2010 is the 50th anniversary of the movie Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock and the 100th aniversary of first movie edition of Frankenstein.
To be honest, I have never watched either of these classics, but it got me thinking about scary movies and how they have changed over the years. I love a good scary movie, even if I am much less inclined to watch them alone and in the dark than I was in my teens and early twenties.
These days, it often feels less about the audience’s mind working in overdrive to imagine the ‘scariness’ that’s happening off-screen, and it seems more about the gore, the violence and the “spell out the plot” viewing.
I thought I might go back through some books to get some ideas for classic movies to watch – such as How to survive a horror movie, Creepy crawls : a horror fiend’s travel guide, and The Rough Guide to horror movies.
Check out our Halloween page for more scary stuff.
So have scary movies gotten scarier? What’s your favourite? Any recommendations?
3 November 2010 at 12:48 pm
I watched a great french zombie flick a couple nights ago – “The Horde”.
It has one of the best “last-stand-against-the-zombie-masses” scenes I’ve seen.
Highly recommend it!
3 November 2010 at 4:17 pm
Embarrassingly for me, the movie that has scared me the most is one that my horrible husband rolls his eyes and laughs at. I’m not even going to tell you what it is, as I am afraid you will all laugh too.
Recently, though, I was very unsettled by a much more ‘acceptable’ scary movie – Paranormal Activity, which freaked out everyone in my house, including a 17 year old visitor who then spent his whole stay with us sleeping with the lights on. Oops.
4 November 2010 at 1:08 am
For me horror is pulled out of the back of the viewer’s head, not shoved in through the eyes. ‘Alien’ got your pulse racing because you couldn’t see the alien. ‘Aliens’ put dozens of the beasties front and centre & became a fun-packed thriller rather than something scary. I’ve seen people who love a splatter-fest have to leave the room during ‘Blair Witch Project’…
4 November 2010 at 12:06 pm
Thanks for the suggestions – I haven’t seen The Horde or Paranormal Activity (having recently seen the Spanish flick [REC], I was reluctant to see anymore “things in the dark that make you jump” films, but might just make an exception now).
And I will have to go back to watch Alien – I agree that it was *way* better than Aliens for all the reasons mentioned above. As for Blair Witch … I was spooked by that too.
Wicked. Things to watch & re-watch now. Thanks.