Need horror film recommendations?

[MaltonNecromancer]

Right, so I'm on holiday, and I've literally run out of horror films to watch. And I say this without hyperbole; I may actually have run out of horror films.

I need recommendations. I have now seen every Hammer and Universal horror; I've also done the Stephen King adaptions (only "The Mist" and Kubrick's adaption of "The Shining" are worth watching. The first half of "It" is great (if dated), and let down by a terrible second half) and everything by Clive Barker. I watched every John Carpenter film ten years ago, and felt a little sad at how low he had fallen when I watched "Vampires". David Cronenberg's latest films have been superb, though not horror per se. J-Horror has become stale (I've given up on Takashi Miike's work after trying to sit through "The happiness of the Katakuris" and snoozing through "Audition".) I enjoyed the brief renaissance of the exploitation genre when "torture porn" became suddenly in vogue, and have been largely disappointed with the spate of horror remakes - not because they are worse than the originals; more that the originals had good ideas but no money to execute, and the remakes have all the money for effects but can't get quality directors. I've just come down from a New French Extremity session, and can confirm that "Martyrs" is probably the best horror I've ever watched in my life.

It's getting so bad I'm toying with the idea of watching Lars Vin Trier's "Antichrist" and "A Serbian Film", but I'm fairly sure they're just going to be ugly and depressing rather than horrifying.

So: any really obscure horror films people can recommend would be greatly appreciated.

And before any jokers chip in with offers of Justin Bieber or the like, I should point out that I am familiar with his work, and consider him marginally less annoying than Bros or Westlife used to be. At least Luke Goss found work with Guillermo Del Toro.

[eldargal]

My brothers dared me to watch A Serbian Film. It is horrific, but not in a horror film. It is just sick, whether or not that is what you are looking for I don't know.

Beyond that, can't help you, I find horror films exceedingly dull.:)

[Drew da Destroya]

Did you see "Let the Right One In"? It's not really straight-horror, as much as a drama with horror elements, but I liked it a lot.

You saw Martyrs, but did you see "Inside"? That was pretty excellent. They managed to make a fairly short french woman absolutely terrifying.

[Aldramelech]

Try 30 days of night, Dead Snow, The Bunker and Outpost.

The best horror film I've ever seen (but I suspect you've seen it) was Jacobs Ladder.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

My brothers dared me to watch A Serbian Film. It is horrific, but not in a horror film. It is just sick, whether or not that is what you are looking for I don't know.

Beyond that, can't help you, I find horror films exceedingly dull.:)

Every serbian I know utterly despises that film.

to the OP : have you seen From Beyond, Necronomicon, how about old Vincent Price/Christopher Lee films?

[Drunkencorgimaster]

Not exactly scary...but "Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness" is a must see.

I personally liked Blair Witch, but a lot of people think it sucked. It seems to be a movie folks either love or despise.

[MaltonNecromancer]

It is horrific, but not in a horror film. It is just sick

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured it'd be. To quote Noel Carroll's excellent book "The Philosophy of Horror", art-horror (that is, horror we feel upon viewing something we know to be artificial in nature, as distinct from the sense of horror we feel towards real-life events like earthquakes and similar tragedies) is a combination of two specific emotions: fear and disgust/revulsion. "A Serbian Film" seems to have the revulsion sorted, but to be lacking the fear.

"Martyrs" worked for me because at no stage was the outcome obvious, though the sense of impeding dread was relentless, and when something awful happened, they didn't shy away from showing you, which is kind of the problem with a lot of horror - for all the claims that "it's what you don't see that's more terrifying", sorry, no. It's a combination of tension and then showing something utterly appalling that's horrifying. If i don't get to see it, I miss out on the essential "disgust" component of the horror film; i's also worth noting that horror doesn't actually need gore to cause revulsion. Something like "Ring" (original, not tedious American remake) that was low on the blood 'n guts front demonstrates the truth of this: when I saw adako, I wanted to get as far away from her as possible - I was revolted, not by blood and gibs, but by her sheer otherness. The fact that she was A Thing That Should Not Be.

The Weeping Angels in "Doctor Who" also demonstrate this perfectly.


Did you see "Let the Right One In"? It's not really straight-horror, as much as a drama with horror elements, but I liked it a lot.

You saw Martyrs, but did you see "Inside"? That was pretty excellent.

I have seen "Let the Right One In". Very good film, with some horrible, horrible ideas. The vampire stuff was far less scary than the horrible relationship stuff. A great film. "Inside" was a lovely variant on the cliches of the slasher genre; the use of scissors at the end was particularly unpleasant. It also gets bonus points for taking Beatrice Dalle (who was quite the sex symbol when I was a teen) and turning her into a slasher. It's like if Jessica Alba played Jason Vorhees.


30 days of night, Dead Snow, The Bunker and Outpost.

I hated 30 Days of Night; it was almost as embarassingly lame as the comic, but not quite. In many ways, it represents everything bad about modern horror for me. Dead Snow far too goofy to be scary. The Bunker and Outpost both had neat concepts, but terrible, terrible characterisation, and I found them intensely dull as a result. Which was a shame; I wanted to like them both. I think the problem is that <members of a certain extremist right-wing political party, founded by a weird little psychopath with a bizarre moustache, espousing genocide whose party name gets censored here> are frankly scary enough on their own; they don't need supernatural powers to be utterly, utterly terrifying. "Das Experiment" and HBO's "Oz" proved that.

