Best Horror Film of 1981 (part 3 of a series)

V. embarassed to say I've only seen The Beyond, which I cannot imagine being better than everything else.

haha this is an easy one

prediction of winner: evil dead

i think ill vote my bloody valentine tho

"Evil Dead" is almost certainly going to run away with this, but I'm voting for "American Werewolf" because it was a constant favorite of 12-year-old me. I didn't even see Evil Dead until I was in my late 20s.

Went with The Howling.

hate Evil Dead, i was hoping American Werewolf would have walked this. great film

Wow it was totally the year of the werewolf wasn't it?

I might go totally rogue on this one and vote evilspeak

The Entity is worth watching on instawatch, y/n?

Although "Scanners," dammit.

y

xp

Evil Dead

what a great year tho. I love 80s horror

evilspeak is a pretty bad movie but a) it's called evilspeak and b)
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/evilspeak-44.jpg

Scanners is kind of a mess of a movie, Cronenberg still feeling his way around but. MacGoohan is awesome in it, of course. Tons of these I haven't seen but would happily watch most of the sequels on this list (Piranha II, Halloween II, F13th)

"Evilspeak" and "Blood Beach" and "The Burning" and "Omen III" might as well have been on a continuous loop on HBO and Cinemax when I was a kid. I saw them so many times.

I love scanners. the execution sucks but the ideas are fantastic. don't wanna repeat the "what is horror" debate here, but I wouldn't call it a horror film.

don't wanna repeat the "what is horror" debate here, but I wouldn't call it a horror film.

yeah kinda feelin you on this one tbf

Yeah, it's more a sci-fi/paranoid conspiracy thriller than a horror movie. Exploding heads do not horror make. It's more of a kind with "Existenz" than "Rabid."

HARD SCIFI

step

demonz in my computah

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/evilspeak-17.jpg

black candles, unholy water, consecrated host, clint howard

where does one get unholy water?

pazuzu springs

Evil Dead will be a fully deserving landslide winner, but I'm probably throwing my vote to The Beyond or The Funhouse.

the funhouse is underrated, one of the few films one can point to when launching a "tobe hooper is not a hack" defense

tobe hooper is not a hack btw

i remember happy birthday to me being pretty fun

i will fight to the death for the honor of tobe hooper. frankly raimi has had as many hack fucking moments in his later career if not more.

xpost right thinking people agree

for example, i just watched texas chainsaw massacre part II yesterday and you know what it was? IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME is what it was

"Evil Dead" over "Scanners"

"Wolfen" isn't scary enough, but it's one of those movies I can watch whenever it's on, so I'm giving it a vote.

I voted for "evil dead" but it was very close between that, "American Werewolf" and "Scanners"

for example, i just watched texas chainsaw massacre part II yesterday and you know what it was? IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME is what it was

dude I know I am the kind of guy who sometimes gets on a dude's nerves but as of this post you and I are blood bros forever before that movie is permanently the shit

before = because, lol afternoon wine

American Werewolf, if for no other reason than the aerial shot of the werewolf slowly pacing towards his victim in the underground. Such a superbly effective shot that 99% of CGI effects people should be shamed by.

Friday The 13th Part II is one of the most inept pieces of shit I've ever seen.

I wouldn't call hooper a hack but I can see where ppl are coming from. maybe toolbox murders 2004 is a lot better than I give it credit? what I've seen of his tv work has been crap and his feature film track record is kind of spotty. anybody wanna defend these?

Mortuary (2005/I)
Toolbox Murders (2004)
Crocodile (2000/I) (V)
The Mangler (1995)
Night Terrors (1993)
Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) - wouldn't call this a great horror film but it's awesome camp, maybe he realized that going gonzo was the best way to avoid having to top the original
Invaders from Mars (1986) - know I saw it during it's nonstop run on HBO in the 80s but can't remember anything about it
Lifeforce (1985) - this movie is insane by any standard and impossible to judge really
The Funhouse (1981) - yeah I like this one, v underrated
Salem's Lot (1979) - has some classic moments but more boring ones
Eaten Alive (1977) - saw it a looong time ago and don't have good memories
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) - all-time classic no doubt

is 2 the one with Matthew McConnaheyhey and Jennifer Aniston

er Renee Zellwegger

no it's the one with a batshit dennis hopper dueling chainsaws w/ leatherface, kinda hard to forget imo

lol yeah never seen it

haven't see many, but liked Wolfen at the time, Evil Dead later. As far as I can recall American Werewolf starts great but runs outta gas.

uzi wielding nazi werewolf house invasion dream sequence. intense.

this is one of the reasons i <3 ilx - because there are awesome, intelligent people that have seen and loved even more "schlocky" horror movies than i have!

