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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: Scariest Movies
Message-ID: <1325@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-Oct-85 23:45:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1325
Posted: Thu Oct 31 23:45:12 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 08:33:15 EDT
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 >Okay gang.  How about a list of the movies we find the most
 >frightening, terrifying, etc?  

I really tried to stay out of the bad film listing game, but I suppose
being really scary is a virtue.  The scariest films would come to
people's attention.  The one problem is that I haven't been really
scared by a film in years.  A friend describes when we both saw JAWS
for the first time.  He describes it as "[He] was scared shitless and
Mark was sitting there saying, 'The shark really didn't look realistic
in that scene.'  I like horror films as a genre because it is
interesting to see the techniques used, I even feel a building of
tension.  But I don't actually get frightened.  That may come of having
seen too many horror films.  Fiction rarely scares me, and if it does,
radio horror is much more likely to scare me than film.  I am not sure
if you want to open this discussion to non-fiction, but the French
documentary about concentration camps NIGHT AND FOG, I find pretty
frightening. (How pretentious of me to mention it!)

As for fiction films that have scared me, my parents claim that when I
saw WAR OF THE WORLDS at age 2 it really scared me.  I remember being
bored by it.  Years later, after a period of being willing to hock both
my parents for a chance to see the film again, I was surprised at how
much of the film I remembered semi-accurately.  Still, I don't think
that counts as being super-scary.  The last film I remember being
really scared at was PSYCHO at age 9.  Films that I have seen since
that have come the closest to really scaring me are NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD (some of the scenes still feel very real) and (here comes da'
flames) COUNT YORGA: VAMPIRE.  The latter is low budget exploitation,
but it was also a sharp and interesting contrast to Hammer's vampires.
YORGA introduced vampires who were faster, much less sedate, and much
more savage.  They were much more in the tradition of the real vampire
legends.  Stoker's cultured vampire was supposed to be a marked
contrast to the loathsome creature of the legends.  Since then most
vampires have been portrayed as cultured gentlepeople.  The vampires in
the Hammer films would slowly creep up on you looking hungrily at your
neck, and perhaps when you weren't looking would slowly take a nip.  In
YORGA, before you knew there were vampires around they would attack
like a pack of wild dogs and start chewing pieces out of you.  

Two more films to look for in the genre CARNIVAL OF SOULS is a
super-low-budget piece that is really, really good.  Very eerily
filmed.  Also look for a film known as either LEMORA or LADY DRACULA.
It falls down in the second half, but till then it is really
nightmarish.  These are both films made on a shoestring that put their
higher priced brothers to shame.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper