Best Horror Film of 1979 (part 2 of a series)

holy shit

JFC - The Brood vs. Alien is a super tough call.

A buddy of mine keeps pestering me to see Tourist Trap.

Voted Phantasm

Is Phantasm the one with the spinning ball of death?

Yeah. And Angus Scrimm as "the Tall Man".

There's a batshit enthusiasm and almost accidental surrealism about the Phantasm movies that makes me love them madly even if it's obviously not the objectively "best" film on this list.

Actually no fuck it it is the best, Don Coscarelli tried to do something different and succeeded, for all the flaws in the series.

Is Firepower on the list by mistake? The only one I know from this era is an actioner with James Coburn (I think) in it.

I'm sure The Brood will win, and if you can put up with a Count Floyd-worthy bad performance from Oliver Reed, it is indeed a wild and gratifyingly subversive film. (Cronenberg used to love saying it was his personal Kramer vs. Kramer--he'd just emerged from a messy divorce--still one of my favorite readings by a director of his own film.) I think I'll vote for Hooper's Salem's Lot, though; just a good classical vampire film, and the first glimpse we get of the monster is one of my favorite shock moments ever (scroll to the five minute mark--or better yet, watch the whole movie!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0vbSM-fnFw&feature=related

Anyone willing to rep for Herzog's Nosferatu? Based on what little I've seen, it seems to consist of Nosferatu just casually shooting the shit with people and hanging out.

I watched the Herzog movie as a teenager and remember being hugely disappointed but that's cos I was expecting a horror movie.

Is Firepower on the list by mistake? The only one I know from this era is an actioner with James Coburn (I think) in it.

I took the list from Wikipedia, but failed to confirm the validity of this one apparently. Whoops!

Wd argue that neither Nosferatu or Stalker is a horror movie in any useful sense.

Is The Brood the film where everyone in a block of flats catches a virus that makes them sex each other until they die?

I think that was Rabid

Shivers or Rabid. Always mix those 2. The Brood = Ollie Reed plus evil babbies

oh hahahaha yeah is that the tarkovsky stalker? i just assumed it was something else with the same name i hadnt heard of. yeah that wouldnt be horror so much then.

i am 90% sure im voting for phantasm here.

Anyone willing to rep for Herzog's Nosferatu? Based on what little I've seen, it seems to consist of Nosferatu just casually shooting the shit with people and hanging out.

― Darin, Wednesday, 16 June 2010 22:36 (24 minutes ago)

I adore it. The scene of the ghost ship arriving in town is really haunting and beautiful.

I also like the depiction of Kinski's Nosferatu as pitiable and grotesque.

Strange that I've seen almost all of the 1980 horror poll movies, but have somehow missed like 12 of these.

I really like Phantasm and still watch it from time to time, but my abiding love for Alien -- the very first R-rated film and the first horror movie I ever saw -- makes this a walk for me.

I guess I'm wrong--Phantasm will win...Speaking of Count Floyd, I'd absolutely love to see Flaherty's character try to sell Stalker as a horror film: "And, um, they're just walking around...they're-they're-they're just walking around, kids, and they're trapped...they're trapped in the Zone, they're right there trapped inside the Zone, and they just can't...they can't get out! They're trapped! Trapped in the Zone!...You don't think that's a bad thing being trapped in the Zone?...[panic-stricken look towards off-screen director] AH-OOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Although I gotta say that at age 10 The Amityville Horror scared the ever-loving crap out of me. But at that age I also found the Frank Langella Dracula to be simply confusing and silly.

wtf is stalker doing on here?

These polls take me back to buying Fangoria as a kid.

http://www.horrorphile.net/images/fangoria-magazine-issue-7.jpg http://www.horrorphile.net/images/fangoria-magazine-issue-8.jpg http://www.horrorphile.net/images/fangoria-magazine-issue-9.jpg

actually unless there is a super contrarian push back i cant see anything other than alien winning this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzQ8u74uxx8&feature=related

also i think when a stranger calls was pretty great but its been a long long time

Wait, "Nightwing" = Armand Assante + killer bats, right?

Definitely throwing a vote The Brood's way. A best of both worlds situation there (the '70s eeeew factor + the '80s chill factor).

Fulci's Zombie is so stupid.

Salem's Lot has got some of the scariest shit I've ever seen in a TV movie ... and then also 2.5 hours of '70s soap opera.

Fair point. I guess I enjoyed the scary stuff so much--especially in the context of a TV movie--that the soap-opera downtime just seemed like necessary build-up. Not Hamlet, but fairly absorbing and well delivered. Plus I have a crush on Bonnie Bedelia.

I'm being a little flip. It's sort of a disturbing mix, actually. It sort of worked the same way in the book, where you started out with this methodical introduction to characters, characters, characters ... all of which winds up in about 100 pages' worth of people's lives ending.

i think the boy vampire tap-scraping on the window to be let in in Salem's lot is one of the scariest images i can remember from being a child.

hell yes dude, that one still sticks with me to this day

gnarrrgh Alien v Phantasm v Stalker v Zombi 2...?!

(even if I agree that Stalker doesn't rly belong here).

I've been really jonesing to see Prophecy lately for some reason.

The TV ad for Amityville Horror scared me so bad I never saw the movie :/

http://i44.tinypic.com/oaykd1.jpg

I was going to vote Alien but Herzog's Nosferatu is like daaaaaaamn

I hated Zombi 2.

