Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Horror Discussion Thread

So, I felt maybe there should be a thread like this, a discussion thread about all things horror.

Not just horror movies, but TV shows, video games, books, what have you.

I'm down. I'm a big horror/thriller fan.

The Thing (1982) is one of my favourite movies, horror or otherwise.

I actually got a really cool board game for Christmas last year which is sort of horror themed. It's called Betrayal at House on the Hill.

The first half of it is a communal sort of board game in which all the players help each other explore a mysterious house, but halfway through the game something happens to one random player which turns him or her into a 'traitor' out to kill the others.

There are about 50 different scenarios which dictate what that inciting incident is, from being bitten by a werewolf to possessed by a ghost to secretly being a member of a cult to being a descendant of a serial killer, with each offering different hero objectives to stopping the traitor, so each time you play the game is completely different.

Each of the scenarios is kind of in the vein of a B-grade 50s horror movie, with each of the characters being a sort of stock cinema stereotype, so it sometimes really feel like you're playing inside one of those old movies.

Everyone I've played it with so far has really enjoyed it, even the non-board game fans.

My favourite of the 'classic' sort of horror monster concepts is probably the werewolf. An American Werewolf in London had a profound effect on me when I saw it at about 5 years old. After a horrible 6 months or so of non-stop nightmares (nearly all of which I can still remember in detail!) I grew to really like the visceral thrill of being scared, and now I really do not scare easily, in any situation (except public speaking!).

Despite my username, I'm not really a big fan of vampires. There have of course been some great stories using them, but for the most part I find them a really played out and boring sort of adversary. Having said that, The Lost Boys was one of my favourite movies growing up.

Horror and I are like ex-lovers who maintain a distant yet firm friendship.

My first headlong dive into the genre was watching the perennially underrated horror/fantasy/modern mythology movie Nightbreed, and subsequently discovering the prose of the movie's writer/director, Clive Barker (especially his early stories, collected in the Books of Blood volumes; IIRC, there are four of them in all. Superlative stuff.)

I far prefer European horror (which I discovered around age 20 or 21) and British horror to American horror. There was a good reason why the Brits kicked the Puritans out centuries ago, and while American society has come a long way since then, its worst and most reactionary reflexes have continued to surface in American entertainment, especially horror. That said, I think there a few American horror creators who have managed to rise above those attitudes, Stephen King for one -- my favorite of his novels is the masterful "Salem's Lot," and none of the live-action adaptations do it justice IMO.

Elaborating on European horror, I own copies of both of those big, thick DVD sets known as the "Bava Boxes," as in the late, great Italian director Mario Bava (1914-1980), who redefined the genre in the 1960s and 1970s (he was latecomer to the director's chair, having spent his youth working in special effects and cinematography) albeit under the radar. When I discovered his work in the mid-1990s, he was still strictly a cult figure. That's why I've been very glad to see how the posthumous recognition of his talent has grown and grown in recent years. My favorite Bava movies would have to be: "Lisa and the Devil" (avoid the commercial-minded recut, "House of Exorcism," and watch the gloriously arty and artful original), "Black Sunday," "Baron Blood," "Kill, Baby Kill," "Black Sabbath," "Blood and Black Lace," and "Five Dolls for an August Moon." As for Bava's non-horror work, the indisputable top choice is "Diabolik," an adaptation of an Italian comic book (fumetti) about a swaggering anti-hero let loose in the world of espionage; Diabolik the character shows up James Bond as the establishment toady that he is (IMHO.)

A close second behind Bava in the pantheon of Italian horror directors would have to be the sly, stylish, subversive Dario Argento (born 1940.) That said, I consider him to have turned into a self-parody after 1987's "Opera," and the warning signs were already there in "Opera" and its predecessor, 1984's "Phenomena." But his first seven movies as a director -- "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage," "Cat o' Nine Tails," "Four Flies on Grey Velvet," "Deep Red," "Suspiria," "Inferno," and "Tenebre" -- are never less than good, and sometimes great. In particular, I think everyone who loves the art of cinema itself should watch 1977's "Suspiria," regardless of their feelings toward horror. My second favorite is 1982, "Tenebre," which I consider the director's stylistic and thematic apotheosis.

