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IT’S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR! The time when you try to get your friends to watch scary movies with you or go to haunted houses and none of them want to because none of them like scary things because you picked all the wrong friends! HALLOWEEN! And what better way to celebrate than with a few minutes of test footage from one of the best scary movies of all time, The Exorcist. Can we all watch it together? Please? It’s not too scary! I promise that it isn’t too scary. There isn’t even any scary music. Just normal newly-found test footage from 1973 of a child levitating above her bed because she is possessed with the spirit of the devil. Let’s watch it and then maybe we can all talk about how much we love The Exorcist, and then other scary movies we like? My top two are The Shining and The Exorcist, but also I like basically all of them. (Especially ones that are meant to be “real,” even if they are clearly not. Like the Gallery Girls of scary movies. Those are great.) LET’S WATCH THIS THING!
So good. Great movie. Great time of the year. WHAT OTHER MOVIES DO YOU LIKE? (Via Neatorama.)
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The Others was surprisingly good.
check out el orfanato! it’s atmospheric and beautiful and moody and straight up terrifying. just a shining example of modern horror.
oh, oh! a tale of two sisters is also similar and also excellent.
Shutter, the original Thai film. Still one of the scariest movies I’ve seen!
Possession (the 1981 one with Sam Neill):
Event Horizon (also with Sam Neil)
“This place is a tomb” is something I say at every opportunity (in a L Fishburne voice). Fun fact.
Possession is so deeply weird and great. I once read a description of it as “art house tentacle porn.” It never really scares you but it disturbs you, which lasts longer.
i’ve had this on my dvr forever but i’ve never gotten around to watching it. i think i will later today.
No way. I’m not watching that. Nope. NO!
I was terrified of gigantic Ursula from The Little Mermaid until I was 10 so there’s no way I’m going to watch this Exorcist footage.
Fun fact: Urusula the sea witch is based off of Divine, the drag queen.
(I hope this isn’t one of those fun facts that everyone is like “well, yeah, duh” cause like 4 people have told me this fact this week and every time I was like “well, yeah, duh”)
No wonder she was so cranky, she never got her cha cha shoes at Christmas!!
This can’t be true.
Citation: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1540535,00.html
It is 100% true. Alan Menken and Howard Ashman were friends with the John Waters/Divine crowd. John Waters is interviewed IN THE SPECIAL FEATURES of my DVD of The Little Mermaid.
Has anyone ever seen the Celebrity Ghost Stories with John Waters where he talks about camping and how he was confronted by a drag queen ghost outside as a child and basically laughs on camera? Amazing.
The 1982 version of The Thing is the best thing. Wilford Brimley is in it!
YUSSSSS I just got that at Target for five dollars. It is the best five dollars I have ever spent aside from any money gone towards the consumption of sandwiches.
Holy cow, I just bought it on amazon for $5! I watched it for the first time last month! It was really, really good! I also read the novella it is based on, which is available on the Kindle for $3.99 and super cool! “Who Goes There” by John W Campbell you guys. Think it over.
I love that version, I love the 40s version, and I have to admit I kinda like the recent remake. It’s just a timeless tell that can be retold over and over and really speak to a generation.
I like the Pingu version
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82164665/
I like the Zombie Zombie version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT7AH4JyuNs
I don’t like scary movies generally speaking because I am just a big wimp, but the show Ghost Adventures is the best.
The Innkeepers was fun.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1594562/
And Ti West’s debut, House of the Devil is effing fantastic!!!
AGREED!
fantastic? yes. his debut? no.
he’s got a few others out there. some even on Netflix instant!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814365/
I am so ashamed. Also, I forgot he did the Cabin Fever sequel. Never gave that a shot.
If you like that you will also enjoy Black Christmas, which is the best http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08U_JOv-6_Y
I love Black Christmas. There. I said it.
It’s so great! And leaving your friends voicemails wheezing “Billy! What your mother and I must know is… what have you done with the baby?!” never gets old.
That’s funny. My old roommate once put that as our outgoing message on our answering machine (this was back in the last millennium) and someone called the police. True story.
I saw that last week, and I liked it a lot! #coolstroylbt
…and if you like found footage – Atrocious may be up your alley. Although it’s subtitled so it can give you a headache, what with all that camera shaking and reading at the same time.
I’ve never commented so much on anything. This subject is catnip.
if we’re going to talk found footage horror, i have to bring up the last exorcism. i really, really like that movie. okay, it has ONE major problem. but the rest of it is just sOOOoo good!
I’m a big fan of the original Nightmare On Elm Street series, for a number of reasons, none of them involving the movies actually being good.
which one was good besides the one with Johnny Depp?
The third one, Dream Warriors, is so good. 80′s horror at its finest. And the second one is the most homoerotic horror movie of all time.
