Best Horror Film of 1988 (part 10 of a series)

I'm very partial to The Serpent and the Rainbow myself, despite the rubbish ending.

BTW, there's a bunch of movies we've been talking about on these thread becoming available on Netflix WI this Friday. Opera, City of the Living Dead, The Prowler, and bunch of other Fulci & Argento flicks.

dead ringers but only cuz i can't consider they live horror, can't remember if lair of the white worm is actually any good, don't really like any chucky movies until much later, have never actually seen pumkinhead. maybe the next poll should go back to the beginning (1980? i forget) and go backwards, definite past the end of the line vibe here.

Friday the 13th part 7 has the best kill in series history, and probably would be mega-awesome if they left in all the gore effects.

Have never seen the greatness in Hellraiser 2 that so many seem to see, but need to give it another chance.

Wow, I think I've only seen The Blob, Child's Play and Dead Ringers out of these ones. It's got to be the latter out of those choices, although it's another that is on the borderline of horror.

I think this might be the weakest year so far, tbh

haven't seen a lot of these. Dead Ringers, in addition to being terribly boring, does not strike me as a horror film.

Child's Play is great, the Blob is really good, can't remember a thing about this particular Friday the 13th installment. NOES IV has some hilariously bad shit in it (death by television! puppetmaster vein pulling!). They Live is pretty awesome, though more of an action/sci-fi flick.

Brain Damage vs Maniac Cop vs Phantasm 2 for me. Heart says Brain Damage but it's been a long time and Maniac Cop is such a great title.

Oh man also Killer Klowns.

Discarding They Live, Dead Ringers and Serpent and the Rainbow for having ideas above their station.

Also if you have never seen Dead Heat you should watch it because it is fucking immense.

Maniac Cop = Bruce Campbell, so automatically awesome

Remember my buddy being stupidly excited at the thought of William Lustig/Larry Cohen double team.

Pretty sure I saw Maniac Cop at the cinema.

every movie on this list that I've seen, I hated :(

Still waiting for Criterion to do a Frank Henenlotter box :(

OH NO AWIT. I LOVED "They Live".

We went around in circles on this in a previous poll, but I'll echo something expressed above: other than having been directed by Cronenberg, I can't see Dead Ringers as a horror film in any way, shape, or form. (You could, I suppose, argue that Cronenberg's authorship is enough, in the same way that "Yesterday" is pulled into the field of rock and roll because it's a Beatles song. But I wouldn't.)

I'll cast one of the few votes for Pumpkinhead just for the late Stan Winston hitting a home run in his first major league at-bat as a director.

I remember seeing still from The Blob for months ahead of time in lol Fangoria, then when I finally saw the movie I was absolutely fucking hammered, having drank most of a bottle of Jack Daniels, and found the whole thing vaguely unpleasant. Esp. this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW6maJgzk7E

I think this might be the weakest year so far, tbh

― Darin, Monday, August 16, 2010 10:26 PM (41 minutes ago)

hahahaha i was just about to say how impossible it is to pick just one out of all the awesome choices up there!

that said its almost impossible for me not to vote for hellraiser II

yeah Dead Ringers - even moreso than the Fly (which at least, as pointed out, has gore and a monster to its credit) - just does not have any of the trappings of a horror movie. can anyone point out a horror genre signifier in Dead Ringers? Having "Dead" in the title doesn't count.

They Live even though its not really a horror movie.

Maniac Cop is really good too.

Dead Ringers is a dece flick, but I'm done with Cronenberg winning these things now thx.

Probably gonna vote my favorite Elm Street installment here, if not The Blob.

Yeah, actually, having said Dead Ringers was a 'borderline' horror upthread I'm now struggling to think of anything that makes it horror. I mean, psychological horror, maybe? But I wouldn't have thought that counted.

Still, I think Child's Play is pretty terrible, and don't remember liking '80s Blob much, so I don't have much choice here.

Child's Play is terrible.

what do people have against Child's Play? I saw it again recently and thought it held up pretty well

Just plain didn't get good until the Bride/Seed era.

eric otm

I agree that Bride/Seed are both really fun

some bad, bad movies here. they know who they are.

Dead Ringers is as much a body-horror meditation as any of Cro's earlier films. find me another "drama" featuring a full set of forged stainless-steel "instruments for operating on mutant women." they even factor in the horrifying finale.

