Best Horror Film of 1974 (part 19 of a series)

Texas Chain Saw Massacare for me. Though I must throw an honourable mention to The Beast Must Die (a weird attempt to combine Hammer Horror with blaxploitation). I have always liked the idea of Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (Hammer Horror combined with Hong Kong martial arts action - what's not to like?) but have never seen it.

I bet Andy Warhol's Dracula is the world's most boring horror film. I also bet that Nuda per Satana is a very good film.

Wedding Trough and Spasmo in my to-(re)watch pile. will share thoughts when i've done so. know my early favorites.

Warhol's Dracula is fucking fantastic and v. funny.

xpost re: AW's D. far from it.
same applies to N4S.
books, titles, etc.

so many good movies here. but this will be a (Chain Saw) massacre.

... "Nude For Satan"?

yeah, warhol's blood for dracula and flesh for frankenstein are both classic (I actually saw the latter in 3D in the theatres during some weird early 80s rerelease!)

wish homebodies was here, overlooked black comedy about elderly folks who go on a killing spree when they get evicted from their brownstone

Kind of want to vote for Phase IV just because it's so awesome to look at.

phase iv one of my all-time faves but more of a sci-fi film

dead of night more widely known as deathdream I think

Who will survive
and what
will be
left of
them?

Deathdream looks great, as does Peopletoys.

So many Exorcist rips.

Texas Chainsaw, even though it's not something I'd necessarily want to watch today (nearing 50...), had a huge effect on me in the '70s; I still feel it's legitimately one of the great films of the decade. Like Pink Flamingos, it's a great send-up of hippiedom. (Funniest moment for me: when the deranged father remembers that he needs to shut off the lights to conserve energy.) It's also unbelievably tense and grim, even though, as others have pointed out, there's very little actual violence. (After the meat hook, the most startling moment is in the van, when the blithering-idiot song cuts his finger.) In my last year of university, I did an independent study of horror films, and my final paper was on (in the immortal words of Joe Bob Briggs) 'Saw. (I guess that's not as funny as it used to be, now that there really is a film with that name.)

Robin Wood would vote for Texas Chainsaw, but he'd argue that It's Alive! is almost as good.

I remember being so disappointed when I saw It's Alive!

I thought it was pretty silly too. You should read Wood on the film, though (in The American Nightmare, which is probably very hard to get now); it's like he's writing about Bergman or something. I mean that as a compliment...

http://dkholm.typepad.com/.a/6a011279486fe528a40133ec94449f970b-800wi

That was the key text for my course.

I would have taken that course in a heartbeat!

I can only post from iPhone so I'll save my lengthy treatise on this until later, but as great as TCM (and others on this list) are, people should tale a long hard look at "Black Christmas" which is hands down the best and smartest proto-slasher film I've ever seen. It's on netflix on demand if you want to see for yourself.

Yeah, I'll totally rep for the original "Black Christmas". The remake from a few years back was hilariously bad - although I recall an inspired scene involving a cookie cutter.

"Black Christmas" almost made me reevaluate my DO NOT WANT stance on slasher movies

I would actually watch it again, which is usually not the case for me and slasher flicks

also, it is fantastic for playing "spot the actress"

Also the score is totally nuts and awesome, tons of manipulated piano. And holy shit, the phone calls.

It's very gore lite for a slasher flick - which is not to say that it's a light touch - initial victim and the role she plays in the rest of the film is so deeply unsettling.

haven't seen anything here except for PHASE IV WHICH IS FUCKING AWESOME.

oh and I've seen TCM obviously

if my life goes according to plan, I will never see TCM

I like the idea of their being a horror film called "Turner Classic Movies".

Despite its extreme cheapness, Frankenstein & the Monster from Hell is pretty good, esp. for late Hammer.

huh, no deranged on this list

^^^ Good call. I haven't seen Deranged since it was newish, 3rd on the bill at the drive-in along with Eaten Alive and something. Memorable, even after all these years.

Man, I could of sworn I had Deranged on there - must of been accidently deleted.

o_O at wedding trough

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b6/Vase_de_Noces.jpg

gonna keep repping homebodies, which unfortunately never made it to DVD

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

Black Christmas is indeed very good. Though I can't vote against Texas Chain Saw, which is probably my favorite horror film of all time.

Just once, I'd love to see TCM on TCM.

