Best Horror Movie Ever

[Malechi]

a 1970's Australian horror movie by the name of "The Long Weekend"...  A couple go "up the coast" for a holiday away from the big city and are terrorised by nature at every turn.  The haunting cries of a dying Dugong (manitee) that eventually crawls its way up the beach silently .....disappearing campers close by and a haunting beach landscape, the insanity of an urbane man in the bush with nature against him... unreal!

freaky..

I'll confer on the props to Dark Water... also The Ring (all versions), The Eye...checking out The Grudge this weekend (another uber scarey japanese movie)...

Jason K...

[jrs]

Dav,
The hopping vampires could be one of the Chinese Ghost Story movies.  

Walt,
I can't believe someone else has seen The Other.  Here I was thinking I imagined it.  Seriously creeped me out as a kid.  

Uhm. Horror movies. I'm on a Dario Argento kick at the moment.  

One of my all time favorite horror movie is The Haunting.  That's the 1963 version; the 1999 remake is a huge waste of time.

Julie

[Marhault]

the remake of House on Haunted Hill scared the shit out of me.  At lease, until they "let the darkness out" then it went to hell.

I'll agree with Seth on Event Horizon.  It's one of the scariest things I've ever seen.

Also, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the first two versions), Night of the Living Dead (original) and In the Mouth of Madness.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Dark Water Scared the fuck out of me when I watched it.  For others, though, it was just a "meh".  But man, especially the creepy last-last-last sequence... I'm not comfortable with that stuff.

Ju-on (The Grudge), though, fucked my shit up so bad that I was afraid of the dark for about 2-3 days. It's not very 'logical', but it's got atmosphere and terror in spades. Actual, its lack of logic is probably scary: If ghosts were logical or understandable, they wouldn't be scary, would they?

Audition Has the most absolute worst displays of human cruelty that I've ever seen.  Horror of Horrors.  Yech.  But good.  Just a little slow at times.

I just realized that the above are all Japanese movies.  Even though I'm a total whore for Japanese culture and language, I really don't think much of Japan's cinema at all.  But when it comes to horror, J-Cinema hits more nerves than other flicks.

Oh, interestingly enough, the above Dark Water and Ju-On are being remade for US release, like the Ring (Ju-On was bought by Sam Raimi).

Aside from the above, my favorite outside-Japn horror flick would be Hellraiser 2.  The story is still awesome by today's standards, but the effects are pretty cheesy by our standards, so it takes away from some of the effect.  The calm, cool, elusive and captivating Hell of Hellraiser 2 really struck a nerve.

Here's a guide to bunches of Asian horror flicks:
http://www.mandiapple.com/snowblood/index2.htm

Oh, that reminds me, I'm selling a bunch of Japanese and Asian horror DVDs really cheap. I won't go into a big spiel here, but if you're interested PM me and we can work out the details. Most are all-region.  I ship overseas:
The Eye * Ju-On (movie) * Ju-on (TV parts 1 + 2) * Chaos * Audition * Onmyoji * Dark Water * Fudoh * Red Dragon * Charisma * The Guard From Hell * Kourei/The Seance * Kairo/Circuit Pulse * Serpent's Path and Eyes of the Spider

[taalyn]

Horror movies - I'm not a snob, but I'm definitely jaded.

Blair Retch Project - nuff said. Stupidest movie I ever saw. Not scary (I would be so jazzed to find cool stick figures, but then, when I go to haunted houses, I'm all "Ooh! I want one of those!"), and the crappy filmography made me, a sailor, sea sick.

The Omen, Exorcist, etc...booooring.

My fave: Ginger Snaps. Not the best production values, but the twist on typical teenage horror romps is great. There's actually some social criticism in it, and it brings up issues of sexual awakening in a very different way.

Other faves: Reanimator is a classic. Shrunken Heads and Skeeter (Full Moon Ent rocks!). Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. The Ninth Gate. And the only horror movie to ever give me the creepies so I couldn't sleep....Salem's Lot.

[lumpley]

I'm no good at "best ever," but May is my current favorite.  I'm a little bit in love with that movie.

-Vincent

[Christopher Weeks]

The first thing I thought of when I saw the thread name was Silence of the Lambs.  But I saw it as an adult and was never scared.  The movies that really fucked me up as a kid were The Omen and The Godsend.  I haven't gone back to see them since, so I don't even know if they're scary, but they effected me at the time.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

I agree with all the people on The Omen.

It's those fucking Rotweilers, no? Damn, but those are the scariest things on Earth. I don't even want to know how they got the things to behave like that for the scene. I mean, the physical danger is one thing, but those animals were acting evil. That's just unnatural.

Mike

[orbsmatt]

Star Wars II - The Attack of the Clones.  Scared the bejeebers out of me.

*looks around at the odd stares*

What?

[quozl]

Star Wars II - The Attack of the Clones.  Scared the bejeebers out of me.

I wasn't really scared but I was definitely horrified.

[hix]

My creeping and growing sense of dread as Matrix Reloaded unfolded is all I can compare Clones too.

Steve.

[JamesSterrett]

Dunno if it qualifies as horror, but the British miniseries "Ultraviolet" is the best vampire film/show I've seen....  puts a cop-show/John Le Carre spy novel spin on the genre.  It can be hard to find, though.

[KingstonC]

"Funny Games"

I don't know the director. It's german, and it's a brutal take on the "Home invaded by madmen" genre of thriller. It's very honest about our desire as a film audience to see bad things happen to good people, and then have bad people punished for doing the things that we, as an audience, want them to do. It's a little too ironic and self referencial at the end, though.

[clehrich]

Audition was sick, sick, sick.  Really very difficult to watch.  Urgh...  But not bad, though.

Blair Witch Project I enjoyed, despite the annoying camera-bounce thing, which got old after about 10 minutes.  And that last sequence really was very scary, at least to me.

The Exorcist was excellent, but I don't like the retooled re-release, with the cheesy special-effects face popping up.  Really screwed it up.  The book is better, anyway, but the film was very good.

Angel Heart I still find very disturbing and creepy, and the first time I saw it I didn't know what it was about.  I thought it was a straight noir thriller.  Boy did the end freak me out!  Kind of the way people were supposed to see 6th Sense, except that David Shitterman decided to blow the punchline for me -- last time I watched his show.  (That'll learn him!)

For those of you who haven't seen it, and no, it's not particularly good, you really need to watch The Dunwich Horror.  Directed by Roger Corman, the King of the Drive-In; starring Sandra Dee and Dean Stockwell [no, really].  It's cheesy, it's silly, it's Corman, yeah yeah.  But until the last fifteen minutes or so, it's actually not half bad in a Hammer Horror sort of way.  And if you know who Dean Stockwell was in those days (i.e. a former child star) and you know who Sandra Dee was (competitor to Doris Day), the whole thing becomes seriously creepy.

And speaking of Dean Stockwell, what about Blue Velvet?  Mmm.  And stop looking at me that way.  Don't look at me!  Don't fucking look at me!  

[clehrich]

Oh, BTW, has anyone seen The Happiness of the Katakuri Family?  The world's two funniest discovering-the-horribly-dead-body scenes.  Plus a nice dead-people-rise-from-the-grave-and-sing-for-no-reason scene.

Very weird, very Japanese, very funny.  Joe Bob says check it out.