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I respect your differentiation (and agree on how Demme’s film walks a line for me too though I’ve never considered it horror), but I disagree. First, giallos strike me as the bones of thrillers but even if we look at your rules, the amount of blood and gruesomeness of kills is subjective. What about all the early Hammer films and 50s B-horror that don’t show gore? Surely something like The Blob, a non-scary horror film, was affecting at its release because it represented an unfamiliar presence that shakes up our sense of reality and emasculates us of our tools to solve its threat more than because it contains an alien force in the shape of a silly red ball. I have a problem with these “usual conventions” as necessary definers because I don’t know who sets them and if history and categorization is dynamic rather than static, then the rules should be allowed to shift. I keep going back to demonlover but that film is horror because of its existential effects of globalization and powerlessness, perhaps a modern development of similar thinly drawn concerns in The Blob. But it’s not horror because there aren’t jump scares or enough blood?

Outside of the normative signifiers, I consider a film to be horror if it forces me to sit with discomfort, horrified at a raw dismantling of rules or defense mechanism we employ, with a mood that is relentless. Films with horrifying premises or events don’t make the genre list for me for these reasons, as I can be terrified by an idea or incident but if the vibe doesn’t keep me locked in that space just because I am repelled or forced to confront unpleasantness, that’s not enough. The Trial is maybe the most intense, aggressive depiction of a nightmare I’ve experienced on film, consistent throughout and assaultive on actual human concerns of powerlessness and identity diffusion, so that’s my “serious argument.” I tried to address your Trump argument (which I agree with) in the other thread but basically, Children of Men is a horrifying premise but not a film that’s mood makes me feel trapped in perpetual dread so it doesn’t belong, while The Seventh Victim is existentially stripping in showing us that dystopian space as the here and now, and plenty of people have argued its membership in this genre - and not for the silly satanic cult. I understand that my definition is somewhat loose compared to yours but I also think that as we enter an age removed from when these “rules” were established, existentially piercing disruptions from our comfortable blindness should be at least considered before tossed aside when they don’t check enough predetermined boxes on some arbitrary checklist based on prior genre entries.

If horror is meant to pray on our fears, then its defining parameters should be flexible based on how the medium chooses to be creative in covering more ground in those fears, rather than remain subject to dated objective signifiers in staticity.

Concerning giallos, it's pretty much established in all the literature that they're horror films. Any book chronicling European horror films with include them. Select any title and use imdb or allmovie.com and the tag "horror" will be included, as well as "thriller".

Less gory earlier horror films had other horror genre conventions to establish them as horror. (A Bergman film may shake me to my core, and most Universal horrors make me smile, but the latter are still horror films, and Bergmans, excepting Hour of the Wolf by common consent usually, are not.) In your approach, it seems to me, you could in the same way, for example, decide to call "comedy" whatever a viewer decides is funny, and there's just too many things wrong with that approach I feel that I could begin to unpack.

We'll have to agree to disagree here regarding the validity of your approach versus mine. (I'm arguing this in the first place not to contest the guidelines in this film project anyhow, but just because I was picking up on something in your statements.) I think there is something to substantiate the reasons why genres are genres beyond only conventions, and there's been much literature on the subject, often in a cognitive approach (see Torben Grodal's Moving Pictures for example), but I don't have the writing skills or time resources to really do a good job of articulating and defending the argument here.

I don’t think giving any flexibility necessitates a free for all, but fair enough. I just think that if we can vote for Phantom of the Paradise (as I will undoubtedly do) we can vote for films that acutely provoke a destabilization of safety within us, and feel validated in calling those films horror. I also don’t think you’ve addressed the issue your argument poses for the possibilities of recontextualizing genre over time, as I think some films now are finding ‘new’ ways to horrify us. I genuinely feel like completely rigid constructs defeat open-mindedness while some concreteness is necessary to establish any categorization. So I’m not opposed to you or others trying to find some way to harness genre, but going by past definitions without accounting for the dynamic positions inherent in how we interpret art throughout history is doing the idea of genre or the process of analysis a disservice and professing that at a certain point we have disallowed ourselves to redefine alongside a constantly moving cultural landscape, which is just too depressing to think about. This is where I think horror must be viewed differently than say, a musical, because its core ingredient is provoking fear (rather than just knee jerk anxiety in a thriller) in the viewer which is always evolving and complex.

Also having just watched Hour of the Wolf earlier today, I fail to see how it constitutes horror while Persona does not. Both involve psychological deterioration, but one involves clearly defined physical manifestations of imagination while the other is up for interpretation (which is scarier..) so that’s the line?

To be transparent, I don’t think this as an anything goes situation, and I can only think of maybe a handful tops that’ll be on my list and be questionable to anyone here, but the few that do fall in this domain I think are worthy of consideration and I believe that’s discounting their inclusions as being backed by an argument that isn’t “serious” because it doesn’t fit one’s interpretation of objective horror parameters as exclusive and timeless is problematic. I suspect we may have a good amount of overlap, RV, and this isn’t an attack on you just an expression of my issue with discounting an argument based on accepted assumptions and static readings.

All the Bergmans of that period are about psychological deterioration, so on that basis they could all be called horror films, but they usually aren't. Obviously by your approach and how you define horror they can be, that I well understand. But check imdb, whatever other source, Hour of the Wolf will be labelled horror (obviously because of its Gothic and supernatural elements) - even though it's much more than just a horror film but Bergman decided to play with the trappings of the genre; to my mind it's not primarily a horror film, rather another psychological-existential drama that uses horror imagery -, and most (all?) of the time Persona will not be labelled as such, rather a psychological drama.