You are correct, I have indeed seen Jacob's Ladder, and it is superb. There's a reason it's the basis for every monster in the Silent Hill games.


have you seen From Beyond, Necronomicon, how about old Vincent Price/Christopher Lee films

Yes to all. Brian Yuzna often a bit weird, but enjoyable enough. Can't quite let the horror push the comedy aside. Love Vincent Price's stuff - House of Wax is amazing, and Abominable Doctor Phibes predates the Saw films by years. And when I'm 90, I want to be as cool as Christopher Lee. I never will be, but I can hope.


"Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness" is a must see.

I personally liked Blair Witch, but a lot of people think it sucked.

I enjoyed "Army of Darkness" when I was younger; it's lost a bit for me now (especially in the wake of things like "Crank 2", where the po-faced, taking-the-bad-film-far-far-too-seriously seriousness of Jason "Emotions Are For The Weak" Statham is far superior IMO to Bruce Cambell's mugging). It's also more of a comedy than a horror. "Blair Witch" had a key problem, in that it was a victim of it's fame. Most people who saw it came late to the party. It was intended as huge multimedia hoax. Most of the storyline was on the internet and in other resources. The film was a very small component of this. When it blew up huge, they had to come out and say "This is not real. It is just a regular film". Imagine if that had never happened, and the first time you encountered this weird little film you had never heard of was late night on some channel or other. You'd come away convinced you'd actually watched a real recording, and it would be terrifying. That was the problem for me. Taken as a horror film on it's own merits, it's nicely atmospheric, and there are a few excellent moments (and roundly superb acting (largely enforced by the actors living on one banana a day for the week of filming), but overall it only really works as part of the grand enterprise it began as.

[Brass Scorpion]

I'm a fan of the classics, so happy to hear you've already seen the Universal and Hammer films.

Next stop for classics if you haven't already done so is the 1950's and 1960's. Lots of fun, mostly low-budget, occasionally brilliant, and many cheesy fun films. The original Invastion Of The Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy is a great SF/horror film.

Also, there are a couple old films that provided a huge amount of material for the original Alien. Ray “Crash” Corrigan who starred in action serials when he was younger was also the guy in the monster suit in the 1958 movie, It! The Terror From Beyond Space which provided a major amount of inspiration and story elements for Ridley Scott’s Alien. Another film that provided inspiration and story elements for Alien is Queen Of Blood with Basil Rathbone and John Saxon. It’s eerie fun, I highly recommend both films.

[MaltonNecromancer]

Those "Red Scare" films are great. Love the original version of "The Blob" (the 90's remake's awesome too), and "This Island Earth" is still visually magnificent.

Not heard of "Queen of Blood" (and Basil Rathbone is an astonishing actor), so that's on the list! :)

[Brass Scorpion]

Those "Red Scare" films are great. Love the original version of "The Blob" (the 90's remake's awesome too), and "This Island Earth" is still visually magnificent. Not heard of "Queen of Blood" (and Basil Rathbone is an astonishing actor), so that's on the list! :)I only recently discovered Queen Of Blood and my first reaction was, "how is it I've never heard of or seen this movie, I must see it!" I got lucky finding it last year new and cheap on DVD because it was out of print, but it recently came back in print as an "on demand" title. You can buy it from Screen Archives Entertainment or from Amazon. Dennis Hopper is also in it and it is in color.

This Island Earth was also the subject of the one theatrical venture done by Mystery Science Theater 3000 and that is back in print on DVD as well. Since you've seen the original you might want to give the "MSTed" version a go with Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Movie.

Another creepy "psychotronic" SF horror movie from the 1960's is Planet Of The Vampires. Good atmosphere, pretty creepy effort from famed director Mario Bava.

[MaltonNecromancer]

Yeah, I've heard so very, very many good things about MST3K; can't really get it in the UK. :( If the MST3K version of "This Island Earth" is on DVD, I am totally getting that. :)

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

these are more uncommon, but you sem pretty experienced/hardcore with the genre (like I am) so it won't surprise me if you've seen them already :

The Deadly Spawn
Metamorphosis The Alien Factor
The Brain
Dark Waters (1993)
The resurrected
X The Unknown

I know more, but I have a feeling you've likely seen them already...

[Drew da Destroya]

This one's pretty out there... Have you seen the Japanese film "House"? Usually pronounced "HowSu"?

It was one of the first "Teen" horror movies in Japan, a double feature with some likely-terrible romance movie, so if you haven't seen it, don't expect "good". But it's bizarrely entertaining, and is still a horror film.

[Denzark]

'We don't need eyes where we're going....'

[Grailkeeper]

Some film's I've watched recently that were quite good, altough they're fairly mainstream so you've probably seen them- Jaws, no county for old men and Zombieland (more of a comedy than a horror but still rather good).


One thats quite good is bronson- the use of violence is fairly horrifiying, even if its not really a horror film. Tom Hardy is superb and the Bronson is not a million miles away from Bain.