Best Horror Film of 1977 (part 13 of a series)

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

I really wanted to see this one when I was a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc6pGJZ8Xd4

THE HILLS HAVE EYES

i mean i know there are going to be a lot of votes for suspiria, but THHE is just plain better.

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

waht

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qxdLCl46Nw

Pretty good year (Suspiria, Hills Have Eyes.) Probably not the best film on this list, but I'm a HUGE fan of Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw followup, Eaten Alive. First saw it at the tail end of a drive-in multi-bill in 1978 and was transfixed by the garish, colorful lighting, cheap sets, atonal synth score, and Neville Brand's crazed performance. (Plus, Carolyn Jones and a very young Robert Englund.) It's kind of incoherent in places (post-production tampering?) but it drips loony atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah1THv686EY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Bed:_The_Bed_That_Eats

WAHT

FYI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01l1WIC9mBo

When I worked at TLA Video in Philly The Car was easily in the top 5 out-of-print movies middle-aged guys asked to rent or purchase. Watched it when it was finally reissued and, yeah, I can see why it lingered in the brain.

I always thought "Equus" was supposed to be like deliberately funny and campy, and every time I share this opinion, I realize I am the only living human with that opinion.

No way Sidney Lumet and Richard Burton were in on that one.

The anguished picture of Jesus he was obsessed with is just too goofy!

Suspiria is way overrated. I prefer the absolutely loony, over-the-top Argento of Tenebre or Phenomenon, thanks.

Last House On The Left from this list for me.

Er, The Hills Have Eyes, rather. Sorry, Wes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFWea3Eu97E

definitely better than Christine, if not Duel

The Hills Have Eyes is maybe the most overrated horror movie of the '70s.

And Suspiria is great.

So basically, reverse on Phil D.

If Equus counts as a horror movie, I almost wanna say so does 3 Women.

My vote may go to The Last House on Dead End Street.

The Hills Have Eyes is maybe the most overrated horror movie of the '70s.

"Twenty five years I'm a cop in the worst goddamn precinct in Cleveland. N@##%&* shoot arrows at me. Hillbillies throw dogs off the roof at me. I'm even shot at by my own men. But none of these bastards have ever come as close to killing me as my own goddamn wife and her goddamn roadmaps and her wrong turns and her goddamn hysterical screaming!!!"

Why are they wasting they're time with remakes and sequels to the remakes when they should be filming a prequel about the asshole dad being attacked by arrows and falling dogs on the streets of cleveland.

wow the Car looks great. Death Bed sounds kinda like a mess but I am curious...

Hillbillies throwing dogs would be a great movie.

My "most overrated horror film of 1977" challop is easily Suspiria. It's not that I don't get it, I just don't get how you get through the parts between the parts that I get.

I enjoyed Tintorera, it's got some surprisingly good acting in it. Though the male characters respond a bit too casually to the fact that women in their vacation spot are getting eaten by tiger sharks one by one. I believe it was filmed in Cancún, btw.

Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals is pretty outrageous - and is perhaps better known as Trap Them and Kill Them. Demon Seed starring Julie Christie is creepy & worthwhile.

Have to choose Suspiria, though... it's not really close for me.

Kingdom of the Spiders

I would just like to say that this movie is so, SO BAD. even by Shatner standards

voted Suspiria - the opening sequence at the airport alone is as perfect a fusion of image/sound/movement/colour as anything that the archers achieved

I never saw Demon Seed, but if it's as o_O as the novelization, it's probably worth a vote or two.

No love for "Martin!?" It's between "Martin," "Hills Have Eyes" and "Suspiria" for me. It's sort of wild that a film like "Suspiria" can be even sillier than "Eyes," yet so, so cool. "Hills Have Eyes" falls under the category of b-movie that accidentally stumbles on some smart ideas (which is basically Craven's trade). "Martin," though, is so unique and near-genius that it transcends the mundane (to my memory) filmmaking. (Have fond childhood memories of "Moreau," too, and a chance screening of "Legend of Boggy Creek" gave me tons of nightmares around age five). But yeah man, the composition of "Suspiria," the score, the opening where she leaves the airport and heads straight into a gale ...

