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I find most of them laughable killfests. But there are some good ones. What makes a horror film 'good' to you?

Do not confuse psychological thrillers with horror.

Could you define psychological thriller, sorry to sound like a dork :yh_loser

Not so dorky. I had to think about it for a minute.

Psychological thriller is more like a drama with a psychopath. Like Silence of the Lambs.(they had two psychopaths even)

Horror films are slasher/gore fests. Like Friday 13th series, Nightmare on Elm Street, the Exorcist.

I would say that the Exorcist is the best horror film I've ever seen. It is almost a psychological thriller but had enough sp fx to make it a horror. The first Nightmare on Elm St. was great because the concept was so new and freaky. The sequels, however...blah. For me it takes ingenuity in finding true scariness and/or the remote possibility that it could actually happen

koan wrote: I find most of them laughable killfests. But there are some good ones. What makes a horror film 'good' to you?



Do not confuse psychological thrillers with horror.
The ole black & white films "Frankenstein" with Boris Karloff, "Wolfman" with Lon Chaney are hard to beat despite their age. Something about that black and white that added to the horror.

Cool....thanks for clarifying.



I get caught up in some horror flicks and before I know it, it could "really happen to you". Like Halloween, the first one. There's a scene where the creep (its escaped me now what his name was) is walking across the yard, coming towards Jamie Lee Curtis who is locked outside the front door. That scene has freaked me out for years, maybe because I'm secretly afraid of myself being in a real life scene like that.



The Grudge really freaked me out this past year too. I'm not sure why, others tell me they thought it was horrible. Some of the scenes that made me quit breathing were:

..when the Japanese ghost/spirit/whatever was crawling down the stairs....not just crawling but making those creepy jerking motions. Those jerky motions freak me out everytime.

...Same jerky motions when the woman was watching the security camera and the black person-like thing came out the side door and walked/jerked down the hall towards the camera.....then wham, her eye was in the camera.

...That little boy was creepy...showing up on one side of the bed,.... being on every floor as the woman was going up the elevator....making that weird hissing noise.

...The creepy thing in the stairwell that grabbed that chicks hand as she walked out.

...the weird 'cricket noise' that came along with every scene when something bad was going to happen (kinda like what that monster made in Preditor with Arnold Swartz-his-name)



I just realized you almost need to see the movie to know what I'm talking about above. Oh well, I'll still post it anyway...maybe you've seen it.



How about Gothika? Same jerky motions in one scene.



Ok now I'm rambling. Its easier for me to give you examples of what makes a good horror flick in my book, as opposed to putting it into words.

A good horror film has to have a large body count. the people that the heroine cares about should die a more gruesome death than the previous one. I say "heroine" because every good Horror flick has a creepy-psycho chasing the prom queen, or head cheerleader, or mayor's daughter... get the idea?

But most improtantly, a good horror flick should an abundance of gratuitous nudity. Horror films today are missing that. Although it could just be the juvenile male in me saying that. :sneaky:

koan wrote: Not so dorky. I had to think about it for a minute.

Psychological thriller is more like a drama with a psychopath. Like Silence of the Lambs.(they had two psychopaths even)

Horror films are slasher/gore fests. Like Friday 13th series, Nightmare on Elm Street, the Exorcist.

I would say that the Exorcist is the best horror film I've ever seen. It is almost a psychological thriller but had enough sp fx to make it a horror. The first Nightmare on Elm St. was great because the concept was so new and freaky. The sequels, however...blah. For me it takes ingenuity in finding true scariness and/or the remote possibility that it could actually happen
I think that se7en with Freeman, Pitt, and Spacey fits that. Creepy enough that it could happen.

How about the "Exorcist"?

It is only "The Excorcist, the best horror film bar none, IMO that is, I still cannot bear to listen to "Tubular Bells"

The original Texas chainsaw massacre was cool. Is I.T a horror i thaught it was it scaird the s**t out of me. i hate clowns

And See? The exorcist didn't have a high body count!

Suspense is what makes a horror movie good.

I thought Alien was the best, but a new crop is coming along with the same formula and doing pretty well with it.

The Ring and The Others come to mind, as does Signs and The 6th Sense.

