Best Horror Film of 1973 (part 21 of a series)

If The Exorcist takes it, it'll only be because Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man split voters.

Wow, what a great year, even among the paltry percentage of this list that I've seen. Tempted to vote for The Asphyx, which is basically an overlong Twilight Zone episode, but has fun, eerie premise and a great Man-With-Xray-Eyes-"I can still see!"-style payoff that it's worth every second.

Wouldn't be so sure about The Exorcist. Wicker Man is much beloved 'round these parts.

xp

Reminds me I need to watch Warhol's Frankenstein again. I think it's streaming on Netflix. Udo Kier is so amazing -- "To understand life, you have to fuck it in the gall bladder!"

you have to fuck DEATH in the gall bladder!

I've only ever seen Warhol's Dracula, which is ... something.

"Don't Look Now" and "The Wicker Man" definitely split the batshit not quite horror vote, that's for sure.

every1 shd def see flesh of frankenstein

oh man

maybe the crazies?

After this series of polls runs its course, I'd be interested in seeing the results of a poll for 'best year for horror movie titles', 'cause clearly '73 is coming up strong on that front.

Would probably vote for Wicker Man or Exorcist, of the ones I've seen.

yeah this is a pretty killer year all told

btw if i havent said this already, i love love love these polls and they are among my favorite things ever on ilx, so thx darin

i've had this pet theory for a while that you need to have some kind of religious background - nothing extreme, just grow up w/some churchiness - to find the Exorcist scary. it always bored the heck outta me.

yeah i am actually completely with you there - never got it at all

i mean well done movie but yeah doesnt do it for me

BINGO--coming into direct contact with the devil was about my #1 fear as a child. The very idea of this movie was too scary for me to deal with until I was in my teens.

wow I've only seen three of these (Theater of Blood, Wicker Man, and Excorcist)

I used to think that too, re: religiousity & Exorcist, but the last time I watched it, it seemed to be making a specific appeal through atheism as the given (i.e. Ellen Burstyn's offended reaction to someone putting a cross under her daughter's pillow).

i mean well done movie but yeah doesnt do it for me

yep totally agree as well. It's a good movie, but the supposedly horrifying aspects of it all seem kinda silly to me. Biskind OTM that it's all about fear of women/female sexuality

wow, a lot of good stuff here

Legend of Hell House is pretty damn good, marred only by a laughable 'shocker' ending. Non-stop creepy atmosphere up to that point.

http://roarvis.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/legend_of_hell_house21.jpg

the thing I always found kind of laughable about the Exorcist is that the Devil seems like kind of a pussy. Like, really, all he can do is sort of transform this teenage girl, hurl some furniture around, and get one guy to kill himself? pretty weak sauce, Satan!

lol

I'll point out once more that I saw warhol's frankenstein in 3D and wait here for the tsunami of your jealousy to flow over me

i voted for Sisters btw

the thing I always found kind of laughable about the Exorcist is that the Devil seems like kind of a pussy. Like, really, all he can do is sort of transform this teenage girl, hurl some furniture around, and get one guy to kill himself? pretty weak sauce, Satan!

And murder Burke Dennings.

Anyway, I grew up with little-to-no religious exposure -- my dad was a non-practicing Jew and my mom was some-or-other mainline Protestant denomination -- but The Exorcist, first as a novel, then as a movie, scared the ever-loving shit out of me. In many of the same ways as Cronenberg's body horror stuff does, and for the same reasons, involving the rather disgusting attributes of the human body, its transformations, and your helplessness to do anything about it. (The scene in which the housekeeper and the priest view the words "Help Me" appear on the skin of a sleeping Regan, as if she's literally trapped in there, is just hair-raising to me.)

Anyway, the movie itself makes it clear that the point isn't how powerful the demon is or how many tricks he can do, but how effectively he can make the people around Regan question their faith in both God and/or the value of human beings.

Anyway.

these run the gamut from interesting to classic, hopefully hal jam will make an appearance

Andy Warhol's Frankenstein
The Asphyx
The Crazies
Don't Look Now
The Exorcist
Ganja & Hess
Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural
The Legend of Hell House
Raw Meat
Sisters
Theater of Blood
Tenderness of the Wolves
The Wicker Man

how effectively he can make the people around Regan question their faith in both God and/or the value of human beings.

yeah see this just doesn't work for me, given that there's plenty of mundane, every-day horrifying-level shit that can make people do this ("why does God allow suffering" etc)

After a dying Voodoo queen, Mama Loa, chooses an adopted apprentice, Lisa Fortier (Pam Grier) as her successor, her true heir, Willis, (Richard Lawson) is outraged. Seeking revenge, he buys the bones of Blacula the vampire from the former shaman of the voodoo cult, and uses voodoo to bring the vampire back to do his bidding. In turn, Blacula turns him into a vampire and makes him his slave. Meanwhile, Justin, a police officer with a large collection of African antiques and an interest in the occult, investigates the murders caused by Blacula and his vampire horde. Justin meets Mamuwalde, Blacula's previous name when he was prince of an African nation, at a party he is hosting. Mamuwalde meets Lisa at the party and they talk about voodoo. Mamuwalde later in the movie asks Lisa for help to take the curse of the vampire off him using a voodoo doll that looks like the prince. Justin pulls together other cops to go to the Mamuwalde residence to investigate the recent deaths. While she is performing the ritual, Justin interrupts with other cops performing a raid on the house. Lisa refuses to help Mamuwalde after she sees him kill the other police in the house. In his anger Blacula is about to bite Justin when Lisa stabs Mamuwalde's voodoo doll killing Mamuwalde and forever destroying Blacula.

waht

many great films on this, it's hard not to vote for The Wicker Man but -- Ganja and Hess is a film that just will not leave my head, it's just got too much going on in it, and I've watched it more times, so the vote goes there

http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC35folder/ganja-Hess.html

xpost haven't seen Blacula, I hear it's pretty rough

btw if i havent said this already, i love love love these polls and they are among my favorite things ever on ilx, so thx darin

thanks man! I worry every now and then that these might polls might be a bit exhaustive, so I'm glad people are still into them.

might have to rep for lemora

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQNmu4Cw72s

xpost still going off on ganja & hess

that article, apart from the first few paragraphs, is definitely one for people who've already seen the film. but all of the links I found have spoilers

I don't know, the whole film is just crammed in with all these incredibly real moments, the interactions between black and white, the nina simone concert program laying on the desk table of the bourgeois museum director, the suicidal artist hanging out in a tree, the self-conscious way the prostitute takes off her wig, the street scenes, the pentacostal choir

the amazing moment when the 'African Vampire Queen' character in full headgear wanders across the field and we all realized she looks familiar and then my friend Laura went "Holy shit, that's Mabel King, the mom from 'What's Happening'" and we all had our minds blown -- that won't mean as much for some people, but to know that this film is woven into that context was, at that moment, an essential connection back to the real world because this film is way, way out there

http://www.stomptokyo.com/otf/Ganja-Hess/Ganja-Hess.htm

/pentecostal! ha. one of the links I was just looking at had a pentagram, I hope that was what forced that inexcusable spelling error

a bunch of these are streaming btw - Lemora, Raw Meat, Blacula, Theater of Blood, The Crazies

avoid the lemora streaming on netflix! awful pan n scan transfer

from a print that was apparently run over by a truck

and dragged 50 feet into a blazing barn

where it was reassembled by blind dwarfs with metal pins for fingers

hopefully that gives you some inkling of how horrible it is

It's been a while since I saw Don't Look Now; didn't care much for it at the time, though I might feel differently today. The Exorcist vs. The Wicker Man is a difficult choice. The Wicker Man is easily the more thoughtful, serious film. But just as pure sensory experience, I still think that The Exorcist on first viewing is the most frightening film ever made. (Unless you think it's laughably silly and it makes you giggle--if you're so inclined, I think that's a perfectly valid response.) I saw it the year of its release at a Florida drive-in--my cousin and I were 12, and our moms took us to the drive-in. She was a great mom! I'm guessing she didn't realize just how intense it would be. (I've always wanted to see Ganja & Hess on a big screen, but I don't think I've ever gotten the chance.)

The Pyx is kind of creepy--that used to play on Canadian TV constantly. I believe you see some skin from Karen Black, so teenage me would never miss it. Didn't care for Sisters the one time I watched it. I think that was a Robin Wood favourite. Theatre of Blood is fun.

have always loved the title "Sssssss" but have never had the guts to actually watch it

haven't seen to many of these, actually. but this thread is making me queue things up like a madman. yeah, these threads are definitely some of my faves on ilx as well.

Mark of the Devil 5: Return of the Blind Dead

this is one of the tombs of the blind dead movies, right? I find the films a bit dull but horror monster design doesn't get much more perfect than this:

http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/tomb_of_blind_Dead_4.jpg

I remember watching "Sssssss" on network tv when I was around 6 years old. Guy slowly turns into a snake. Terrible make up. Wasn't Lee Major or someone like that in it?

At first I thought Baby Yaga was a typo but that is indeed how the Italian flick Baba Yaga was retitled for the anglosphere. Anyway that's a really good and weird one, based on erotic graphic novels. I liked Sugar Cookies, too - that's basically Mary Woronov playing mind games. Hard not to vote for Don't Look Now, though.

Don't Look Now is one of the most overrated films ever, imo. Pretty good sex scene and the opening scene in england is good. Other than that it's ponderous and pedestrian. And the ending is just ridiculous.

why didn't they include the spiderwalk scene when exorcist was first released?

Don't Look Now is great and it gets my vote. Felt like it did the Polanski horror thing better than most Polanski films. Sisters has a lot going for it, but it loses me about halfway-2/3 through. Happens too often for me w/ De Palma.

Voted for The Exorcist, but it was difficult not to choose The Wicker Man: two movies dealing with religion in a rather fascinating way, by the way.
Many good movies, also had a soft spot for Theater of Blood - I saw it when I was a kid, the mix of horror and comedy left me flabbergasted (I was particularly impressed by the killing of Robert Morley).

Plus, if he wasn't so in the tank for God, he would not have died and would've gotten probably the best lay of his life.

I definitely wouldn't take The Wicker Man to be a conservative film. Stodgy old Edward Woodward tries to uphold virtue and goodness as he plods along solving the case; all the hedonists laugh at him, play mind games with him, then burn him alive.

Yeah, but where do your sympathies lie at the end, stodgy burned alive dude or crazy pagan not burned alive hippies?

I'm cool with burning up a pious asshole ( ... who was trying to save a girl he thought was kidnapped).

Your sympathy may be with Woodward (or may not be; he's kind of annoying), but I always figure the director's sympathies are with whoever gets to have the most fun.

Just saw Lemora and it is another excellent horror movie from probably the best year ever for horror movies - I'm also curious about The Killing Kind.

About The Wicker Man: I love it and, as I wrote upthread, I think it works (probably unintentionally, but maybe not) almost as an essai on scapegoating. It is all about ritual sacrifice and its consequences: the heathens live a carefree, phisically satisfying life, in apparent harmony with nature and themselves - but there's a darkness behind all of this, the necessity of blood and death to perpetuate the natural cycle, and next time they will have to burn one of them.

Woodward is a Christian and Christianity (at least in a Nietzsche/ Girad perspective) overtakes the pagan pattern of conflict and sacrifice through a rejection/sublimation of the scapegoating practice (there's a key scene in the movie with Woodward taking communion). The price you pay for this is resentment and inhibition.

I understand why the movie can be seen as conservative, but I think it is pretty much a honest and slightly bleak observation on how humanity deals with violence and nature.

Yeah, but where do your sympathies lie at the end, stodgy burned alive dude or crazy pagan not burned alive hippies?

sure, lord summerisle is an evil heathen, but he's contrasted with a constipated, tortured saint. our sympathies are w/ woodward only to the extent we experience the movie from his perspective. he's not a sympathetic character, and the film doesn't go to pains to humanize him. he's portrayed as a haughty dick, a caricature of heroism, and ultimately, a fool. the pagans are creepy murderers, but they're having fun and are running the show beginning to end.

that said, I really like marco's take on it. one of the film's strengths is in not taking a side, or as portraying both sides as unlikeable.