The rest of the Italian horror directors pantheon are, in no particular order, and with possible omissions (the coffee's just kicking in): Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Antonio Margheriti, Umberto Lenzi, Lamberto Bava (Mario's son and ex-assistant) and Ruggero Deodato. I don't count Michele Soavi, even though his movies have large followings, because I don't like any of them.

To reiterate what I said at the beginning of this post, I no longer actively seek horror experiences, but I treasure my old favorites and always will.

^ I'm another big 'giallo' fan FL! I've got that first Bava collection on DVD as well as a smattering of others including Deep Red, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Suspiria. All great!

My first Italian horror movie was Bay of Blood / Twitch of the Death Nerve (GREAT title!). I'd heard it was the inspiration for all of those Friday the 13th and Halloween movies and while it clearly is, it is also so bonkers and unique in it's plot structure that, to my knowledge, no other film has ever completely copied it.

If it had been set on an old English state full of people being politely cold to each other it could almost be an Agatha Christie mystery due to the complicated and surprising 'whodunnit'-ness of it. I loved it.

I'm also like you FL in that I don't seek out much new horror these days. I find that most of it is very derivative and 'gore for the sake of gore'-heavy.

That said, there have been a few really good ones that I've loved for being either a) very creative and original, or b) a classic horror scenario told very well.

An example of the former would be It Follows which is quite slow and atmospheric but so clever in the tension it creates just in watching people walk around in the background of a scene, and an example of the latter would be 10 Cloverfield Lane which is probably my favourite movie of 2016.

My taste in horror films tends to mostly skew toward creature features and monster movies. Everything from Japanese kaiju flicks to Romero zombie films to Corman drive in schlock is my game for the most part. Some of my favorites are Piranha, Humanoids from the Deep, The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Mummy (1959), just to name a few .

Thanks to Fanfie and thoth, I've actually really gotten into Italian horror these days, particularly Argento and Fulci, to the point that I actually have a Fulci bobblehead on my desk right now! However, my favorite Italian horror film is Demoni, which Argento wrote and produced, but was actually directed by Lamberto Bava.

As for modern horror flicks, I agree that 90% of them are crap, but there are a few good ones released every now and then. Ti West is one of my favorite modern horror directors an I highly recommend you guys check out House of the Devil and The Innkeepers if you get the chance, especially if you love moody, slow burn horror.

^ I wish I could say I was on the same page as you with those Ti West movies, KK, but unfortunately I found them really disappointing.

House of the Devil is the better of the two but the burn is waaaaaaaayyyyyyy tooooooooooo slooooooooow in that movie and then just when things get freaky... it ends. It was more like an electric fire that sits there quietly until you turn it on and it suddenly bursts into life... before a power cut makes everything go black. (How's that for a tortured metaphor? haha).

And The Innkeepers had two of the most annoying and unlikeable protagonists I've seen in a horror movie in eons. I was totally rooting for the ghosts in that one.

However, Ti West comes from an interesting little gang of indie horror movie makers (including Adam Wingard, Zack Parker, Aimy Seimetz and Joe Swanberg) who all seem to share the same horror sensibilities and inspirations and often use a lot of the same settings and actors. And though I've found most of their past movies have ranged from 'awful' to 'just OK' (the pulpy escapism of You're Next and the whiplash tonal shifts and twists of Proxy elevating them into the latter group), I have noticed a gradual improvement in them and think a future horror 'hit' is going to come from someone in that crew.

When I was a very li'l thoth...

My mother took me to the local library. I loitered while she was with the librarian, until I saw the cover of a book. The background colour of the cover was a solid yellow.

On it there was a drawing of a coffin, from the perspective of looking downwards onto it from one corner. The lid of the coffin was nearly closed. From one side, there came the fingers of a long, thin hand...

Definitely an inciting moment for me. What about you guys?

