15.CREEPERS(1984) D-Dario Argento ST-Jennifer Connelly.Young girls uses psychic power to communicate with insects to track down a serial killer.Features excellent Dario Argento shock camerawork,and seething masses of every insect immaginable.Great fun from one of the greats. Also features a terrific heavy metal soundtrack!
14.AMERICAN GOTHIC(1987) D-John Hough ST-Yvonne de Carlo. Very scary yarn about a group of absolute crazies terrorizing a woman on a getaway trip to recover from a breakdown.The film really focuses on her reaction to the madness she is seeing. Really graphically realistic and creepy.Also stars that kid from the Star Trek episode"Miri".
13.THE HOWLING(1980) D-Joe Dante ST-Dee Wallace. A reporter is terrorized by a werewolf cult. Campy,lots of marvelous effects, and lots of in jokes for horror fans. Joe Dante's love of the genre comes through.The werewolf transformation is incredible.
12.LAIR OF THE WHITE
WORM(1988) D-Ken Russell ST-Amanda
Donohoe. British horror lives! Snake cult
priestess sacrifices unsuspecting
virgins.Russell's films are always full of
bizarre,perverse,imagery and this one is no
different.It's fun, fast paced and different
enough to stand out as excellent.
11.COMPANY OF WOLVES(1984) D-Neil Jordan ST-Angela Lansbury.Very literary horror with one foot on the side of fantasy.Story involves a young girl's granny recounting tales of werewolves invading her small mythical village.Very intelligent updating of old children's stories adding large doses of sex and violence.Great artsy sets.
10.AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN
LONDON(1981) D-John Landis ST- David
McNaughton. Great black comedy. Humor
lightens graphically violent film.Lots of fun
in-references to old werewolf movies.Story
follows McNaughton who is repeatedly visited
by the spectre of his dead friend trying to
warn him of the werewolf curse.Rick Baker's
transformation sequence revolutionized horror
movies forever.
9.NEAR DARK(1987) D-Kathryn Bigelow ST-Jenny Wright. Vampires in the southwest! Jenny plays a reluctant vampire in a migratory vampire gang terrorizing a small town.Lance Henrikson in great as their leader. Very quirky and well directed(by a woman!) This film very much captures the essence of the vampire/style movement which began around this time. Highly recommended!
8.DEMONS(1985)D-Lambert o Bava. Franticly paced with lots of nasty gore. Demons take over a movie theater trapping the movie goers inside. Really wild stuff from Mario Bava's son.The scenes of the horror movie showing on the screen while a real life horror movie goes on in the theater is particulary memorable.
7.THE
SHINING(1980) D-Stanley Kubrick ST-Jack
Nicolson. Typical Kubrick. He pulls off
everything he wants to achieve. Story,of
course, concerns an hotel caretaker snowed in
for the winter, going insane though his own
feelings of personal failure. Very complex
images of hotel corridors and the maze of
shrubbery.Nicolson is great, giving perhaps
his greatest performance. The best Stephen
King film,yet often overlooked for not being
completely true to the book.
6.RETURN OF THE LIVING
DEAD(1985)D-Dan O'Bannon ST-Clu
Gulager.Terrific second look at George
Romero's dead series by his ex-partner John
Russo.Story is caused by cannisters being
reopened that supposedly contained the
chemical that caused the big disaster in
Pittsburgh,see Night of the Living
Dead. Less for gore but a lot more creepy
and fun than Romero's.And lots more humor.I
laughed out load in spots. Featuring a great
soundtrack and a great performance by scream
queen Linnea Quigley as a punk girl.
5.NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET(1984)D-Wes Craven ST-Robert Englund. The original of the series that did for sleep what Jaws did for water.Not a favorite of mine but still a classic. You know the movie.
4.HELLRAISER(1987)D-Clive Barker ST-Ashley Lawrence. Clive Barker brought new territory to horror,no mean feat.Here darkness and perversion mix with hell's minions. The effects are great and the monsters are unique enough to carry the story about a woman's love for a man who died by looking a little too hard for the ultimate combination of pleasure and pain.
3.FRIDAY THE 13TH(1980)D-Sean Cunningham ST-Adrienne King. Another movie I dislike, yet it is on the list because of its historical role. A clone of Halloween but became twice the success,starting a whole series of films and ripoff movies,the biggest wave of the 80's. Here dumb teenagers are killed after or during sex. Wow, complex allegory! The clever way these deserving kids are killed is the real fun. This is what kept the series going.
2.REANIMATOR(1985)D-Stuart
Gorden ST-Jeffrey Combs.Terrific,gory, film
based on the works of H.P.Lovecraft. Mad
doctor reanimates the dead with a serum.
Great make up effects.Cool story.Fun
characters and best of all no punches
pulled.The dark humor helps lighten the load.
You will love the scene where the disenbodied
head makes love to Barbara Crampton strapped
to a table. Highly recommended!
1.THE EVIL DEAD(1982)
D-Sam Raimi ST-Bruce Campbell. Made by a
group of suburban school buddies, financed by
themselves,this incredibly
gross,immaginative,brilliantly directed
masterpiece, launched them all to stardom.The
story of how this film was made is great
story itself! But the film is terrific. The
story involves friends who spend the night in
cabin in the woods and find a book called The
Book of the Dead and end up summoning demons
and evil forces which take over their bodies.
Then the madness begins.The camera angles are
unique. New technologies were rigged,by Sam
Raimi, to film this stuff.Really gross
effects make this one a classic to freak out
your unprepared friends. Led to two sequels.
Highest rating!