It is! The head writer even admitted to putting in tons of homosexual undertones, just for the hell of it.
The first time I saw the Exorcist, I was in a theater in Union Square and it was the 2000 recut with the new footage of her walking backwards down the stairs and I have never laughed so hard in my life… except maybe when they offered her Ritalin?
My point is I might be Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice!
BEETLEJUICE!
Nice fuckin model *honk honk
the first time i saw it was the re-release as well, although the backwards crabwalk or whatever was the only part that actually did creep me out. the rest of it… i don’t see what the big deal is? it was creepy, sure. but THE GREATEST HORROR MOVIE OF ALL TIME? get out of here.
I think it is partly because they play it so straight. It takes a belief in Satan very seriously. Although I have had discussions with friends and it was decided that to really be freaked out by this movie, it helps to be raised Catholic.
i was raised catholic, though. i actually when to catholic school from kindergarten til sixth grade. i did think that it was scary (the movie, not catholic school) (but also catholic school), i didn’t mean to come off like “haha, the exorcist? whatever, dorks.” it’s definitely very creepy and does a very good job of maintaining a constant sense of dread. i just didn’t think it was THE greatest horror movie of all time, which seems to be the overwhelming opinion. but i’ve also only watched it that one time, maybe i need to give it another try.
Hmm. I have only seen it twice. Once when I was 12-15 and once in my 20s, and it didn’t bother me the first time (I was tons more scared by the first Nightmare on Elm Street). So maybe it depends when you see it? Maybe the scares work more on the adult mind? Hypothesis!
Also I have lived in a haunted house and am willing to believe in supernatural stuff for real, so when a movie plays it straight it kind of works me over. Like, The Ring was inventive but not great, because that is not how ghosts work.
The fall down those terrifying stairs in Georgetown was kind of scary but mostly because I’m afraid of heights and pretty accident prone.
Some of my high school teachers were Jesuits who were in that movie. They told creepy stories of scary things that happened on the set. And my husband went to Georgetown, so I’ve had the tour. I guess what I’m saying is, I may as well be one of the stars.
Ahh! Stay away from those stairs!! Especially if you have been drinking!!!
When it first came out, it freaked people the fuck out. No one had ever seen something like that before. I think it’s still pretty scary. The first time I saw it was on cable and I was probably 13 and I didn’t sleep that night. I was convinced my bed was shaking and I was about to be possessed. When a horror movie is too hyped, it lessens the experience, I think. They work better when they take you by surprise.
I didn’t find it scary either and I was raised a Catholic too. But I was possessed by a demon for a while when I was a kid so when I watched it I was like, “Hey, projectile vomiting, I remember that! Man, it got all over the curtains, mom was so pissed! Haha, good times.” I miss being a kid.
The dried years gather
like leaves in corners, sharing
meaningless whispers.
I remember when I was little my mom told me about how there was a bunch of crazy stuff that happened on the set of this movie because they were messing with forces they didn’t understand or whatever. At the time, I was all like “Woah.” -Keanu Reeves, but now I’m more like “Nope.”
She was right! See above…
Rec and Rec 2. Best horror movies of recent memory.
I still haven’t seen Rec 2 but yes, Rec 1 scared the s&*t out of me.
You have to watch it! It ties in with the first movie and is even scarier.
my school offers a “film genres” class, where each semester focuses on a different genre, and i took the horror one last year. (i had previously signed up for the western one, but it was cancelled because apparently i was one of the few who did.) one class we spent about an hour discussing all of the ways that [rec] was superior to quarantine, and it was just the best. (although i actually kind of enjoyed quarantine.)
I’ve never bungee jumped before (big surprise), but I swear if I ever were to do it (which is never), I’d love to jump backwards off the bridge and yell “Look at me Damien! It’s all for you!” and see if anyone got my Omen jokes.
I’m sure the bungee instructor would and would roll his eyes but you know what buddy? Your job is instructing people on jumping off bridges so shut up!
Alien and The Birds are two of the best movies ever. And they both feature Veronica Cartwright? COINCIDENCE? (probably)
I went to a Catholic university and they did a screening of The Exorcist every Halloween. As they do – to you you know, remind us what Catholicism is all about. Anyway at the end of the screening, this guy walks on stage and it’s WIlliam O’Malley who played Father Dyer and he was dressed as father Dyer and everyone sort of screamed until they realized what was going on and that he was friends with someone in the drama dept. Anyway, that was really cool and scary. I love the Exorcist, but having grown up Catholic I was horrified of possession because Catholicism is creepy.
I always get a kick out of hearing about priests who love The Exorcist. At the 2000 re-release, the TV interviewed a couple of priests on their way into the theater, to ask why they were going, and the one answered, “To root for the home team, of course!”