They Live is not a horror film. sci-fi to the bone.

Cameron's Closet is the only movie ever to make me jump. but it's not very good.

Brain Damage is my favorite Henenlotter until Bad Biology. so, that. over the sublime Scarecrows by a whisker.

Vampire's Kiss is a pretty great movie, just debatable on whether it's horror.

Vampire's Kiss is total garbage, and Dead Ringers is the only other one I've seen.

Vampire's Kiss is a lot better if you have a sense of humor.

"Lair of the White Worm" is totally nuts, this hypersexualized but camp vampire caper. Then again, it is Ken Russell.

Tough 'cause of the crap choices. "They Live" is ace, but not horror. "Dead Ringers" is ace, but not really horror. "Dead Heat" was terrible, but I saw it in the theatres. "Pumpkinhead" is surprisingly solid, as is "Waxwork" and "Monkey Shines." "Serpent and the Rainbow" had one of the more intense trailers, if memory serves."Don't bury me, I'm not dead!" Bill Pullman also gets his scrotum nailed to chair. I want to say the movie is a big, fat missed opportunity, though.

PUT ON THE GLASSES!

haha i loved vampire's kiss, but dont think it's horror

this one is A LOT of schlock, of which I've seen about 75% - tho I don't remember much of it.

Dead Ringers I have a hard time voting for as a horror film, even though it fits most criteria for such. That would easily be the best film here, as far as I can tell, though I'm going to go with something I liked at the time. Was 1988 the year of the underrated horror sequel?: Hellraiser II, Phantasm II, & Return of the Living Dead II were all standbys, but I haven't seen any of them in over fifteen years.

Vampire's Kiss gets a pass for the scene in which NC is wandering around the NYC financial district w/ a shard of plywood, begging disinterested pedestrians to do him in.

Hellraiser II had better gore, Phantasm II just as batshit as the first, and Return of the Living Dead II a pointlessly lame retread of the first (which was of course a clever retread to begin with). Will rep for Return of the Living Dead III, though.

NOES IV has some hilariously bad shit in it (death by television! puppetmaster vein pulling!).

Wrong NOES, Shakey Mo. That was 3. Having gone through the lot recently, 4 was the most entertaining of the bunch.

As noted above, a lot of these are just cheesy as all hell. Which is probably why I loved so many of them in junior high.

As I said in the '87 poll thread, I tend to smoosh Hellraiser 1 and 2 together in my brain. I know that 2 is the lesser film, but it still has some quality ideas and effects.

I will still unreservedly rep for The Blob, Brain Damage, and NOES 4 as solid and entertaining horror flicks. And I've rewatched all three recently enough to know that that's not just nostalgia talking. I'll vote for one of those, for sure.

NoES4 has a pizza of souls and a Sherlock Jr. reference. It is pretty much great.

Then again, a crazy person does skin himself alive on a dirty mattress in the second Hellraiser.

seriously nobody repping for 976-Evil? that is a really, really fun movie!

As I said in the '87 poll thread, I tend to smoosh Hellraiser 1 and 2 together in my brain. I know that 2 is the lesser film

disagree with this 100%, 2 is much much better than 1.

whoa also is no one else going to give a shout out to bad dreams - some great moments in that one for sure

legit worth watching stuff from this list:

976-EVIL
Bad Dreams
Brain Damage
Dead Ringers
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Killer Klowns from Outer Space
The Lair of the White Worm
Maniac Cop
Night of the Demons
Phantasm II
Pin
Pledge Night
Poltergeist III
Pulse
Pumkinhead
Return of the Living Dead Part II
Scarecrows
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers
They Live

people hating on this year are insane, this is one of the best fields yet imo

oh ha pledge night got in there by mistake, i have never seen that

The Serpent and the Rainbow is fucking awesome

ugh the spider scene

Sleepaway Camp II had some cool kills but ultimately I hated that they went so overtly campy with it, it's not like there wasn't enough camp in the first one. But then again, Sleepaway Camp II is like The Battle of Algiers compared to Return to Sleepaway Camp, which was beyond awful.

See, I always wondered why they let the same transgendered individual who murdered all those other kids come back and work as a camp counselor. I remember something involving an outhouse and leeches..

i will not have an internet fight concerning my lord and saviour john carpenter. gonna repeat that ten times to myself.