Usually horror films aren't only defined as horror just because they happen to include elements that some people might find "scary" or, perhaps more accurately, disturbing (especially when we mean by that a sense of existential anguish and threat or anything that might create a "destabilization of safety within us" as you say) but usually on the basis of the types of elements they include and perhaps the types of scares produced (?). (Confronted with a romantic drama that touches on some of my traumas and produces a great sense of destabilization, should that count as horror?) Traditionally that has included Gothic elements, either supernatural, or something "monstrous"/unnatural in some way (see creature horror, supernatural horror, demonic horror, sci fi horror). Even when the antagonist is human, he or she in his or her manner and actions is usually "unnatural" in some way, as if a monster (Norman Bates). I realize many of the different things I'm saying here can and have been argued and aren't dogma.

Psychological horror is obviously a more subtle category, but there are reasons, which at this point I'm not well-equipped enough to define, that make people label Repulsion, a film about mental illness and playing with the viewer's sense of reality similar in some respects, a horror film and not Persona. You may be automatically equating existentially-unsettling/sense-of-reality disturbing dramas with psychological horror, I'm not sure. That's your prerogative but I think distinctions between a type of film that includes that kind of element and is a horror film and one that includes them and isn't a horror film get lost in some way.

I don't have a problem (at least I don't think I have) with films now finding new ways to horrify us, as you say, but when you label old, well-established films like Persona and The Trial as "horror films", alarms go off for me (most people don't view them as such, and neither do I). It's an interesting topic though. If I had tons of time, I'd be willing to make more of an effort to try and wrestle this to the ground, but I also recognize there is some fluidity and non-absoluteness in genre definitions that makes reaching for a synthesis and hard truths an impossible task. At the same time I'm not inclined to relativitize it all and just lay it on the viewer's subjectivity.

I appreciate your rundown, RV, and I don't disagree with all of it, though I feel like I need to again say that I'm not advocating to "relativize it all," but that when the mood of the film provides a consistently haunting vibe, that can transform drama into horror. Drama is so broad it encompasses so many genres, and it really is the manipulation of the medium to evoke horror beyond content. I think all psychological horror can be argued as psychological drama (but not the other way around), and wouldn't be surprised if whatever sources I checked on Hour of the Wolf all got it from imdb or whatever arbitrary place to give it a name. At the end of the day, I appreciate the desire to make things tangible with clearcut restrictions, but there is something intangible about a film that produces a sense of dread and unease that becomes horror that's hard to pin down in every instance. I see a relationship drama that shakes me to the core as horrific for me but not horror; though if the filmmaker used the tools of the medium to make it psychologically violent for the viewer, well then it would be up for discussion.

As for your comments on Persona and The Trial as not horror because of when they came out... well don't we look back and recontextualize art or other things in this world based on new perspectives and ideas developed in our modern age? I guess I just don't understand why an argument for The Trial can't be "serious," when you continue to cite "usual" and "most" as reasons to exclude and use "well-established" to prevent arguments from being made against those apparently in-stone conventions. It feels a bit condescending to those who may not look to imdb or the undefined interpretation of the masses as deities to explain how to categorize the cinematic experience (I want to be clear that I don't think you are being deliberately disrespectful but that, in my view, a narrow attitude based on one's available sources or personal perspective is a 'slippery slope' toward invalidation before entertaining analysis, just like the threat of genre flexibility might be to you or others). There are other members here who have cited films that do not fit these parameters as horror, and don't show up on imdb with that label, and while it may be an unpopular opinion, it doesn't mean that the arguments for such inclusions should be met with a dismissive stance. I'm not trying to open the floodgates on drowning the genre with exceptions to the rules, but it's worth considering that if a perspective played a role in defining this in the 1960s, and perspective continues to play a role in defining this today, and perspectives change over time, that perhaps those 1960s films can be redefined even if there have already been published books that exist in the world not encompassing those films under such definitions. I think we just need to agree to disagree, but I felt it necessary to restate that it appears my comments are being misconstrued to mean a free for all, that I can make serious arguments for films I believe should be included that are often excluded, and that rigidity isn't necessary to organize a framework, and that framework can be flexed slightly over time as analyzing 'art' through uncompromising perspective, discounting history or context, doesn't feel right to me. I don't think anything needs to be wrestled to the ground to finalize hardened rules, but that definition should have some breathing room, which is where it appears we come to a stalemate.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2020 4:42 am I see a relationship drama that shakes me to the core as horrific for me but not horror; though if the filmmaker used the tools of the medium to make it psychologically violent for the viewer, well then it would be up for discussion.

I guess the way I see it is that "the horror film", as I understand it, historically and into the present isn't defined by what you're describing. "Films designed to be psychologically violent on the viewer" is a valid potential category (if not genre), but it's not the same thing as a horror film, unless you want to change the definition.

We disagree on where this definition comes from, how rigidly in place it is, under what parameters, and who has the right to change it and when, but in short I don't think it needs to be some big event to "change" something that I don't believe has been concretely established as exclusive or given credence to patronize arguments for films' inclusions as ridiculous or whatever the opposite of "serious" is, so yeah no need to continue this.

Horror movies are the ones that have vampires in them. Hope that helps, everyone!