Predictable vote for the unparalleled Evil Dead. Wolfen is a noble second & wd win in a lot of years.

American Werewolf is another great film that I quote all the time but I can't vote for on the grounds of horror/scariness alone.

Am I right in thinking The Black Cat's got Ben Gazzara in it? Cos I heart that dude to death but iirc the movie's a big bag of nothing and well short of Corman's verzh.

Friday The 13th Part II is one of the most inept pieces of shit I've ever seen.

enjoy your SB, baghead Jason is my God

You forgot Poltergeist in your Hooper list, Edward. Sort of.

what 80s teen comedies is American Werewolf like?

Teen Wolf

nah.

AWIL feels much closer in spirit/substance to british exploitation/comedy flicks of the 60s and 70s - it's like a mash-up of Curse of the Werewolf and Carry on Screaming

yeah I was kidding there

man you even love it when jokes die

AWIL is actually lot like "The Breakfast Club" if you really think about it

lol latebloomer

The Breakfast Club is more like a drama w/ socio-political sexual stuff than an 80s teen comedy

You can make a very strong argument that David's transformation in AWIL is directly analogous to Allison's transformation in TBC

was thinking more along the lines of Ferris Bueller's Day Off actually

a case could be made for this! the 1st Nightmare is kinda lame

Wow--the first one I consider genuinely frightening. I'm not sure if I ever saw another one, though.

1st nightmare is so not lame!

We'll get there but 1st "Nightmare" is kind of brilliant in its originality/intensity.

Dunno if I'd defend tapping "Werewolf" as the top, but no question the top films finished best. All pretty different, too. Goofy, gonzo, smart and subversive, in that order of finish.

have never seen any Fulci. If I love Suspiria, will The Beyond be a decent starter?

The Beyond is def Fulci's best horror movie, tho The House by the Cemetary, City of the Living Dead, The Black Cat and Zombi 2 all have their moments. Thing is, Fulci and Argento don't actually have that much in common - Fulci's movies are generally a lot slower, and even more incoherent at a narrative level, but their combination of ultragore, old school gothique, insane zoom lensing and bad (dubbed) performances somehow creates an incredible... aura... of otherness and strangeness.

I also like Fucli's earlier giallos, Lizard in a Woman's Skin and Don't Torture a Duckling. I wld avoid everything post New York Ripper.

Yeah, Fulci is no Argento. The Beyond is good, though, and definitely worth picking up. We just got Lizard in a Woman's Skin, am excited to see it.

I hate Fulci with a passion. His movies exist as nothing more than vehicles for lazy gore, which consists largely of pig entrails and piles of maggots spewing from bad make-up and models. It's one step up from student filmmaking, to my eyes, and the complete incoherence - which I wish I could blame on the bad dubbing - doesn't help. Things happen. Little makes sense. Which I suppose one could say of Argento, too, but at least Argento is an ace stylist with a real sense of vision. The gap between "Suspiria" and "The Beyond" is like the gap between ... I don't know, something sublime and something inept.

Sold! Thanks all.

sorry, Josh, but that dismissal of Fulci doesn't apply to his pre-Zombi 2 films of the '70s: his gialli, Don't Torture a Duckling, Six Notes in Black, and (my favorite) Lizard in a Woman's Skin are all excellent, well-crafted (sub)genre pieces. and his overlooked Beatrice Cenci is a startlingly powerful, Church-critical historical opus deserving of a place in its select pantheon alongside Russell's The Devils. it's also the only film of Fulci's career that is not only devoid of his (unfortunate) token misogyny, but in fact fiercely feminist. Fulci was more than a gore-smitten hack who could wrangle a maggot (or a couple thousand) on camera. the man had range. he made a (really good!) White Fang movie, FFS!

Yeah, a defense could be made of his giallo stuff. But all his zombie films are a total mess, and variations on the same mess, for that matter. They're just excuses to shove things in people's eye-sockets with a grim, joyless, cheap determination. Though I suppose he gets points for his lame shark-vs-zombie showdown in "Zombi 2," stuff like "City of the Dead" and "The Beyond" are just garbage that seems assembled from the same pile of unused b-roll footage. They're the sorts of boring movies where the zombies are buried two inches under ground to allow the beleaguered actor to sit up easier and let the maggot and mist wranglers do their work. Just astounding to me how lazy his flicks can be.

To me, The Beyond is the only Fulci film I've seen to transcend his basic horribleness as a filmmaker.

Tho I guess Don't Torture a Duckling is supposed to be great.