Is "Black Christmas" the one with the scene featuring a drunken (or stoned) Margot Kidder laughing about watching giraffes fucking at the zoo? That's a good one.

I'll rep for Captain Kronos, which is pretty cool. But yeah, Chainsaw.

Still waiting for a horror film to even come close to matching TCM. One of the greatest films ever.

The phone calls in "Black Christmas" are some of the most crazy-ass bone-chilling things you've ever heard in a movie. And jjjusten OTM about the fate of the first victim. Plus, nobody in the movie really acts like too much of an idiot, unlike in a lot of slashers. In fact, given the information everyone on-screen actually has, everyone does just about what you'd expect them to do!

That said, this is far and away TCM. Everything about that movie is so artfully done. And the impact of Leatherface appearing on screen, hammering that first victim on the forehead -- his feet beating a tattoo on the floor as he collapses -- then slamming that metal door shut is like HOLY SHIT DID THAT JUST HAPPEN? The title aside, nothing in the movie up to that point leads you to expect that shocking moment of violence.

I mean, honestly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1igo_Kh0kwI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f834Ei78nU&feature=related

man this is awesome

Gotta see Black Christmas (aka Silent Night, Evil Night). With Andrea Martin, pre-SCTV... wow.

Vampyres is quite good. Lesbian vampires.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a zombie movie I just saw. Wanted to like it more - it has a couple of good special effects. Arthur Kennedy plays a hippie-hating cop who speaks with an Irish brogue.

Plus, nobody in the movie really acts like too much of an idiot, unlike in a lot of slashers. In fact, given the information everyone on-screen actually has, everyone does just about what you'd expect them to do!

This re: "Black Christmas" can't be stressed enough; I don't think I've seen a movie that did as good of a job of undercutting the information given to the characters in the film, making their oblivious reactions in the face of danger believable/credible.

The ending was really, really, really disturbing and kind of perfect.

"I was nervous. We were both speaking Scottish, something that I learned when I played in his home city of Glasgow, but I can't tell you what we said.

This is the zombie flick with an alternative title yes? something about the Manchester Morgue, i have it on dvd somewhere.

about the hippy bike rider that goes out to countryside. It's strange and ooky but the first horror bit you see where the zombie appears near the river, and the hippy guy is talking to the farmers is just so surreal.

voted TCM also, too awesome.

HAHAHAHA i c&p on the wrong pc

was meant to copy :

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a zombie movie I just saw. Wanted to like it more - it has a couple of good special effects. Arthur Kennedy plays a hippie-hating cop who speaks with an Irish brogue.

Phil D.'s review and vid post completely OTM. That scene still haunts me, and I haven't watched the movie in 20 years. Sure, it opened the floodgates for hundreds of more violent, (and definitely less artfully done) "kill stupid teenagers" movies, but this is still the benchmark as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't possibly vote for anything but TCM.

This is the zombie flick with an alternative title yes? something about the Manchester Morgue, i have it on dvd somewhere.

Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, iirc?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6hDZt1e0ofY/Sx8iZi5wmXI/AAAAAAAAIII/flNZWlWk3YY/s320/santa-claus-is-a-black-man.jpg

ORGY OF HORROR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja2GD0je1jA

Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, iirc?

That's the one.

yeah, it had some really groovy music at the start - whilst the guy was driving through london and then all of a sudden some woman runs across a road with her boobs out.

I thought that was a fairly common occurrence in Ol' Blighty

well i guess you could be right, the traffic in the film didn't bat an eyelid.

Really gd year, especially for Brit horror flicks - Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (Terence Fisher's last film, incredibly grim), Captain Kronos (from Brian Clemens of Avengers/Thriller/Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde), House of Whipchord (no 'the', Pete Walker's great psycho-sado exploitation flick), Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (Hammer's shamelessly entertaining Kung Fu cash in), Satanic Rites of Dracula (Christopher Lee's last turn as Dracula, hilarious modern day setting and nudie Joanna Lumley), Madhouse (Vincent Price kinda playing himself as a has-been horror movie star.) And both Vampyres and Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue are UK horrors from Euro directors.

Still, voted TCM obv

at work, so i have to be brief.

