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

easy: the shining. maybe not the scariest, but the best.

yeah this is only to see what comes in second, right?

Cannibal Apocalypse
Cannibal Holocaust

tough choice for no. 2, tbh.

1980: good year for cannibal movies.

No Scanners? That would be my vote.

haven't seen many of these but went with The Changeling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVTRrggfU6A

1980: A good year for spooky balls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaPLQidZub4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhCqefJ28ik

A wealth of riches in 1980! Motel Hell is a sentimental favorite & The Changeling is prob in my overall top ten horror flicks, but imo u can't really fuck w/ the slow mounting tension in the first half of The Shining, culminating in the "all work & no play" scene. If the payoff weren't so overblown, it might be the best movie ever. Flaws aside, the good parts still tower over everything else here. Delbert Gr8080 washroom dialog in contention for best horror scene OF ALL TIME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tul5bY12y0

Of the 3 I've seen, Altered States easily over Dressed to Kill and The Shining.

Scanners is '81.

1. The Shining
2. Altered States
3. Dressed to Kill

someone more tech savvy than me should post that exploding head .gif from scanners.

in its own way, the funniest horror film scene i can recall.

Only one of these has David Copperfield.

those are hard to beat, but it's kind of a stretch to include altered states, right? i mean, it's scary, sure, plus heavy on the disturbing imagery and latex effects, but it's as much sci-fi, fantasy or just plain ol' ken russell weirdness as it is horror. quibble quibble, aaaaanyway...

city of the living dead, inferno and motel hell are worth a mention alongside c1916's big three. city's an appealingly grisly zombie gore flick from fulci, and motel hell a wonderful, underappreciated horror comedy. really need to see the changeling again, i remember almost nothing about it.

went with the shining, no surprise.

I love the title of "The Anthrophagus Beast," so much so that I doubt the film could live up to my current love for its name.

"Anthropophagus Beast," even better than I typed it.

sadly, it does not live up to much of anything :(

Anthropophagus is pretty unremarkable grindhouse fare overall, but the "child-birthing" scene is pretty o_0.

The Shining will win, and deservedly, but I'll be voting for Dressed to Kill for as many rounds as it makes it through.

Underrated: The Fog. Overrated: The Changeling.

Oh god, somehow missed Inferno in the rundown. Hope it gets a few votes. It's got some of Argento's most striking images (and, yeah, maybe his worst plot).

wtf at Evil Dead not being on the list.

I could understand arguing that evil dead 2 is a comedy, but Evil Dead 1 is definitely horror, and maybe the one I'd vote for.

imdb lists evil dead as 1981, and i'd expect it to do quite well in that poll.

in addition to those mentioned above, i also rep for watcher in the woods and humanoids from the deep. the former a surprisingly spooky disney ghost story, the latter an entertainingly cheezy roger corman production about horny fishmen.

several films left of the original poll:

Blood Beach (monster beneath the sand eats teens)
The Children (they seldom wash their hands after using the restroom)
Contamination (killer space fungus makes people explode)
Don't Answer the Phone (self-explanatory)
Don't Go In the House (part 2 in the year's popular series of advice-themed horror films)
Eaten Alive (cult-celebrated Italian cannibal flick)
Effects (lame Snuff rip-off)
The Godsend (possessed moppet looks spooky)
He Knows You're Alone (generic slasher)
The Hearse (half decent and mostly forgotten ghost story)
Macabro (dull necrophilia flick - directorial debut of Lamberto Bava)
New Year's Evil (holiday-themed mayhem)
Patrick Is Still Alive (super sleazy & gory sequel to Patrick)
Phobia (lame Canadian killer thriller directed by John friggin Huston)
Silent Scream (ok slasher flick, was quite popular at the time)
Virus (dull zombie flick)

Dressed to Kill is somewhat fun as yet another De Palma exercise in Hitchcock aping, and so bizarre and silly to be at least a little entertaining on a camp level, but it's really just just too ludicrous to have any kind of legitimate claim to being good.

don't buy that argument. ludicrous can be just as good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQEPecjwbP8

Tonight... someone has come to the Prom alone.

If you're not back by midnight... you won't be coming home.

