More of The Horror!

OK, on with the list. Continuing my Halloween tribute with my top 13 horror movies that scared me, made me go “yeesh”, or ones that were just memorable to me in some way (even if the movie sucked):

10. Creep (2004) – I bought this DVD in London last summer as a souvenir because a) the movie takes place in the Underground, the subway system we used to get all over London, and b) it had a special lenticular cover of a bloody handprint sliding downward….I’m a sucker for those sort of things.

The movie is about a young woman (Franka Potente of Run Lola Run) who gets trapped in an Underground station after the system shuts down. She encounters a horrendous creature in the tunnels, which was a product of a secret experimental project, in a secret underground lab facility….in the Underground tunnels. Hey, it could happen, right?

As it turns out, the movie wasn’t that great. It wasn’t extraordinarily bad; it was just kind of your run-of-the-mill horror movie: a little gruesome, but not particularly scary. I just added it to my list to get the most out of the ten pounds I paid for it.


9. Dog Soldiers (2002) – This movie was an underrated and ignored horror film when it first came out. It’s a small-budget British production about a group of soldiers out in the forest on a training exercise who get attacked by werewolves. The chase ends up in a small cottage in the woods, where the big soldier versus werewolf battle takes place.

The movie works because it’s a simple story with plenty of excitement and thrills, good characters, and loads of blood & guts thrown all over the place. It’s also free of any CGI effects, and the werewolves surprisingly look really good. Who knew a guy in a werewolf suit could be so convincing?


8. The Exorcist (1973) – I actually saw The Exorcist on TV when I was young. Back in the day before cable and VCR’s, network TV used to show movies on prime time. If you didn’t see a movie in the theater, chances were that it would be shown on TV a year or two later. This is how I saw The Exorcist, because there was no way in the world my parents would take me to see this movie at the theater.

That was a good thing, though. I probably would have been traumatized if I saw this thing in a dark theater. A really scary movie is a little less frightening with regular commercial breaks. The images of Linda Blair in that movie are still very vivid to me: thrashing around in her bed, turning her head 360 degrees, spewing vomit all over priests. Pretty freaky stuff for a little kid. The weird thing is that it didn’t really keep me awake at night. What the movie did do is burn its images into my memory, which says a lot for it.


7. Magic (1978) – OK, I actually didn’t see this movie. But the advertisement on TV still had a big effect on a young, impressionable child in the late 70’s.

Magic was a movie starring Anthony Hopkins as schizophrenic ventriloquist who suspects his dummy is committing murders. The movie also had Ann-Margaret as the love interest and was directed by Richard Attenborough (that’s right, John Hammond from Jurassic Park).

What freaked me out was the commercial for this movie: it’s hard to describe, but it only featured the head of the talking dummy, saying some sort of scary rhyme. I don’t remember what it said, all I remember this evil little wooden head almost made me crap my pants. I had to turn away whenever that commercial came on. You think ventriloquist dummies are harmless? Not this one; this is one scary dummy. You’ll crap in your pants too.

Will I ever actually watch this movie? No way, man. I like my pants nice and clean.


Come back soon, more of the list to come! Aieeeeeeee!