I totally agree -- we're all repulsive. It's part of what I like best about the movie. Sgt Howie is totally a haughty dick, and a fool -- he doesn't know, or doesn't want to see, what's best for him (what kind of God wants him to be that miserable?) Also, would like to add that Ingrid Pitt's character is powerful (as an educator), Willow is powerful (as an...educator), and Lord Summerisle is powerful (not moral, but powerful) -- Howie is a pawn and a weakling who is being entrusted to a powerful position.

messiah of evil not available from netflix ;_;

from the stills and clips I've seen, it appears to have the same kind of monsters-in-broad-daylight feel as carnival of souls or let's scare jessica to death. which I love.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/messiah06.jpg

This scene (and its build-up) is incredible: very simple, subdued and effective.
Also there's another zombie attack filmed in a movie theater that is truly great.

(comparisons with jessica are totally apt).

oooh i love let's scare jessica and carnival of souls!
will have to check out messiah of evil

man I hated carnival of souls.

John D. Hancock (Jessica)--he went on to do Bang the Drum Slowly and Baby Blue Marine. From what I remember, Jessica's strange and creepy.

I like Carnival a lot.

I watched Jessica by myself at 4 in the morning coming off of an acid trip and it scared the hell out of me.

why would it do that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gis3QnFGDfc

truth be told I had a very similar experience lol college

channel surfing into the scene you just posted, age 13, 1 AM -- jessica and emily go boating

yikes

slightly longer youtube clip including the scene of emily rising, + DVD clip not VHS transfer (had no idea how beautiful this film looked before getting the DVD)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jySks3pgvBw

guess we should save all this jessica gabbing for 1971

Now there's an overrated '70s horror movie!

eh, jessica's somewhat obscure ime and generally loved by ppl who stumbled across it at 2am

it's not like some classic of the horror pantheon

These results equal:

TS: girl masturbating with crucifix vs. woman having sex with a door

prefer either to having sex w/ donald sutherland tbh so ilx otm

oh man you did not just say that about donald sutherland
i love that guy!

I love him too. just not that way.

I hope he understands

more 70s donald sutherland for me
he's my 70s husband

well yes, he is 75

he wasn't 75 then!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prT1E_S__jM

I was the third Messiah of Evil voter. Here's what I wrote about it a few years ago (no spoilers...not really a spoilers type of flick):

OMG! I just saw Messiah of Evil and loved it! Very artsy fartsy horror flick from 1973. Sometimes called DEAD PEOPLE. Starts with a prologue featuring two characters you never see again (that I could determine). Then we get three different voiceovers from three different time periods. A woman drives to visit her artist father whose increasingly bizarre letters have recently stopped. She pulls into a gas station where she finds the attendant firing off a gun into the adjacent forest/darkness. This latter action doesn't seem to phase the heroine that much. And thus, for a looong time, the shots tend to collapse in on themselves. Images fire off in a dream-like irreducibility, e.g. a wacky, unmotivated shot of two Mobil signs in an arty, zig-zag composition. Character motivation is shady. A creepy albino (are there any other kind in cinema?) rolls up in a pickup truck. The attendant sees dead bodies in the back but proceeds to ask if the albino wants stamps.

The heroine makes it to her father's pad. Turns out dad is a Robert Longo-ish artist who has populated the walls with all sorts of trompe l'oeil imagery. These will repeatedly figure in more arty compositions with the "real" actors: characters look as if they're part of a jury or just stepping off an escalator.

She hooks up with a swingin trio (one guy, two gals). The guy's looking for dad too. He shares with the heroine a sort of upper class somnambulism - stilted, overly careful speech and movement a la MARIENBAD. The two swinger chicks are more crass - they burp and laugh at dad's art. One splits and runs into the truck driving albino. He gives her a lift (dead bodies now propped up in the
back), plays Wagner (which he pronounces like Mr. Natalie Wood's last name), and eats a rat (avec crunching sounds too). She wisely walks the rest of the way only to meet her end in a deserted supermarket...deserted save for raw meat eating townsfolk.

