Top 25 Favorite Horror Movies Pt. 2
#14 - The Howling
It's a horror film detested by Roger Ebert, so you know it's actually great. To add to Ebert's wrongness, it actually is easily the smartest werewolf film from recent decades, adding in themes of masculinity, psychoanalysis, and nature to the werewolf mythos.
Click to view#13 - The Call of Cthulhu
H.P. Lovecraft has been much adapted, but few of those adaptations really try to capture the spirit of his work. Luckily where Hollywood fails indie directors may succeed. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has hit on a fantastic concept; create films that would come out of an alternate universe where Lovecraft's stories had contemporaneous film adaptations. In that vein we have a silent film adaptation of "The Call of Cthulhu" that's extremely faithful to the source while workin as a strong film in its own right.
#12 - Nosferatu (1922)
This might be blasphemy, and I really don't mean any disrespect to the great Bela Lugosi, but honestly I think I have to prefer Nosferatu, even though it owes its existence to getting around the copyright of the novel "Dracula," to Tod Browning's Dracula. It just has that special quality of atmosphere that the German Expressionists did so well and that few directors since then have been able to recreate. (And Werner Herzog's remake, Nosferatu the Vampyre, is worth watching too.)
#11 - The Curse of Frankenstein
Not only is this one of my favorite Hammer movies, but it's without a doubt my all-time favorite adaptation of the novel "Frankenstein." I can't quite articulate why (although part of it is how the film daftly combines the fantastic nature of what Dr. Frankenstein accomplishes with actual early nineteenth century scientific ideas), but there's just something about an interpretation of the story that portrays the Doctor as complex but outright sociopathic rather than the sympathetic Romantic hero that works, at least with Peter Cushing at the helm.
#10 - Rosemary's Baby
An obvious choice, sure, but honestly as great as The Exorcist is this is my pick for the best film to come out of the late '60s/early '70s horror revival. It just has an understated atmosphere that's sadly been lacking in many horror movies from before and since. Plus, I think the Castevets are among the best horror villains in film history.
#9 - Two Thousand Maniacs!
Ah, the only film to ever awaken my Southern pride...I guess by rights I should find the premise of a town of bloodthirsty Southerners who terrorize and then slaughter any Yankees that come through town for an anniversary celebration kind of offensive, but Two Thousand Maniacs! is odd in that it doesn't quite indulge in stereotype as much as you think it would, at least in my opinion. Plus (spoiler!) the idea of an entire town of ghosts continue to ritualistically enact rituals of revenge for wartime atrocities decades after the last participants in the war have died is a very good idea for a horror story, not to mention an excellent metaphor for the neo-Confederate movement.
#8 - The Stepford Wives
If it's a shame that this movie is out of print (at least last I checked), then it's a crime against humanity that it was remade as a comedy. One of only a few horror movies that can be described as unequivocally feminist (and not in a self-consciously ironic Jennifer's Body way either), The Stepford Wives is all about men achieving their fantasy of replacing their real wives with their circa 1950 ideals. The real horror isn't in the fact that these husbands are going all Invasion of the Body Snatchers on their own wives, but that they prefer docile, servile drones to the smart and ambitious women they actually married. Maybe the fact that this film was remade as a comedy says something about our own times.
Linked to because the no embed code on YouTube is stupid and pointless!
#7 - Salem's Lot (1979)
One of the better Stephen King novels out there, it also spawned one of the better film/TV adaptations. It presents the original and what I think is the best interpretation of vampire mythos, as animalistic predators who disguise themselves under a very thin veneer of humanity. Personally I think a town-wide invasion by these vampires is much more terrifying than a similar invasion by Romeronian zombies (well, an invasion by Twilight-style vampires is really terrifying, but for different reasons). Be sure to watch the full version originally released on TV and not the heavily cut theatrical release.
#6 - The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Vincent Price as a supervillain-esque killer who murders people based on Old Testament plagues and plays a psychedelic organ...do I have to explain at all why I love this movie? Plus, I know I said I wouldn't pick a second film with the same icon, but, hell, try and stop me!