Any GOOD horror movies?

I'm of the opinion that special effects killed the scary movie. (well, perhaps slasher films started that process) I can't understand why latter day horror film makers never grasped that less is definitely more when trying to get a good scare going. Our imaginations do way better with just a small prompt. And all that blood and gore, echhh, not scary, just repulsive. Anyway, in the spirit of halloween here are my oldies but goodies pics for real scary movies (they scared me as a kid and still do :) .....definitely the original Haunting of Hill House (1963 with Julie Harris, not the insulting, barely recognizable '99 remake). The Innocents (Deborah Kerr 1961), Burnt Offerings (1976, yikes that haunted swimming pool and ghoulish chauffeur), and although not a ghost story or paranormal, See No Evil (with Mia Farrow, 1971) a creepy as heck, on the edge of your seat psychological horror/thriller.
 
When I was around 15 years old I saw a movie that for some reason scared the beejesuz out of me, never really watched much horror movies after that. Don’t know what really got to me about the movie “Night of the Living Dead”. Had bad dreams about that movie! Anyway, I found it on YouTube:

 
There is actually something horror that is relatively good IMVHO. It's not exactly a movie. It's a TV series called "The Haunting of the Hill House". It's a story of the experience of a family in a haunted house and the series explores different themes: trauma, coping mechanisms, grief, over-protection, self-fulfilling prophecies, time loops, etc.. It could be described as a "psychological drama with ghosts". The cinematography is good for a TV series.
 
Asian horror films put most western ones to shame. Take “Audition” for example
There is a lot if good jap films and anime I agree.

Alien is another classic to be sure. That was far spookier than the rest and inspired perhaps the greatest series of games ... Metroid.

The first Alien is such a good suspense movie! Watched it again 2 weeks ago I'm such a fanboi!
 
I've been recalling scary movies from my childhood as well . A few really made an impression and I remembered them for years after. Village of the Damned was one, with the group of blond, creepy kids from outer space and glowing eyes. They always traveled around in a group. Its based on the book "The Midwich Cuckoos". Several remakes.


Invasion of the Body Snatchers was another. There have been a lot of remakes of the 1956 version.
 
sorry can't think of a Movie but the only scary book i ever read was this one ..
much better than the movie, gave me nightmares for weeks ...
i don't know whats scarier than being buried alive in a coffin ..

The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies, and Magic is a 1985 book by anthropologist and researcher Wade Davis. He investigated Haitian Vodou and the process of making zombies. He studied ethnobotanical poisons, discovering their use in a reported case of a contemporary zombie, Clairvius Narcisse.
The book presents the case of Clairvius Narcisse, a man who had been a zombie for two years, as showing that the zombification process was more likely the result of a complex interaction of tetrodotoxin, a powerful hallucinogenic plant called Datura, and cultural forces and beliefs.
According to the book, the assortment of ingredients in Haitian zombie powder include puffer fish, matter from a corpse (specifically to Davis' adventure in Haiti, the bokor, a Haitian shaman, crushed the skull of a deceased infant that had been dead for a month or two, and added it to the poison), freshly killed blue lizards, a large dried toad (Bufo marinus) with a dried sea worm wrapped around it (prepared beforehand), "tcha-tcha" (Albizzia), and "itching pea" (pois grater, a species of Mucuna).

The book inspired the 1988 horror film, The Serpent and the Rainbow.

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I think also that books are more intense than movie when talking about terror. I remember a terror book that impressed me very much "The van: a tale of terror" by John Ball. It is based on a true story about 2 psychopaths that killed young girls in their van in the USA around the 80's.

John Ball said of this novel: "The series of bizarre and frightful murders described in the pages that follow is based on an actual case, the complete file of which is shattering reading."

The setting for the powerful story is the Los Angeles area. The van, a dark-colored one, basic to much of the horror, was not much of a van.

The many victims whose mutilated bodies were discovered were chosen haphazardly. There were two killers. The Los Angeles sheriff’s office and homicide bureau included many able, well-trained men, used to dealing with murders. But when the tapes the killers enjoyed making were found and played, they were the most horrifying piece of evidence the technicians had ever listened to.

The victims were always young ladies—often very young.

Working with the police department was Dr. Flavia de la Torre, a sociologist who had been given a grant to do a study on the incidence of serious crimes committed by men on parole. She was an attractive woman who was an asset—but who wasn't really aware (were any of them?) of the criminal minds she'd be encountering.

The reader should be prepared, too, as he (or she) reads ahead.

I was really scared when reading the book because I was not informed about psychopathy.

van.jpg
 
I've been recalling scary movies from my childhood as well . A few really made an impression and I remembered them for years after. Village of the Damned was one, with the group of blond, creepy kids from outer space and glowing eyes. They always traveled around in a group. Its based on the book "The Midwich Cuckoos". Several remakes.