Eventually we learn that the entire town has become zombies. They get swinger chick #2 too in a very creepy scene at a movie theatre. KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE is on the marquee. But the Sammy Davis Jr. Western GONE WITH THE WEST is playing (which is odd because IMDb lists it at 1975 whereas MESSIAH is 1973).

Dad shows up too. Immediately after triggering a flashback (from 100 years ago!), he flays red paint onto the walls and douses his face in blue making for ever more arty (Antonioni-esque?) compositions. Soon it looks like he's staging an Otto Muehl happening.

A masterpiece? No. But winningly godforsaken. And made by the folks who brought us AMERICAN GRAFFITI and, um, HOWARD THE DUCK (which I should probably take in now [NOTE TO 2011 SELF: still haven't taken it in).

And the cast! Joy Bang (swinger chick #2) brings sssssssteam heat as does the stunning Anitra Ford. Royal Dano (!) is dad. Elisha Cook Jr. (!!) as a wino is first scary then lovable. And best of all is the great Michael Greer in a rare heterosexual role (well, nominally het).

How the hell do movies like this get made?

Also repping for the uber-creepy Tenderness of the Wolves, Ulli Lommel's film about Fritz Haarmann, the Butcher/Vampire of Hanover (the partial inspiration behind Fritz Lang's M). Produced and edited by Fassbinder (who also plays a small role).

La Lechera OTM about The Wicker Man and Donald Sutherland.

Thanks, KJB. Saves me a heap of trouble. I'll scribble something about TKK and LMD when i can.

Donald Sutherland is a dreamy gentle-yet-strong fuzzy haired kind-eyed 70s man -- what's not to love?! Clip not representative, criticism invalid. Love him.

tokyo rosemary otm about me being otm

I saw "Scream, Blacula, Scream!" on Sunday and am now convinced it should have won this poll

re-watched the Wicker Man last weekend. so many lolz. love it.

I feel that someone should reprazent for "The Creeping Flesh", a classic in which Peter Cushing plays a Victorian scientist who discovers a mysterious ancient skeleton and Christopher Lee plays his brother, the director of the local lunatic asylum. If you like Hammer-style horror, it is a total classic.

Rose of Iron aka The Iron Rose was on tcm underground -- wasnt scary imo but i liked it, v unique & beautifully shot

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/382629%7C443272/The-Iron-Rose.html

the baby is streaming on netflix now. the end sequence was sorta genuninely frightening but it def takes a real level of comittment to see it thru 2 there. idk it also gets pts in my book for being so bound to its (ridiculous) premise

Messiah Of Evil is on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA-Qj1uegiY

I hadn't seen it before, but it's Something...

messiah of evil's got some great scope compositions, so watching a cropped version with that terrible song at the beginning (forced by producers, removed by director when it was released on DVD) might not be the best intro. it fell into the public domain so there are lots of crappy versions floating around, the code red DVD is worth searching out.

Yah, the YT version just caused me to track down the DVD of it.

i rly need to see The Wicker Man

I think of it more as a comedy than a horror movie

the Code Red DVD was back in print for about three minutes, about five minutes ago.

Saw Messiah of Evil on the big screen at MoMA tonight. This film, wow. I was struck by the geographical dislocation aspect of it. You can never really get your bearings on where the locations are and their relation to one other. You’re in a remote house on the beach, but it’s also on a street of stucco-faced tract houses, which is also somewhere near a supermarket and a cinema and a Main Street-style shopping area, and oh yeah there’s also a street with art galleries. And of course, IMDb indicates that all of these locations were in different Californian towns. But the effect is surreally unsettling.

And what is it about that beach house. I didn’t grow up in California but I feel I KNOW that house and I KNOW that vibe.

perfect movie

I watched the 4k restoration a few nights ago and OTM. The only bit I didn't care for was the exposition about the dark stranger toward the end--I think it dragged the pacing, and the situation was evocative enough that it didn't need explaining.