It's interesting -- I found the first Friday the 13th film sort of fascinatingly upsetting without actually enjoying it when I finally got to see it as a kid. It wasn't really horror as I knew it, just people in pain. The throat getting cut. I kept asking myself why I was watching this and feeling kind of sad. Audition probably plays off the same feeling, but is much more atmospheric, and I'm a much different (jaded? decadent? ooooolder?) watcher now.
1) What is the most overall scariest horror film you've ever seen? And why?
When I was young, it was Phantasm that I found genuinely disturbing. Watching it more recently, it feels a lot more cartoonish, but still has some kick -- it operates on such a nonsensical, dream-like level. Oh, and if you get the DVD, keep your damn thumb on the scene-skip button. For some ungodly reason, Coscarelli saw fit to stick Angus Scrimm right in front of the movie with what seems like a swell introduction but turns out to spoil pretty much all the head-fucking reveals in the film.
The things that worked for me in Phantasm seem to be similar to the things that still work for me (as much as they do) in Videodrome, which I found much more disturbing than Dead Ringers (same director) and Ringu or Blair Witch Project (same obsession with horror-by-videotape).
Had I seen Ringu first, I'd probably have found it scarier. It really is a beautiful film, and the implacableness of Sadako is, I don't know, like watching some new kind of myth being born or taking ascendancy. Videodrome is about transgression and taboo; Ringu is about, like, punishment for accidental trespasses -- "What am I doing?" vs. "I did what?"
Night of the Living Dead, by the way, should probably get some kind of award for being my honest answer to all four of your questions. Both laughable, jolting, thoughtful and seriously disturbing.
2) Which film produced the best jump-out-of-your-seat-gasp moment? (The small moment)
This is the kind of thing I think big-budget Hollywood films are really good at, actually. The one in Alien was horribly spoiled for me (as opposed to spoiled horribly), so I can't honestly say that was one. But it's been emulated so damn often.
I can't think of a single one. I do remember being stunned by some character's sudden death and thinking, "Oh, that's a riff on whatserhead in Psycho getting it so early on," but the actual film has slipped away.
I also find these moments work best in non-horror films. I'll never forget the sudden apparition of Evil's skull-headed freaky things in that maze-scene in Time Bandits, dragging the troop off to the cages. That fucking nnnoise.
Spielberg's popcorn movies always do this. Dinosaurs. Flying saucers.
3) Which film produced the best creeping, never-ending, tense feeling? (The long moment)
Do you mean the ones that linger long after the movie's over?
My first thought with this one was Requiem for a Dream, which isn't properly part of the horror genre, although it could maybe be mapped over the same structure.
But I recently saw The Stepford Wives for the first time. I had a few weeks where I couldn't shake that one.
The '70s were a brilliant decade for distopian social commentary.
(beat)
OK. I'm better.
I also had the reverse experience with The Blair Witch Project. I'd followed the story on the web site and managed to get sneak preview tickets. The movie itself was negligible. I found it really unpleasant, actually, because of the physical challenge of all that damn wobbling. (I picked seats for us in the back, but they changed theaters on us at the last minute, and we were so far from the door we got stuck in the first couple rows in the new cinema, which was just motion-sick city. Everyone around me wound up clutching their head between their knees.)
But as the culmination of the narrative from the website, it was genius. I'd been involved in the story for weeks or months, the same as if I'd been reading case histories of serial killers or, I dunno, a study project on human sacrifice. Little bits of evidence. Clippings. Interview transcripts. The movie (supposedly found video shot by a student documentary crew) was just another item from the evidence stash. Afterwards, I felt like I'd finished something... but looking back, that was a fun few weeks.
Uzumaki probably should have, but didn't, for whatever reason.
Oh, and honorable mention to the non-horror-film Alice (the Jan Svankmajer one, not the Woody Allen one). The moving meat creatures and the sawdust coming out of the rabbit's unstitched belly/watch pocket. Yayayayaya....
4) Which film did you find scary long ago now laughable?
Gargoyles. I first saw it on TV on a Saturday afternoon at around age 11, and was alternately terrified and fascinated -- more for the idea, which was new to me, and for the brilliant use of sound in the first half.
Telling my family that made me a laughingstock when we actually borrowed the thing from Netflix last summer.
But no, really -- the film starts with this researcher getting contacted by this crazy roadside museum dude out in Arizona. The researcher was developing the case that gargoyles were actually representations of some kind of racial memory of another humanoid species here on earth. The old dude had a skeleton in the shed out back he said belonged to one. So the researcher and his daughter (a journalist) go to, like, check it out. They're totally skeptical, think the guy's just out for liquor-money, but then they get attacked in his shed by creatures we don't see, but who kill the old dude and make this noise that they capture on a tape recorder.
And playing the tape again seems to bring them closer.
Anyway, the creepies are executed in a really cheesy rubber suit way, they're made visible way too early, and they, like, have speeches in English and stuff about how once we ruled this planet and used you hu-mans as slaves, and as soon as my brood hatches you will serve us all again. But the actual character design is still pretty cool -- they made 'em look like a cross between church gargoyles and dinosaur-men. Prehistoric.
It was the first time I remember running into that "we owned this planet before you, we will take it back" concept that's the core fear-source in Jurassic Park (the fucking intelligent raptors) and Quatermass & The Pit, which are both infinitely better horror movies. |