I actually like (and even love) a lot of Carpenter's stuff. I just think that Halloween is pretty much the least exciting/interesting of the ones that I've seen. But then I've never seen Memoirs of an Invisible Man...

love Dead Ringers but I'm gonna follow my heart and go w/ my fave Henenlotter flick, Brain Damage.

The Blob is great too.

Pleased to see Brain Damage getting some very deserved love before the crushing inevitability of Dead Ringers winning by 15 votes.

dudes no offense to dead ringers, its good, but im going to start campaigning for a cronenberg moritorium here pretty soon if his shit keeps winning these polls for suspect reasons

OTM

It's kind of the horror movie equivalent of being yr corny indie fuxxor imo

Paperhouse isn't on the list?!? That movie was scary as shit when I saw it as a teenager. Been waiting to vote for it for about a month now.

Sigh... Guess I'll just vote for Dead Ringers then...

I actually like (and even love) a lot of Carpenter's stuff. I just think that Halloween is pretty much the least exciting/interesting of the ones that I've seen. But then I've never seen Memoirs of an Invisible Man...

― SNEEZED GOING DOWN STEPS, PAIN WHEN PUTTING SOCKS ON (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, 18 August 2010 18:49 (6 days ago)

Halloween felt like a revelation the first time I saw it (12 years old I guess). But the older I get, the more sterile it feels. It has obvious strengths: the haunting theme, the shot of Myers standing in the backyard in broad daylight etc. But it's just all so buttoned down and stiff.

Horror rarely works that way; you need to have the sense that the movie is somehow out of control and might show you something you kind of don't want to see. The Shining managed to beat this phenomenon just because Kubrick is such a master that you felt like you were in another world and the sheer atmosphere was scary. But Carpenter isn't in that class.

In retrospect, it's a shame that Halloween was the horror film that set the pattern, instead of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead of horror films that felt unpredictable from scene to scene, we got one guy marching around killing people in goofy ways.

Rob Zombie is remaking The Blob

In retrospect, it's a shame that Halloween was the horror film that set the pattern, instead of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead of horror films that felt unpredictable from scene to scene, we got one guy marching around killing people in goofy ways.

can't tell you how much i disagree. i'm not a fan of slasher flicks, but halloween is a tight, well crafted thriller, alarming and entertaining in equal measure. it's sadistic to some degree, as sadism is intrinsic to the slasher genre (and to the giallo from which it sprang), but its sadism is compartmentalized, almost genteel. the pleasures that it offers are not much different or more extreme than those of hitchcock.

TCM is a very different animal, and, i think, a profoundly unpleasant viewing experience. its sadism is pure, unleavened by civilized restraint, a seething pit of endless torment. its appeal is the appeal of the gladiator's pit, of helpless suffering and senseless chaos as ends in their own right. i admire it for its inventiveness, bravery and style, but i can't say i've ever really enjoyed it. i am glad that it took a few decades for its approach to horror to become dominant.

dead ringers and they live are both great, but i'd never vote for either in a horror poll. they're too far outside the genre. favorites here:

brain damage (excellent head trip flick from the basket case dude)
hellbound: hellraiser II (great effects, solid story, better than the first)
killer klowns from outer space (goofy, but a lot of fun when you're in the mood)
lair of the white worm (ridiculous, campy, awesome)
maniac cop (sucker for larry cohen anything)
phantasm II (easily the most consistent horror series of the 80s)
vampire's kiss (nick cage at his best, not really horror, but great)

TCM is a very different animal, and, i think, a profoundly unpleasant viewing experience. its sadism is pure, unleavened by civilized restraint, a seething pit of endless torment. its appeal is the appeal of the gladiator's pit, of helpless suffering and senseless chaos as ends in their own right. i admire it for its inventiveness, bravery and style, but i can't say i've ever really enjoyed it. i am glad that it took a few decades for its approach to horror to become dominant.

― a dystopian society awaits if we continue on this path. (contenderizer), Tuesday, August 24, 2010 4:44 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

But today's torture porn films are heavily regimented too. Saw is the perfect example of this: everything is elaborately set up, literally mechanical, and completely exposed and unmysterious.

TCM on the other hand feels RAW. The deaths in it aren't fetishized and rigorously documented, they just happen.