Abby – The Blacksorcist
Beyond the Door – Exorcist, Italian style.
Flavia – How to Flay a Rebel Nun. more exploitation than horror.
Garden of the Dead - chloroform zombies. mercifully short, IIRC.
Grave of the Vampire - nasty US oddity about the consequences of vampire rape.
Impulse – Shatner’s Esperanto possession melodrama?
L'anticristo (The Tempter) – Exorcist, Italian style, redux
The Mutations – See the (real) freaks! Browning without the heart.
Peopletoys –Leif Garret and his sister are among the five moppets who gang up on their IRL mom
The Perfume of the Lady in Black – decorative, lethargic giallo with a stunner of an ending.
Seizure – Oliver Stone’s inauspicious debut. Incomprehensible.
Ship of Zombies – is this one of the final Blind Dead films? They go by so many damn names
Silent Night, Bloody Night – one-of-a-kind Upstate psycho shocker. Desperately in need of restoration.
Wedding Trough – words fail
When the Screaming Stops – Lorelei legend given the Spanish Z-movie treatment. fun, actually.

Impulse is AWESOME. it is not the Esperanto film tho. Shatner plays a serial-monogamist-killer

... he kills people who bounce from committed relationship to committed relationship?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7EIL1AhN2Q&feature=related

my memory is that the daughter of one of the women he picks up with finds out about his serial killer exploits but no one believes her etc

you're absolutely right. confused Impulse and Incubus. both Shat joints, both merit a place in the BMHF.

Blaxorcist, obv.

man this is awesome

if TCM weren't on the list I'd have to write in homebodies, glad the whole thing's up on youtube

can't think of another movie that's so poignant and so mean-spirited at the same time

Phil D.'s right: I should have said Kirk's death is the second-most startling moment in TCM, not the blithering-idiot son's self-mutilation. It's so fierce and so sudden, and the timing of the music ("music") to Leatherface sliding the door shut is perfect.

Where's Shriek of the Mutilated, one of the all-time great horror titles (and I mean that literally...the title rocks but I can't recall a thing about the movie itself, not even the fact that apparently Hot Butter's "Popcorn" was used in a scene but was taken off the DVD due to copyright issues)?

i didnt realize that Dead of Night is the same movie as Deathdream, which means that Bob Clark turned out both that and Black Christmas in the same year? thats fucking amazing

how the fuck does a dude like that end up schlocking out baby geniuses stuff in his latter career?

p.s. Chris Fujiwara has a piece in the Sleaze Artists anthology called "Boredom, Spasmo, and the Italian System."

Baby Geniuses is pretty fucking scary imo

bob clark's filmography is totally bizarro, dude made black christmas, porky's, and a christmas story

and children shouldnt play with dead things!

i think he got broken somewhere along the way, because man, so good right out of the gate

v sad death for bob clark, too

my girlfriend said for one of her friend's Bad Movie Nights (hate this sorta shit, but w/e) they watched Black Christmas. that kind of legitimately annoyed me, but she said everyone ended up digging it so cool on 'em.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

aw

this thread finally pushed me to watch my phase iv the other night. it had been sitting in its netflix envelope for months. was not let down, and visually, it is indeed pretty wild.

still had to vote chainsaw. such a smart and effective film.

didn't hurt that I had this poster of this image up for most of my teenage years:

http://www.bhi.net.au/thumbnails/Texas%20Chainsaw%20Massacre%20001%20Who%20Will%20Survive%20And%20What%20Will%20Be%20Left%20Of%20Them.jpg

TCM will destroy a '74 horror poll btw

― it made me wish batman had written an article on mfas (Edward III), Tuesday, February 15, 2011 10:06 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

pretty surprised about phase iv tho

Phase IV is amazing but calling it a horror film is kinda questionable I think

Am I the only one who keeps reading 'TCM' as 'Turner Classic Movies' and thus wondering how the hell Turner Classic Movies could destroy a '74 horror poll? Maybe TCM was showing a bunch of 1974 horror flix that changed peoples' votes?

Which is why you have to go back to Joe Bob Briggs's much less confusing 'Saw. Just forget the other one exists.

saw didn't come out til '04, no way it could destroy a '74 poll

ok srsly rolling horror dudes need to watch black christmas

and i think texas etc is a O_OwesOme movie, but black christmas is better. no srsly.

i think a lot of the rolling horror ppl would have already seen it? just preferred tcm

just sayin otm

tcm is my favorite horror movie.

black christmas is seminal slasher pic and you know I love to rep for the underdogs in these tourneys but tcm was beamed in from some nightmare world of pure perfect horror and is unfuckwithable on a profoundly deep and iconic level, plus the saw is family