My interests in horror are like my interests in comics: all over the place. I like a little bit of everything, but I'm not fond of the following: stuff involving sideshows, torture porn movies like Saw and Final Destination, and the majority of horror remakes that started flooding the market in the early 2000s. I can't say I'm entirely fond of any of the theatrical horror films that've been released in the last few years, especially Rob Zombie's movies, but I did enjoy Trick 'R Treat and I hope to see Krampus.

I like teen horror such as slasher fiction, ghost stories, Halloween and holiday stories, murder mysteries, urban legends, anthology shows and movies, living toys and dolls, witchcraft tales, haunted houses, and the like.

Literature: Goosebumps were the pictureless books that really got me into reading, and I still read and buy books from the franchise. Not only that, but one of my hobbies is collecting kids and teen horror novels as a form of research for my own writing career. Graveyard School, Shivers, Spinetingles, Bone Chillers, Ghosts of Fear Street, Strange Matter, Choose Your Own Nightmare, as well as numerous Scholastic and Apple one-shot kids horror books like The Dollhouse Murders and The Ghost Children. I wouldn't really call this nostalgia because there was never a point when I stopped reading these books as I've grown older, but age has helped become more aware of the flaws in these books, especially R.L. Stine's. He tends to make the lives of his protagonists a living hell well before anything scary happens, but he'll also make some of them completely insufferable morons who don't know how to stop making things worse for themselves before the inevitable twist ending.

As for teen horror, when I was in elementary school and still reading Goosebumps I found out about Stine's other series, Fear Street. I've read nearly all of them, yet I strangely have not made the effort to purchase the new ones that've been released in the last couple of years. From there I also learned about Christopher Pike's teen novels about horror, science fiction, and spirituality, as well as the Point Horror line of teen horror books, the Nightmare Hall series by Diane Hoh, and Losing Christina by Caroline B. Cooney.

I read my first Stephen King short story, Children of the Corn, when I was 10. There's an old copy of Night Shift that belonged to my mother. She owned most of the King novels that came out by the 1990s. I've read Rose Madder, but I mainly stick to his short stories and novellas. Jerusalem's Lot and the Boogeyman both freaked me out when I read them. On and off my experience with adult horror fiction is not as long reaching. The Red Church, Dark Harvest, Winter Moon, Guardian Angels are some of the adult horror books I've read. I was trying to read one novel, the Toy Cemetery, but my curiosity got the best of my and I skipped to the ending. I was sorely disappointed and not sure whether or not it was good that I did. It involved incest.

The first horror movies I ever saw at the age of 8 were the original Halloween and the original Wolf Man. I must've been the only kid in my elementary school who ever watched Universal Monsters, Vincent Price, and Abbott & Costello. But I guess before that the first would be the Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus. Those're staples in my house.

I love cheesy slasher movies but I also love old black and white horror and mystery movies like Arsenic and Old Lace and The Bat with Price and Agnes Moorehead. I don't mean just Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday the 13th, but Night of the Demons, Prom Night, the Amityville Horror, and Sleepaway Camp as well. I used a website called the Video Graveyard to help search for interesting movies, which led me to some obscure gems but also some really enjoyable crap films like Fever Lake and Sleepy Hollow High. I used to love looking through Hollywood Video and Blockbuster for all the old 70s and 80s horror films and was very disappointed when they got rid of their tapes.

Fever Lake, Grandmother's House, Moon of the Wolf, Sleepy Hollow High, Return to Horror High, Ghost Town, Trick or Treats, Welcome to Spring Break, The Thirteenth Chair, Scarecrows, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, The People Across The Lake, To All A Goodnight, Xtro 2, Killers in the House, all underrated gems or cheese fests. Well The Thirteenth Chair's actually a 1930s horror mystery film I saw on TCM.

When it comes to the franchises, I'm one of those odd people who has a soft spot for the sequels while acknowledging they aren't great. Mainly because I like the characters. The fifth Elm Street movie is my favorite because it devoted so much time to Alice Johnson's character and gave her friends enough moments to really care about them before they died.

