Best Horror Film of 1967 - 1969 (Part 30 of a Series)

hail satan, hail adrian

Night of the Living Dead vs. Rosemary's Baby for sure. Don't mind if the established favorites take this one at all.

I think this is between Witchfinder General, Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead, and it's a very very tough call! I haven't seen the Sorcerers -- isn't that by the same guy who directed Witchfinder General, young doomed cat with a name I'm blanking on?

I'll be pretty disappointed if Rosemary's Baby doesn't take this one.

Never thought Witchfinder General was quite as great as it's rep. :(

its

This is between Witchfinder General and Venus in Furs for me. Always had a special place in my heart that last one. But fuck, I can't not vote for Witchfinder General.

Wild in the Streets? Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)?

Wait, is that The Cremator the '69 Herz film? That's not horror! It's dark in a psychological way, but would never class it as a horror film.

Anyway, I have to vote for Night of the Bloody Apes. Sure, there are better films on the list. Sure, the title is somewhat misleading. But it is Night of the Bloody Apes, I cannot do otherwise.

IMDB classifies The Cremator as horror and I'm using that for lack of a better classification system.

Oh yeah, don't mean to demand you triple-check everything or use the exact same criteria as me, it's just I was very surprised by its inclusion. I suppose the title sounds quite horror-y, but I'd class it as psychological drama rather than psychological horror.

Wow. Two way tie for first. This is like voting between Hiroshima and Nagasaki (/bad taste).

That's cool - I do wish I had more time to screen all of these. xp

The Sorcerers is by Michael Reeves yeah and is perhaps the better horror film. Witchfinder General's rep does feel a tad overblown, partly because some (but not enough) of its cinematography is fantastic, partly cos Reeves died so young and partly because Vincent Price gives one of his best performances I think. All that said, it isn't as good as either Blood on Satan's Claw or The Wicker Man, both of which play in the same field so to speak.

I don't think anything is more deserving than Night of the Living Dead in this field, but I'm not gonna vote yet cos I want to have a think about one or two of the non-anglo movies, like Blind Beast (not really a horror tho??) and decide if my love of the alien shd outweigh one of the top 5 most influential horror flicks ever made.

Here's the deal between the three contenders as I see it. Rosemary's Baby is a fantastic movie & has one of the four or five greatest climaxes in cinematic history as far as I know. Just unbelievably great. But the dream-sequence/black-mass stuff is really a lull & a LOL; it's one of those instances where you think, I don't get how the people who made this movie didn't see that this part is silly. Night of the Living Dead, shit, that's as close to perfect as a horror movie gets, almost, so brutal and raw - totally different neighborhood than RB, though, which is a sort of symphonic build, classically composed movie as vs. Romero's I've Got A Vision schtick. Witchfinder General is the most left-field of the three, one of Vincent Price's best performances ever, historically it does an awesome job with its subject imo (the sadness of the scene where they make the priest run around & around the table is just so vicious) and its vibe is just so bleak - in a way, it's the most forward-looking of them, because it takes place in an amoral world that postures as a moral one (both NOTLD and RB have fairly "classical" values which they look at through the lens of horror).

It's hard to know how to vote! The only one I've seen on the big screen is Witchfinder General, and that was just a few months ago, which leaves it most vivid in my mind...but then again...the climax of Rosemary's Baby is just incredible.

think there might be something a little amoral about the demise of NotLD's hero. also the whole movie is about the uselessness of morality in a hostile world

Yeah, nothing moral about "Night of the Living Dead." It's an every man for himself sort of scenario, with cooperation only as needed.

In fact, the moral choice made of not killing a child literally comes back to bite them.

I have often named Rosemary's Baby as my favourite film, period. I also think Night of the Living Dead is amazing. Seeing as this is a vote for best horror film, I'm going to vote for Romero. The things I love about Rosemary's Baby don't have a lot to do with horror. (Some of the things I love about Night of the Living Dead don't either, but all in all I think it's the scarier film.)

This is more or less à propos of nothing but for Deleuze and Guattari fans it's just occurred to me that, even more so than Willard, there is nothing more rhizomous than a plague of zombies.

which makes '68 the necessary year for Night of the Living Dead...a decentred shifting mass movement with no discernible organisation or leadership coming to an urban centre near you, soon

I would also include Hour of the Wolf. The one time I saw it was in the early '80s when Cronenberg included it in the American Nightmare series he programmed for the Toronto Film Festival (back when nobodies like me could just buy walk-up tickets on a whim).

xp

whereas Rosemary's Baby is "HI DERE WE@RE THE BILDERBERG GUYS" by contrast

It's a shame that one of the very best Japanese kaiju eiga, namely War of the Gargantuas, has to compete against the two gargantuan American classics of 1968. Which it actually shouldn't, since it's from 1966. (imdb is wrong).

night of the living dead pretty easily, shoutout to devil rides out and succubus though

I'm just hoping a bunch of the many people who are intending to click Night of the Living Dead accidentally click Night of the Bloody Apes and it ends up winning.

