Buffista Movies 5: Development Hell
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BWP freaked me out completely. In the beginning, I was rather bored, but the tension got ramped up in the last hour and by the final run through the old house, my sister and I were practically pounding on each other's forearms (last time we did that was for Poltergeist). I didn't quite get what the guy was doing in the final shot, but as the lights came up, my sister stared at me with wide eyes and said, "He was standing in the corner, facing the wall!!!" and I put it together and shrieked, "Oh, my God!"
I wouldn't watch it again, though, just because I know I couldn't get that same feeling a second time.
Sad thing about that list is that the only other film I've seen on it was The Others, and that was the edited-for-TV version on TBS.
I saw
The Ring, The Others
and
The Shining.
I thought
The Others
really cool, but not that frightening. And
The Ring
didn't scare me until afterwards. I'd have to add
Audition
and
Santa Sangre
to my personal list.
I love
The Ring, The Others,
and
The Shining.
I did not love
BWP
though the last scene WAS almost worth the entire experience (had the theater been less than 90 degrees, thereby doubling the feeling of motion sickness, it might have been entirely worth it.)
I would put
The Exorcist
on there.
And if the 1963
Haunting
is scarier than
The Shining,
then I'm not sure I can ever see it. I STILL get random nightmares about that movie, love it though I do.
Carnival of Souls
is probably the scariest movie on that list for me, and I've seen all of them except
The Uninvited.
I didn't find
The Haunting
that frightening, except for that scene in which Julie Harris and Claire Bloom are clutching each other's hands while some unknown evil being bangs on the door, then Claire Bloom later tells Julie that she *wasn't* holding her hand, and Julie is all, "OMG THEN WHAT WAS HOLDING MY HAND?" Freaky. Also, that film has lesbian subtext like whoa now that I think back on it. It's been a while since I've seen it. Time for a rewatch, I think.
The only ones on that list I've ever seen are
The Shining
and
The Haunting,
which were certainly scary and awful and gorgeously tragically atmospheric, but really not unbearable. I've heard things about almost everything lower down on the list that sounded far more viscerally, emotionally, lizard-brainily horrifying, and most of them I would happily pay good money never to see (and, even more so,
Audition,
which isn't even on the list). I don't know what it says about me that I'd cheerfully watch the #1 and 2 movies again anytime but the very thought of seeing most of the others even once makes me cry.
I've seen The Ring, The Others, and BWP. The Others was nice and creepy, The Ring was so boring I almost fell asleep, and BWP was just irritating.
Conclusion: I don't actually like horror movies.
Don't Look Now
is deeply disturbing. Not scary but it does get under your skin in a creepifying way (and it seems to have had a strong impact on David Lynch). It also has one of the cinema's most famous sex scenes, between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, which is beautifully shot and edited and hot hot hot.
New SOAP interview with Samuel L Jackson.
I think the conclusion I drew from that list was that 70% of scary horror movies are titled
The {Noun}.
The Others
was well-made, but didn't strike me as all that frightening. Likewise The Haunting, while a great movie, wasn't just heart poundingly frightening to me.
To that list I'd add Ju-on which was a lot scarier than The Ring IMHO, The Haunting of Julia, and the creeptastic gold medal winner, The Exorcist. I've never seen Audition but I'd guess it deserves a slot too based on the reactions all those horror directors had to it.