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Your Favourite Horror Films?
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The Exorcist was my ultimate Scary
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- #19
Crikey, you certainly love horror films! That's quite a list you have there! I love Nosferatu and have it on DVD in my collection. I saw the original Evil Dead on DVD a few years ago, when it was re-released in an uncut form. I loved it, and thought it was very entertaining! I actually saw Evil Dead 2 years before I watched the first film, and I thoroughly enjoyed that as well. I wasn't keen on the third Evil Dead film, though, and I am not interested in the remake. I also love The Fog and The Thing. I had both of these on VHS video back in the day. Halloween will always be my favourite John Carpenter film, though. That was one of the first horror films that I ever saw.
I haven't seen Braindead or those TV series you mentioned. I've heard of them of course, but never had the chance to check them out.
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- #20
I saw this film when I was still a teenager and not quite 18. That probably goes a long way to explain why it freaked me out so much. I remember that it was unavailable on video until around 1998, IIRC, but I saw it years before then. I guess that I must have seen a very dodgy "pirate" copy, though my memory is not that good. Back then, everyone knew someone who could get the latest "video nasties", even though they weren't legally available, lol.
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I agree entirely with all your points. The 3rd Evil Dead film is the weakest of the 3, but it has Bruce Campbell in it, who brings me nothing but joy.
'Ghost Stories at Christmas' were adaptations of short stories by MR James (and one by Charles Dickens) that were first aired from the late 60's I think, with one shown on Christmas Eve. If you are a fan of MR James, then I'd highly recommend getting the DVD boxset, it's not cheap but I believe it's really worth it. They occasionally put on a rerun of the originals around Christmas on BBC4, so worth keeping an eye out for them.
The Video Nasty list seems to have been one of hte most important things for horror films, as it seemed to create a community for horror film fans; a checklist for fans.
Have you seen Exorcist 3? It has some gloriously creepy moments!
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Anything Hammer Horror as a first preference, Amicus and anything peripheral with Christoper Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price or Donald Pleasance; that ilk of actor. Period plays, heaving bosoms, lucicrous acting. Love it!
Older Universal is fun, too. While I'm not at all a fan of 70s gore, splatter, slasher and onwards, there will be a good few titles I do like. Gruesome, sadistic and sicko is not really my thing. That said, I have enjoyed Rob Zombie's films, much of which is a retrospective of this period.
Nazi Zombies are always fun! I suppose it began with 'The Keep' (Tangerine Dream soundtrack) and there was 'Shock Waves' (Peter Cushing) before it exploded in the '90s and beyond. Yeah, 'Iron Sky/2'? Fun genre.
I very much enjoyed 'IT' and particularly the second part.
Older Universal is fun, too. While I'm not at all a fan of 70s gore, splatter, slasher and onwards, there will be a good few titles I do like. Gruesome, sadistic and sicko is not really my thing. That said, I have enjoyed Rob Zombie's films, much of which is a retrospective of this period.
Nazi Zombies are always fun! I suppose it began with 'The Keep' (Tangerine Dream soundtrack) and there was 'Shock Waves' (Peter Cushing) before it exploded in the '90s and beyond. Yeah, 'Iron Sky/2'? Fun genre.
I very much enjoyed 'IT' and particularly the second part.
I did enjoy the John Carpenter films from the early 80's. In addition to The Fog, The Thing was great. As posted above, Michael Mann's The Keep is a cult classic...
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Agree about them all. The Keep is a fantastic film from what I remember, I need to revisit it though.
The 1980's 'VHS' era of horror film making seems to be the era I take the most pleasure in for a number of reasons.
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- #27
You are correct. The Exorcist was released in 1973, but wasn't officially released on video in the UK until around 1998. I recall that there were various allegations of "blasphemy" among other things, which may or may not have led to it being banned for so long. There was also a notorious "spider walk" scene that was cut from the original film, but I have never seen that particular scene. It would appear that the version released in 1998 did not include this scene.
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- #28
Thank you for your very informative post. I'll have to keep an eye out for the Ghost Stories boxset. I have a collection of MR James short stories among my books, so I am sure that it would appeal to me. TV adaptations of his stories do tend to be very well-made and are usually worth watching.
I have never seen The Exorcist 3, I am sorry to say. I haven't seen The Exorcist 2, either, but that seems to have predominantly very negative reviews. I've always avoided it, because of that. I don't watch films if there is a reasonably good chance that they will disappoint me.
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I'm pretty sure the exorcist wasn't banned on video. I remember when we were kids and the boom in videos and video rentals started, me and me mate got the exorcist from a rental shop and watched it. That will be around 1982.
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- #30
Have you seen "The Burning" or "Zombie Flesh Eaters"? These are two very notorious films that were on the Video Nasties list until the late 1990s. They were previously released on VHS heavily cut in the early 1990s and were then released on DVD, but were still heavily cut. I didn't see a complete, uncut version of these films until the mid Noughties, but by then my interest in them had waned a lot. I guess that I had moved on from those kinds of horror films by then. These days, my horror tastes veer more towards the classics, rather than the Video Nasties that I used to enjoy.
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- #31
That may have been before The Video Recordings Act, which came into force in the early to mid 1980s, IIRC. Before that, videos did not have to have an official BBFC age classification, and could therefore be released on video illegally, without being passed by the BBFC first. There were still a fair few "dodgy" videos without age ratings circulating in the early 1980s, so there is a chance that you may have seen one of those. There were plenty of video shops that were prepared to turn a blind eye to the law and rent videos to people who may often have been obviously too young to see them. I know, because there used to be such shops where I live, until the police closed them down, of course. These days, ALL video recordings, DVDs, Blu-Ray, cinema releases and even some videogames must carry a BBFC certificate. That, my friend, is the law, lol.
The Exorcist was unavailable (banned) on VHS in the UK until around 1998. Of that, I am more or less completely sure. Check out the BBFC website if you are still not convinced.