The thing about Fulci is that you have a talented, versatile, fairly successful writer and director of studio sex and spy capers, who was by all accounts too intellectual and creatively restless to settle for a life of lazy, lucrative Ratnerdom. he lashed out by securing private financing for Beatrice Cenci, a contentious, controversial and very personal project whose aggressive politics did nothing for his popularity among Italian studio execs. his artful gialli, which he co-wrote, were very popular with the Italian public - casting Euro beauties like Florinda Bolkan surely didn't hurt - but further deepened the schism between Fulci and the studios. when the graphic Lizard was plagued with post-production allegations of animal vivisection and related legal woes, they had the excuse they needed to sever ties completely with the difficult director. Fulci struggled to reestablish his reputation, trying his hand at low-budget westerns.

it was Zombi 2, the cheap and nonsensical semisequel to Argento's smash-hit Continental cut of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, that ultimately gave him a shot at redemption. Fulci didn't share a writing credit for Zombi 2, which was the brainchild of vet genre scribe Dardano Sachetti. nevertheless, Fulci had finally found an appreciative audience and a winning formula. the worldwide horror community embraced Zombi 2 not only for the unprecedented grisliness of its onscreen carnage, but for its mood and atmosphere, achieved in close collaboration with skilled makeup artists, musicians, and cinematographers. Fulci was smart enough to know not to deviate. so while subsequent projects were more thematically ambitious, culminating in the pastiche Lovecraftian American gothica of City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, they stayed true to the grue. if you can't see past the rubber critters, maggotty decor, pretzel-logic plots, and sometimes drab cinematography to the indelibly haunted hearts of these films, you're not looking hard enough.

even the most ardent Fulci fan would concede that, at some point, he gave up all pretense of making art and settled for churning out cheap, profitable grindhouse fare. scarred early in his career by a bitter divorce and who knows what other psychological damage, his work began to manifest a virulent misogynist taint that reached its toxic nadir with the vicious, leering violence of The New York Ripper and Touch of Death. hack-for-hire projects, like Poltergeist cash-in Manhattan Baby, slash-dance mystery Murder Rock and sibling Patrick-goes-to-boarding school and nuns-amok supernatural gorefests Aenigma and Demonia, marked Fulci's steady decline throughout the '80s, sealing his fate as a fading maestro. and yet even these lesser films feature inspired, memorable moments of visceral abandon. glimmers of late-career hope came with Conquest, a surreal and frankly mystifying peplum exercise, and the debatably brilliant self-excoriating A Cat in the Brain, a Fellini-esqe meditation on moviemaking, misogyny and madness. the passionate support of his fans boded well for a return to genre ascendancy, had Fulci only lived to realize his planned remake of Michael Curtiz's Mystery of the Wax Museum. we will never know.

That's a great post, but I'd only concede his "haunted heart" in the most facile sense. Like, his films are about decay, because they showcase things ... decaying. Really, his gore is hardly unprecedented, and his cinematography, etc., workmanlike. There may be any number of reasons why his films are shit, but at their heart they're mostly just shitty. Call me old fashioned, but I find "rubber critters, maggotty decor, pretzel-logic plots, and sometimes drab cinematography" very hard to see past. "City of the Dead" features supernaturally teleporting zombies that appear out of nowhere, rub fistfuls of maggots in peoples' faces, then just vanish again! At least Raimi's gonzo work is actually gonzo, and he understands the innate silliness of what he's doing, as opposed to Fulci's laughable portent.

I mean, come on - Zombi is the only movie where the people move slower than the zombies!!!

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qwp904lxTo&feature=related

Hey, more standing around staring at horrible effects!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQV1OA4a0vc&feature=related

Look, mannequin-eating tarantulas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUqqVo0JxM4&feature=related

appreciate that post hal jam, esp. yr defense of fulci's non-zombie/gore work, which i'm haven't paid anywhere near enough attention to. i've held back because, like josh, i'm not a huge fan of the zombie films, not even the beyond. i grant that he's able to develop atmosphere - the films have an air of weary, zombified vacancy that can be compelling - but he doesn't seem to know what to do with that atmosphere once he's got it in place. so the films just sit there, waiting for the animating spark that the gore effects provide.

i really believe that there's more to The Beyond and City of the Living Dead than either of you is allowing. when you brush away the fog and the plastic spiders, i find that Fulci touches on genuine existential dread in these movies. their subtler horrors slip the veil no less effectively than Lovecraft's explorations of same in the Mythos writings. and even the gore isn't just pointless set dressing. Fulci started his career as a medical student and as an art critic. i think this informed his perspective as a filmmaker, and that he saw decomposition as far from the ultimate (or worst) fate awaiting all flesh. at the whims of (super)natural forces, we can become puppy chow or a putrid puddle on the floor without notice. neither man, woman, beast, nor child is spared such desecration of the flesh.

