The Fractal Hall Recommends… Horror
And we’ll finish the week with some films, listed by (and why the hell not) creature.
Aliens!
Well, let’s face it, it’s the obvious one in this slot. But I’m also going to acknowledge the pluralicious sequel for being the finest military SF film ever made, and the first really scary scary movie I ever saw. Not quite making the top spot is Signs. I like M. Night Shyamalan’s films a lot, and this one terrified the life out of me in the cinema, although I’ll have to own up to being easily terrified.
Alien
Best cast of any film on this list. Best creature design. Best director. And in all honesty, more a haunted house flick than anything else.
Ghosts!
No Patrick Swayze on this list. Going to have to acknowledge another M. Night one, as The Sixth Sense probably came closest to giving me a heart attack than a truckfull of doughnuts. Also, Below, a story about a haunted submarine. Directed by Pitch Black’s David Twohy and co-written by Darren Aronofsky, it’s a brilliantly creepy flick that didn’t get a wide release because, I think, the studio was put off by the proximity to the fucking dire Ghost Ship. The best horror film I ever picked up randomly at Blockbuster.
The Haunting
A close adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, legendary director Robert Wise proves without a doubt that the scariest things ever put on film are, well, not actually there at all. It’s the perfect Christmas Eve ghost story.
Sea Monsters!
Not an incredibly crowded category, really, so 1998’s Deep Rising doesn’t have much competition to make it on this list. It was a fun little creature feature in its time, but I suspect it’s dated a hell of a lot.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
And speaking of dated, while this film is undoubtably crude and somewhat tame compared to, well, practically every other horror film ever made, it’s fascinating, not least due to the influence it had on horror as a genre, the ground-breaking creature suit, and the creature’s status as a true horror icon. On an artistic level, the film does actually have an odd, engaging dream-like quality. Also, I remember watching the video of this loads when I was a kid.
Vampires!
Damn, there’s a lot in this category, not least the one reviewed earlier this week. In terms of overall significance, I’ve got to mention Nosferatu, Universal’s Dracula, and the Hammer stuff, all of which set the tone. Interview With The Vampire took a different perspective on the myth, and Steven Norrington’s Blade pumped the undead into an action flick. For a different take again, Willem Defoe is extraordinary in Shadow of the Vampire.
Near Dark
Oh, I can’t be doing with the erotic undertones of the romantic children of the night. Monstrous superhuman killing machines is more like it. And Lance Henriksen as the head of a redneck vampire clan? Hells yes. Action, gore, black humour; this is essentially an undead western, expanding considerably the explosive violence that characterised Hammer’s take on this kind of monster.
Werewolves!
Werewolves as teenage metaphor? Ginger Snaps. Werewolves as dark, gruesome comedy? An American Werewolf in London. Really shit werewolves? The sequel to the latter.
Dog Soldiers
Talk about a film that has it all. It’s a squad-on-a-mission action film, it’s a claustrophobic thriller, it’s a gore-fest, and on top of everything it’s very, very funny. Stupidly impressive for a debut film, with a great cast and creature effects. The disturbing, creepy movements of the wolves were achieved by sticking ballet dancers on stilts and in fur suits, which is just the kind of crazy we like round here.
Zombies!
Done to, erm, death in both fil-ums and comics recently, the living dead have always been of more interest to my buddies than to me. So take the following recommendations as coming from someone with only a passing interest in the genre, who’s only really seen the modern stuff, and as such is inevitably blasphemous.
28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead (the remake). Both on the list for being way, way better than I could’ve expected. While the connoiseur may like her zombies slow, I liked the frantic energy of speeding the suckers up.
Shaun of the Dead
Simon Pegg is one of the funniest writers alive, but the revelation of this film wasn’t just that it was hilarious, but that it was a really, really good horror film. Along with Spaced and Hot Fuzz, this film sets up Pegg, Wright and Frost as England’s greatest contribution to world culture.
Bonus: Much discussed elsewhere on the internet so you probably don’t need me to point them out to you, but nevertheless the Fractal Hall recommends the following zombie-related goodies:
Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead
You may have noticed a whole lot of undead titles clogging up your comic shop like a shopping centre full of stinking, shuffling corpses. Well, this is the best of them, helped in no small way by a couple of crazy awesome artists working in black and white: Tony Moore on the early issues, Charlie Adlard more recently. Adlard, of course, worked on the excellent (and overlooked) first year of the X-Files tie-in comic about twelve years ago, fondly remembered at the Hall.
Jonathan Coulton’s Re: Your Brains
No comment. Just bask in the genius, people.
Honourable Mention:
The Hall’s No. 1 Spanish Civil War Based Dark Fantasy:
Pan’s Labyrinth
Doesn’t really fit into any of the other categories here, but I needed to put it somewhere. One of the best films of last year, never mind horror films. Guillermo Del Toro’s masterpiece (and yes, I took Blade II into consideration), there’s no way I could do it justice in a couple of sentences. If you only watch one film on this list, make it this one.
on December 1st, 2007 at 10:30 pm
I’m really surprised that ‘Creature Of The Black Lagoon’ hasn’t been remade-the sequels were rubbish! although, there’s talk of having all the old Universal monsters in Del Toro’s planned ‘Hellboy 3′. Talking of Del Toro, I agree that ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is excellent, and probably my favourite movie of the last couple of years. I don’t know if you’ve seen Del Toro’s other Spanish civil war film ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ which is also a cracker, and would fit into the ‘Ghosts’ category.
My favourite werewolf film is ‘Curse Of The Werewolf’, the old Hammer movie, with Oliver Reed as the titular monster. He’s only a werewolf because he was a gypsy born on Christmas day! Brilliant. I also love ‘An American Werewolf in London’-this was the first movie to genuinely shit me up, but I was only about twelve when I first saw it! I’m surprised the first ‘Howling’ film didn’t get a mention though.
I hated ‘Signs’ , probably because I thought the whole notion of aliens that are fatally allergic to water trying to invade a planet that’s surface is at least sixty percent water was a ridiculous one! It was a quite a tense movie up until the aliens showed up though.
Zombie movies (and comics) have been done to (un)death recently, but I think the best one was probably Evil Dead II, a genuinely original (well, as original as it can be, seeing as it’s a virtual remake of the first) movie, and that bit with the eyeball flying into the girl’s mouth always makes me laugh!
The first horror movie to make me physically ill was ‘Hellraiser II’, as I went to the cinema to see it when I was fourteen, pretending to be eighteen, obviously! These films have these certificates for a reason! I can watch it now without flinching, but back then, it turned my stomach!
I’m also surprised that Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ didn’t get a mention, as I reckon, in my humble opinion, that it’s the best horror movie ever made, but it doesn’t really fit any of your categories, so I’ll let you off!