I might like cheesy, bloody trash horror movies, but I'm not fond of exploitative, depressing torture porn movies that aren't so much movies as they're an hour and a half of exaggerated, dragged out death scenes. It's why I hate the Saw films and the Final Destination movies. There's nothing to make me care about the characters and the villain always wins. The deaths are cruel and take up too much time to be set up and played out. It's why I never did them for If It Were Stine. Basically, I don't like horror films that aren't scary as much as they're depressing and cruel. The same goes for horror stories and TV shows.

I like some Italian horror movies like Suspiria and Phenomenon. I've been trying to find a full length copy of Deep Red but I'm not really one for international horror movie except for the Hammer horror movies. The Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Dracula films, for example.

For horror TV shows, it's the anthology ones like Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, but also Nightmare Cafe and Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. I wasn't a fan of the Masters of Horror show because, I don't know, something about the way the episodes were filmed felt incredibly off putting and difficult to watch. Not just the stories but the, the feel they all had. Sterile and grey, almost. The same feeling I had watching newer horror movies in theaters. It's like being forced to sit in a doctor's waiting room, bland greys and tans everywhere and nothing but old, crappy magazines to read.

Blacula, always glad to learn that a Legion World friend is a giallo fan. J'adore Bava's "Bay of Blood," and the only reason it didn't make my all-too-short Bava list posted above is because I had wanted to choose a "lucky seven" (my favorite number since I first saw numbers as a toddler.) Thank you for the movie recommendations, I shall seek them out.

Thoth, my inciting moment would have to be accidentally (?) watching the original "Omen" movie one night at my grandparents' house around the age of 11. That Jerry Goldsmith-composed demonic chorale theme song...wow. And the poor reporter getting dismembered by a vehicle (I'd say that movie made me a David Warner fan for life.)

Kappa, glad that Thoth and I were able to steer you toward the Italian classics, and now I have to demand that you post a picture of yourself holding up the Fulci bobble-head. As for "Demons"/"Demoni", it's not in my Top Ten, but it's definitely bubbling under...Claudio Simonetti's heavily rhythmic theme music is certainly a big plus.

Sarky, I hear you about the sterile, ugly look of too much modern live-action horror. That's one of the reasons I find the Italian classics such a tonic...thank you, Mario Bava, for your innovative and influential use of bright-colored filters over the camera lens! I quite like the British Hammer classics, too, though I think most of them don't have quite the same degree of brazen energy as the works of Bava et al.

Finally, for anyone who missed it the first time round, here's a short review of Argento's Tenebre that I originally posted in Kappa's schlock thread a while ago (thanks again for your generosity and encouragement, Kappa.) And I'll also include a link to your thread.

http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=895724&page=1

"Back on his European home turf after his unhappy experience making 1980's "Inferno" in America with major-studio funding, Argento rebounded artistically in spectacular fashion. While I still believe 1977's "Suspiria" to be his true masterpiece, "Tenebre" ranks a very close second on my list. And then only because Argento seems to be trying to work outside of his hyper-stylized comfort zone. In this story of a novelist specializing in murder mysteries whose life becomes a nightmarish replica of a scenario he might have devised himself, the director's limitations as both a writer and a director of actors are brutally exposed: the plot is full of improbabilities and is nearly done in by an over-gimmicky climax, while the cast (headed by Tony Franciosa and including genre veteran John Saxon, as well as Argento regular Daria Nicolodi) turn in almost uniformly wooden performances. The exception is a cast member who has no dialogue at all: Eva Robins, a European LGBT icon who claims to have been born male but developed female secondary characteristics at puberty; to have her playing an evil seductress in the killer's silent flashbacks is brilliantly subversive casting. For subversion ultimately seems to be the intent of the movie: the extensive use of point-of-view Steadicam photography implicates the viewer as a voyeur; the deliberate over-lighting makes everything look impossibly shiny, pristine and antiseptic, creating a hyper-real visual style enhanced further by a limited color palette of blues, whites, greys, and blacks -- punctuated, of course, by the bright red of the murder victims' blood. More to the point, Argento was born into show business (his father was a film producer, his mother was a fashion model), and he appears to have (perhaps unconsciously) tapped into the gradual blurring of the borders between society and showbiz. To have done that way back in the early 80s is an amazing exercise in predicting the future. That, in my opinion, is why this is a transcendent movie despite the hair, costumes and music being very much of their time. Fashions come and go, but society -- with its pathologies and repressed psychoses -- stays frighteningly constant. And that's the scariest thing of all."