Stalker is the best movie, but it's in the wrong poll

Voting Phantasm, even though I think Alien is pretty unimpeachable & obv. deserves to win this.
When I was a kid, I used to watch the first two Phantasm movies every year, right around Halloween. For whatever reason, they gave me the creeps in just such a way that coincided nicely with the late-October chill & decay (of course it didn't hurt that they were CONSTANTLY on television during that time of year, at least where I lived. To this day I can't take bike ride down a country road late Oct-Nov w/o at least once picturing the Tall Man singlehandedly hauling a casket over his shoulder across some nondescript cemetery, next to some nondescript church in the middle of NOWHERE. What great imagery & what a great villain - much about the films has not aged so well, but The Tall Man has got to be one of the great cinematic boogeymen OF ALL TIME.

Another thing about the movies that ruled was the alternate dimension/martian landscape/manufacturing zone for dwarf corpse-slaves.

Oddly enough I have thusfar not seen The Brood or The Thing, even tho I generally stan for Cronenberg. How this happened is anyone's guess. At this point, I'm almost sort of saving them for a special occasion.

Oh man you need to see both those movies!

I ended up voting for Alien. It's perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojhGdRSkiUw

wow i haven't seen the brood or the thing either iirc.

It's really demoralizing for me that the director of Alien now makes movies like Gladiator.

Is The Brood the film where everyone in a block of flats catches a virus that makes them sex each other until they die?

― kraudive, Wednesday, June 16, 2010 3:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think that was Rabid

― Darin, Wednesday, June 16, 2010 3:56 PM (Yesterday)

Brood: Oliver Reed and evil rage children in puffy ski jackets
Rabid: Marilyn Chambers and virus that makes them bite each other
Shivers: island luxury apartment tower and the sexing until death

Lots of the Herzog is oddly dreamy and lovely (a vibe that belatedly ports over to Coppola's "Dracula"). Plus, he released an army of rats! "Alien" is pretty much as perfect as "Jaws," save why Sigourney strips to her undies at the end. "The Brood" is a bit of a mess, but boldly transitional to his "body horror" peaks of "Scanners," "Videodrom" and "Dead Ringers."

"Salem's Lot" I haven't seen for ages, but it was a pretty good TV movie, if I recall! Hooper is a pretty talentless hack, though, who lucked out.

Alien: In space, no one can hear you snore.

Stalker?? horror?

The Brood v Nosferatu

Just curious, when was the last time you saw "Alien?" Cause it's always more efficient than I remember it. I mean, "Aliens" - an action movie! - waits, like, an hour before there's any action, then follows it up with another 45 minutes of "inaction" (akin in mood to "Alien") then goes all out at the end to the extent you forget there was such a loooooooong build-up. "Alien" is pretty linear in its suspense, and though I suspect time has robbed it of some surprise/shock, the rest of it (acting, set design, creature design, SOUND design) rules.

Nice deployment of smoke, strobes and sirens in the last 15 minutes of Alien but, yeah, I have to agree with the detractors that it takes a pretty long while to get there.

So many other films since then have bitten the basic structure of Alien that it's hard now to appreciate how well built the movie is. The long build-up is one of its strengths.

One thing that was really fun about Alien was that when it came out in the pre-Internet dawn time most people didn't have a clue it was a horror movie. "Oh, a new SF movie, we liked Star Wars and Close Encounters, let's go see that." My wife was so traumatized by her experience in the theater she still won't watch it.

i disagree p strongly w/ josh in chicago's assessment of tobe hooper as "a talentless hack" - aside from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which has a gd claim to being the greatest horror movie of all time (and incidentally features a terrific electronic score by Hooper), Salem's Lot, Tourist Trap, Texas Chainsaw Massa and Poltergeist are all gd to great and far from hacky.

also, scanners always struck me as a step back from The Brood, which is prob. my favourite cronenberg film - i love the wintry canadian texture/look, and its 'domestic horror' feel is still pretty unique.

by the time alien reached the uk, ppl were well aware that it was a horror film - the stomach bursting scene was the talk of my school playground

sorry, typing hurriedly at work here - shld be Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 in my third sentence. Hooper's best films edge closer to black humour than just abt any other major horror director, and the first chainsaw sequel is a glorious, messy farce

Can a director be a hack if he made basically the best American horror movie ever?

One thing that was really fun about Alien was that when it came out in the pre-Internet dawn time most people didn't have a clue it was a horror movie.

We're getting a myth a day now, huh? Ridiculous. I went the first week and all the reviews mentione dthe disgusting John Hurt scene. The more perceptive ones noted it was an FX-polished haunted-house B-movie.

Sorry to spoil yr illusions about " pre-Internet" savages.

We're getting a myth a day now, huh? Ridiculous. I went the first week and all the reviews mentione dthe disgusting John Hurt scene. The more perceptive ones noted it was an FX-polished haunted-house B-movie.

Sorry to spoil yr illusions about " pre-Internet" savages.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 17 June 2010 13:59 (3 minutes ago)

Most people don't read movie reviews before seeing a movie.

Surely everyone must have known it was a horror movie. The reviews said so.

Can a director be a hack if he made basically the best American horror movie ever?

― rim this, fuck that (Eric H.), Thursday, June 17, 2010 1:41 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

He can certainly turn into a hack...

OK, if you didn't get my little joke above, this was the original, ubiquitous poster:

http://screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/alien_poster.jpg

See, "scream" is a clue.