Well, Hard Candy doesn't meet any peer reviewed definition of horror but Ellen Page does play a vampire, so I guess you're good

It makes my Horror list because of the way Patrick Wilson says the word "ganache"

That is an interesting discussion because horror means different things to everyone. You can have horrific moments in straight dramas (in fact especially in straight dramas: I have been amazed watching so many TV movies recently just how many of them adhere to the horror film template, usually ending with some other member of the family being tied to a chair and beaten up by the 'crazy' person, or the wider family being terrorised in some fashion, before we get a confrontation between our main characters. A lot of them are just as psychologically brutal and paranoid about home invasion as 'horror' films about serial killers (if not more so because the cathartic pleasure of blowing the killer away is mostly denied for justice to re-enter to belatedly restore order), It is just that the TV movies by necessity cannot really show any detailed violence or often actually any murders or anything like that. So we just end with a punch up often and then the bad guy seething with rage as they are being taken off to jail whilst our main characters look on in relief, just as in the end of Home Alone!), but for me a horror film has to have some kind of extra element that punctures the norms of the natural order of things and shakes them up. That can be fantastical in the sense of monsters and ghosts, or something that takes imagery transgressively beyond the bounds of whatever has been shown before (so The Thing, or the visceral bodily dismemberments in the Guinea Pig films or Human Centipede II), or it could be something inexplicable entering the 'normal world' and making us see it differently (say the monster in It Follows, or the visions in Don't Look Now).

There definitely is a boundary between horror and thriller that is a fine one. There is an argument that could be made that the only reason that Silence of the Lambs won the Oscar for Best Picture at the time was because it could be classed as a "Thriller" more than a "Horror" film (but then that is arguable now that we exist in a world were one of those foreign language films can win the top award and enrage Trump in the process! Or when Schindler's List, a three hour black and white picture, could win a few years after that. So there are always nuances), but I think I would class it as 'horror', if just for Anthony Hopkin's scenery chewing performance and his ever more gothic locations for his high security cells! It is especially 'horror themed' in comparison to Manhunter from before this, which was stripped back to a sterile clean and white cell, that now we have a caged monster first in a dark basement and later on as a museum installation piece that escapes and goes on the rampage. Whilst most of the procedural investigation portion of the film is played relatively straight (though it does have an (albeit foul mouthed and grumpy!) fairy tale princess trapped down a well that would anticipate the Ring!) and a bizarre final pitch black confrontation, that is still rather heightened. I really think part of the power of that film (which interestingly Ridley Scott's Hannibal film also seemed to catch on to compared to the way the book discards it for full bore excess) is that we have the ordered, rule driven and safe FBI world confronting coming up against people driven by insane desires, and even being tempted by them in the 'romance' scenes between Lecter and Starling (where Lecter is the charismatic 'Dracula' figure if you like!). That's what makes the final "I'm having an old friend for dinner" moment play not just as a wonderfully blackly comic zinger, but also as this dark tendency still being at loose in the world despite the Organisation's best efforts, and maybe that is for the best as it allows for the tantalising cat and mouse chase to continue, despite the collateral damage along the way! The dangerous fascination and unclear motivations (is Lector only interested in Starling for what she represents, as Starling is with him? Or is it something more for one or other, or both, of them?) is part of the dangerous power in those scenes between them.

Plus Silence of the Lambs has to be a horror film for everything that happens in Lecter's escape scene, capped off by the jump scare in the ambulance!
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I know what people mean about whether giallo is really best classed as horror or not. I mean Agatha Christie could be in much the same area if filmmakers relished the violent ends of the characters more! (And there are a few 40s films that blur that line, like many of the Karloff 'thrillers' such as Before I Hang, The Man They Could Not Hang, You'll Find Out or The Boogie Man Will Get You. That's my favourite period of Boris Karloff by the way!) And I do think that it is good to think of giallos in a class of their own but I understand for ease of classification for general audiences it is probably just quicker to class them as horror, because whilst they are also well classed as 'muder-mysteries' that often does not get across how they focus so much on the visceral detail of murder along with the darkest of the psychological aspects of crime without providing the same kind of moral framework to make everything feel 'safe' as in a Poirot or Miss Marple! So the 'horror' label for giallo I think is as much to warn audiences that the content might be more extreme than they are used to from a 'murder-mystery', perhaps! There is also the deeper psychological trauma dimension to many giallo compared to just 'solving a crime' in many a murder-mystery, where once we find out whodunnit the story is over. In a giallo often the resolution of the crime plot triggers off a whole host of other disturbing implications in itself! (Did the victims 'deserve' it, in some way? Can things ever go back to the way they were? Have we traumatised another group of people so that the cycle begins again? Was it worth it to fulfil a desire, or to get all that insurance money, anyway? Has anything really stopped, or is that just the way of the world? Has art itself driven the killer insane, or to their criminal or compulsive acts?)

The way that often sexual crime is focused on, or the psychological focus on neuroses and it makes sense that the giallo might be being placed in the 'disturbing content' horror category for convenience. Plus the big connection of giallo with horror is the way that it could be argued that the entire slasher subgenre sprung out of it, comprising a series of viscerally detailed violent stalking and murder set pieces just with the psychological nuance stripped back to the bare bones!
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I kind of agree on bringing up the parallels between Persona and Hour of the Wolf too. In a way Bergman one-ups the horror genre by making a 'conventional' horror inflected film with fantastical imagery in the Hour of the Wolf and then moves beyond it into the infinitely more disturbing internalised trauma of Persona, where the horrific imagery is actual newsreel footage of the monk self-immolating as broadcast through the television screen, and the most psychologically brutal and 'graphic' moment is the simple verbal recounting of a sexual beach-set encounter. In a way Hour of the Wolf is comparable to The Seventh Seal, in that it feels like Bergman actually had to make a story with actual personifications of fantastical beings and then could move on to much more austere and brutally 'real world' films where nothing so obvious occurs yet the characters are still just as traumatised, if not more so, by the world within their own heads (the 'Spider God' in Through A Glass Darkly is perhaps the supreme example of this) and squaring their profession, their belief, their upbringing, with the realities of the world around them. I think that's why out of the Bergman 'horror' films I prefer the axe wielding and image deterioration at the climax of The Passion of Anna more, because we don't need vampires when we can cause as much damage to ourselves!
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And as someone who works in admin, The Trial most definitely feels like a horror film to me, but probably not for the reasons intended!