PS It's funny you mention giallos, because I still haven't seen one of those that I find scary (or good).

i'm hardly an expert in italian thrillers & horror flicks, but i've ejoyed quite a few giallos, mostly the big mainstream one's you always hear mentioned: bay of blood, house with laughing windows, blood and black lace, tenebre, deep red, etc. depalma's dressed to kill always felt like a giallo to me, though it isn't italian, and i love that movie to death.

agree about the feral, unstructured chaos of TCM. it is rather unique and impressive. but i'm even less interested in the films that pursue or evoke that quality: entrails of a virgin, august underground's mordum, gummo, etc.

i guess i'm kind of a classicist. in cinema, i love formal rigor and the obsessive control of the effects generated -- especially when that rigor is employed in the service of a feverish, unrestrained id. thus depalma, hitchcock, verhoeven. funny cuz when it come to music i love the splattery, unstructured and chaotic.

so funny to see House with the Laughing Windows referred to as a "big" or "mainstream" giallo. the canon would be more like Blood and Black Lace; Argento's "Animal Trilogy;" Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin; Martino's The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colours of the Dark, The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, and Torso (with the latter signaling the gradual passing of the commercial torch from the giallo to the harsher "slasher") along with one-off hits like Crispino's Autopsy; Pastore's The Crimes of the Black Cat; Carnimeo's The Case of the Bloody Iris; Dallamano's What Have You Done To Solange?; maybe one of Bido's already derivative but still successful late entries, like Watch Me When I Kill or The Bloodstained Shadow. House seems like such an outlier to me, a connoisseur's picture that would have slipped by Italian audiences all but unseen, basically as far from the mainstream as the extreme sleaze of Gore in Venice, The Murderer is Still With Us and Fulci's The New York Ripper.

Dressed to Kill is every inch a giallo. so are Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll and The 4th Man. you don't have to be Italian to be yeller.

yeah, that's fair, but house seem to have been subsequently been rescued from obscurity and talked up by fans as an important film. again, speaking as a genre novice. i mean, i haven't seen most of the films you list...

guilty of doing just that. (: but it's just such a goddamn great film. if it was never a box-office success, at least House has found an appreciative audience in the home-video afterlife. i remember having to settle for an nth-generation dub in the pre-DVD days, and feeling total awe even as i soaked up those blurry, faded flickers.

... and there's your shopping list, if you have even a passing interest in the giallo. they're all pretty great.

surprised to read jj repping for hellraiser ii, saw it at the cinema at the time of its release and thought it was pretty much a disaster (and i loved the first one)

tbf i should really watch it again, because its been a long time, but i really remember being into the sort of deep dip in the bizarre it took after the first one was so claustrophobic and insular.

the third one is one of the worst things to ever happen tho.

Fangoria nailed the problem with Hellbound: Hellraiser II when they commented that "the retelling is so ripe, it's rotten." but i sure did love its excesses when i was younger. watched Hell on Earth again and it wasn't as bad as i remembered. budget limitations really hamper it. you get a sense that it wants to be more epic but can't scrape up the production value. i've always had an irrational fondness for Bloodline, more for what could have been than what actually was. it's only the fifth film, Inferno, which really failed, for me, by misconstruing Barker's rich mythos with bog-standard Christian guilt. Hellseeker got back on track (and brought Kirsty back into the fold), but was a pretty weak movie. the rest of the sequels have been abominations.

i am impressed by yr knowledge of hellraiser sequels mr hal jam - i have that nice cube dvd box which iirc contains the first 3, never gone beyond those

Fangoria nailed the problem with Hellbound: Hellraiser II when they commented that "the retelling is so ripe, it's rotten." but i sure did love its excesses when i was younger.

this may be so. like jj, i haven't seen it in ages (since i was a kid, really), but i remember liking it quite a bit, especially its imaginative excesses. i also remember that it wasn't quite as ferally nasty as hellraiser, had a kind of fantasy/fairly-tale vibe around the edges, and i liked that. should really watch it again. been trying to, half-assedly, on occasion, by my local video stores don't have a copy and i keep forgetting to put it on netflix.

by = but, on occasion (a strange but common error)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

As a kid Watchers scared me, but I haven't seen it in 20 years so not sure if it holds up as a good movie (doubt it). But from the ones I had seen from this list, none of the other ones scared me even then, so I'll rep for Watchers.

