I’ve been able to pass around a few hot takes here and there, but just about everything I’ve written so far has been factual. For education purposes over entertainment purposes and I think it’s high time I change a little bit of that. You might think that I’ve already gotten a little personal already based on the films that I’ve chose to cover first, but you’d be surprised. I want a little bit of engagement, I want to stir the pot a little bit and I think my list of favorites will be a little different than most.
Honorable Mentions:
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
I’m going to lose readers right now, but here me out. I know this isn’t a good movie. I’m fully aware of it. A lot of the movies in this list aren’t, but as an 80’s baby who started watching horror in the late 80’s and becoming a bit more involved in the genre in the early 90’s, this movie engrossed me in its mythos. It might be a bit odd for someone who had seen the original Hellraiser prefer this, but I’m not going to lie about it.
As I’ve grown older and more educated with how things work, if anything it makes me appreciate this film a little more. Given an Allen Smithee credit due to the production being such a nightmare, I understand now why the plot is all over the place. Perhaps it was just too ambitious for its time. It’s still a nostalgia trip for me and I’d still recommend it to others just for the mess that it is. They say horror icons go to space to die, and in this case that holds true. This is the last Hellraiser film to get a theatrical release and until the recent Hulu adaptation, this is the last film Clive Barker had anything to do with.
Behind the mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
I stumbled upon this little gem on accident shortly after its release. It’s a fairly known movie to people who love the genre, but definitely missed out the mainstream and I think this movie really deserves more exposure. This film is a mockumentary where horror icons like Jason, Freddy, and Michael are real and we’re following around Leslie Vernon as he plots his first killing spree.
This movie focuses on the major horror tropes in the slasher genre (further discussed in my Friday the 13th review I just put out) and in a very meta way, makes fun of them. I think this film was brilliant and it’s a shame we never got anything more out of director Scott Glosserman or the actor who portrayed Leslie, Nathan Baesel.
With that out of the way, lets get on to the actual list.
My Top 10:
10. Candyman (1992)
Anyone else terrified of this movie as a child? No? Just me? I loved this movie when I was young, and love it even more now. I used to love the sequels as well. Now? Not so much. What made this movie special to me as a child was the rollercoaster it put me on. Tony Todd as Candyman was legitimately frightening and even the cold open was enough for me to throw the covers over my head. As I’ve grown older I can appreciate the political undertones, albeit I think they are a bit misguided. Barkers novella was a take on classism, while Bernard Rose adapted the story to be about race. From a white man telling that narrative…it’s noble but a little off course.
This is still one of the best movies of all time, and it’s amazing to think about the impact this movie has had. It was released in ’92, regarded as the worst periods of horror as it’s right between the wild 80’s slasher craze and the late 90’s teen movie phase followed by Scream. Not only that, but this film highlighted racism during a time of fairly high unrest. This film spurred a lot of controversy not only for having a black villian in Tony Todd but also having interracial romantic themes. Again, I didn’t understand all of that then, but I can certainly appreciate it now so it gets a solid spot on the list.
9. Scream (1996)
Nobody can deny what this movie did for the genre, and it had a lot of impact on me as well. I was 12 when this movie came and still remember watching it for the first time shortly after it made a VHS release. This movie follows a lot of the tropes of its 80’s predecessors but updates it for the modern audience. The characters are self-aware, smarter (kinda) and is a meta commentary of the same films it imitates. Masterfully crafted by Wes Craven, I absolutely believe this is a better movie than anything on the Nightmare on Elm Street series, which you won’t even find on this list. It’s not that I don’t love that series, there are just movies that stands out more to me than that one (although I really considered putting the 3rd one on this list)
8. Phantasm II (1988)
I binged this series a few years back when the 5th one came out since it had been a while since I’d seen the older ones, and this series is so weird. Usually when people talk about these two films it’s a fairly divisive crowd, people either prefer the original or the sequel and I honestly prefer both. I’m not too big on the films to follow even though I can appreciate it holds a continuity throughout the decades but I love the first and second almost equally.
Angus Scrimm and Reggie Bannister are very entertaining to watch, and in further sequels are about the only reasons to watch. Continuing with the first one, it’s still got one of the most iconic scenes in horror with the spheres flying through the air and drilling through peoples heads, this is the movie where Reggie makes his 4 barrel shotgun which is awesome. The original definitely has a bit more of a horror feel to it, but this one has much more of an entertainment value, which is why I put it on the list over the original.
7. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
I know this might be a sin, but I never saw this film until I saw the “sequel” (you can call it that, right?), An American Werewolf in Paris. I believe I watched that movie for the first time with my mother and then she told me about this gem. Spite other negative reviews, I really liked Paris (maybe it was the just soundtrack), so this was to be a home run for me.