It seems 1980 was ground zero for the sort of stuff that inspired the parody trailers in Grindhouse - Don't Go Into the House or Answer the Phone + titles based on any number of holidays, formal occasions, national observances & such. I'm actually kinda surprised there wasn't already a Thanksgiving-based slasher film from this era.

Has ILX ever done a legit old-school poll of horror films, ballot-style?

imdb lists evil dead as 1981, and i'd expect it to do quite well in that poll.― the other is a black gay gentleman from Los Angeles (contenderizer), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 3:43 AM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh shit sry, I thought this was an 80s poll.

holy shit 1980 was great!

Has ILX ever done a legit old-school poll of horror films, ballot-style?

Good idea, since I doubt a '30s or '20s poll is in the offing.

ILX should do a legit old-school horror film

don't buy that argument. ludicrous can be just as good.

oh man if this had just started one year earlier i could have spent half this thread pimping for Phantasm

The shining will (and probably should) win this, but I feel like voting for something else. I remember having fond feelings for prom night, and am rewatching terror train at the moment, which I remember liking quite a bit. Cannibal holocaust is kind of in it's own world, but idk. Don't think I ever saw altered states, but that's prob up next (thx instant watch).

Couple entrants here from troma, who I kinda hate, so no votes for mothers day from me.

Scanners is '81.

Dressed to Kill is somewhat fun as yet another De Palma exercise in Hitchcock aping, and so bizarre and silly to be at least a little entertaining on a camp level, but it's really just just too ludicrous to have any kind of legitimate claim to being good.

any time someone smears a De Palma film (a good one anyway) i almost feel like i need to give excuses for the dude. not gonna get into it here, but the film's pretty awesome high-gloss schlock. the guy has a handle of the craft that makes up for any narrative dopiness.

dressed to kill is retarded

probably gonna vote for the fog cuz even tho its really corny its p effective. dont really like that many of the movies listed here tbh but i always wanted to see the house on the edge of the park

yeah, the fog is way more sophisticated totally.

i love old carpenter, but whatever dude.

http://blogue.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Clarissa_Explains_It_All_4.jpg

haha. ok. sounded more butthurt than intended there but The Fog is weak Carpenter imo.

motel hell a wonderful, underappreciated horror comedy.

my sentiment exactly - the pig's head chainsaw sequence is a true gem - i think there's also a seriously wtf lol shot where some unfortunate athletic team (it's been at least 10 years since i saw this movie, so cut me some slack) has its heads sort of swaying back and forth while planted in the ground. I couldn't decide whether it was meant to be a parody of 60s/70s psychedelic movies or was in earnest.

Hm, not seen either the Fulci or the Argento on this list - a year or two different and one of them would definitely win with The Beyond (although actually not if Evil Dead is the same year) or Tenebrae.

So yeah, probably The Shining will take this, although I'm gonna give myself some extra mulling time before actually voting.

Saturn 3 is a better horror movie than The Shinning, but so's most of this list. Voting for The Fog as a solid "when-Carpenter-was-fab" entry.

The Shining ftw. I'd rather see The Fog again than Dressed to Kill.

voted Dressed To Kill, but part of me really wanted to give it up for Mother's Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=NFXSBcNulYw

Someone explain me House On The Edge Of The Park. I saw a DL link for it the other day and felt intrigued...

I rly need to see Alligator and Saturn 3.

Incidentally, Saturn 3 has a really killer modernist score from Elmer Bernstein, one of his best IMO.

Trying to think of the ones that actually scared me in 1980, when I was 11. Saw lots of these thanks to HBO. Strong contenders: The Shining, The Fog, The Changeling, Humanoids.

Funny Death Ship story: This played in HBO in early 1981, and my family watched it. If you've not seen it, it's about a ship haunted by Nazi ghosts, and throughout the film the ship would periodically blast its foghorn. After the movie, I -- scared half to death by this Z-grade movie -- went to wash up and brush my teeth for bed. When I turned on the warm water, our partly-frozen pipes let out a blasting, moaning noise -- OMG NAZI FOGHORN O SHIT!! -- that caused me to run, white-faced and screaming, back into the living room and into my mom's arms.