Night of the Living Dead, has to be. But I'd watch just about any of these happily. Especially love Blind Beast.

I love that still at the top of the thread so much. Didn't recognize it, so I dragged it into Google's search bar and figured it out. Have to see that.

Several Andy Milligan masterpieces are missing from this (Torture Garden gets a nod but not Torture Dungeon?!? For shame!) which is odd since they're much more horror than many of the titles above. Seeds would get my vote easily. Rosemary's Baby is my fave amongst these but I'm going with Blind Beast to give it some love.

And yes, Rosemary's Baby's climax is one of the best ever. Still have deep horror scars from it.

Django, Kill! (If You Live Shoot!) - Also not a horror film. Showed it in a western class recently. Didn't get it. For now, I'll think it's my fault and take it in again some time soon.

Someone throw it a vote please: Berserk

Spirits of the Dead vs. Rosemary's Baby vs. Night of the Living Dead is a really painful decision for me. Spider Baby holds a dear place in my heart as well. I know which one it has to be, but I don't feel good about it.

Please, please, let me talk to you. Let me explain what's been going on. I can't stay on too long here. They'll be coming for me, looking for me. Doctor Hill? Doctor Hill, there's a plot. I know that sounds crazy. You're probably thinking This girl has flipped. But I haven't flipped, Doctor Hill. I swear by all the saints I haven't. There are plots against people, aren't there?

Here--drink this and you'll feel a little better. It's plain, ordinary Lipton tea. You drink it.

vote splitting between rb and notld tempting me to pull the lever for viy

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/VIY12.jpg

maybe it's just the multiyears (though it's not like it's alot more films than were on like the 98 list) and i'm sure i'm just forgetting some other year(s) but man that list just looks more loaded to me than any other we've had, at least in terms of depth. i'm sure it's just that this happens to overlaps w/ some specific geekiness of mine and some true horror dork can set me straight on which years we've done smoke this but i look at that list and it's just crazy to me.

Wow. "Viy" and "Blind Beast," neither of which I'd heard of until this poll, are both totally bonkers!

agreed that this is easily my favorite horror poll yet, love everything i've seen from it and would happily see all of the rest. weird to think that 'rb' came out the same year as 'fearless vampire killers.'

from wiki:

Polanski, having never before adapted a screenplay, was unaware that he was allowed to make changes from the source material, so the film was extremely faithful to the novel and including many lines of dialogue drawn directly from Levin's book. Author Ira Levin claimed that during a scene in which Guy mentions wanting to buy a particular shirt advertised in The New Yorker, Polanski was unable to find the specific issue with the shirt advertised and phoned Levin for help. Levin, who had assumed while writing that any given issue of The New Yorker would contain an ad for men's shirts, admitted that he had made it up.

lol, that's amazing

Oh shit I didn't see Viy! I would've voted for that. Dang.

Wild in the Streets? Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)?

ooooo scary ...

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

Yeah I know I know - not sure how Wild in the Streets fell in there. I stand by Hour of the Wolf though.

SCTV's masterpiece! "Tirteen, tirteen..."

"shrimpken" is what makes me LOL ... and now that i've seen the silence, i know what they were parodying.

Count Floyd practically brings me to tears. When he accidentally breaks character and starts demanding to know who booked the film, or the sideways glance at 7:40, or the Hail-Mary howling he falls back on whenever cornered--that stuff never gets old for me.

if only midnight cowboy were a horror film, then i'd have an excuse to post SCTV's midnight cowboy in 3D remake.

With Pauline Kael, y'all. Don't get me started on SCTV...

oh man i dont think i can break free from night of the living dead but honestly i am not sure i have ever had so much fun watching a film as Spider Baby. Its the Troll 2 of early horror films.

I have no problem with the dream-sequence/black-mass stuff in Rosemary's Baby, as I prefer horror with a strong vein of comedy, and I think RB is funny as hell. (Why does her husband give her up? haha, he's an ACTOR!) Ruth Gordon is the lead witch, for God's sake, and I don't know what the tenants in the Dakota were like in the '60s, but now they only care about their estate and what the specials are at Zabar's.

