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Page 1 Page 2 In the spirit of Halloween I’ve decided to go through my collection and try and work out (in the style of High Fidelity) my top ten all time favourite horror films.  I’ve had in mind those that would go into the list and have been slowly reviewing those films for the site but this article is the culmination of hours of thought. 
 
Creating a list like a top ten favourites can never be definitive as tastes always change plus films are released that you feel should be on the list.  These films came from the ones that got me interested in horror from different directors, localities, subgenres and eras.  It was a nightmare to sort and I’m still not entirely happy with how some of them placed.  In addition, narrowing the list down to ten was a hardship and saw some films I really love miss out – I would have loved to include both Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead but Dawn is my favourite of the trilogy and other films moving above Night and bumping it out of the top 10 (the same goes for Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn). Likewise, Hellraiser, Ring, Eyes Without a Face, Alien, Frankenstein and numerous others just missed the cut.
 
10. Halloween
A must for October 31st and a film that, with Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, defined the stalker/slasher film, Halloween was a breakthrough for promising filmmaker John Carpenter who only had the student film Dark Star to his name, giving his career a big boost and turning Janet Leigh’s daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, into a star.  It’s success is something of a mixed blessing as it is as great film that deserves to been seen by any film fan, making horror mainstream and slightly respectable but it also spawned the rash of sequels and imitations by directors who weren’t as restrained as Carpenter, choosing to abandon the sense of unease that makes this film so special and rely instead on cheap shocks and gore effects.  Closing your eyes in the scary bits won’t work as the sound design and Carpenter’s score make the horror aural as well as visual.  This is just about the perfect horror movie and a film that should really be seen at this time of year. 



9. Nosferatu
One of the finest examples of German expressionism and the best vampire movie ever made, Nosferatu is lucky to even exist. Bram Stoker’s estate realised that F. W. Murnau had used the Dracula novel as the basis for the film and were granted a court order demanding that all copies be destroyed. Fortunately they were well spread and copies were already in the US, so Murnau’s classic survived, Max Shreck became the most frightening vampire and I’d rather watch this than just about any other vampire film.  Werner Herzog made a creditable remake in 1979 with Klaus Kinski fantastic in the title role but he isn’t as effective as Shreck and there’s just something about Murnau’s visual flair and the performances that make this such an important film and a landmark in the genre.
 

 
8. Suspiria
Dario Argento has always been a director more concerned with visuals than coherent narrative but in Suspiria, he practically dispenses with plot and creates such a visually stunning film that it doesn’t matter the story is so thin!  The plot is an odd one, but not particularly any stranger than any of Argento’s others, with an American ballet student going to Germany to perfect her skills only to find that the school is run by a coven of witches.  As the first in Argento’s ‘Mothers’ trilogy, it is the best though Inferno puts more flesh on the bones with Mother of Tears finishing the series with a competent film that fails to live up to the promise of the first two instalments.  The pounding soundtrack by Goblin is an aural treat worth listening to on its own. There are many Italian horrors that I love but, if I had to pick one, it would be this.
 

 
7. The Shining
Stephen King is a great horror author but you occasionally get the impression he doesn’t know when to say ‘enough’ and his books can get a bit saggy and wordy. This is the case with The Shining, where Kubrick improved the story by stripping away some of the unnecessary back story and making the ending more ambiguous. Just as he (and co-writer Diane Johnson) reduced the amount of the book that went into the film, Kubrick then responded to the initially poor reception by cutting about 25 minutes out, making it a tighter and more suspenseful film. I have a lot of time for both but think that Kubrick was right and that the shorter version is better – a clear case of ‘less is more’. The filming is extraordinary, with phenomenal use of Steadicam, Kubrick demanded take after take until he got what he wanted, resulting in great performances from Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd and a career-defining turn from Jack Nicholson.
 

 
6. The Wicker Man
Released as the B-movie to Nic Roeg’s sublime supernatural horror, Don’t Look Now, The Wicker Man was misunderstood from the moment it got back to the studio. British Lion gave the go-ahead for the project but, by the time they’d finished in Scotland, there’d been a change of personnel at the studio who didn’t like the film and didn’t see it as a main feature. The only way they considered it could be released was in a supporting role, so cut it down from 100 to 88 minutes and put it out as a B-movie. From those humble beginnings in 1974, it has garnered a reputation as one of the most original and intelligent British horrors of the decade and is a true cult classic. Though the quality of the Director’s Cut (the best and most complete version of the film) is patchy, it is still a great piece of work with an ending that still sends shivers up the spine.
 

 

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Posted by David Beckett