Haha awesome! Is the early-00s Ghost Ship sort of a remake of Death Ship?

how so?

cuz it's so unscary, geddit!

http://www.mstrmnd.com/files/PDVD_030dannyfinger.jpg
Best film blog ever, Physical Cosmologies, about the Shining. Long but some crazy rad hermetic/spiritual aesthetic discussions going on here.
http://www.mstrmnd.com/log/802

I saw Altered States after seeing clips of it used in some Flaming Lips "Zaireeka" bootleg DVD and went out and got the movie and it's very intense in parts! I never thought of it as a horror movie but i guess it's something like those old monster movies where the scientist turns himself into the monster.

Shining is great, and will win. Love the fog though so i'm going for that.

have a soft spot for the first Friday 13th movie, but it's not because it's scary more because I just like the rustic way it's made.

Oh, I think I missed seeing Alligator on the list - John Sayles wrote the screenplay for this - like a number of films from around the same time period that are also "kinda cheesy" (C.H.U.D., They Live) there's some acerbic social commentary involved that i thought was pretty cool.

Didn't see Friday the 13th on there, might have given it a vote. Tom Savini on effects I think? And it was my first "proper" horror movie. Scared the bejesus out of me at the end.

yeah that ending is a beauty

I think the "rusticness" or cheapness of the production ramps up the scary quite a lot cos you get a kind of home movie vibe.

savini effects on FRIDAY THE 13TH yeah (the axe in the face, and a lot more, is stolen pretty directly from Bava's BAY OF BLOOD/TWITCH OF THE DEATH nerve). kevin bacon getting the arrow thru his neck = seminal gore moment.

C.H.U.D.! I still remember my friend Tom very solemnly telling the ticket girl, "One for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, please."

LOL

since someone asked, house by the edge of the park is a ruggero deodato (cannibal holocaust) flick about two thugs taunting, torturing and raping a bunch of upper class twits. the fact that the upper class twits stared it doesn't make the movie any easier to take. it's an ugly piece a work, and an obvious inspiration to a lot of the "torture porn" type survival horror that's come along in the last decade or so. wonderful central performance from david hess, but the movie is genuinely repellent.

is it like a pre-funny games funny games?

yeah, kinda like that. not as clever or well-made, but equally unpleasant, if not more.

it's been years since i've seen HOUSE BY THE EDGE OF THE PARK, but isn't there a twist of some kind at the end? genuinely can't remember...

yeah, there's a twist, but it's silly and doesn't redeem the movie's sadism

most sadistic scene in house by the edge of the park

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfdrG7yc5LU

didn't know j0n w1lliams was in it tbh

Love "The Fog." Also love "Alligator" (Robert Forster! john Sayles script!) Awesome bookend to "Piranha." Tried watching "City of the Living Dead" last week, and it was unwatchable, like most Fulci. Just a total POS.

it's so unscary, geddit!

that and the other dozen things we've gone over for years (Jack crazed from the start, Jack somehow married to Shelley Duvall, etc)

i guess i recommend city of the living dead mostly for its impressive gore & makeup effects. weak justification, i know, but it made quite an impression on me as a kid. especially the scene of the bloody-eyed girl barfing up her guts near the beginning. agree that, like most fulci, it's turgid, nonsensical and badly photographed.

always hated Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (seewhatididthere?), so Cannibal Holocaust all the way.

Scanners is one of Cronenberg's worst films.

j'adore, Inferno, but you're a mess.
same goes for you, City of the Living Dead.

have never seen Antropophagus referred to by this title - and lord knows it has gone by enough of 'em. btw, anyone catch Andreas Schnaas' unofficial remake (Cannibal: Anthropophagous 2000). vastly more entertaining than D'Amato's. not coincidentally, a lot less boring. and it actually tops the fetusphagy scene 10x over.

OMG Beyond Evil is srsly one of the most entertainingly bad movies i've ever suffered through on purpose. great score. and Herb Freed redeemed himself (sort of) with Terror Night.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

You people are scared by boredom.

based on his posts on this thread I would like to hang out w/condenderizer and watch movies all weekend

budget-conscious hourly rates, vcr, no pool, no pets

Two runners up are worthy. Wish I wasn't the only one who voted for Inferno. Interesting that Cannibal Holocaust, after all that discussion, couldn't muster even one vote.

not interesting, JUSTICE

The hell???? I def. put in a vote for CH. Wonder why it didn't register. Hrmph.

shining > all other 1980 horror films combined, 27 -- 20. sounds about right.