I don't know where that "here" version came from -- fucking Internet -- but you get the idea.

ie

http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/pictures/tv.film/Alien/Alien-poster.jpg

Sure looks like an SW-styled sci-fi romp to me!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-yXZ7_G7ic

"Look, honey, it's just like that UFO movie we saw!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLamj-b0I8

next you guys should post "Pete Rose didn't bet on baseball"

Sorry to spoil yr illusions about "pre-Internet" savages.

Compared to the kids on our lawns today, the target demographic in 1979 wasn't nearly as saturated in publicity and hype.

As a teenager in the late 70s, I did not read a whole lot of movie reviews. I didn't go to movies all the time, so I doubt I saw the trailer. The "scream" tagline in the newspaper ads led me to expect a run-of-the-mill creature feature. I was hardly alone in being surprised.

Sometimes it was fun being a pre-Internet savage.

If only it had been a run-of-the-mill creature feature.

alien's a highly stylized film, and if you don't dig the style then its pleasures are going to be lost on you

there are so many smart + innovative production decisions made in alien that leveling charges of "glossy b-movie" don't really wash w/ me, it's like saying barry lyndon is just another hoary costume drama with better cinematography (which iirc is what critics at the time thought)

alien actually makes a good double feature with blue collar, which according to your logic is just a heist movie with better acting and a smarter script, but who cares, it's just a heist movie

last temptation of christ, just another sandal epic yawn

not making much sense, Ed3. Alien is just not compelling.

oh it's a lovely movie with a beautifully orchestrated tone - clearly drawing on Kubrick imo for this sort of ongoing-stasis-interrupted-by-troubling-stuff vibe - c'mon man if you don't like horror that's cool but don't ask the movie about the alien parasite that explodes from your chest to be some 70s character study about the bourgeoisie or whatever

tobe hooper prob has a more consistently good track record than like 99% of the 70's horror dudes that are still semi-active, so calling him a hack is sorta o_O to me.

not a huge fan of the genre, but even grotty pre-Scanners Cronenberg does way more with the New Graphic Overexplicitness than a Ridley Scott sleekfest.

and let's not forget it's 'feminist' cuz Sigourney kills the beast in her underwear.

Even if Alien sucked, which it don't, it would need to be praised for giving birth to one of the best film scores of all time.

by...?

I dunno morbz, it seems like you want to beat up alien for being "an FX-polished haunted-house B-movie" and I'm saying there's more there than that. yeah it's not la commune but a lot of smart thinking went into the movie and it shows. stuff I find compelling/interesting about alien include:

remains one of the best envisioning of george lucas' "used future"

folds in paranoia and class consciousness, but then again I'm a sucker for that dystopian 70s stuff

unique + frightening creature

well-mined sexual + body horror themes, the whole film can be read as a metaphor for a sexually abusive family dynamic (why is the computer that runs the ship called mother? why doesn't she protect her children from the phallic monstrosity?)

strong female hero, in any other movie dallas would've saved the day w/ ripley clinging to his hip (and btw ripley doesn't kill the beast in her underwear, she's attacked by it - small point but it's in tune with the theme of the monster as sexual predator - but she puts on her protective gear and goes to do battle with the monster and saves her own damn self)

design design design - 30 years later and the sets, costumes, etc, don't look stupid, which is hard to pull off in sci-fi - logan's run was another glossy big budget sci-fi picture of the time and it looks like dung, like a space 1999 episode

btw I think there's place to find fault in alien but accusing it of being empty-headed gloss is misguided imo

Jerry Goldsmith did the score and yeah, it's fantastic.

x-posts

yes, the art direction was topnotch. But I have no idea what the source of the horror is ... pre-Reagan paranoia?

also pretty sure I haven't seen the whole thing since '79.

logan's run was another glossy big budget sci-fi picture of the time and it looks like dung

you take that back!

in the future we all live at the disco

http://api.ning.com/files/oc0OdnkCRWnInXU8YjVubFFkyjYivf2oPctdlo7ifD7cvkkbIKo5AYjXYg25FrmFNdPjmblIDvi7l0mehf7AzPzWgcOBdhSm/Logans_Run_560x330_MSDLORU_EC004_H.jpg

hell yes

the future looks like too much cocaine imo

see now i just want to start talking about "the apple" but this isnt the thread for that

I mourn the fact that there actually is an ILX thread for that.

yes, the art direction was topnotch. But I have no idea what the source of the horror is ... pre-Reagan paranoia?

it's all sex & body horror. which is what all horror is about I guess, but alien really amps up the force/penetration/gender role stuff. ian holm's character is a robot programmed by the corporation to help "mother" enable the "monster". when he's found out, he tries to kill ripley by jamming a rolled-up porno mag down her throat. there are some deliberately-placed signifiers to unpack there, it's more than just a william castle cheapie in space.

it is slow-moving, I'll give you that. but if you're digging the set design + aesthetics it gets kind of hypnotic.

ok I just figured out why you don't think alien is scary

The script for the 1979 film Alien was initially drafted by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett.[10] Dan O'Bannon drafted an opening in which the crew of a mining ship are sent to investigate a mysterious message on an alien planetoid. He eventually settled on the threat being an alien creature; however, he could not conceive of an interesting way for it to get onto the ship. Inspired after waking from a dream, Shusett said, "I have an idea: the monster screws one of them";[10] planting its seed in his body, and then bursting out of his chest. Both realized the idea had never been done before, and it subsequently became the core of the film.[10] "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape," O'Bannon said on the documentary Alien Evolution, "That's scary because it hits all of our buttons."[11] O'Bannon felt that the symbolism of "homosexual oral rape" was an effective means of discomforting male viewers.[12]

i bet nobody here ever suspected this, but alien is my favorite movie

i refuse to talk about alien as slow-moving on a poll that contains stalker

lol

and let's not forget it's 'feminist' cuz Sigourney kills the beast in her underwear.