Amazing. Yes, the Catholics loved it but they did use it too much to scare us as kids.
I don’t know if it’s the best Halloween but Halloween 6 is definitely the most ridiculous Halloween before the edge of totally stupid, and the only career intersection for Paul Rudd and Donald Pleasence.
Has anyone gotten a sneak peak at Stoker yet? Is it good?
they’re more comedic than scary, but dead alive/braindead and evil dead II are both definitely up there for me. (especially dead alive at the moment, because it was on tv the other day and i had forgotten how much it is just THE BEST.)
Look I don’t mean to come across as a conceited celebrity but my dad appears in The Excorcist. He was a student where this was filmed and received a princely sum of $5 to walk across the quad in the opposite direction of main characters. You can all relax though I did not turn out like Chet Haze and still have a reasonable grasp on reality, despite my background.
When I saw it, I thought The Ring was very good. HOWEVER, I was either in 8th grade or a freshman in high school when I saw it, and also enjoyed the musical stylings of Linkin Park at the time, so my taste from back then is questionable to say the least.
However, I do think that Cujo is a fucking creepy as hell movie. Never before in a movie have I actually hoped that the dog would die in the end.
Ya know, I was talking about this the other day, and I think The Ring really holds up as both a horror movie and an interesting piece of magical realism! I think the movie had a really interesting aesthetic, the production design was pretty fantastic, and the video itself was downright disturbing. What Gore Verbinski did with the source material was really wonderful (the original is so crazy!), considering he’s kind of a schlock artist (not that that’s a bad thing).
seconded on the american version of the ring. it’s honestly better than the japanese original, and i’m not just saying that because i have a crush on naomi watts.
I think the American version connects better because it hits the proper nerve about the American obsession with voyeurism. The Japanese version is just kinda spooky.
There’s a little-known gem called Session 9 that creeped me the hell out. They filmed it on location in an abandoned lunatic asylum.
Ooooh, and Descent! Descent!
Oh my god I have opinion on EVERY HORROR MOVIE!!!! (It is basically the only genre I watch.)
Session 9 is absolutely one of the best atmospheric horror movies ever created. It gets used in cinematography classes a lot because it’s so gorgeous.
Also, another fun fact, my BFF from high school’s dad is an actual asbestos remover/contracter. He had a bid on that building but turned it down because the place was (and this is verbatim) “too damn haunted.”
that asylum was in my hometown! They tore it down and built condos. When you bought a condo you could opt to have a medium come in and check for bad spirits.
At the bottom of the hill of the asylum was a slaughterhouse we used to break into after it had been abandoned. Surrounding that was a bunch of cornfields. Scariest place ever.
Needless to say, I refuse to see that movie because it would scare the bejeebus out of me.
i really, really love dario argento’s giallo movies (suspiria, profondo rosso, etc.), even if they are kind of style over substance. they’re basically psychdelic horror movies; lots of bold, primary colors, gorgeous set pieces, and fantastic music. although his more recent stuff, ehhh, not so much.
Deep Red is such a treat, and I think I like it better than Suspiria, just because it doesn’t use the supernatural as much. You might enjoy The Beyond, if you haven’t seen it before.
no, i haven’t seen that one, but i’ve been meaning to. i haven’t seen as much of fulci’s stuff. i think i need to have an italian horror marathon this halloween.
Deep Red is such a treat, and I think I like it better than Suspiria, just because it doesn’t use the supernatural as much. You might enjoy The Beyond, if you haven’t seen it before.
sorry. My mouse is possessed.
My favorite scary movie is probably the original Dawn of the Dead. That movie has everything.
lots many of my favorites listed! so, for my part, i’ll add just a few of my halloween-time favorites of the more COMEDY/horror variety (even your wimpiest friends might enjoy these!):
trick r treat
drag me to hell
behind the mask: the rise of leslie vernon
poltergeist (no duhhhh)
I tweeted it to Kelly because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to track down my password, but Jacob’s Ladder is definitely one of my personal favorites. Also, 28 Days Later and the original Black Christmas.
Incidentally, Black Christmas is by the same director as Baby Geniuses 2. So Bob Clark beats out Francis Ford Coppola for greatest disparity between his best and worst films.
Oh, horror comedies are definitely my favourite genre, so I’m going to plug, Hot Fuzz. Seriously guys, more poeple need to watch it!
Not that I disagree with everyone’s choices but just to be an obnoxious original :
In a less horrific but more unsettling tone :
Funny Games (1997)
The Tenant
Antarctic Journal
Lady In White
The Mist
And as far as unsettling documentaries go :
Deliver Us From Evil
Paradise Lost
Catfish
Did you go to Columbia College by any chance? If you did – I was probably in your class!