*** SPOILERS ***

yes, the tarantula attack is hokey. but Fulci was trying, at this point, and i'm sure it was the best he could muster with the meager resources and funds at his disposal. ignore the sub-par FX and appreciate the scene for what it is - the unknown reminding us of our insignificant place in the scheme of thing by targeting our squishiest, most vulnerable points. Fulci's fondness for depicting the wholesale annihilation of eyeballs - and tongues, and lips, and brains, and nipples - is an effective translation of rational body horror into the artificial cinemechanics of fear. this was a man who knew how to manipulate an audience as well as any of his peers. can you deny the effectiveness of the sequence in City where the pickax comes crashing the coffin wood, inches from the eyes of the victim trapped within, between slow suffocation, freedom, and a painful, pointy end? or the inexpressible horror of a child watching as acid dissolves her mother's corpse,staggering numb and resigned into the wormy arms of the undead?

but back for a moment to existential dread. the villagers in the prologue of The Beyond crucify the alchemist and attempt to eliminate every mortal trace of his body, flensing it away with chains and quicklime. in their superstitious naivete, they believe that this will stem the destructive forces threatening to destroy them. their actions prove effective, but only in the short term. man can not tame the chaotic universe through will and deed, as we learn when the hotel is reopened. similarly, the fate of the living in City hinges on the corporeal integrity of a dead priest, now a gatekeeper whose continued metaphysical being holds back the horrors pounding at Hell's threshold for Earthly egress. and the survivors of the sanity-stretching terrors of The Beyond ultimately find themselves trapped in a limbo-like void of inconceivable design and expanse. the universe laughs. my point, Fulci was no fool.

not to diminish anything you've said, cuz i'd happily read this kind of analysis at much greater length, but the existential angst present in fulci's zombie flicks (and i agree that it IS present) only makes them interesting. it doesn't make them good, doesn't make them work. fulci's seeming despair is integrated into the films at the most basic level, it's not trivial or grafted on, but it's cinematic expression is far too literal. these aren't zombie movies so much as movies-as-zombies. pitiless, rotting, turgid flesh. there's a quality of cinematic inertness/indifference that makes them very difficult to engage with.

every time with the "it's"

fuck that thing

these aren't zombie movies so much as movies-as-zombies. pitiless, rotting, turgid flesh.

that's a really interesting idea.

in fairness would extend the idea to a bunch of non-fulci/non-zombie italian exploitation flicks of the 70s & 80s (cannibal holocaust, joe d'amato flicks, etc.)

i actually haven't seen any fulci - i just liked the idea.

i won't deny the turgidness, but i'd argue that it's a large part of the movies' charms. didn't like any of Fulci's films on first viewings. but they do wear you down, until they're as comfortable as old socks. and just as reeky and full of holes. so now i take the visceral thrills with the longueurs, without complaint. it may even have helped me to appreciate Jean Rollin, Dead & Buried (for which i voted here. it's just such a perfect, self-contained chiller), Deathdream, The House with the Laughing Windows, and pretty much the entirety of the Japanese cinema of the '60s and '70s.

great posts Mr Hal Jam, and i agree w/ pretty much everything you say

i wonder if this is - partially - a Euro-America divide, in that genre audiences in Europe and American have different expectations and demands w/ regard to narrative cinema and the 'well-made' film. i think its profitable, or more critically exact, to consider the different ways of telling between fulci and, say, john carpenter w.out resorting to (impossible to prove or disprove) accusations of hackery and incompetence.

just a minor correction, tho it is an important one. Fulci is evoking existential dread, not angst. his characters seem to surrender, powerless and defeated, to the growing realization that their world is not bound by the natural rules they came to accept as reality. that's some cool shit.

Deathdream is hardly a pair of old socks.

more like john cassavetes' jockstrap

but in a GOOD way

not exactly what i said, is it?

excellent point, WF. there's definitely a Euro/US divide with regard to "acceptable" pacing and narrative expectations. also the meting out of satisfying explanations by the picture's end. but filmmakers like Roger Corman were already instilling European art-cinema sensibilities into grindhouse pictures as early as the '60s, so our cinema has had ample opportunity to acclimate. denigrating the films of Fulci, Argento, D'Amato, et al, for their lack of narrative cohesion seems to be counterintuitive. at their best, like a Suspiria or The Beyond, they're faithful to their inner illogic, representing fantastic, frightening worlds in miniature, not outright reflections of our shared reality.

just a minor correction, tho it is an important one. Fulci is evoking existential dread, not angst.