When Carrie was laying the flowers on her friend`s grave right at the end of the film, and the hands suddenly reached out through the ground and grabbed her (okay so we know now it was only a nightmare but at the time...!). when the old woman turned round in Burnt Offerings and turned out to be the young woman and the bloke fell through the window and landed in the car....when I had to go upstairs in the dark after watching a midnight showing of The Sentinel....etc etc!

in agreement with everyone else about the exorcist, the ring was pretty scary to me especially that bit where her nail breaks scraping down the wall & when she climbs out the t.v

Psycho can still make me jump. Also Dracula with Christopher Lee.

Then, I like the old movies best.

I forgot all about this one-------How about the "Omen"?

I really don't like horrors, like Koan I find them more funny than scary. Never seen The Exorcist either. I've never found any movie that has made me jump either.

They all scare the bejesus out of me. I don't like to be scared - so I don't watch them.

nvalleyvee wrote: They all scare the bejesus out of me. I don't like to be scared - so I don't watch them.Its the beJayus here:D

capt_buzzard wrote: Its the beJayus here:D


Is that because your country is so Catholic? I'm not trying to be a smart mouth - just wondering if you don't take Jesus' name in vain either.

nvalleyvee wrote: Is that because your country is so Catholic? I'm not trying to be a smart mouth - just wondering if you don't take Jesus' name in vain either.Oh they do just that too

Yes my names sarah jane and i`m a horror freak i`ve got them all every halloween ,friday the 13th ,scream ,texas chainsaw 1/2.I like them all se7en ,ring 1/2, funny or scary give me a good slash fest any day of the week then second on the list is a good old action movie `i`m very easily pleased .

Angel chocobo wrote: Is I.T a horror i thaught it was it scaird the s**t out of me. i hate clowns
"we all float down here, Angel!"

can't sleep. :-1 My bud went out and bought "Faces of Death" until earlier this evening i have only watched 2 movies that have ever given me nightmares. Gremlins when I was like 6 or 7. And Event Horizon when i was 15 or 16.

I went out and stole a bag of MtDew premix from the QuickTrip around the corner and have jimmy-rigged an I.V. drip to keep me awake.

DO NOT see this movie. It shows REAL people Actually DYING! video footage form all over the world. from as early as the 20's.

It is truly disturbing.

I saw that film /doco many years ago its all real life post mortems not for the squeamish

I'm puzzled why anyone would mess their head up by watching a slasher movie. I've heard that they exist, I've never been close to watching a movie with Friday or Scream or Devil in the title. I didn't know that videos of dead bodies were available in the shops. I thought we still had a ban in this country on Bride of Chuckie, or whatever the filth was that informed Thompson and Venables at the age of 10, and you tell me that the current crop of abused primary-school children are watching genuine executions, murders and autopsies on their bedroom DVD players?

I watched Psycho when it came out. I've not seen it since. A lot of it is still imprinted on my brain. I'd happily not have it there.

The first twenty minutes of Joel Schumacher's 1987 The Lost Boys persuaded me that I was in the wrong theater and I walked out. There had already been a death as the credits were rolling, but I was coming to the conclusion that the society portrayed in the movie was not one I wished to associate myself with. Whenever I think of California, it's those twenty minutes of in-your-face punk aggression in Santa Cruz that spring to mind.

The thirties "horror films" weren't horror, in my opinion, they were pathos films, debates about the source of and reason for life. They had a philosophical depth to them, informed by Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker's original novels. Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 vehicle for Gary Oldman, "Dracula", fits even more into that profile. All of them had staggeringly high production values. Gary Oldman out-acted everyone in the pathos genre, from all I've seen. So, if that subset of what's being discussed is relevant, then what counts is quality of acting, followed by quality of script. For all I care, they could perform it in front of a white sheet with no props and it would, ideally, work better than with the distraction of scenery and effects. The most horror-filled drama I ever saw was Ian Mckellen as Macbeth, on stage with Judi Dench at the Young Vic, and the only prop in the whole play was twelve beer barrels and a single cloak. If you equate good acting with convincingly portraying the psychology of the characters, then good horror has to be based on the psychology.

I love horror films, used to watch all the Hammer house of Horror and the classic black and whites. The best are The Ring - Others - 6th Sense and of course The Exorsist. Hate any of the Zombie films.