Invasion of the Body Snatchers was another. There have been a lot of remakes of the 1956 version.
The blond and blue-eyed "creepy" kids in "Village of the Damned" (1960) remind me a little of the (predominately) blond and blue-eyed childlike "Eloi" 'adults' depicted in the original film based on H. G. Wells "The Time Machine" - also released in 1960.
The naive and incredibly useless Eloi depicted in The Time Machine, and the insidious 'evil' alien spawn-children turning against the adult population in Village of the Damned, I find eerily representative of the 2 opposing extremities of mind-set fast approaching real-life expression within 'Millennials' of our own time.

Although The Time Machine isn't a horror, I did find, as a child, the concept of the sub-terrainian "Morlocks" coming up through holes in the ground at night, eating the Eloi, to be quite frightening. The Morlocks, incidentally, are also very blond with reflective eyes that of the eyes of the spawn-children in VotD when exercising their psychic powers.

I was reminded of the Morlocks when I first read of the article in the 1940 addition of the National Geographic reporting the alleged disappearance of children beneath the tunnels of the Hypogeum in Malta. The childrens disappearance apparently involving large subterranean hairy humanoids with psychic 'powers'. See relevant Cass thread here: The Maze of Malta
It would seem the subterranean creatures described here combine the physical features (though smaller) of the Morlocks but with the mental powers of the VotD children.

Worthy of note is similarity of the names "Morlock" and the the Canaanite god "Moloch" - of which children were sacrificed to. Malta was known to pay homage to Moloch Moloch - New World Encyclopedia

Given H. G. Wells biblical Hebrew "gods" reference: "Eloi", I'm inclined to believe the Morlocks are a deliberate reference to Moloch.
 
The movie ‘The Mothman Prophecies’ is probably more psychological thriller than horror but a good one, I thought.

Although The Time Machine isn't a horror, I did find, as a child, the concept of the sub-terrainian "Morlocks" coming up through holes in the ground at night, eating the Eloi, to be quite frightening. The Morlocks, incidentally, are also very blond with reflective eyes that of the eyes of the spawn-children in VotD when exercising their psychic powers.

I remember that movie being frightening to me as a kid as well, definitely left an impression and I think it’s because of the very concept you mentioned above. Plan to check it out again.
 
The movie ‘The Mothman Prophecies’ is probably more psychological thriller than horror but a good one, I thought.



I remember that movie being frightening to me as a kid as well, definitely left an impression and I think it’s because of the very concept you mentioned above. Plan to check it out again.
I've come to the conclusion horror movies are, in various forms - whether the premise be supernatural, or just plain street-level psycho 'sicko-path' - are all portrayals, in miniature, of our Fall into matter unto STS - and subsequent reflected portrayals of Man feeding 4D STS - as with also the mind of the Predator given over to us, now our minds also, as stated by Carlos Castaneda Predator's mind - CassWiki


"They [the sorcerers of ancient Mexico] discovered that we have a companion for life. We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless
They took over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, gallineros, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them."
They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal.
"In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engage themselves in a stupendous maneuver-stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now.
Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear."


We are have long become both the predator and prey - and horror movies always reflect this at their core, whether the predator is human or non-human, the prey is ALWAYS human - or a symbolic representation of "humanity".
'We' connect emotionally and psychologically with horror movies on a subconscious/unconscious level because somewhere deep within we know its OUR story as the collective Human race - and it resonates with us.

Gandalph may have "joked" when he said:
Well, if you are looking to watch for a very good horror movie, the best one that I can recommend you but the movie is still not finished is simply called " The reality on our Big Bleu Planet". And not only we can watch it, but we are actors of this movie.
- But actually, he's being dead serious!
 
Gandalph may have "joked" when he said:
Well, if you are looking to watch for a very good horror movie, the best one that I can recommend you but the movie is still not finished is simply called " The reality on our Big Bleu Planet". And not only we can watch it, but we are actors of this movie.
- But actually, he's being dead serious!

Indeed, I was not joking but dead serious as you said.
 
JeeperCreepers 1&2 is a good movie with theme of feeding.
I've not seen either movies myself, but had a look at the plot on Wikipedia. This bit, at the beginning of the movie's story, caught my attention:

"They later see the same truck parked next to an abandoned church with a man sliding what appears to be bodies wrapped in blood-stained sheets into a large pipe sticking out of the ground. The man notices Trish and Darry watching him and attempts to run them off the road.
After escaping, Darry convinces Trish to go back to the church and investigate. At the church, Darry hears noises coming from within the pipe and crawls inside with Trish holding on to his feet, but ends up falling in..."

Many horrors have a scene similar to the aforementioned, of trepidation build-up before the main horror-events of the movie is subjected to the viewer, whereby the unknown yet obviously foreboding rattle-of-the-basement-door-handle behind the door-to-the-abyss, so to speak, seems to warrant investigation by the 'innocent' soon-to-be-prey victim(s) having to peek through the key-hole... And the abyss inevitably will look back!
It gets played a lot in such movies. Of course, its all part of the psychological build-up for suspense, but, the often running "curiosity killed the cat" theme does have, I feel, mixed in parallels representing "Temptation" having caused our Fall from the Edenic state into STS, of which the C's said: when we said "hello" to the predator Lizzies, "traps" and "tricks don't exist" - and "Free will could not be abridged if you (us) had not obliged".
 
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