Thanks for that thorough and thoughtful (and most importantly, empathic) response Colin, glad I’m not completely insane

Re: Lambs- For me there’s got to be a consistent tone beyond certain scenes of horror, so I get that feeling from Hopkins but his ten or fifteen minutes of screen time don’t bleed into the rest of the film enough for me to take that leap. In some ways, despite appearing to be liberal in my metrics of defining horror I think that my own parameters of consistency discount a lot of others and may actually be too constricting. I’ll certainly be voting for some films that are tonally diverse depending on the overarching narrative aims (i.e. Phantom of the Paradise for its Faustian integral structure, while Detention and Happy Death Day 2U may be tougher for me).

Bergman is an interesting topic because like RV said all his films are about psychological deterioration but I’ve tried to be clear that content (Trump is horrifying) is not the same as adding an element whether imagery or some unexpected variable, as you say Colin, to shake us up (visible or invisible). So films like Winter Light, a philosophically stripping exercise that gets dangerously close to posturing at nihilism, isn’t horror because there aren’t suffocating forces in the medium beyond content, like in The Trial, to allow this to dive into horror. I’d even say that The Seventh Seal which literally involves Death and supernatural forces, is more dramatically ruminating on philosophy than it is a horror. Shame, a horrifying dystopian narrative, I would need to see again but don’t recall it incorporating those intrusive elements. But Persona, which begins with weird inexplicable imagery and a scene that is not of this world, ventures into territory with no semblance of reality or groundedness, and has a constantly distressing mood throughout. Having just watched it again, I think it’s a mistake to lump it in with the rest of his work, and will absolutely be putting it on my list. Just because a movie touches on existential anxiety doesn’t mean it’s a horror, and I have a hard time with any reading that lumps all of Bergman’s films together under the same umbrella when he’s clearly implementing different techniques into capturing distinct moods beyond simply a broad feeling of existential unease.

Speaking to the idea of invisible horror of the unknown, Todd Haynes’ Safe while not listed as such on IMDb, has been called a horror film in numerous reviews and even on Criterion’s synopsis blurb, so I’m wondering what RV and other ‘purists’ would say to that. I was planning on voting for it, but I don’t want to throw my votes away if the board is swaying from these flexible assessments, even though I’m far from the first person to dub it as such (I actually got into Haynes’ work by watching that film because I read several academic pieces citing it as a different kind of horror movie). For me it fits with the consistent mood of dread from powerlessness and inexplicably unexpected occurrences piercing normal life, but it certainly feels like the wildest offering I've made yet, despite it having the most public voices declaring its membership in the genre…

The Masque of the Red Death (Corman 1964). (rewatch) Corman was hesitant about making a film that would cover content similar to The Seventh Seal, but the thing here that makes me think of Bergman isn’t just the general medieval plague setting but more specifically the Satanist vs. Death storyline/theme, which calls to mind that allegorical, potentially rich-in-meaning demon-and-skeleton silent film farce that Bergman included in the film Prison, and referred to again in later films (Persona at least). The bar is definitely raised by Corman here in terms of production values and artistic ambition. The plot is pretty simple and the interest it evokes is limited but that’s definitely compensated for by the visual flair and style here, not only Roeg’s cinematography but the entire production design. Price is at the top of the game and all the rest of the actors (notably Asher, Court and McGee) are quite strong too.


The Gorgon (Fisher 1964). (rewatch) The idea of a mythological Ancient Greece monster hiding out in an early 20th century German village doesn’t make much sense, but actually the phantasmagorical nature of the premise really helps in bringing out a quintessentially Gothic spirit of strangeness and mystery. The film is relatively low on actual horror and action, and conversely very strong on atmosphere, with the romantic aspect of the story a nicely essential element of what makes the film work. There isn’t one dominating character, but Barbara Shelley’s is arguably the most central, and along with the Gorgon itself brings an effective and at this point for Hammer relatively rare female quality to the spirit of the film. Peak Hammer production values and acting from a strong cast that override the disappointing special effects in the last scene.


Rasputin the Mad Monk (Sharp 1966). (1st viewing) I concur with the general opinion regarding the strength of Lee’s performance in this film – he really has tremendous authority and intensity, Mr. Sausage mentioned his “basso-profundo” voice, which also particularly struck me. He clearly is the best thing here, but I also didn’t find anything else to be problematic or weak in this film. Yes the script is fairly simple but it’s executed with a lot of vitality. Shot back-to-back with Dracula: Prince of Darkness, the filmmakers do a good job of turning the same sets into a Russian setting. Very good performances as well by the supporting actors (Lee, Shelley and Pasco were all in The Gorgon also), and a great-looking film that looks pretty stunning on the just-released Shout blu. (It’s surprising how lousy Prince of Darkness looks by comparison.) Quite enjoyable.


The Changeling (Medak 1980). (1st viewing) Somehow I never caught this before. For the first half or so it’s a well-done, nicely shot, very atmospheric haunted house film, that even manages to be a little creepy at times, and that feels a bit more original because of the more melodramatic layer surrounding the main character’s tragic loss. That said, it felt things might have eventually gotten a bit stale if the film had kept to just that narrative, but when we start getting to the backstory of the discarnate the film changes course into more of a political mystery thriller (which becomes the heart of the film, rather than any “horror”), which I felt made the film more interesting. What’s a bit unsatisfying at the end is how the terrifically horrific loss at the start of the film doesn’t really get integrated into the rest of the film, and it feels like its absence wouldn’t have actually changed much except the initial mood.