so in response to the discussion of hellbound: hellraiser II, i watched it and hellraiser this past weekend. more than anything else, they reminded me of how disappointed i was in the first film at the time. i'd been a fan of barker's short stories for a few years and expected something artistically and psychologically ambitious, something more than a particularly gruesome schlock horror film. hellraiser isn't a failure by any means. it aims to surprise and to disturb and succeeds admirably in that regard. but it's shallow, awkward, badly acted and less scary than simply grisly. some of the images and special effects sequences are marvelous (particularly frank's extended resurrection and eventual, jesus-weeping comeuppance), but it's not one of my favorite 80s horror films.

hellbound is a similar film in tone and feel. if anything, the acting's even worse this time around. it's just as sadistic and a good deal more ludicrous than its predecessor, but i enjoy it a lot more. though the budget clearly isn't adequate to the task, i love that it devotes so much of its running time to the exploration of a hellish, labyrinthine otherworld. the escher=like images of this hell, with diamond-shaped, black "eyed" leviathan rotating forever overhead are stunning, unforgettable, exactly what i want out of fantastical genre films. same goes for the ridiculous final transformation of dr. chenard into the tentacle of some unseen beast from below. the effects shots of snakes growing from the palms of his hands, their mouths sprouting fingers, flowers and knives remains my single favorite image/idea from either film. overripe, yes, but appealingly so.

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

I give up.

Don't Blame Me - I Voted For Pumpkinhead!

oh goddamnit

I don't think I voted in the end, so (probably) don't blame me.

honestly don't remember what i voted for. neither of the two non-horror movies that took top honors. think it was lair of the white worm, though maybe brain damage?

I mean seriously, fuck you guys. Dead Ringers is not a horror movie.

I threw Brain Damage a bone. There really hasn't been enough discussion about it in this thread. An ancient talking (and singing) parasitic slug named Aylmer who injects his host with mind-blowing psychedelic drugs just before slithering off to feast on some random person's brains! This movie is just insane, and highly entertaining.

maybe not the best movie on here but 13-year old me thought the blob was a lot of fun. and brian flagg is a great name. so, I voted for it. guess I was the only one.

I liked The Blob too when I was 13. I would have voted for Waxwork over it though-- I'm a little sorry that that flick didn't get any votes.

waxworks 2: lost in time is pretty great, but i'm less fond of the original

note "waxwork" is not plural, and i really oughtta see em both again, it's been quite a while...

I dunno. Waxwork II didn't have Deborah Foreman in it, which was very disappointing to 14-year-old me. The haunted house movie tribute is pretty funny though. It's really a fantasy movie, not a horror flick like the first one is.

trying not to be a dick here srsly but

OH SHIT LOOK CRONENBERG HE AM IMPORTANT RESPECTED DUDE I WILL VOTE FOR HIM IN ANY POLL

is getting fucking ridiculous. DEAD RINGERS ISNT A FUCKING (HORROR) GENRE MOVIE DUDES, FUCK

ALL CAPS 4 LIFE ON THIS ISSUE

yeh agreed, but it's a losing battle. save caps for dotage when they will come in handy wr2 kids on ur lawn.

Sorry, I would have voted for Paperhouse, but I guess that wasn't a horror movie either. There's a lot of good schlock movies on this list, but I wasn't going to upvote Killer Klowns From Outer Space or whatever over a movie that genuinely disturbed me when I first saw it as a kid.

I kind of wish I'd watched Brain Damage before voting in this poll though. Its video box cover fascinated me for years whenever I was browsing the horror section of my local video store, but for some reason I never rented it.

haha ok so i just finally got around to watching Evil Dead Trap and holy shit what an insane mean gonzo movie - def the didnt make it to art school distant cousin of house/hausa in some ways, but with no humor ever and so shamelessly full of homage to giallo and cronenberg body horror and shit everybody, down to the uber-repetative poor mans goblin soundtrack. Pretty much slaps you across the face with its nasty intentions in the first 15 minutes, lulls you for a little while and then delivers crazy stacked on crazy including the oddly distant and totally chilling scene with the woman outside of the van and an ending that is def willing to either work for you or make you v v angry. An absolute treat in every way (altho plz note - theres some out of nowhere unsolicited sex scenes that are pretty uncomfortable/unpleasant/pointless)

bump because i posted this at some odd hour in the morning last night and im just hoping some other human has seen it

watched Maniac Cop last night. never seen it before - not bad, but not great either. was hoping for something a little more insane/out there from messirs Cohen and Campbell