It did take me a few films to realize that Italian horror was more visual/aesthetic driven than plot driven, especially with classic Fulci. (Is it possible to make sense of City of the Living Dead? ) Like you said, I just love how colorful they are, especially Suspiria which was processed in technicolor!

Yeah, I agree, Kappa, Italian horror is strictly an exercise in dreamy/nightmarish sensory overload at the expense of plot. Thankfully, cinema as an art form is flexible and accommodating enough to have room for any number of approaches. And, yes, I do think many of these genre movies deserve to be called "art" in 20/20 hindsight. Horror, like superheroes, used to be what Grant Morrison, in his non-fiction book "Supergods" termed a "pirate art form," but it ended up being assimilated into the mainstream. IMHO, horror was commodified all the way back in the early 90s, with the aforementioned "Nightbreed" serving as a symbolic final doomed heroic stand for the genre, shortly before the atrocious "Silence of the Lambs" made the genre quasi-respectable, at least for highfalutin movie critics and deeply phobic mainstream viewers (all the pieces of the puzzle came together in my mind a few years ago, after an acquaintance told me that, in the original "Silence" novel, the serial killer is both gender-confused *and* a violent homophobe. Damn each and every one of the people involved with that movie for dumbing down and simplifying the original story in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Are there different cuts of Suspiria? Every time I've tried it I don't get "Visually Interesting" or "Dreamlike", I get schlocky, cheap, incoherent mess that isn't remotely scary. I'm convinced I'm not watching the same film others are.

Maybe it's an expectations thing. I keep expecting something like Lynch's awesome "Inland Empire", that will freak you completely out, and scare you at the same time.

Dave, I don't expect to be freaked out by a movie like "Suspiria," I expect to be, for lack of a better term, soothed by the sheer display of cinematic technique. And I have no trouble with the lack of coherency. Are nightmares coherent?

Have you been watching the English versions?

I'll have to catch up on the rest of the thread shortly, but jumping in on Suspiria and Italian Horror in general of that era, I have to agree totally with Fanfie. It is more a feast for the visual senses; you are seeing something actually quite beautiful, though the setting and context of the beauty is very disturbing. It's meant to be both pleasing and revolting at the same time, and that dichotomy creates a weird sensation. *That* is the real horror of it all, I think. Not only are we dulled to what is happening on screen, we become mesmerized by the visual beauty of it all.

I can see why its a hard sub-genre to fall in love with (and give your comments, Dave, you probably have had this conversation a few times before). I don't think the intent is to scare the viewer and I don't think its to present a coherent story either. I think the intent is to confuse the viewers senses so that they're drawn to something they find revolting, and then feel uneasy about why that is.

Lastly, I'll add that Suspiria is a personal favorite of mine too. I know Argento has done many other things that some people think are superior, and Suspiria is kind of the one everyone loves, but I think there's a reason to it. For me, it's the entry point into the whole genre and the easiest to spend some time with.

And to expand into the thread properly, I’ll add that most of you know or might remember that I’m a big fan of horror. I’ve always been that way (and I can trace back to exactly when that started—I’ll do that sometime). I love the really great horror but I also have a soft spot for the B-grade horror that often is more covered in flaws than good. Interestingly, my wife was always a horror fan but after she’s had kids, she’s really had no desire to engage in the genre. I have to admit that I find most modern horror films to be pretty shitty myself and have a hard time connecting like I used to; I’m sure the issue lies more in how I’ve changed personally than anything else, though it probably is also because for movies in general I just can’t stomach films that are sub-par anymore; other mediums, like comics, I’m much more forgiving.



I’m also a big fan of American Werewolf in London though I didn’t originally like it at first. I thought it was a bit too corny when I finally saw it, years after it came out. But as I matured in my teen years, and also saw countless other werewolf films, I was able to see just how really fantastic this movie was, and still is. Werewolves really lend themselves to great psychological horror and innate fears we have about ourselves and those closest to us. And that is a type of fear that only grows as you get older.