Scars of Dracula (Baker 1970). (1st viewing) Pretty awful and definitely grabs the lead for the worst Hammer for me so far. It starts with a terribly unoriginal script and the young trio of heroes are both bland and unlikable – you’re actually rooting for Dracula here, and of course bound to lose. It’s a lot more violent and bloody than the previous Lee Draculas, but it feels pretty desperate – at some point Dracula is frenziedly stabbing someone to death. The sets and matte painting are cheap-looking, and the fake bats even more so. Lee still has some presence, as do the actors playing his helper Klove and the tavern maid, but that’s about it. I’m not going further into this series, at least for this project.


The Howling (Dante 1981). (1st viewing) This project is affording me a nice opportunity to finally see classics that I somehow never got to. I remember constantly seeing but never selecting to rent the VHS of this growing up. Probably because I loved American Werewolf so much and didn’t think it could come close, and had also seen Wolfen, so 2 out of 3 of the werewolf movies released that year. (The overkill probably did the genre in, apart from those Howling sequels.) I thought this started really promisingly, with this story about an anchorwoman hounded by a stalker, and how the film plays with the theme of the watcher and watched because of the TV news studio setting, and wondering where the werewolf was going to fit in to this. But the film got clunkier as it went along, with the first transformation scene during the sex scene pretty 70s Hammer horror-y. This is anything but an elegant movie, and I recognize Dante’s style from his other later films, which I’m not a fan of so it’s not surprising this wasn’t to my taste. That whole multiple wolf thing turns it more into a circus-y action movie, and everything is quite loud and has a kind of junk-food quality in the end (the cinematography in the woods has this glaring light that makes it look quite artificial, which was possibly the director’s intention, but anyway hurts the realism). Some fun transformation effects, although again very loud, and both occasionally impressive and goofy at the same time.


The Night Walker (Castle 1964). (1st viewing) Stanwyck joins the club of aging actresses hitching the horror wagon for a potential career revitalization job. Castle and Bloch add a “is she dreaming this or not?” slant, but this is pretty much another Les Diaboliques-inspired thriller with added horror imagery. Early on you kind of guess someone’s engineering the mysterious proceedings, and it’s just a matter of finding out who. It feels we’ve been down this road too many times already and there’s nothing really all that captivating in the way it’s done. Pretty forgettable.

I've never been much of a fan of The Howling, either. Here's my reaction to it in the context of the three big 80s werewolf films, from the last 80s list thread seven years ago.

Mr Sausage wrote: Sat Apr 26, 2014 12:54 am So 1981 was the year of werewolf films. I don't know if it's coincidence or if there's some sociological explanation, but either way, I (re)watched the major ones from that year.

An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981): I was disappointed with the movie when I first saw it in highschool, thinking the set-pieces superb but the movie otherwise insubstantial and underdeveloped in a way I couldn't articulate. I liked it much better this time. It's a very entertaining movie, and the set-pieces are still superb. The transformation and the nazi-wolves dream sequence get all the attention, but I was most impressed with the attack on the moors where our protagonists try to mask their growing panic with increasingly strained joking. It captures a note of fear and disbelief I haven't seen in any similar movie, or not nearly so well. The humour, even the more juvenile stuff, worked, although it makes the film feel a bit schizophrenic since there's enough humour nearly to tip the film into outright comedy, but so much else is treated with convincing naturalism. But I've finally identified the chief flaw of the movie, the one that eluded me initially: the climax comes too soon. There's only a single transformation and one small scene in which David grapples with his atrocities before the climax gets going. There just isn't sufficient drama in our lead's dilemma. One of the reasons The Wolf Man worked so well was it gave Lon Chaney time to deal with his guilt and horror and ponder solutions. Landis' movie compresses these bits too much. It's too bad, as the acting is of a high enough standard (Griffin Dunne and Jenny Agutter are particularly good) that the dramatic moments are always skillfully handled. An engaging and well-made film that doesn't quite match its reputation, but isn't so disappointing after all.

The Howling (Joe Dante, 1981): I saw this around the same time I saw An American Werewolf in London, and my reaction to them both was the same: impressive set-pieces that didn't add up to much. However, my appreciation of American Werewolf having lately increased, I revisited Dante's movie with the same hopes. No such luck, it's the same movie I saw a decade ago. It has the schlockier elements of Landis' humour (a penchant to name everyone after directors of werewolf movies in place of Landis' use of pop songs about the moon), but Landis' movie could also be charming and droll, as well as serious when it wanted to be. Dante's movie is cheeky and not much else. It's not funny enough to be an outright comedy, but not invested enough in its characters and (admittedly ridiculous) scenario to be serious horror. I would guess it wants to be a loving reflection of B-movies, but it mostly comes off as light-weight. Imperfect as it is, American Werewolf is the superior movie.

Wolfen (Michael Wadleigh, 1981): At two hours, with extensive location work in New York city, including atop Brooklyn Bridge, and with Albert Finney in the lead, this was definitely intended as a prestige picture. It's filled with considerably more gravitas than the other two. It takes its themes of urban decay and the arrogance of modernity very seriously. There's also a strain of Native American spiritualism (or what the movie takes for it) running through it. The movie's more a police procedural than a horror movie, with Albert Finney as a cop investigating a series of gruesome, animalistic murders. The evidence increasingly suggests wolves, although Finney suspects something deeper is going on, and pesters some of the local native americans about it. It's not a bad movie; indeed, thanks to James Horner's score*, it's occasionally a thrilling one. But there's something about the solidity of its craft and the earnestness of its aims that makes it more banal than its two cheekier, self-aware cousins. It risks nothing unusual. It's very much a movie we've all seen, a slick, blockbuster horror film that tries not to call too much attention to itself nor put off the viewer with too much supernaturalism. It takes refuge within a familiar realism and within a familiar non-horror genre with a comfortable layer of horror running underneath to spice things up, and a play at real themes to give it a touch of importance. Good, but perfectly forgettable. It has nothing on American Werewolf, easily my favourite of the three.

