h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

this has been discussed a while ago at A2474507 but id be interested in what everyone else thinks..

Well I only really like Vampire, Werewolf and Ghost Monsters horror



A4069596

whys that then?youre prolly missing out!

Really great horror for me is something that gets my imagination ~ not necessarily blood and guts but the more psychological stuff.

I dislike the films like Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser ect I dunno why but the do nothing for me.


A4069596

- to think about this a bit. - good question....

Does Alien / Aliens class as Sci Fi horror

hellraiser is a masterpiece of modern horror

blood n guts can be fun,but the great ones make you think

Sorry but I can not stand Hell Raiser but each to their own.

Don´t know whether "the Ring" is a horror movie, but it scared the shit out of me...
I think a good horror movie needs to be plotted enough subtile to let your imagination do the real hard work, and enough explicit to trigger this effect(shudder).

one of the scariest films ive seen is rosemarys baby,no gore,no effects/monsters but can keep you awake at night..

quite possibly....

I'm just looking into it now - one the one hand I think one should be careful to not conflate genres, as movie databases tend to, between say horror and suspense (which leads to results such as Evil Dead and, bizarrely, Ocean's Twelve ) and say Horror and Thriller, which would list The Usual Suspects as horror candidate. Now I love the usual suspects and could (indeed have) discussed the finer points of that film at length. but a horror movie? I'm not so sure.

I think there are some specific things that apply to horror movies, but within that tent, you can cast a very wide net.

To answer your question - I'd say Alien is at root, a haunted house movie, and it inspire fear and terror and is therefore probably can count as a horror movie. Aliens by contrast, quite specifically widens the scope of the original (to perhaps arguably greater effect story wise) but I'd say it sacrifices the horror of Alien for action.
There is only one chestburster scene in Aliens which takes place in the nest, (a second is implied in Ripley's dream sequence) unlike aliens where this serves as a direct to camera shock, the resulting level of expectation deflates that impact so instead the chest bursting scene is used to initiate the awakening of the hive and the first major action scene which the film has been building towards since the marines landed on the planet.

Sci-fi does not exclude horror. I wonder if 2001 A Space Odyssey is in part a horror movie, once HAL turns on Floyd and Bowman? In everyway a psychopathic murder of countless other films.

I think what matters is probably not necessarily subject rather execution. The thing is to evoke an emotional reaction of terror and shock.

I'd contend that The Wicker Man is a horror movie, a slow and creeping horror of realisation, which reaches something of a crescendo when the villagers all pass through the star of swords in the stone circle chanting:
"Here comes the chopper to chop of your head - chop! - chop! - chop! chop! - chop!" but when the puppet is decapitated we share in the police officer’s horror and suffer the same bathos when the mood is one of joy at the person who has been chosen.

The film then succeeds in elevating the horror - in the words of Christopher Lee, what follows is "the more dreadful sacrifice”, the set up when Sgt. Howie realises it is he that is to be sacrificed in The Wicker Man, and we're back in horror territory again.
Trapped and sacrificed and to be burnt alive Howie cries out "Oh God! Jesus Christ! Oh God!" proselytising like a saint of old. But a neat aural trick has first, his desperate plea's for mercy and appeals to Christ, ring as hollow as the echoes of his plaintive arguments for mercy in the caves, and then again, the camera lingers on the cheerful and joyous faces of the islanders dancing around his flaming pit, which betray no sense of remorse.

When the wicker man's head falls and the camera trains in on the setting sun, the transition is not cathartic but actually horrific because it gives no indication of whether the gods will produce the bountiful harvest.

Howie's death is horrific but not gory. Another subgenre of films associate horror with the body more directly in terms of gore, sadomasochistic etc. I know Hellraiser for instance isn't much appreciated by some, I rather like it but that's beside the point. The real success of Hellraiser, which transcends that rather naff 80's latex special effects and the really, really awful series of sequels (starting at about film 4), is the part of horror the films tap into in this case the visceral feel of flesh, distended and ripped apart by Pinhead's hooks. Crone berg is another filmmaker who does body horror rather well. His remake of The Fly or Videodrome appals the senses in a similar vein (excuse the pun) to Clive Barker.

Is it also worth mentioning John Carpenter? A director seriously off-form of late, his 80's remake of The Thing (formally: "Who goes there?") matches the body horror of physical distortion in Cronenberg and Barker (when the Thing sticks it's hand under Richard Dysart's face and you can see it's hand moving visibly underneath his skin) but piles on the isolationism and fear. It terrifies emotionally as it disgusts.

Which I think, after an unintentionally long and rambling post, is the point of a horror movie, to evoke terror emotionally and psychologically, whether by means of gore or situation.

A930214

Here is a good entry on the subject of what are the elements of a horror movie. It mentions films I'd quite forgotten to include like American Werewolf In London with it's ramapaging nazi pigs, rotting zombies and *that* scene of the transformation (IMO the best special effect in make-up before morphing inside a computer took over and robbed the whole process of any sense of physical diremption.)

Then there's also....

Nosferatu
The Shining
Blair Witch

to pick just four.

An American Werewolf In London is my fave comic/horrer film but I did not rate An American Werewolf in Paris.

Heck spelt horror wrong sorry.

Blairwitch was good but the last broadcast was better imo

mmmm... persoanlly I love the hellraiser, nightmare on elm street thing. Never much got into friday the 13th cause quite frankly if people can`t learn not to swim in the lake and get butcher hell they deserve to die.

So whats makes a good horror in my humble opinion is the main character whether it be jason, freddy, pinhead, dracula whatever has to have a good sense of humour for one. Freddy is the best at this, they have to kill people in differnt ways, keeps the audience interested. Not to mention if they leave a bit to the imagination, the human brain can generally come up with significantly scarier things than whats been depicted on tv.

if i think of anything else to add will do but thats for now


The Gothic Smurf

My view of what makes good horror is the building up of tension and the sudden release (albeit the cat jumping out of the cupboard, rather than the axe wielding maniac).
The truly good horror films build up the tension in an engaging way that keeps the audience entertained as well.
My two favourite horror films are 'The Shining' and 'Ringu' (I've seen the Japanese version and first follow up, but not the American one).

Great lines like.........

'Beware the moon, lads, stick to tut road, stay off the moor'