not sure about any purported feminism to the first alien movie, but anybody who doesn't see aliens as an explicitly feminist text has his head in the sand or some other dark place imo

I once read a feminist critique of Aliens that said it's all about reinforcing traditional femininity. Vasquez is the non-conventional woman, totally butch and not feminine at all, so she has to die before the movie ends. In the beginning Ripley is kinda non-feminine too, but she embraces traditional femininity by becoming a surrogate mother to Newt (which leads to the famous "bad mother vs. good mother" final battle), so she survives. No way could've someone like Vasquez been the main hero in the movie.

So yeah, gotta go Vasquez, because she's more classic and has better lines than Chacon, and she isn't foxy at all.

― Tuomas, Monday, April 19, 2010 8:47 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Aliens is all about reinforcing the nuclear family (Ripley, Newt, Hicks, with Bishop as the wacky uncle) and individualist blue-collar Everywoman small town values (i.e. the Colony) against the nasty, rapidly breeding hive-like Aliens (i.e. foreign collectivists) who have been enabled by the permissive yuppie Burke and his company. The ineffectual leadership (Gorman) won't even let the marines use their weapons. Damn.

― The Holy Seefeel (latebloomer), Monday, April 19, 2010 10:02 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

And not only is Aliens reinforcing the nuclear family, Ripley literally uses nuclear force (the only way to be sure, after all) to reinforce the family by vanquishing its enemies.

― The Holy Seefeel (latebloomer), Monday, April 19, 2010 10:08 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

And of course the reason Alien 3 did so bad at the box office in the USA is because it tried to appeal to a different audience. It's basically about a troubled woman struggling in a hostile all-male workplace (the prison colony), and who wants to get an abortion (the alien queen fetus inside her), all while being pursued by her abusive ex, who wants her to keep the fetus (the alien). It probably hit way too close to home for many.

― The Holy Seefeel (latebloomer), Monday, April 19, 2010 10:23 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

I like the second one a lot. xp

Don't remember much about the Alien score; Goldsmith's for Planet of the Apes I know backwards and forwards, of course.

yay Dave Kehr:

An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the disco-inspired art direction and some handsome, if gimmicky, cinematography. The science fiction trappings add little to the primitive conception, which features a rubber monster running amok in a spaceship. Director Ridley Scott relies on suspense techniques that looked tired in The Perils of Pauline: for the most part, things simply jump out and go “boo!” Under the circumstances, the allusions to Joseph Conrad (Nostromo) and Howard Hawks (The Thing) seem unforgivably presumptuous. Instead of characters, the film has bodies; some of them are lent by Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, and Yaphet Kotto.

disco inspired sets...jeez louise

traditional femininity !=surrogacy! trad nuclear family structure !=surrogacy!

why do I always get on the good threads ten minutes before I have to go to the damn airport

Now on to the non-blockbusters...

so is the Badham/Langella Dracula any good? I had the impression it was only made cuz Frank L ran forever on Broadway with it.

it was pretty common slasher trope to have a female survivor kill the monster by 1979 (friday the 13th, halloween, etc), I think the big diff w/ the first alien is that sigourney weaver doesn't run around screaming her head off like an idiot. she's terrified but poised + resourceful in a way other horror heroines were not allowed to be, something that aliens capitalized + expanded on.

xxxps

never saw langella's dracula, but I actually bought a used dvd of amityville to watch on long drives week before last...not without its moments, but it kinda sucks

nb when I say "drives" I'm just a passenger not actually driving

ok, you want to talk about big budget schlock, badham's dracula is your man

I thought Badham's Dracula was terrible when I was 10, but I remember my mom liked it.

There's a ringing endorsement for you.

nothing against yr mom, but badham's dracula is like some romance novel artwork come to life, they should remake it w/ fabio

Poltergeist is the Goldsmith score of choice. End of discussion.

never saw langella's dracula, but I actually bought a used dvd of amityville to watch on long drives week before last

horror movies don't scare you like they used to so you watch them while driving, that's pretty hardcore

Hawks' The Thing has not aged well, and i don't think its 'unforgivably presumptuous' to allude to it at all. And in fact, Scott's alien movie is much closer to the 1958 movie It! The Terror From Beyond Space. The early scenes in Alien - with the revived crew eating lunch together and so on - remind me strongly of 70s Altman, complete with overlapping dialogue, uninterrupted takes, roving camerawork, lack of close-ups, ensemble character acting etc.

^yes!

Jesus - I was just checking out Jerry Goldsmith's resume. It's insane!