*Has there ever been a major film composer more willing to cannibalize his own work than Horner? He got a lot of mileage out of his pounding score for Wolfen. I heard themes from at least Star Trek II, III, and Aliens. He also repurposed his 48 Hours score in both Commando and Red Heat. I'm not complaining as they are all excellent scores, but it's shocking how blatant it is.

One of the things that strikes me with An American Werewolf is that it combines horror and comedy (although the former predominates), but side by side rather than in an integrated way. I.e. it's not a "horror comedy" where the tone is consistently comic, even if blackly, à la Shaun of the Dead or whatever. It has moments of comedy that are just that (although usually black), many other moments of pure horror, and then also touches of romance and melodrama. It's kind of a surprise that it works the way it does, probably because all of the individual sequences are so strong.

Revisits con’t:

The Fly (‘86): Cronenberg implements the excellent fat-cutting writing rule of jumping in head first, wasting no time in setting up a conversation between Goldblum and Davis in media res before initiating the action. What ensues is one of the better remakes, and a tale of science failing us or rather us failing through reliance in science, or more aptly on our own egos. The body horror in this one is some of my favorite from the director and it’s always been one of my favorites of his in general: Lean, effective, startling, and a fluid narrative. This is also one of the few Cronenbergs I actually feel comfortable ascribing to horror (even Videodrome is tough for me to rationalize), but whether or not it places is up in the air. As of now I have no Cronenbergs, which feels very wrong since I like or love most of his work, but I suppose for reasons that don’t scream horror. Maybe my sci-fi list will make up for this deficit.

Cabin in the Woods: I still enjoy this self-aware commentary on the horror genre; not as much as when it first came out in theatres, but it’s smart, funny, and plays by a consistent internal logic of rules while deconstructing the same ones. The third act is where this loses people but by that point we’re enveloped enough in the absurdity that upping the ante is all there is left to do. Maybe I’m alone here, but this functions just as well for me within the wheelhouse of the subgenre it’s dissecting as it does in its dissection. A few years ago it had a chance of making my list on originality alone, but I’ll admit that some of the gags and creative choices have lost steam over time, whether because I’ve seen it too many times or because they’re actually not quite as witty as I thought they were. Fran Kranz is still genuinely hilarious and should have gotten more work.

Phantom of the Paradise: I’ve seen this many times and it continues to get better every viewing. A riff on Phantom of the Opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Faust in structure, this colorful musical horror comedy is vibrating with life. De Palma has never used his gifts of reconstructing old ideas as creatively as he does here. Aside from the absolutely fabulous music, the satires of music and film industry, genre, and self-reflexive references are gushing all over the place, layered and honest. The Touch of Evil moment, however obvious, is a personal favorite, along with the equally transparent Psycho nod that’s better than any other homage De Palma has paid to Hitchcock since. More rock operas should be so bold. As far as horror, well there’s a real discomfort under the fluff in the idea of the rich and powerful as godly untouchable forces of harm, and Harper’s gravitation away from the good guy towards the bad carries with it a sobering devastation that rings uncomfortably true outside of a fantasy.

Still, the comic lightness balances out any horror nicely and this will likely land a spot on quite a few genre lists for me down the line, likely higher on a musical list than a horror one though. I know this film has many, many fans on this forum, and while I undeniably love it I'm eager to hear from those who consider it an all-time favorite, as there are so many layers to this gem I'm sure there are countless ideas I'm missing even after five or so watches.

Tenebrae: Argento revisits are hot and cold but this one clicks in all the ways it intends, encompassing the feel of a dime-store mystery novel while remaining self-referential to deliver on structural gags. I’m not sure I like it as much as Deep Red, which occupies so much physical and narrative space it earns its position near the top of his filmography (these two draw the line between thriller and horror for me but in the end come down as qualifying slashers); but Tenebrae is probably his most engaging story all the way down to the ridiculously twisty finale. Suspiria, a break from the Scooby Doo mold, is my uncontested favorite as a vane demonstration of pure style that works on mood alone; and Opera, perhaps Argento’s most disturbing film (the eye spikes, never forget) is up there as well for taking his typical outlines and turning the disgust factor up to 11. I’m not sure if I’ll have much room on my final list for more than one, but all four are worth considering.

It is interesting that both An American Werewolf In London and The Fly are kind of odd couple romances for the majority of their running time, albeit with gory and horrible moments! And both end in much the same brutally devastating manner.

Mr Sausage wrote: Sat Apr 26, 2014 12:54 am*Has there ever been a major film composer more willing to cannibalize his own work than Horner? He got a lot of mileage out of his pounding score for Wolfen. I heard themes from at least Star Trek II, III, and Aliens. He also repurposed his 48 Hours score in both Commando and Red Heat. I'm not complaining as they are all excellent scores, but it's shocking how blatant it is.

I never knew how right you were until I saw that Best of the Worst episode that makes note of how Horner used the Star Trek score for the Roger Corman-produced Space Raiders!

Blood Sucking Freaks Galore!