I mean, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6zJGUUiG0c

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

haven't seen most of these but Martin and Suspiria are great (in very different ways). The Car is entertaining but nowhere near as good as Duel.

Would also like to lodge one nostalgic honorable mention for the campy fun of Drive In Massacre. The trailer is so bad it's like a Grindhouse-type homage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9eqvWQV4rI

Voted Suspiria over The Hills Have Eyes.

I haven't seen it in many years, but I remember The Sentinel as enjoyably creepy.

House is Hausu, right? So tempted to vote for that, but... it has to be Suspiria, and death by pit of razor wire wished to all the haters. I don't find it scary (though I don't find many horror films scary), but it is far more beautiful than any other film on this list.

that drive-in massacre trailer is great, cops really got the Mitchell vibe down

"I haven't picked up a knife since the carny closed!"

lol @ mispelled "Masacre" in trailer

The Sentinel scared to death when I was a kid, I saw it again recently and, despite being a bit silly, it has at least one great scene.

prolly voting shock waves here

in no way are equus or the deep horror films

I want to see the 3 hour cut of last house on dead end street - the cuckoo clocks of hell

I haven't seen Equus, but The Deep was at least marketed as a horror film iirc

Martin is really good, the opening sequence especially. But Suspiria is the best film here by a good distance

I should have voted Martin, that I recently saw in its original version (the Argento-edited version released in Italy is awful).

I'm finding so many great old trailers on youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ0U2dLqtag

As with much 70s horror, I saw Ruby when it was new, and not since. Low grade Exorcist ripoff that even Piper Laurie couldn't save, although I did like that much of it was set at a drive-in theater. Stuart Whitman was in this and Eaten Alive back to back.

idk dudes, maybe i saw suspiria just way too late in life after mucho overhype, but ehh it has a couple of good moments in it but theres just so much weird boring pointless dreck in between that i cant really get fully behind it.

best soundtrack for sure tho

The Deep was at least marketed as a horror film iirc

mismarketed more like

note: by far the most hilariously bad movie on this list that i have seen is The Incredible Melting Man

From imdb:

Trivia:
The films Spanish title is Viscosidad, which means "Stickiness."

Goofs:
Factual errors: Saturn's rings are composed of icy debris. A spacecraft flying through them would more than likely be smashed apart long before a mysterious phenomenon could cause its crew to melt.

Quotes:
[it's lunch time at the Nelson home]
Dr. Ted Nelson:Steve escaped.
Judy Nelson:Oh God. What're you gonna do?
Dr. Ted Nelson:Uh... did you get some crackers? I told you yesterday that we needed some crackers.
Judy Nelson:Oh, I forgot. I knew there was something... Y'know there's uh, there's a pad right by the phone y'know, you could write it down too.
[she brings over his soup]
Judy Nelson:So what about Steve?
Dr. Ted Nelson:So, we don't have any crackers?
Judy Nelson:Ted. Steve?
Dr. Ted Nelson:Steve? I've got to go out and find Steve.

Sounds good to me.

weird boring pointless dreck

It's the "weird" that sets boring pointless dreck of "Suspiria" over much of the above boring pointless dreck. That and style out the Italian equivalent of wazoo.

When I was a kid my mom and I used to stay up late to proto-mst3k that movie (incredible melting dude) which was on constant late night rotation on one of the third tier broadcast networks here in MN. to this day thinking of the "It's......HIS EAR!" line gets me every time.

Wow, I just started watching a bit of the original "Legend of Boggy Creek," and while the primordial recesses of my mind recognize, jeez is it boring. It's like a surreally bad foreshadowing of Terrance Malick: five minutes of nature shots, then a kid running through tall grass for two minutes, then the kid telling someone he saw something in the woods, then the kid running back through the tall grass. And then it gets around to the titles!

This movie sucks, but its faux-documentary style is I suppose ahead of its it time, for horror. Or "horror."

If Day of the Animals inspired the cinema of my beloved Damon Packard in any way, then it deserves a vote here. But that's the only positive thing I can say about a film that even Michael Weldon hated (which is really saying something!).