Meanwhile, I’ve always liked vampires but they are clearly the most overdone of all horror monsters. There is so much shitty vampire art out there that its hard to sort through it and find the gems. But they do exist! Lost Boys is another I always liked too. Though when I was a kid, the trailer scared me so bad that when I finally saw it years later I was surprised it wasn’t scarier.

I like vampires because when I was a kid, I learned that in the late 50’s and 60’s, my father, then himself a kid, was a huge fan of Hammer Horror movies. And to this day, he still has the occasional nightmare of Christopher Lee playing Dracula. What’s so funny is that my Dad is not a horror fan at all really—but he was back then. So, as with many other things related to my Dad, I went about making myself a fan as well, and eventually that translated. The Hammer horror movies, with all their extremes, remain a favorite horror era of mine.



Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. As some of you may know, I’m an avid reader and am constantly reading novels every single day (which is helped by having a 45 minute train ride to and from work every day). So I read a lot, and during that time I’ve read or reread most of King’s work again. He’s the ultimate horror writer because all of his scariest moments don’t come from monsters but come from the “real” moments that could easily happen or the psychological pain people are feeling when dealing with immense trauma.

Salem’s Lot is my ultimate favorite as well. And I agree no adaptation has ever translated to TV or film. The potential other favorite is It, but regardless of which is my “favorite”, I think Salem’s Lot is far scarier than It. (I just love the hell out of It for the characters).



Love the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Another one I love from that era is the Blob. Though not for the horror—rather, for the usage of teenagers in the 1950’s. Horror, being too vulgar for polite society, always has elements of underground and counter-culture, and therefore often will have some more “real” depictions than mainstream films. It’s one of the reasons I love the genre. I think with the Blob, they really do that. It’s like Rebel Without a Cause on Viagra.




I have Night Shift in the basket of magazines in my bathroom at home. I love that short story involving the two guys trying to kill all the rats. It’s just so visually disturbing! If you hate rats or any other pest, it’s definitely the thing to keep you up at night.




This sums up how I feel too.

Lastly, as is evidenced by the Halloween thread, I’m a MAJOR fan of Michael Myers and Halloween, which always was my #1 favorite in the same way the LSH and Spider-Man are my favorite comic concepts. Even when the movies were at their shittiest (and yeah, some of them were), it’s still a favorite franchise.

Thanks, Cobie. Couldn't have put it better myself.

Cheers.

I think Halloween II is an underrated gem that needs more love. The use of Mr. Sandman in the opening and ending credits is one of the best uses of 50's doo-wop song I've ever seen in a movie.

How about I do you better and post it while also wearing a Suspiria shirt?

That's *doubly awesome*, Kappa!!

Thanks!!

I was actually wearing that shirt today at a diner when a man came up to me and started asking me about it. We got into a huge conversation about Argento, Fulci, and Bava before his wife made him leave because we were talking too long!

^^Small world.

But seriously, I remember a time when most people I would casually encounter, even certified pop-culture fans, didn't know Mario Bava from Mario Andretti. I'm glad that's changed.

Hey, for all this talk about Dario Argento, have any of you heard of a video game called Clock Tower?



It was released in the early 90s in Japan. It was a story about an orphan girl named Jennifer Simpson (she was modeled directly after Jennifer Corvino from Phenomena) getting adopted along with her three friends by the Barrows Family. The Barrows lived in this gigantic mansion called the Clock Tower. It's a survival horror game where the conflict involves Jennifer trying to avoid this disfigured maniac dubbed "Scissorman" for the pair of giant shears he used to kill Jennifer's friends.

The first game was never released outside Japan, but the sequel was released for the first Playstation under "Clock Tower." You can play the first game for free online if you look for it.

Both games have got a more subdued Dario Argento feel to them without all the bright colors and gore. Yes there's blood but it's not really exaggerated.

Holy Nass! Someone's Giffened Binky!!