My Favorite Horror Movies

Why do horror movies rock so hard?

• Can you think of another genre that regularly deals with life and death? Good and evil? Sanity and insanity?
  
• Can you think of another genre that is all about being subversive?
  
• Can you think of another genre that has so many attractive teenagers running around half naked?
  
• Is death funny or what?
  
• Is there any other genre that works so hard at eliciting such visceral feelings from its audience 
  
• If it's not trying to make you jump and get under your skin, it's trying to make you vomit.
  
• Can you think of another genre that is as angry as horror movies?
  

I thought not!

My 13 favorite horror movies:


28 Days Later

• If I ever woke up from a coma and found myself in an apocalyptic world full of zombies – er, excuse me – infected persons, I would totally go around chopping up everyone with a machete. Even “sodiers.” Fuck ‘em all. Anarchy! ANARCHY!
• Other zombie movies: I Walked with a Zombie (Voo Doo Zombies), Night of the Living Dead (Cannibal Zombies), Dawn of the Dead (Satirical Zombies), Shaun of the Dead (Romantic Zombies), Land of the Dead (Talking Zombies) and the remake of Dawn of the Dead (Fast Zombies).

Alien

• If I ever woke up from a deep sleep and found myself on a salvage mission with a bunch of androids and aliens and chicks and pussies, I would totally shoot everyone to smithereens. Why not? Hell, I would have been on that escape pod the second we got a distress signal. Movie over.
• Other scary alien movies: um . . . The Thing?

An American Werewolf in London

• Being a werewolf is totally sexy. I got this dangerous side, but I need some chick to take care of me when I’m not all hairy. Plus my best friend is a really sarcastic zombie who keeps rotting away. The actual transformation looks like it hurts like a bitch, though. This movie is the sole reason I could ever tolerate a song by CCR, the Hootie and the Blowfish of their generation.
  
• Other werewolf movies: The Wolfman, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Wolf.
  

The Blair Witch Project

• I would have totally brought, like, a compass or some shit. The girl is all Ahab and thinks she can save the movie in editing. Whatever. I’ve heard that before. At least I can hold a camera steady. This movie is like an episode of The Real World, but everybody dies at the end.
• Other witch movies: Um . . . The Wizard of Oz? Rosemary’s Baby.
  

Deliverance

• I am not going to let some inbred redneck rape me without kicking some ass. I would never have shot myself with a bow! Myself?! You know what’s scary? That thing hanging out of Burt Reynold’s pants. Gross!
  
• Other rape movies: I Spit on Your Grave, Rosemary’s Baby.
  

The Exorcist

• Twelve-year-old girls? Creepy as hell. Priests? Even creepier. Talking backwards? That fucked up vandalism on that statue? Masturbating with a crucifix? Awesome! What’s scarier than religion? Nothing! That chick was crazy. Science vs. the supernatural? Whatever. I want to rent Dominion, but Tower is closed now. Goddamn it.
• Other Satan movies: Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Legend.
  

The Haunting

• The original. Not that other thing with Catherine Zeta Jones and Owen Wilson. This one has some crazy chick who thinks the house likes her. She whines a lot and seems sexually baffled. The doors in this place are crazy wicked. I actually jumped the first time I saw it. I’m older now, so screw that.
  
• Other movies with The something in the title: The Shining, The Innocents, The Others, The Uninvited.
  

Jaws

• How awesome are sharks? Blood goes everywhere. Conspiracies abound! Now I know how to destroy a shark. All I need is a pistol and an oxygen tank. Boom! I’m killing everything that way from now on. Boom! Boom!
• Other conspiracy movies: The Parallax View, The Conversation, The China Syndrome, All the President’s Men.
  

Night of the Living Dead

• There was this show in the eighties called “Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection.” They would take public domain movies and dub over them. Kick ass! They did Living Dead as a surprise birthday party for that hysterical chick. The zombies outside who stumble around saying, “Surprise!” Totally funny. "Lock yo door. They'll want a tip!"
• Other birthday party movies: The Boys in the Band
  

Psycho

• This movie fucked me up. So I knew the cute chick with the sticky fingers was going to bite it, but I didn’t know dude was so messed up. And it like screwed with my head cause the corpse talked. But not really. What a crazy story. I wonder if I would notice if I went insane.
• Other movies from 1960 where the main chick gets stabbed halfway thru: Horror Hotel
  

Rosemary’s Baby

• As if being pregnant wasn’t scary enough. Now I have to worry about getting raped by Satan and birthing the antichrist. And old people are weird enough without being witches. Now I know why they smell funny and their food taste “chalky.” Roman Polanski puts his camera in weird places and I heard weird things. How does this movie not rock?
• Other creepy Roman Polanski movies: Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, Macbeth, The Tenant.

