Halloween is one of my favourite times of year, no i don't mean dressing up in the skeleton costume from Karate Kid and knocking on neighbours doors asking Trick Or Treat, i mean it gives me a legitimate reason to watch horror films. So along with my cohort Richard, we've both come up with a list of 5 halloween favourites. Check mine after the jump...
I could have chosen any 5 horror films to include on this list, i have stated countless times that George A. Romero's 1978 Zombie epic masterpiece, Dawn Of The Dead is one of my all time favourite films, but i've already reviewed that, i could include one of the Freddy Or Jason movies but everyone includes a Freddy or Jason movie on a list of top Halloween faves. The ones I have chosen mean something to me, something from my childhood or Teens, something that made me who i am or made me fall in love with horror. I will however give a shout out to a few films that i um'd and ahhh'd about. Those films are....
- The People Under The Stairs
- Day Of The Dead
- I Know What You Did Last Summer
- The Haunting (Original)
- House On Haunted Hill (Original)
- Quatermass And The Pit
I struggled to find a way of including all of these but i had to choose 5, so below are my choices for top 5 Halloween Horror flicks...
CHERRY FALLS (2000)
Dir: Geoffrey Wright
I love Cherry Falls,
it's unfairly dismissed in the Horror Genre because it's a sort of
spoof, in that it's blackly comic and rips the piss out of slasher
movie clichés. It had some troubled history in the U.S as it never
made it to U.S cinema screens and had to be submitted 5 times to the
MPAA to receive a certificate due to the violent and sexual nature of
the film. In the wake of Scream's Post-modernist take on the slasher
genre became a smash hit, we had a renaissance of the once dead genre
and a slew of Slasher flicks flooded the latter half of the 90s and
early part of the 21st century. Titles like I know What
You Did Last Summer, Valentine and Urban Legend became moderate hits
but Cherry Falls was over looked, it's a damn sight better than those
films, with a great premise and good cast. It follows teenager Jody,
the daughter of the local sheriff who find her self and her friends
the target of a vengefull killer who prays on virgins. It's up to
Jody to uncover the truth as to why this killer is taking out her
friends and in the process makes a startling discovery about her own
family. Cherry Falls has a great hip script with some great teen
speak dialogue much in the same vein as Juno, it's got some neat
little in-jokes aimed towards the fans of this kind of flick and is
pretty generous in the gore department. For me it's one of best post
Scream slasher flicks as brings something original to a genre that
was awash with copycats. I've seen it countless times and that's why
it's on my List of 5 favourite Halloween films.
THE EXORCIST (1973)
Dir: William Friedkin
I have a weird
relationship with The Exorcist, i'd heard about how it was the
scariest film ever made so when Warner Bros finally released it uncut
in the U.K for the fist time on video and DVD I decided that it was
time I found out what all the fuss was about and to be honest my
initial reaction was one of hate, I really really hated the film,
that was in 2001. 11 years later it's on my list of 5 favourite
Halloween horrors. How did that happen?....As I matured, not just as
a person but as a film fan I discovered that the more I watched The
Exorcist, the more I realised it's technical brilliance and the
frankly stunning performances that make this film such an iconic
film. I understood the 'fuss'. I looked past the whole 'scare factor'
and looked more into how the movie was made and during this process
found the 'horror' of the film. There are genuinely horrific moments
with in the film, subliminal images and just the master craftsmanship
behind the scenes. But the performances by the cast are what tops the
film off. Linda Blair's turn as little Reagan McNeill is a phenomenal
performance but she lost out to Tatum O'Neal at the 1974 Oscars.
Other members of the cast, also nominated were Ellen Burstyn and
Jason Miller. I have seen The Exorcist at least 8 times now and
everytime I watch it I find something new with in the film. William
Friedkin's film is a genuinely brilliant piece of film making and I
watch it every Halloween if I can.