(this is the only film I can stand Gordon in, aside from Abe Lincoln in Illinois)

Yeah but that comedy makes the film all the scarier. I mean, most people's conception of a Satanist isn't Ruth Gordon and the resulting disconnect is freakin' TERRIFYING!

Could have sworn Polanski got the RB gig only after Evans saw (or someone told Evans they saw) Fearless Vampire Killers. Must a coincidence that FVK got released the same year.

But not a coincidence that I'm posting this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xXBO35c8ig

nah i remember the same anecdote re:FVK, i think its in the kid stays in the picture

also FVK is 67 and rosemarys baby is 68, so its def plausible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH68fXg9rYM

^^ How does this not make anyone want to see this?

morbs otm. "ah shaddup or we'll kill you, milk or no milk!"

Could have sworn Polanski got the RB gig only after Evans saw (or someone told Evans they saw) Fearless Vampire Killers. Must a coincidence that FVK got released the same year.

Yeah, another director (name escapes me, but he was a B-horror guy who did a lot of work with Vincent Price) actually bought the book rights and then brought it to Evans. Much to the dude's chagrin, Evans was like "yeah how about you executive produce this instead of direct" and then brought on Polanski.

I suspect that Rosemary's Baby is the winner here, but I have not seen it and so choose the fine Hammer film "The Devil Rides Out". I also recommend "Frankenstein Created Woman".

"Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" is not great... but is notable for a grafted on rape scene that has no relevance to the rest of the plot. apparently they felt the film needed to be spiced up, in a "what's wrong with sexy?" kind of way.

I am intrigued by the Django film. Maybe my new mission should be to see every Django film ever made.

Voted Rosemary's Baby. Which is a bit boring & mainstream to do but cannot be helped, this thing is filled to the brim with neogothic quality and possesses this great sense of absurd Polanskiesque humor, which very effectively brings you out of your comfortable standard-horror-stance and throws you off beat a number of times. Also absolutely love all these details like the Time cover at the doctor's waiting room.
Still, Night Of The Living Dead is an iconic contender as one could be, FVK not to mention (would easily win Best Horror Soundtrack of that year, if such a category would exist).

I wish there would be a Spotify-like easy-to-use playlist-option to watch all that stuff I yet don't know about. Netflix unfortunately not an option here...

I'll mention this here rather than a more specific thread--Polanski turns 78 today. (To 2011--the YEAR ONE!)

oops... missed Night of the Living Dead. Clearly a winner.

But still, the Devil Rides Out... "It is the Goat of Mendes - the Devil himself!!!"

it isn't NOTLD good but kuroneko is a solid samurai horror flick w/cute cats. recommended. http://www.notcoming.com/images/reviews/kuroneko.gif

It's a shame that one of the very best Japanese kaiju eiga, namely War of the Gargantuas, has to compete against the two gargantuan American classics of 1968. Which it actually shouldn't, since it's from 1966. (imdb is wrong).

haven't seen this one but it's instant watch! so, now I will.

and similarly, despite having one of the best titles of all time, destroy all monsters is mostly just boring. whadda drag.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

Ha, who voted for "The Green Slime?"

Night of the Bloody Apes 1

;_;

I know these results are the height of predictable, but they are also the height of right.

*shakes head in despair*

War of the Gargantuas got no votes here, but now we learn that it was the film that inspired Brad Pitt to go into acting.

i am not sure i have ever had so much fun watching a film as Spider Baby. Its the Troll 2 of early horror films.

― I dream of vodka sandwich (jjjusten), Wednesday, August 17, 2011 9:28 AM (6 months ago)

i should really see Troll 2 one of these days, huh? I obv. failed to vote in this poll as Spider Baby had 0 votes.

The House That Screamed? I guess Jess Franco is far and away the best known in this series.

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/41719

Maybe. Grau's LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE goes by a huge number of different titles, but is perhaps best known as THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE (at least in the UK). It's an early 70s Romero cash-in, shot in England, with a vague ecological theme and lots of gore - it prefigures the Fulci movies that came later on in the decade, so is pretty influential in that regard.

Larraz' VAMPYRES is a kissing cousin to DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS; NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS is one of the 'Blind Dead' series of films (about zombie-templars); Paul Naschy starred in a number of Spanish horror movies in the 60s and 70s, and is almost certainly much better known in Spain, at least, than Franco.