― babytown frolics (Mr. Hal Jam), Friday, July 9, 2010 12:38 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, i knew i was being lazily imprecise even as i typed that

on second thought, D'Amato was just a marginally more ambitious pornographer and should probably be excluded from such esteemed company. i'll substitute Sergio Martino for D'Amato. though i think he was the hackiest of hacks that ever hacked.

denigrating the films of Fulci, Argento, D'Amato, et al, for their lack of narrative cohesion seems to be counterintuitive. at their best, like a Suspiria or The Beyond, they're faithful to their inner illogic, representing fantastic, frightening worlds in miniature, not outright reflections of our shared reality.

― babytown frolics (Mr. Hal Jam), Friday, July 9, 2010 12:48 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmarkthing is, i would never denigrate argento for reasons under discussion here. my problem with fulci and d'amato isn't that their films are slow and incoherent, but that they don't provide sufficient cinematic reward to offset these trivial deficiencies. argento does. you brought up jean rollin earlier, and he's worth considering in this context. now, i love "la morte vivante", though i don't have much use for rollin, overall. i love LMV because it not only creates this dreamy, otherworldly reality, but it invests that reality with some emotional weight. argento, in comparison, doesn't make emotionally affecting films (for the most part), but he's an obsessive and brilliant craftsman of cinematic moments. it doesn't matter that his films make little sense, because each moment is more deliriously unhinged than the last.

d'amato and zombie-fulci, on the other hand, create a cinema not of rewards, but of punishments. one has to enjoy cynical tone poems celebrating the fundamental and brutal banality of existence. and i don't. i find fulci's mournful gravitas and d'amato's leering cynicism equally tedious. but that's just me. maybe it's an american thing, too, i dunno. my primary response to all of this isn't to revisit city of the living dead (which i do remember liking, if only for the grue), but to dig back into his earlier giallos.

do you have one or two best-of-fulci recs in that regard, HJ?

yeah, i understand wanting to exclude d'amato. i'd sub deodato.

interesting, Contenderizer. i need to think about what you said before i respond to it.

as for my Fulci recs, see Lizard if you haven't. just a beautiful picture, very controlled and elegant. there's a solid central mystery, for a giallo, and nice use of color, framing, distractions, music. it's like nothing else Fulci ever made. and of course it was brushed off by critics as mere Argento mimicry, which must have set the ol' boy's teeth on edge.

Duckling is a good picture, technically, but not one that i could ever say i enjoyed. it's didactic, bleak, and paced as lethally as What Have You Done to Solange? (which D'Amato lensed, incidentally). but it is well made, with the best of intentions, and it has one of the better stories told in a giallo picture. it's just not fun, so i hesitate to recommend it. the gory pay-off almost sways me - it's one of Fulci's most satisfying (and brutal) - but i just can't do it.

try Lizard, though. if the dream of bisected dogs doesn't win you over, and convince you of Fulci's warped, wry humor, nothing will.

if you like historical horrors, a la The Witchfinder General and Onibaba, do try to see Beatrice Cenci. i think it's an amazing film, though neither giallo nor genre pic. it's available on DVD as Conspiracy of Torture, and its only the graphic torture tableaux that betray Fulci's involvement. you'd seriously think this was a lost Reeves or Russell. yeah, that good.

oooh! good call! Deodato is IN. i'm a tireless CH apologist, with plenty of breath left to defend The Washing Machine, Dial Help, Cut and Run, and all his other cheese/sleaze.

re-watched American Werewolf in London last week. It was okay but I don't think it's entirely successful in its attempts to merge horror and comedy - the comedy is too dry/restrained and undercuts the more trad horror elements, which are similarly not strong enough to carry the whole movie. The transformation scene is amazing, of course. Compared to some of the comedy-horror stuff that came later this just seems neither funny nor scary enough.

I wonder if Cannibal Ferox would've won this poll if more people realized that it's the same movie commonly known as Make Them Die Slowly.

also re-watched An American Werewolf in London. first time i've seen it since about age 15. thought it was fantastic. i didn't really get that conflict between the horror and comedy elements. found it thoroughly entertaining. what horror/comedy films are you comparing this too?

that dream sequence David has where his family's household is assaulted by a bunch of ghouls with machine guns is surprisingly intense and shocking. also, great ending. from the phone call home, to the porn theater, to the massively violent traffic accident, to the DEAD -> ROLL CREDITS. a+.

i'd vote for this over Evil Dead now, breaks my heart to say it.