DRACULA (1958) Dir:
Terrance Fisher
Hammer films, the U.K
based film production company, had already had some success with
their 1957 film, The Horror Of Frankenstein, the first of Hammer's
'colour' horrors. They followed the moderate success of that with
their adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic Dracula story. Peter
Cushing stars as Vampire hunter supreme, Abraham Van Helsing, on the
trail of Christopher Lee's mysterious and deadly Count Dracula. I
love this film, as I do most Hammer films, but there's something so
important about this film that it just can't be dismissed as just a
horror film. Not only do you have the incredible Cushing and Lee in
dual lead roles, but for a film made in 1958, it's one of the first
studio based films to show graphic violence, not graphic in a SAW
sort of way but for 1958, it's pretty much top of it's gore game and
the fact that the film was shot in Technicolour on 35mm film just
shows how ahead of the game Hammer and specifically Terrance Fisher
were in the horror genre. Yes there had been Dracula films made prior
to this like the legendary Universal version from 1931 starring Bela
Lugosi, but for me Hammer's first Dracula film is my favourite. This
film marked the first of 9 times he would don the black cloak as
Dracula for Hammer. Lugosi was good but Lee will forever be THE
Dracula to me. That is why it's on my list.
RE-ANIMATOR (1985) Dir:
Stuart Gordon
Re-Animator is the kind
of horror film I dig the most, it's outrageously gory and
outrageously funny. Based in part on H.P Lovecraft's Herbert West:
Re-Animator stories, Stuart Gordon along with first time producer and
future Fantastic Factory creator, Brian Yuzna, updated the story to
the 1980s and placed Herbert West at a training hospital. He meets
Dan Cain, an aspiring doctor who has everything going for him, his
grades are good and he's dating the beautiful Megan Halsey. Dan is
looking for a room-mate and who should apply, Herbert West that's
who. West takes over the basement and turns it into a lab. West has
created a serum that can bring the dead back to life, a day-glow
luminous green substance that he tests on Dan's dead cat. Things do
not got according to plan and suddenly there's an unstoppable zombie
cat attacking them. As Herbert's experiments get more and more
intense, so does poor Dan who's life is slowly spiralling out of
control until all hell breaks loose and Dan, West and Megan must
fight their way out of a hospital over run with zombies. Re-Animator
is an incredible achievement in modern horror, It mixes dark comic
humour with blood, guts and splatter and pulls it off almost
effortlessly. The cast are all outstanding, especially Jeffrey Combs
who plays Herbert West. I love this movie and while the sequels don't
match up to the utter mayhem of this, Re-Animator still one of my
favourite franchises.
SCREAM (1996) Dir: Wes
Craven
For me Scream marked a
turning point in the evolution of my love for horror cinema, I was
13, nearly 14 years old when I first saw it on VHS, it's
post-modernist take on the tired old slasher genre caught the
attention of this film reviewer with it's rather graphic violence and
it's wealth of pop cultural references, much like Tarantino's films
had done, Scream was like a movie horror encyclopedia. I learnt about
Halloween (the Carpenter Film), Friday 13th, A Nightmare
On Elm Street etc... due to Kevin Williamson's fantastic script. If
you don't know the plot of Scream, here's a little run down. In the
small town of Woodsborough, a killer in a mask that resembles a
screaming ghost is going around offing students left right and
centre. High School Student Sydney Prescott survives an attack and
local Dept. Sheriff Dewey is put in charge of her protection. Sydney
and her friends are invited to a party where all hell break loose as
the killer has a field day offing all the students and finally
setting his sights on Sydney, while Gale Weathers, a TV reporter
tries in vein to get an interview from her. That's about the gist of
the plot, I don't want to go too deep into it because the would spoil
the fun of the film. Not only does Scream contain some rather
gruesome deaths but it also has a darkly comic sense of humour. It's
probably the best looking and directed film this side of Music Of The
Heart for director Wes Craven and Scream Proved to be a massive hit
resulting in three sequels, all of which have continued to entertain
and shock. Scream also paved the way for spoof series, Scary Movie
which although completely lost it when Spoof king David Zucker fucked
up the franchise, still had that element of horror and made people
laugh and Gasp in horror, although these films were clearly made to
tickle and not scare, the first two were genuine box office hits that
may have even rivalled Scream. The cast do great, fresh off of Party
Of Five was Neve Campbell as Sydney Prescott, TV curse Skeet Ulrich
was very menacing as her boyfriend, David Arquette was pretty good as
goofy dept Dewey and taking time out from the massively popular TV
show Friends was Courtney Cox. They all did really well with Kevin
Williamson's script. It kept me guessing from the get go and it's
Scream's thrill of mystery that makes me love it so much.
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