1950s
Black Patch (1957)
Face of a Fugitive (1959)
City of Fear (1959)
The Twilight Zone (1959)

1960s
Studs Lonigan (1960)
Adam Harding (1960)
The Spiral Road (1962)
Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
Freud (1962)
The Prize (1963)
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
The Stripper (1963)
Take Her, She's Mine (1963)
Lilies of the Field (1963)
A Gathering of Eagles (1963)
Shock Treatment (1964)
Rio Conchos (1964)
Seven Days in May (1964)
Fate Is the Hunter (1964)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964)
The Satan Bug (1965)
Von Ryan's Express (1965)
The Agony and The Ecstasy (1965)
A Patch of Blue (1965)
In Harm's Way (1965)
Morituri (1965)
Stagecoach (1966)
The Trouble with Angels (1966)
Seconds (1966)
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
To Trap a Spy (feature film expansion of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s pilot) (1966)
The Blue Max (1966)
Our Man Flint (1966)
In Like Flint (1967)
The Flim-Flam Man (1967)
Warning Shot (1967)
Hour of the Gun (1967)
Sebastian (1968)
The Detective (1968)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Bandolero! (1968)
Room 222 (1969)
Justine (1969)
The Chairman (1969)
The Illustrated Man (1969)
100 Rifles (1969)

1970s
The Travelling Executioner (1970)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
Rio Lobo (1970)
Patton (1970)
Wild Rovers (1971)
The Mephisto Waltz (1971)
The Last Run (1971)
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971) (basis for The Waltons)
The Other (1972)
Anna and the King (1972)
The Waltons (1972)
Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies (1972)
Pursuit (1972) (TV movie)
The Red Pony (1973) (TV movie)
Shamus (1973)
Police Story (1973)
One Little Indian (1973)
The Don is Dead (1973)
Papillon (1973)
Hawkins on Murder (1973) (TV movie)
Barnaby Jones (1973) (theme and pilot score)
Winter Kill (1973) (TV movie)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1974) (TV movie)
Chinatown (1974)
S*P*Y*S (1974)
High Velocity (1974)
QB VII (1974) (miniseries)
Take a Hard Ride (1975)
A Girl Named Sooner (1975) (TV movie)
Ransom (1975)
Breakout (1975)
Breakheart Pass (1975)
Babe (1975) (TV movie)
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)
The Wind and the Lion (1975)
Logan's Run (1976)
The Omen (1976)
Islands in the Stream (1976)
Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)
The Cassandra Crossing (1977)
MacArthur (1977)
Coma (1977)
Damnation Alley (1977)
Contract on Cherry Street (1977) (TV movie)
Capricorn One (1978)
The Swarm (1978)
Damien: Omen II (1978)
The Boys from Brazil (1978)
Magic (1978)
The Great Train Robbery (1979)
Alien (1979)
Players (1979)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

1980s
Caboblanco (1980)
Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)
Masada (1981) miniseries
Inchon (1981)
Outland (1981)
Night Crossing (1981)
Raggedy Man (1981)
The Salamander (1981)
The Challenge (1982)
Poltergeist (1982)
The Secret of N.I.M.H. (1982)
First Blood (1982)
Psycho II (1983)
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
Under Fire (1983)
Gremlins (1984)
Supergirl (1984)
Runaway (1984)
Legend (1985)
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985)
Explorers (1985)
King Solomon's Mines (1985)
Poltergeist II (1986)
Amazing Stories (1986)
Link (1986)
Hoosiers (1986)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (theme only, re-arranged by Dennis McCarthy) (1987)
Extreme Prejudice (1987)
Lionheart (1987)
Innerspace (1987)
Rent-A-Cop (1988)
Rambo III (1988)
Criminal Law (1988)
Alien Nation (rejected) (1988)
The 'Burbs (1989)
Leviathan (1989)
Warlock (1989)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

1990s
The Russia House (1990)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Total Recall (1990)
H.E.L.P. (1991)
Not Without My Daughter (1991)
Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)
Mom and Dad Save the World (1991)
Medicine Man (1991)
Basic Instinct (1992)
Forever Young (1992)
Mr. Baseball (1992)
Gladiator (rejected) (1992)
Hollister (1992)
Love Field (1993)
The Vanishing (1993)
Dennis the Menace (1993)
Rudy (1993)
Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Malice (1993)
Matinee (1993)
Angie (1994)
Bad Girls (1994)
The Shadow (1994)
The River Wild (1994)
I.Q. (1994)
Congo (1995)
First Knight (1995)
Star Trek: Voyager (1995)
Powder (1995)
City Hall (1995)
Executive Decision (1996)
Two Days in the Valley (rejected) (1996)
Chain Reaction (1996)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)
Fierce Creatures (1996)
Air Force One (1997)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
The Edge (1997)
Deep Rising (1998)
U.S. Marshals (1998)
Small Soldiers (1998)
Mulan (1998)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
The Mummy (1999)
The Haunting (1999)
The 13th Warrior (1999)

2000s
Hollow Man (2000)
Along Came a Spider (2001)
The Last Castle (2001)
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Star Trek Nemesis (2002)
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)
Timeline (rejected) (2003)
Kingdom of Heaven (2005) (Uncredited; Reused score "Valhalla" from The 13th Warrior)
Basic Instinct 2 (2006) (Uncredited; Reused score "Main Title" from Basic Instinct)

An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the disco-inspired art direction

what disco was dave kehr hanging out in, and what did he take before he went in

wanna dance?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/Alien_%281979%29_-_The_Alien.jpg

hey what's your sign?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7HTO3jP-_lk/SfeSVQMIqpI/AAAAAAAACao/Rvof3qzF95g/s1600-h/ht_alien_movie_051018_ssh.jpg

such a gorgeous monster design. so elegant and lethal.

is this the way to the bathroom?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/ht_alien_movie_051018_ssh.jpg

this is definitely not the way to the bathroom

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/interior.jpg

must be the chillout room

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/alien_shot1l.jpg

whereas the villain in logan's run is actually in fact a malfunctioning disco ball (sorry goole)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/logansrun1.jpg

love to love you baaaabbyy

http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/pictures/films/alien/alien2.jpg

The more perceptive ones noted it was an FX-polished haunted-house B-movie.