Yeah, I'm OK with that too, but I'd be more like:

The Shining > all other 1980 horror films combined > all other 1980 non-horror films combined

fuckin' hate cannibal holocaust. animal cruelty shit in that one made for one of the most unpleasant movie experiences of my life.

the fog has a killer vibe. altered states too.

should re-watch motel hell sometime. all I remember is the dueling chainsaws bit. (which rules, obv)

and I noticed this thread too late to vote, but I would have just thrown another vote in for the shining. as with just about everyone else I know, I saw it when I was WAY young and it put some deep fear into me.

huh i could swear i voted for Terror Train?

Friday the 13th getting no votes is also kind of O_o

i guess i recommend city of the living dead mostly for its impressive gore & makeup effects. weak justification, i know, but it made quite an impression on me as a kid. especially the scene of the bloody-eyed girl barfing up her guts near the beginning.
― the other is a black gay gentleman from Los Angeles (contenderizer), Thursday, June 10, 2010 2:31 AM (2 months ago)

Yeah, holy shit, that scene. Someone needs to steal that idea for a better movie.

rented Prom Night over the weekend - actual slasher content is kinda weak but movie gets points for a) awesomely ridiculous "Disco Madness" dance routine and b) the big decapitation at the end. As a low-rent mash-up of Halloween and Carrie it's not so bad.

since someone asked, house by the edge of the park is a ruggero deodato (cannibal holocaust) flick about two thugs taunting, torturing and raping a bunch of upper class twits. the fact that the upper class twits stared it doesn't make the movie any easier to take. it's an ugly piece a work, and an obvious inspiration to a lot of the "torture porn" type survival horror that's come along in the last decade or so. wonderful central performance from david hess, but the movie is genuinely repellent.

it's weird -- in the present day, I actively avoid movies that are genuinely repellent (funny games, for example). but when it's something from twenty years ago or so, I'm drawn to it.

Just tried watching Cannibal Holocaust, but Jesus is that movie repellant. Had to shut it off after 30 minutes. That early 80's Faces of Death crap really turns me off.

theme song is awesome though.

really hate cannibal holocaust. def "top 5 most unpleasant movie experiences of my life" material.

add one voice to growing chorus of disapproval. awful movie.

couldn't make it past the turtle scene (I'll take "torture porn" or Funny Games over legitimate animal torture, "tribal realism" or no)

The theme music to CH is haunting as hell in a way that seems innocuous, but is also strangely nauseating/repellent. Maybe that was just my reaction to it. Considering the subject matter of the film, I guess it is quite effective, then?

Riz Ortolani really does more than dozens of beheaded endangered turtles could ever do to make that movie seem really, uniquely horrible.

Kay Dickinson has a great essay (partially) about the music of Cannibal Holocaust in her book Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. There's also another version of it in Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style and Politics, ed. Jeffrey Sconce, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

If I would have known that CH was a animal snuff film I never would have bothered. Oh well. The score was kind of an interesting choice, have to admit.

we need a best horror themes poll.

Probably following a nominations thread.

This reminds me that there was a sideproject of Anekdoten and Landberk that did a buncha old horror movie themes in a double-mellotron rock band lineup. It's pretty nifty, and includes a good CH theme. The album is "Symphonic Holocaust" by Morte Macabre.
Seems the whole thing's on youtube, see for instance Apoteosi Del Mistero (City of the living dead) or, of course, Opening Theme (Cannibal Holocaust)

(Sorry to go all prog on yr thread)

The Changeling is a kind of fun, mostly basic Victorian (though set in the present day) haunted house story. Knowing that the film had something of a following, I think I was expecting a bit more from it, but it hits all of the expected genre notes, and I really liked the Melvyn Douglas performance. If anything, I think the film mostly suffers as a result of the misfortune of being released in the same year as arguably the greatest haunted house movie of all time.