London has some of the greatest practical effects ever put into a film done by Rick Baker, and some would debate THE best werewolf transformation, rivaled only by The Howling released a few months prior. This movie has one of the best dream sequences of all time and the dead zombie friend is hilarious.
6. The Thing (1982)
I’m a huge John Carpenter fan. Not only of his movies (I prefer his action movies over his horror movies, actually) but of his skills as a composer. As a bit of a hobbyist composer myself (you’ll see more soon), this has always appealed to me. That’s a bit of a tangent though, as Carpenter actually didn’t do the music for this one (you can tell watching it).
The Thing is a remake of The Thing From Another World, which was based on the novella Who Goes There?. is somewhat of a body horror / sci-fi film that follows a team of American researchers in Antarctica. They come across a Norwegian base, with charred ruins and a bunch of frozen bodies, one of which being a little…different. They end up discovering an alien life force that can take different forms and is an amazing story of survival in these conditions. The effects were always what stuck with me though, and is one of the reasons it’ll always be one of my favorites.
5. Psycho 2 (1983)
I could easily throw in the original as it’s one of my favorites as well, but I just covered that one plus I just binge watched this series last month and this one definitely entertained me the most. Two decades after the events of the first film, Norman Bates is released from an institution and tries to adapt to society. It…doesn’t go well. Tom Holland, the director of Fright Night and the original Child’s Play writes the hell out of this screenplay, and Anthony Perkins hams it up and has another perfect performance as Norman. This is a much more sympathetic version and you really root for Norman in this one, but people gotta die to make this a horror movie. Still one of my all time favorites.
4. Re-Animator (1985)
I could watch this movie any day of the week. This is based off of a short story by HP Lovecraft and is a Yuzna film. If you don’t know what that means, it means it’s going to be a weird ass ride of a movie but you’ll love every minute of it. If you’ve never watched this movie, do yourself a favor. You’ll understand my top pick a lot more if you’ve seen it.
Re-Animator is a mad scientist movie where a medical student unlocks the secrets of reanimating dead tissue. It’s a wild ride and between Jeffrey Comb’s portrayal of Herbert West and some of the crazy effects by the late John Carl Buechler, the director of Friday the 13th Part VII and fairly prolific makeup artist doing films like Halloween 4 and Hatchet.
3. Friday the 13th Part 4
Well, I just mentioned a Friday the 13th film, and now I almost get to talk about one. I’m not going to go into too much detail because I’ve got a full review for this film coming very soon, so stay posted.
2. Evil Dead 2 (1987)
This trilogy (kinda) is probably THE film series of my teenage years. So much in fact that I’ve got a tattoo of a possessed Bruce Campbell on my arm. Young director Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams kept me entertained in my younger years, and I watched these films so much back then I’m surprised I didn’t burn up a VHS player with them. I still have my old directors cut of Army of Darkness but sadly I have gone completely digital for the rest of the series.
If you know this trilogy, the original is more of a focused horror movie, while 2 and Army lean pretty heavy on the unintentional camp that the first had and went full on horror/comedy. Army didn’t really succeed with it as much, but Evil Dead 2 is what I gauge the success of horror movie cheese. I always enjoyed the physical comedy that actors like Jim Carrey pulled off, but I’d argue to say that Bruce Campbell did it better and did it first.
1. Braindead AKA Dead Alive (1992)
Make fun of me if you want, but this is still probably one of my all time favorite movies. I’m really not a fan of zombie movies but this is one of the most ridiculous and funny movies you’ll ever see. This is a Peter Jackson film, yes, that Peter Jackson. The guy who did The Lord of the Rings. He also did Bad Taste, an equally ridiculous movie and The Frighteners, another of my favorites from my teenage years.
This movie starts off with an excavation from Sumatra where some kind of infected rat-monkey gets smuggled to a zoo and then infects the main character, Lionel’s mother. Some of the choices in this film are hilarious. After the mother gets bitten, she looks down and just curb stomps this monkey with her high heel, then when she gets home her cheek flesh falls off and Lionel just tries to super glue it back on like this is an every day occurrence. Then you have a dinner party and she pops a boil into someone’s soup and this fat guy just eats it like it’s cooked by Gordan Ramsey. Then towards the climax we have a zombie baby and a lawnmower massacre, there’s just no point in this movie that I can’t laugh at and I love it.
That’s going to be it for this list. If it inspired you to watch or re-watch some movies, great. Feel free to share your top 10 favorite horror movies.