Maybe it is - though Aliens is more in line with the haunted house genre than the original - but Alien definitely has plenty in common with B-movies. It is a very well made B-movie, and I don't see that as an insult. I'd rather watch a well made B-movie than a poorly-made "A" movie. Would Pauline Kael consider Alien "trash" (as opposed to "art")?

just like xanadu up in this piece

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/alien01.jpg

Aliens is more in line with the haunted house genre than the original

if alien is a haunted house movie, aliens is a war movie and alien3 is a prison pic

I'm just wondering if there's a critical short list out there of the basic "types" of horror movies.

Body · Comedy (list · Zombie comedy) · Dark fantasy · Dark romanticism · Ero guro · Erotic · Ghost · Gothic · J-Horror · K-Horror · Lovecraftian · Monsters (Frankenstein · Vampire · Werewolf) · Occult detective · Psychological · Religion (film) · Sci-fi (film) · Slasher (film) · Splatter/Gore (film) · Supernatural · Survival · Weird menace · Weird West · Zombie apocalypse

can't find Kael's review online, just someone quoting her saying the film contributed to 'the murder of taste' xxp

(she didnt like Cameron's either)

Ero Guro?

(xxpost) + cannibals

these are more genres rather than thematic types though.

never mind, looked it up - seems weird to bother with that one tbh

such a gorgeous monster design. so elegant and lethal.

― Save Ferris' It Means Everything knocked my socks off (latebloomer), Thursday, June 17, 2010 1:56 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

you admire it!

xxxxpost impossible, there can't be a Goldsmith score of choice! You have to split him into categories if you wanna even try something like an OPO with him. Poltergeist-- yeah, that's the killer slab of his early 80s french-impressionist paradigm, but how do you compare that with the high-modernist-caveman trip of Planet Of The Apes, or the Tago-Mago-in-hell of Alien, or the pastorale of Islands In The Stream, or the sonic sign-language of Patton, or the cooly malign synth of Basic Instinct or the blocky harmonic juggernaut of Capricorn One? Dude had apples, oranges, pears, and kiwis in his oeuvre, you can't OPO him.

When i was first getting into film music as a thing I was all 'well of course Herrmann and Morricone are the titans beneath whom etc etc' but within a year or so Goldsmith was as much a figure of awe to me as any composer of the last 400 years. (TBH Morricone is as stunningly polymorphous a genius as JG, but that's about it and JG hits my heart more).

Part of the brilliance of "Alien" is that the monster is a big penis with teeth.

As far as Hooper, "Texas Chainsaw" 1 & 2 are both masterpieces. "Salem's Lot" is not. And "Poltergeist" - come on - is basically producer/screenwriter/(rumored) director Spielberg (and classic Spielberg at that). As for Hooper's hackitude, look at everything the guy did basically between 1982 and the present, "TC2" aside - I mean, "Lifeforce" is incoherent, and the rest is pretty much just TV. Now, nothing wrong with TV, but at least, say, Walter Hill makes great TV. But Hooper? Please. The only reason anyone talks about him at all is "Texas Chainsaw." Which is fine, but hack he remains.

you admire it!

i admire its purity. unclouded by conscience or delusions or morality...

*gurgle*

ian holm as ash is another great thing about alien

Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton together are also pretty great.

Veronica Cartwright nearly outdoes Bill Paxton as the entry for character w/poor stress management skills.

another '79 major studio monster flick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zLb9UtQhy8

xxxxpost impossible, there can't be a Goldsmith score of choice! You have to split him into categories if you wanna even try something like an OPO with him. Poltergeist-- yeah, that's the killer slab of his early 80s french-impressionist paradigm, but how do you compare that with the high-modernist-caveman trip of Planet Of The Apes, or the Tago-Mago-in-hell of Alien, or the pastorale of Islands In The Stream, or the sonic sign-language of Patton, or the cooly malign synth of Basic Instinct or the blocky harmonic juggernaut of Capricorn One? Dude had apples, oranges, pears, and kiwis in his oeuvre, you can't OPO him.

OTM. OPO retracted. (But I do think Poltergeist >>> Apes.)

prophecy is a deeply terrible film

evidently!

just LOL at that shot of the sleeping bag exploding into feathers.

I've enjoyed these threads. Hope they keep up--I'm looking forward to the '68 showdown between Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead.

as a young horror nerd I read the novelization of prophecy, which was actually not bad, had high hopes for the movie, and then

the creepy music I remember from Poltergeist is The Star-Spangled Banner.

^^^ It strikes me how confusing the very opening of the movie must be for today's 24-hour-entertainment audience. How many ppl under, say, 40 have ever seen a TV station sign off for the night?

I'm under 40 and have seen this.

how about under 30?

ppl under 30 must think she means the cable repair guys when she says "they're here"

"Poltergeist" is so' scary - and it's rated PG!!! - that I doubt kids even think about the ancient pre-cable television signal, any more than they consider the fact that no kid ever has ever had a toy clown. And certainly not since this movie. Now, "976-EVIL" - cell phone kids will be scratching their head over that shit.

Goldsmith's descending eerie string sound thing (is it a string? a woodwind? bassoon, maybe? synth?) is as great as the sawed strings in "Jaws." And was totally ripped off (with a trombone) for "Lost."

PG-13 i thought? my memory is that is was one of the first pg-13 ratings. off to verify brb

nope. pg-13 wasn't introduced until 1984.

