Call me radiation from Venus, because the whole scariest-movie-ever thing is spreading like zombification in the Dead movies.
Alan David Doane submits 28 Days Later for your consideration, though he qualifies it by saying the fright comes in large part from shock tactics as opposed to true lasting horror. I’ve wondered about this myself, and am looking forward to checking the film out again to see how it holds up (though God knows which ending I’ll prefer–they’ve got like 12 of them now).
Eve Tushnet nominates Carnival of Souls. This one I haven’t seen, and from the sound of it that’s my loss.
David Fiore‘s candidates are Martin Scorses’s After Hours and David Salle’s Search and Destroy, two movies I also haven’t seen. Part of the fun of this whole thing has been adding to my list of films to see.
Jason Adams becomes one of the first people I’ve ever heard of who prefers the original, Japanese version of The Ring (Ringu) to its American remake. He makes some solid points, though, as always, including something I hadn’t thought of about the surprise climax (yes, there’s spoilers of the hardcore kind in there).
Bill Sherman has created a lovely post on the very ugly EC horror-comics of yore. A pleasure to read and to look at.
RetroCrush’s 100 Scariest Movie Scenes countdown is finished, and I’ve got to say, they did a tremendous job. They included almost all the truly great moments, and ranked them respectably as well, though of course I have some big disagreements as anyone would. (Relapsed Catholic points out, rightly, that the best scenes from The Silence of the Lambs–the ones everybody really talked about, as I can remember even though I was young and didn’t see it back then–are missing.) So far, I think this is the best Halloween-related anything of the year.
Finally, though this isn’t strictly horror-related, both Eve and David have taken me to task for thinking Grosse Pointe Blank is immoral. But that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Yes yes, John Cusack’s character stops killing people and settles down at the end, but is he ever punished in any way for the awful way he led his life? Other than the inconvenience of having Minnie Driver be mildly irritated with him for a few hours, that is? I think his change of heart at the end of the film is as perfunctory as could be. Moreover, are we ever supposed to find him awful, even when he is still killing? I submit that no, we’re not–we’re supposed to think “Oh hey, this is Lloyd Dobbler from Say Anything–isn’t he charming? Isn’t he cute? And listen to his taste in music–it’s almost as cool as Lloyd’s was! So what if he’s killing people all the time for money–Nobody’s perfect! Actually, on second thought, that makes him even cooler–he’s adorable AND a bad-ass!” Bleccch. This movie left a really bad taste in my mouth. (I also don’t handle Lethal Weapon/Bad Boys/Jerry Bruckheimer shoot-em-ups very well–I don’t think violence is particularly funny if it’s never really shown to have consequences too. This is not to say that I don’t like action movies–I do. Just wait until I start talking about Kill Bill.)