And how anyone can get through Shock Waves without drugs and/or talking with friends all throughout is beyond me.

what can I say, one man's boring is another man's atmospheric? I like a lot of glacially paced 70s movies, anything from aguirre wrath of god to phase IV.

harryhausen said the secret to creating a great monster isn't by imagining it terrorizing people, but by imagining what it does when it's alone, imbuing the monster with some kind of inner life. shock waves spends some quality time with its monsters. there's a surreal hypnotic beauty in the footage of nazis strolling around on the ocean floor, or the sequence when they trash the mansion. in one scene the zombies gang up on a guy in an empty pool, and it's played very realistically, there's no quick cutting or hyping the moment, just this matter-of-fact presentation of four silent people focused on killing another person, I find it chilling.

if you go with the flow shock waves can creep you out, but if you're staring at yr watch and drumming yr fingers its effects will most likely be lost on you.

phase IV

this movie is a goddamned masterpiece

yes!

and not to harp on this point, but while suspiria has a lot going for it - beautifully shot, exquisite set design, incredible score - it also has some terrible acting, atrocious dubbing, absurd choreography during kill scenes, and a plot that veers between rote and total nonsense. it's amateurish in its own way, just like "trash" such as shock waves, last house on dead end street, and the hills have eyes. just like those films, suspiria is effective in bringing the creeps in spite of mechanical deficiencies.

that's why I get twitchy when people rep for suspiria as some unquestionable high point of horror and snub other stuff as "boring garbage". it involves overlooking glaring aesthetic problems in order to enjoy the sensuous terrors of a glitzy surface, while discounting the value of films that provide the same experience in a more direct (and grubbier) way. for me it's the difference between dark side of the moon and never mind the bollocks, you should be able to support either of them without trashing the other. unless you're johnny rotten.

sorry if I'm reading into stuff here but that's the way it strikes me.

Holy shit - Saul Bass directed Phase IV! I had no idea this movie even existed. Sounds v. cool

thing you maybe forget about never mind the bollocks is that it was a completely and very successfully pop record. super catchy tunes, colorful characters, jokes, keeps the shiny objects in rapid motion. in that, it's more like evil dead II (or planet terror!) than shock waves. shock waves is a bar band covering pentagram.

xpost

Ok pretend I said drunks with guns instead of sex pistols

yeah okay, that works. love drunks with guns. will rewatch shock waves and pretend they are all doskocil.

lol they stumble around as much as he did

lol @ Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

Any UK Ilxors see BBC Four's History of Horror. Really awful, not only bcz it neglects Italian horror.

suspiria is a symbol of 1977 besides punk rock so yeah, no contest.

I've actually seen Death Bed! It's very...self-serious.

Nearly missed this but made it in time to vote for Martin. I'm cheating my own rules really cos I question whether it's a Horror flick but I love it too much not to give it the vote.

ok it's time to vote and I'm torn between shock waves and the last house on dead end street

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

The right film won. These polls are much better when Cronenberg isn't part of the discussion. (Wait, why wasn't Rabid an option here?)

Sorry, Rage is the alternate title of Rabid. I meant to correct that.

Oops, I missed that too.

ha to think i thought this might be close

no votes for LHODES, after all that, makes me kinda sad. but you can't F with the rightful winner.

Yeah, I hedged my bets and voted Suspiria. Comments had me thinking Hills was set to spoil.

what can I say, one man's boring is another man's atmospheric? I like a lot of glacially paced 70s movies, anything from aguirre wrath of god to phase IV.

That was a great post, edward iii. I guess it's just a matter of payoff for me. Observing how monsters hang when they're not out marauding just isn't enough for me to keep watching (or to watch again) although I recognize it as important to the effect of horror (although I don't know how one would defend Day of the Animals along these lines; couldn't we just go to the zoo instead?). Whereas Some Call It Loving, Jeanne Dielman, Kings of the Road, The Driller Killer, etc. are all glacially paced 70s movies that might make Shock Waves feel like a roller coaster. But their payoffs are much deeper, more complex, and varied in my experience.