Complaints from parents about Temple of Doom and Gremlins being the catalyst

nope i am dead wrong, i think it was used to argue for the pg-13, along with temple of doom tho.

xpost yep

scared the shit out of 9 year old me tho, thats for sure.

My wife's father took her to see it on one of his visitation days when she was 12. She's never watched it since, and refuses to. :(

i actually did have a stuffed toy clown as a kid :-(

nothing like the one in Poltergeist though.

up from the depths lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlD7twzTnoM

I've enjoyed these threads. Hope they keep up--I'm looking forward to the '68 showdown between Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead.

Cool! I'm thinking about doing one per week as long as no one loses interest.

Sorry about the Stalker business everyone - I vow to vet each candidate more carefully next time around. I noticed Wikipedia includes Sophie's Choice and The Secret of N.I.H.M. in the horror films of 1982.

The Secret Of C.H.U.D.

whatever, i cant not vote for stalker in any poll.

its easier than you think!

This is the only poll i can not vote for stalker.

This is the only poll; i can not vote for stalker.

LET ME LEAD YOU THROUGH THE ZONE of not voting for stalker

But wait there's a weird dog over there--

https://www.msu.edu/~lotz/classes/images/stalker.jpg
he's cute

l-r: jjjusten, henry

they are actually watching stalker in that photograph

Goldsmith's descending eerie string sound thing (is it a string? a woodwind? bassoon, maybe? synth?) is as great as the sawed strings in "Jaws." And was totally ripped off (with a trombone) for "Lost."

Actually, the descent is so smooth and the timbre so flat I think this could be a 'gloom tube'-- you know those plastic batons you could buy where if you tilt it it makes this forlorn drooping sound? That's exactly what it sounds like to me!

Re: Lost, Goldsmith created an aggressive version of this poltergeist droop for 1997's The Edge, with a blatting, downward sliding solo trombone signature for the big fucking bear-- I wonder if that was more directly the inspiration for some of Giacchino's Lost trombone moves.

(The Edge = one of JG's very best scores of his final period BTW).

the score for anyone interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaT-JX5r8i8

The Brood. didn't even have to think about it. but that's only because you omitted Cannibal Holocaust from contention.

laughing myself silly at the inclusion of Alison's Birthday in this company.

what about The Changeling, The Evictors, Buio Omega, The Fog, Rollin's Fascination, Franco's Exorcisme, Terror Train and Hardy's Thirst? all 1979 as well. some real contenders among them.

eh, ok. CH, Fog, TT, Changeling all 1980 according to IMDB. most major genre references have these as 1979 releases. Grindhouse DVD liner notes do say CH premiere in Italy was in 1980. could be one of those cusp-y things.

Yeah, most of the one you mentioned are here:

Best Horror Film of 1980 (part 1 of a series)

ok, tnx! seeing this one late, and missed pt 1 entirely.

Stalker isn't the only WTF? movie on this list. Walerian Borowczyk's Immoral Tales is omnibus of bizarre, softcore fables about sexual morality and revenge. Intersting movie, but despite some bloody vengeance, it doesn't belong anywhere near the word "horror".

Anyway, this poll is much less one-sided than the 1980 version. Tough to call between Alien, The Brood and Phantasm. Interesting to compare Phantasm and Alien, as they're both unique and very effective, yet their methods and materials are so radically different. Plus they're both poised on the cusp between 70s and 80s cinematic styles. Always loved how Alien combines the textures of an 80s/"lived in" future with a 70s super clean future. And if The Brood isn't my all-time favorite Cronenberg flick, it's gotta be awful damn close. Not as wigged out as Videodrome, but incredibly creepy and clever. Herzog's Nosferatu is nice, too, if not quite in the same class.

Eventually went with Alien, due to lifelong love. Was the first R-rated horror movie I ever saw, and it scared me so bad I slept with the light on for weeks. Have seen it at least 20 times since.

and this isn't even Immoral Tales, but the lesser semi-sequel, Immoral Women. still has no place in this poll. not that it'll get any votes.

To be clear, I've tried to list every horror film of each year, not the "best". And again, I'm using wikipedia to inform our choices - if anyone has a better idea of what to use as a database, I'd be glad to do so.

Agree with others that Zombi 2 is a crashing bore, famous sharkfight and eyeball threat scenes notwithstanding.

A few more 1979 entries worth a mention:

Delirium - 1/2 a slasher flick featuring a crazed 'Nam vet, 1/2 a lame political thriller
Killer Fish - cheezy Italian Jaws rip-off with piranhas (and Lee Majors)
Malabimba - legendarily degenerate Italian Exorcist rip-off -- boring as hell w or w/out porn inserts
Screamers - decent Italian Dr. Moreau, uh, interpretation - most famous for ads & poster art falsely promising that "you will see a man turned inside out!" You won't.
The Clonus Horror (aka "Parts") - neat, low-budget sci-fi/horror flick about clones raised for their...
The Driller Killer - early Abel Ferrara slasher flick, nicely miserable slice of vintage L.E.S. punk grime
Buio Omega - super sleazy Joe D'Amato necro thriller, one of his best (not much competition)

jeez, did i say immoral tales? yeah, immoral women = the film i was talking about (and the one on the list). cursed brain..

oh, and hal jam, if i were trying to find horror flicks for a year, i'd do an advanced title search on imdb and restrict title type to "horror", release date to "1979", and genre to horror. you'll probably have to screen the results for stuff that more than a few people have seen, but you'll get most everything that might conceivably qualify.