The Shining

• So this movie makes no damn sense, but it’s actually creepy. One of my favorite Christmas movies ever. Creepiest part: when Shelly Duvall is scrambling around all apeshit and she sees some dude getting oral sex (I think?) from some creep with an animal’s mask. WTF?!?! I’m not staying at that hotel! Second scariest part: the paintings on Scatman Crother’s walls.
• Other Stephen King adaptations: Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Dead Zone, Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption.
  

The Silence of the Lambs

• The first time I saw this movie I started jumping around the room I loved it so much. People tossing sperm around willy nilly. Hannibal Lector is in the elevator. No, he’s wearing some dude’s face in the ambulance. Aaaaaghh! The FBI are at Buffalo Bill’s house. No, Jodie Foster is. Aaaarrggghhh! Creepy music everywhere. And everybody’s a little bit gay. Scariest movie ever. I could quote the whole damn thing. “Is she a great big fat person?”
• Other serial killer movies: Psycho, Se7en, Cape Fear.

Just for the hell of it, here is a list of performers who have received Oscar nominations for horror movies:

• Fredric March, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Winner!)
  
• Patty McCormick, The Bad Seed
  
• Eileen Heckart, The Bad Seed
  
• Nancy Kelly, The Bad Seed
  
• Janet Leigh, Psycho 
  
• Bette Davis, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
  
• Victor Buono, Whatever happened to Baby Jane?
  
• Agnes Moorehead, Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte
  
• Ruth Gordon, Rosemary’s Baby (Winner!)
  
• Ellen Burstyn, The Exorcist
  
• Jason Miller, The Exorcist
  
• Linda Blair, The Exorcist
  
• Sissy Spacek, Carrie
  
• Piper Laurie, Carrie
  
• Kathy Bates, Misery (Winner!)
  
• Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs (Winner!)
  
• Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs (Winner!)
  
• Robert DeNiro, Cape Fear
  
• Juliette Lewis, Cape Fear
  
• Haley Joel Osment, The Sixth Sense
  
• Toni Collette, The Sixth Sense
  
• Willem Dafoe, Shadow of the Vampire
  
• Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  

Awesome Performances that Didn't Get Nominated

• Lon Chaney, Sr., The Phantom of the Opera
  
• Bela Lugosi, Dracula
  
• Boris Karloff, Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein
  
• Colin Clive, Frankenstein
  
• Charles Laughton, Island of Lost Souls
  
• Claude Rains, The Invisible Man
  
• Ernest Thesiger, The Bride of Frankenstein 
  
• Lon Chaney, Jr., The Wolfman
  
• Maria Ouspenskaya, The Wolfman
  
• Boris Karloff, The Body Snatcher
  
• Robert Mitchum, Night of the Hunter
  
• Christopher Lee, The Horror of Dracula
  
• Peter Cushing, The Brides of Dracula
  
• Anthony Perkins, Psycho
  
• Deborah Kerr, The Innocents
  
• Julie Harris, The Haunting
  
• Catherine Deneuve, Repulsion
  
• Mia Farrow, Rosemary's Baby
  
• Boris Karloff, Targets
  
• Vincent Price, The Conqueror Worm
  
• Christopher Lee, The Wicker Man
  
• Burt Reynolds, Deliverance
  
• Jon Voight, Deliverance
  
• Roy Scheider, Jaws
  
• Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws
  
• Robert Shaw, Jaws
  
• Jack Nicholson, The Shining
  
• Shelly Duvall, The Shining
  
• Jonathan Pryce, Something Wicked This Way Comes
  
• Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street
  
• Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet
  
• Ted Levine, The Silence of the Lambs
  
• Gary Oldman, Bram Stoker's Dracula
  
• Morgan Freemon, Se7en
  
• Nicole Kidman, The Others
  
• Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive