorite for a few reasons:

1)      Jason, despite his apparent resurrection from the dead, is kind of clumsy. It brings an air of realism to the series that the later films lack and it doesn't seem a mismatch when the heroine confronts him face to face at the film’s end. 

2)      Best heroine in the series.   Amy Steel (as Ginny) is far and away my favorite leading lady in the entire series. The character of Ginny is a fairly intelligent character that uses her field of study (child psychiatry) to bring down Jason. However, she also has a nice sense of humor about her, especially at the beginning when she shows up her boyfriend in front of the other camp counselors.  She’s easy to like.

3)      It strays from the norm in regards to the character of Ted (Stu Charno). Ted takes delight in playing pranks on the other counselors, which means that he is ripe for the picking. In the first Friday and the third, the prankster of the group dies fairly early in the proceeding. You spend the entire film wondering how Ted is going to get his…..BUT HE SURVIVES. Ted and other counselors go to the bar and are spared being massacred. It’s a rather nice, unexpected touch.

24. The Exorcist (1973) 

Dir: William Friedkin
Running Time: 123 min.

The Exorcist is not nearly as high on my list as it used to be; possibly because as I've gotten older it just doesn't have the same impact it did when I was a teenager.  In fact, I find the find the first half of the film far more compelling than the second half, due to its understated nature. The film is very methodical in how it slowly rules out the scientific as embraces the supernatural for Regan’s (Linda Blair) condition. In a way it’s a shame that the subtleties of the first half eventually give way to the fire and brimstone of the second, because ambiguous route might have the served the story better. Is Regan really possessed? Or is it in her mind? Are the priests really giving her an exorcism? Or is it all the power of suggestion? Still, it’s a genuinely well made film and the acting is top notch, especially Ellen Burstyn as Regan’s suffering mom.  The Exorcist is what I liked to call an “aftershock” horror film; it’s not necessarily scary while watching it, but it stays with you for quite some time. I remember a week I had watched it for the first time, I was alone in the house and kept thinking of the possessed Regan. Every time I heard a creak in the house I jumped. When I had to go upstairs to my room, I grabbed the family dog for protection. At the top of the stairs was the attic door and I was convinced something would jump out and grab me. 

23. Alien (1979) 

Dir: Ridley Scott
Running Time: 117 min.

Aliens takes “the old dark house” premise and transports it to space. There’s really nothing at all original about Alien, the premise is extremely reminiscent of the underrated 50s thriller It! The Terror From Beyond Space. However, this is one case where the “rip off” is a vast improvement over the original source.  For one thing, the production design of Alien vastly trumps It! The Terror From Beyond Space.  This is largely due to the fact that Alien had a fairly decent sized budget, while It! was bogged down by an extremely low budget.  The creature in Alien is genuinely frightening, while the creature in It! is rather silly looking when seen in full light (the filmmaker Edward L. Cahn, for the most part, does an effective job handling the creature by either shooting in shadows, or only giving us quick glimpses of it). The chest bursting sequence still packs wallop, despite the many sequels and imitations that have followed.

22. Black Sabbath (1963)

Dir: Mario Bava
Running Time: 92 min.

(SPOILERS)
Mario Bava is one of the most influential horror directors in cinema history, he essentially created the slasher film with the wonderfully ridiculous Bay of Blood, while Black Sunday is probably the definitive “witch” movie.  However, I prefer Black Sabbath, because it’s an anthology of stories that allows Bava to exercise his style and it features the great Boris Karloff, who does double duty as the narrator of the film and stars in the second story “The Wurdalak,” in which he plays a vampire.  

It should be noted that the American version complete reshuffles the order of the stories and completely alters the narrative of “The Telephone,” dropping the lesbian subtext in favor of a more supernatural explanation.  In “The Telephone” a beautiful woman receives threatening phone calls supposedly from her former boyfriend, who is behind bars. However, it is revealed an elaborate ruse by her jilted lady friend, Mary, who essentially uses the threatening calls as a way to get back together with Rosy.  After getting the phone calls, Rosy calls Mary and has her spend the night, because she doesn't feel safe alone.  The next morning Mary writes Rosy a letter confessing her guilt, only (HERE’S THE TWIST) to be strangled by Rosy's crazy ex-boyfriend, who has just escaped from prison.  The American version reedits the story so the audience never sees the reveal that it is Mary making the phone calls. Also, instead writing a confession at the end, Mary is seen writing a note that says she’s going to help Rosy find a good doctor. It deflates any tension that actually existed in the story, especially in one scene where Mary is seen brandishing a knife and looks like she's going to use it on Rosy. In the America version, it  is supposedly the ghost of Rosy's ex-boyfriend that strangles Mary, which makes little sense, because he gets killed at the end of the story. Is it possible to kill a ghost?  The American version also makes the mistakes of putting the scariest story “The Drop of Water” first, while in the Italian version is serves as a fitting climax to the movie, as each story tops the previous one.  “The Drop of Water” concerns the story of a nurse that is haunted by the corpse of a countess whose ring she has stolen. 

21. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Dir: Wes Craven
Running Time: 92 min.
The thing that strikes me about the first A Nightmare on Elm Street is that Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is a genuinely scary villain. This largely due to the fact that Wes Craven wisely keeps Freddy in the shadows or never allows the audience to get a good look at him until the ending of the film.  This may seem trivial, after all, the villain in a horror film is supposed to be scary, so why make a big deal out of it? Well, mainly because as the series progressed Freddy went from being the villain of the piece to the wise cracking hero.  No longer did the audiences care about the fate of the teenagers, but rather they went to see whatever crazy antics Freddy had in store for them…..and laughed along with him. By the time of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, he ceased being scary and was largely the comic relief. The absolute nadir of the series was when Freddy was shown straddling a broom, shouting, “I’ll get you my pretty!” Freddy’s Dead desperately tries to be funny, but it’s just sad reminder of how far the series had fallen.