The Lost Boys (Joel Schumacher, 1987)
I was expecting this to be the glitzy, hollow MTV counterpart to Near Dark. I was not expecting it to be so entertaining. Schumacher found the right marriage of engaging actors, humorous dialogue, and outrageous style. Its tone even manages to accommodate the datedness, being just arch enough for the spiked hair, leather jackets, and synthesizers to feel appropriate instead of collapsing into unbearable cheese.

The Addiction (Abel Ferrara, 1995)
An explicit vampirism-as-metaphor-for-addiction story. The film is carried along by the intensity of its performances, especially Lili Taylor’s, but it’s blunted by its pretensions. The characters talk at each other in a portentous, intellectualized manner, forever quoting philosophy and speaking about their problems in conceptual terms. And then there’s its misguided decision to try to contextualize itself through the Holocaust and the Mai Lay massacre, actual footage of which is shown at length. I can see what the film is trying to accomplish by doing this, but, being unearned, it plays out mostly as a cheap grasping for effect.

Requiem for a Vampire (Jean Rollin, 1971)
Odd to think of a movie that puts no effort into cohering as falling apart, but that’s what happens. After an interesting opening act that borders on the surreal and experimental, the film sags into a trashy skin flick. It eventually seems to want to explore something more substantial, but the movie ends as soon as it’s introduced, so it little matters.

Fascination (Jean Rollin, 1979)
Though no different than any other Rollin film, here, somehow, everything comes together. Morbid, psychosexual, surreal, infantile, unaccountable. It’s fascinating indeed. Again, Rollin seems to be assembling his film out of the fetishes and obsessions that haunt him, but it all combines into a larger trance-like atmosphere in which, like the ladies of the house, you feel trapped and carried along. The only Rollin film you need, really.

The Nude Vampire (Jean Rollin, 1970)
Opens like a nightmare. The rest of the movie fails to live up to the opening, being another collection of trashy melancholies from Rollin.

Dracula’s Fiancee (Jean Rollin, 2002)
More love, sex, and death from our favourite sad French obsessive. It’s surprising how un-contemporary this one is. It looks no different from his 60s and 70s work, even down to the film stock and colour grading. It’s clear Rollin’s “parallel” world, which has shown up before, is the world of the pre-rational, Romantic imagination, and all his vampires and monsters are representatives of our collective fantasies. The vampire hunters and the nuns would be those who fear and seek to contain the imagination. Rollin has become a lot more explicit in his later years, with his surrealism now seeming to be what perhaps it always was, the workings of the traditional fairy tale.

Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kümel, 1971)
Bit slow and stately, content to tease with the suggestion of torrents of repressed perversion running just underneath. Never quite springs to life, tho’. Too much poise to be carnal the way you feel a film like this ought, and yet not quite arthouse enough to feel haunting and beautiful. The lack of a proper narrative doesn’t help. The film feels meandering and unfocussed, without proper motivation.

The Blood Spattered Bride (Vincente Aranda, 1972)
Adapting Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla, the inspiration behind films like Dreyer’s Vampyr, Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, and Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers, this classy and sophisticated vampire thriller starts almost immediately with the titular bride being violently stripped and raped for the camera. When her husband later rips her dress to begin connubials, he reacts to her ensuing panic attack by shushing her, warning that the servants might hear. She patiently submits to his continued advances and is stripped for the camera once again, where we’re treated to lengthy close ups of her breasts and pudenda. The movie’s only been on for ten minutes. The plot hasn’t even started. We then find ourselves in a montage of happy marital bliss—no, really. The newlyweds laugh, play, romp through the garden, and have sex both inside and out. The gardener, strolling under their window, overhears their lovemaking, spits in his hands, and starts to bend over. I honest to god thought he was going to start masturbating then and there, but he suddenly runs off all a-grin…I guess to masturbate in private? The very next scene, a 12-year-old girl catches the pair having sex outside her window. The hijinks are getting wearisome. Thankfully, the film breaks up all these sexual shenanigans with some much-needed animal cruelty. A live fox is snared for real and then shot at close range with a shotgun. Twice. No cuts. It’s been about fifteen minutes now. The next five minutes are pretty uneventful, and then we’re back to the good stuff: the husband bullies and tries to molest the aforementioned 12-year-old. Not long after, the 12-year-old walks in on him groping his wife in a not strictly consensual manner. She uses this as an opportunity to scold the wife: “You like it when he hurts you, don’t you!” This 12-year-old has managed to find more character motivation here than I’ve managed. Our sensitive husband is next seen explaining an old family legend by desecrating a grave and snapping one of his ancestor’s bones in his wife’s face. When she collapses to the ground and shoves grass in her face to keep from vomiting, her husband admits that, ok, yeah, there’s a chance he might be at fault. We’re half an hour in at this point. The plot’s kind of started. The husband has an ancestor, Mircalla Karstein, who murdered her own husband on her wedding night for pressuring her to do “unspeakable things”. The movie’s hinting this’ll be repeated. We’ve already had the unspeakable things; can we skip to the husband murder please, movie? No? *Sigh*. Fine. I’ll watch 5 minutes of the husband mansplaining Jung to his wife and then gaslighting her. Oh shit, yes! The ghost of Mircalla has helped the bride stab her husband to death in graphic detail and cut his heart out and hold it to the sk…oh, fuck off, it’s a dream. Goddamn it. They got me. They really played that scene straight. The bride freaks out on waking and a doctor comes to sedate her and explain that she has infantile tendencies. Her husband agrees, saying she’s basically a child. Oh, when the doctor comments on the large mark on her cheek, the husband explains it was from his ring. He had to slap her, you see. The doctor finds this quite acceptable. Are we really only halfway through? Ok, well, praise where it’s due, the film has managed to come up with something interesting: the husband sees a hand and a snorkel protruding from the sand on the beach. He begins to dig, finding a woman buried in the sand wearing swimming goggles, a snorkel, and nothing else. She turns out to be…Mircalla Karstein! This makes no sense in the best way possible. The wife soon admits she hates her husband and despises being touched by him. It’s nice to see her getting over her Stockholm syndrome. The actual vampire plot has finally begun, 80 minutes in. Some vague feminist themes have shown up, too, I guess to justify the endless abuse and objectification the film has been offering up for our enjoyment. But mostly the film seems to be about female hysteria and perversion. What madness women get up to when you aren’t keeping a close eye on them! Oh, and the film ends with the husband shooting his wife and Mircalla to death while they sleep. Then executing the 12-year-old point blank. Then cutting off Mircalla’s right breast. Jesus Christ.

Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973)
An unconventionally told vampire film. A product of the experimental ethos of early 70s independent cinema, including that cinema’s political and social commitment. Its main character, an anthropologist, seems to determine the manner of the film, which approaches the story and characters anthropologically. For instance, the titles introducing the various acts treat the story as stages in a process, apparently a psychological/behavioural one. You’re invited to see the movie as an examination of a social type, which on the surface makes little sense considering the lead is a newly-minted vampire, but becomes more understandable if you read the film as an allegory for addiction and codependency in the black community. The movie is alienating at first, but once you give over to its rhythm, it becomes a fascinating experience. It works as an antidote to more conventional and mediocre fare like Blacula. It belongs with Martin as among the most interesting and unusual vampire films from the 70s.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (Spike Lee, 2014)
Spike Lee’s kickstarter-backed remake of Ganja and Hess. It follows Gunn’s film closely enough to co-credit him with the screenplay, but makes many themes more explicit and politicized. Eg.: “We live in a blood society! The United States is the most violent nation in the world!”; “What decides if one is a criminal or not, is which side of the law your fix is on”; “These days our black children need to be indestructible”. Little that Lee does makes the story more effective. If anything, Lee is unable to marry Gunn’s oblique, non-traditional narrative style with the traditional story telling and film grammar that informs Lee’s typical style. One gets the sense Lee loves Gunn’s creation so much he finally wished to live inside the movie the only way he could: by making it. As a personal act, this is undoubtably an important film for Lee. As a movie to be watched by an audience, there isn’t much here.

The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983)
Has all the outrageous style of The Lost Boys, but it’s so lugubrious you can’t have any fun. It suffers from Michael Bay syndrome: a need to make every single shot dynamic to the point that it overwhelms more pressing matters like plot, characterization, even emotion, actually. The latter might sound surprising from a film so mournful and atmospheric, but when the emotional expressiveness of the style outweighs the actual emotional content of the drama to such an extent, the effect is more like kitsch or the parody of feeling than actual feeling. It’s exhausting to spend so much time watching things that look sad but aren’t. Now there is one genuinely unsettling and gruesome idea here, a kind of living mausoleum of past loves kept by Catherine Deneuve. But the film seems to find it tragic and romantic, an occasion for doves, drapes, and choral music, rather than the subject of horror. The ending somewhat recovers for an EC comics-esque comeuppance, sort of. The coda is incoherent, however.

The Kiss of the Vampire (Don Sharp, 1962)
A terrifically moody and bloody opening, pure Hammer, unmatched by anything else in the film. A travelling couple’s car breaks down in the country, leaving them prey to a cult of vampires on a hill. All the Hammer elements assembled with bland, workmanlike competence. There are no Hammer regulars here, and the actors they’ve gone with have little in the way of charisma or screen presence. The script plods from scene to generic scene, all so familiar that shorthand would’ve done, and yet they’re given excessive amounts of time to develop. There’s just no charm to the thing; it sits there on screen, in no hurry to thrill or entertain. And then there’s silly nonsense like vampires able to go out on cloudy days, but having to hurry away in their carriages when the weather looks to improve. Not dreck, ie. not Lust for a Vampire or Crescendo or anything. Just Hammer without the wit or energy.

The Lost Boys is indeed so much better than it seems like it would be. Wonder whatever happened to that Rob Thomas reboot? Hope you have Innocent Blood on tap for your next round

Darn, guess I'll stay as the lone fan of The Iron Rose. The Hunger actually has a good chance of making my list. I feel it's the last of Scott's films to have any real merit until True Romance. The dynamism you talk about works really well for me especially as Scott is able to pause it for the sake of mood. In fact I'd argue it as his first successful realization that mood tone poems is where his strength lied. Admittedly it doesn't reach for the Brakhage depths that the later films would accomplish, but watching it always reminds me of a Rothko painting to be honest.

Ganja and Hess is another one that I really adore. I, a million years ago, wrote up abotu two thousand words on it's cinematography for how daring it is. In short at the time, and you can see this in Blackula, films would light black actors in a way to whiten them up. Gunn and his team explicitly have talked about wanting to reverse that so they developed a lighting method to emphasize skin tones. That makes the film become thematically about the relationship between the audience and skin. I think that is the main thing that makes the film better than the Bergman knock-off it occasionally comes off as. Also for fans of the film, though it is not a horror flick, Losing Ground is a must see as Duane Jones plays on his role here in a fun way. It's also just a great movie.

knives wrote:In fact I'd argue it as his first successful realization that mood tone poems is where his strength lied.

Not sure he did realize it, since it's his first film and he immediately followed it with Tom Cruise blockbusters.

It's not his first film, but yes, the Cruise films are unfortunate.

I guess you're counting his short films?

And his first feature Loving Memory which is available on a lovely Bluray from BFI.