...and restrict title type to "horror" "feature film", release date to "1979", and genre to horror.

uh, yeah

not my poll. and, call me old-school, but i just go by reference books (Hardy, McCarty, Balun). though they don't always agree on year of release.

Buio Omega is Buried Alive. I know there is more than one though, but that is the one I assumed was referred to in the poll.

oops, sorry hal jam. thought for some reason that you were asking that question. redirect to darin...

batting average is not too high today

no worries.

haven't associated Buio Omega with the title Buried Alive since, wow, the VHS years???

Whoa - Clonus was 1979 and left off this list? It is a classic feel-bad 70s flick that was later made into the happy-ending glossy action-packed star vehicle The Island starring Ewan McGregor's butt and Scarlett Johansson's boobs.

x-post What about "Alien" is "super-clean?" The sleeping/eating spaces? If anything if was an opening salvo in the "the future is dirty" sort of vision. Everything in this movie is leaking or hissing.

http://www.favouritefilm.com/acatalog/alienlobby1.jpg

The sleeping/eating spaces?

But like I said, everything else is either leaking or hissing. If anything the sterile sleeping/eating arrangements are there just to highlight the messiness/rustiness of the rest of it.

if i were trying to find horror flicks for a year, i'd do an advanced title search on imdb and restrict title type to "horror", release date to "1979", and genre to horror. you'll probably have to screen the results for stuff that more than a few people have seen, but you'll get most everything that might conceivably qualify.

Thanks, contenderizer. I'll use IMDB along w/some other sites in future polls, so hopefully no more omissions.

Killer Fish - cheezy Italian Jaws rip-off with piranhas (and Lee Majors)

ha, I remember watching this on HBO

But like I said, everything else is either leaking or hissing. If anything the sterile sleeping/eating arrangements are there just to highlight the messiness/rustiness of the rest of it.

that's why contenderizer said it combines the used future/clean future, it's got both.

and does both well to boot

I mentioned this above but it's pretty amazing for a 30 year old sci-fi film to still look fresh

Alien was so scary that I get scared just looking at that egg image.

If we really dug deep I bet we could do a 1979 poll of only non-US Jaws ripoffs...

nah, most of those came earlier (Tintorera, Orca) or later (Great White, Mako, Devilfish)

I guess killer fish is technically a piranha ripoff

"Piranha" is awesome. Can't wait til we get to some Dante. "The Howling" is scary as shit.

My friend kevin did a whole slideshow/presentation about ripoff shark movies at 92nd st Y a few months ago so I have posters for all these shark/mean fish movies fresh in my mind's eye. Really wanna see Tintorera because a) early Basil Poledouris score and b) sharks vs. swingers

a tradition still alive & well, it seems

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWJ70m4GaUM&feature=related

it's just not the same.

Yeah if there's one thing the cheap shark movie slideshow proved to me, it's that motionless fiberglass shark >>>> dynamic CGI shark. When we got to the 90s-and-later part it became impossible to appreciate that shit on any level.

i blame Renny Harlin. had to have "fast" sharks. jerk.

For Cutthroat Island? He was probly terrified of ending up w/something like the sharks in the Matthau pirates movie.

x-post What about "Alien" is "super-clean?" The sleeping/eating spaces? If anything if was an opening salvo in the "the future is dirty" sort of vision. Everything in this movie is leaking or hissing.

― Josh in Chicago

yeah - i agree with whomever it was upthread that compared it to Altman(?) or some other 70s drama - esp. in terms of pacing and the types of characters and non-glamorous appearance of the actors

otm. the character interactions in the first half of the film are strongly reminiscent of altman (especially in the dining room/meeting sequence), and unlike any other horror or sci-fi film i can think of. probably the most convincing portrait of workplace cultures & politics the genre has produced. carpenter's the thing tries for something similar a couple years later, but falls far short.

i'm sure there are other examples of this from about the same time period, though ... none are immediately coming to mind, however. The 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers has some similarities in terms of the pacing and initial characterizations, maybe?

The pacing and tone of The Shining is kind of similar.

The scruffy blue collar space guys leisurely sitting around doing blue collar space stuff came from Dan OBannon having written Dark Star earlier, I thought.

yeah, probably, but Dark Star has nowhere near as convincing a vibe. it's only partly a product of script - owes at least as much to the performances and the direction/editing.

really should watch the 70s body snatchers again. love donald sutherland and remember very little about it.

70s body snatchers is one of my favorite movies - imo better than the original

^ Totally. A masterpiece. Listen to the commentary track some time. Kaufman is some sort of unsung genius.

that's what i thought at the time, as a kid, but looking back, alls i remember is

http://www.ugo.com/images/articles/000903600/903558_big.jpg

uh...

http://www.ugo.com/images/articles/000903600/903558_big.jpg

but...

http://www.ugo.com/images/articles/000903600/903558_big.jpg

yes, but in a sense that image summarizes the existential crisis of 21st Century America.

nods sagely. all the good ones turn out to be pod people.

also, Stepford Wives.

70s body snatchers is one of my favorite movies - imo better than the original

― sarahel, Friday, 18 June 2010 22:33 (47 minutes ago)

otm

i mean, seriously - it's got Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy

One more testimonial to the '78 Body Snatchers: one of the 25 best films of the decade, I'd say. Kael's review captured its loopiness well.

could you post a link to that review?

Somebody had all the capsule 5001 Nights reviews online, but I think they took them down (or were forced to). You'd have to go to When the Lights Go Down for the full review. Kael loved Phil Kaufman's films.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol killer fish