I'm not gonna say that shock waves is some deep cinematic experience. it's just a solid and unique b-movie. there's an unhurried, methodical rhythm to shock waves - as if the zombies themselves are controlling the pace of events. I have to admit I find the stock characters kind of charming. carradine's great as the crusty ole sea captain and, speaking of glacially paced 70s films, after shock waves brooke adams went on to days of heaven (and then invasion of the body snatchers!).

though now I'm disappointed that last house on dead end street got 0 votes. c'mon eric we gotta rep for the little films cause no one else will! the top 3 in the resulting order were a given, I thought.

can I just

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/SW_Szdu5WTwww.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/SW_rsgG15Uczt.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/SW_d1MermrWRR.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/SW_HWqjPrEA5O.jpg

amazing underwater photography for 16mm too

so hausu/house is great, but also a wee bit creepy what with ogling & wasting nubile schoolgirls being the entire point. it's great, maybe even suspiria-great, but people tend to dance around the fetish aspect when recommending it.

That horror movies deal in fetishes is sort of a given, innit?

i would've voted for Martin. romero's best non-Dead movie and his second or third best movie overall.

just re-watched Suspiria recently. great just for the sets and soundtracks alone (also Udo Kier bit role!) was a double-header with Inception and um... well Suspiria is much better.

I really think that both the set design and soundtrack for suspiria are all-time. I mean, look at these images:

http://ilovecatparty.blogspot.com/2011/03/suspira-interiors.html

the story is fairly silly, tho. but it's fun.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/sano5/suspiria_dragon02.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xFNMfjZgho8/S-vcpJWi0fI/AAAAAAAAA6k/NmvZrJl5Ooc/s1600/suspiria14.jpg

Can i just say that the new Region B (only) Blu-ray looks amazing and - more importantly - sounds unreal. Color levels were apparently fiddled with, to the chagrin of many purists. I didn't have a problem with it. The whites are scorching, the blacks fathomless, the primaries bolder than ever. It's truly like seeing and hearing the film again for the first time. can't wait to see what BU did with 'Inferno'.

man if i had this to do over i would have def voted house/hausa

finally finished the OG The Hills Have Eyes. previously I watched it in my early 20s where I was less into 70s gritty exploitation horror.

loved it, but it wasn't an 'enjoying' love as much as horrified fascination.

kinda wonder what Craven mighta come up with if he stayed in this lane (Last House on the Left, etc) instead of going the more big budget route.

Papa Jupiter's appearance at the gas station window is up there with Leatherface's sliding metal door in TCM in great 70s horror moments imo.

Messiah of Evil is pretty great, and very impressively directed, but yeah, that title is false advertising.

I wish I could find a copy of the Car.

I strongly suspect "The Gestapo's Last Orgy" had a budget somewhere south of $75,000, even though I've never seen or heard of it before this moment.

Nice Blu-Ray of The Car available from Arrow. Bonus - includes a notoriously awful commentary track conducted by a former ilxor

https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/the-car-blu-ray/FCD856

Thought this revive might be about the new Suspiria trailer

I'm not in the habit of buying things sight unseen... at the same time I know I am that rare dinosaur who actually rents things from a video store

Challops, surely, but I don't think Suspiria even makes it into my top three horror movies from '77.

I probably should have revived the 1973 thread tbh. Without looking it up I’d say The Gestapo’s Last Orgy has a high probability of being directed by Jess Franco.

From Wikipedia: "... produced, directed and co-written by Cesare Canevari. It stars Adriano Micantoni (billed as Marc Loud) and Daniela Poggi (billed as Daniela Levy)." As might be expected, it's basically a porn movie, not really in the horror genre. Made in Italy, w/ dialogue in Italian.

Tbf italian porn is p horrifying

Franco had nothing to do w/ Gestapo's Last Orgy, and it's not 'basically a porn movie' - obviously it's a supremely tasteless piece of trash, but there's no explicit sex as such. There were quite a few of these nasty Nazi 70s Euro exploitation movies that mashed up different genres - the women-in-prison movie (to which Franco did make a significant contribution), the 'erotic' fascist sadism fad (eg The Night Porter and Salo), giallo the Italian cannibal movie, and of course the horror film. See also: Love Camp 7, The Beast in Heat, SS Experiment Camp, the Ilsa movies etc. Gestapo's Last Orgy is now mainly remembered for being one of the prosecuted video nasties in the UK.

Rewatched the original Suspiria tonight. It's a real shame it didn't have a better script to match the visuals and soundtrack, otherwise it could be right up there in my favourite horrors.