PegStaff’s all-time horror movie favorites - and film guy’s gourmet picks for a horrifying Halloween

Mainstream and obscure, here's a prescription for movie-watching unease that's sure to please.

by John P. Meyer

This little drowned girl wants you to know how unhappy she is - before she scares you to death.

Fear is a funny thing. We run away from it in real life yet seek it out for our movie-viewing pleasure. (Most of us do, anyway, judging by the number of profitable film franchises that have spawned from creepshow seed.) It has been thus for as long as entertainment has been a concept, beginning with tales of ghosts and spirits told around the campfire.

Why is it that, both then and now, we choose to subject ourselves to make-believe frights? Is it, perhaps, because we know there to be things more horrible waiting for us in real life - both then and now - than could be imagined by the tellers of tall supernatural tales - meaning that our escape from grim reality into imagined nightmare provides for pleasant diversion?

The Tingler strikes a gossamer pose

Yep, that's it all right.

With this in mind, and with Halloween approaching faster than this goofy flying metal ball with deadly spikes coming out of it (from Phantasm, one of our staff favorite picks), I herewith post the selections chosen by Pegasus News employees as their all-time favorite horror movies. I think you'll be shocked into stupefaction (or at least dismemberment) at the breadth and scope of the selections - except, that is, for Poltergeist and The Shining, both of which made the lists of three different Pegnews staffers. (Scream howled its way onto two staffers' lists, as did Ringu.)

* We respectfully invite you, gentle readers, to respond with comments regarding your own favorite Halloween horror film (or two, or three).

Here's the complete list of staff picks, in no particular order after the first several (which indicate multiple list status) and with comments where provided:

Poltergeist - comment from Alex: "Girl setting spirits loose through a TV set? Boy getting attacked and nearly eaten by a tree? I'm shuddering just thinking about this movie. Damn you, Steven Spielberg -- even when you're not directing (or did you?), you're good."

The Shining - Catherine says "it's tops in my book."

Scream - "for its sense of humor and irony," says Catherine.

Ringu - see my comments, below.

Bug

When that Host critter is after your ass, you put it in gear - and critter take the hindmost.

Nightmare Before Christmas

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 Donald Sutherland version, per Laura E.)

Evil Dead II

Lost Highway

The Exorcist - "Anyone who says they're not freaked out by a young girl spewing obscenities and violating herself with a crucifix is either lying or has seen Saw too may times," says Alex.

E.T.: The Extraterrestrial - by way of explanation, Chad says he was an impressionable youngster when he saw it. (And it apparently scared the Hell out of him.)

Signs

Vertigo

Suspiria

Freaks

Fiend without a face - or a skull, or legs or arms or... you get the idea.

The Birds

The Wiz and Yellow Submarine, Todd's choices, come with the explanation that he was young and impressionable - not unlike Chad.

Erin chose Critters and offered the most extensive commentary of any of our respondents, to wit: "There are four of them, and while I don't think I have seen them all, far and away the first scene of the first movie (I believe) involves one of the critters jumping out of a toilet. I was scared to use the bathroom for weeks after that. And there is another scene I think in a future movie where the critters all join together and make this huge critter-ball and they roll down a hill and run over people and when they do in one fell swoop (roll) they completely devour the body, leaving only an intact skeleton left behind. Frightening. I was like 6 or 7." (Ed. note: there's that youthful impressionability again...)

The Frighteners

The Ring

Saw

The Hills Have Eyes (2006 version)

The Creeper hangs out

House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects - because, as Brett says, "nothing is creepier than 'real' people, though they could have easily chopped out the goofball sci-fi stuff with Dr Satan in my opinion."

Phantasm

Jaws

Psycho

The Godfather made Catherine's top three éven though, as she says, “(it) isn't a Halloween movie, it is (nevertheless) a great - and scary - movie.”

Guest picker John Z. Gray (ringmaster of Fearfest) - and thus, arguably, something of an expert - chose Halloween, Friday the 13th 4: The Final Chapter and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. More about John (and Fearfest 2) in days to come.

What’s that, corpse-breath? You want to know what the film guy selected as his Halloween horror show faves? No problem. I’ve organized my picks under the following categories:

Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon research rapid aging. (HINT: only one of them actually needs to worry about it.)

THANKS, GUILLERMO!: The Devil’s Backbone and Cronos are two uniquely twisted views of terror, the first including an unexploded bomb and the scariest ghost I’ve ever seen and the second involving a diabolical flesh-piercing, eternal life-bestowing timepiece. With just one little catch...

BEST “KIDS DROWNED IN WELLS AND TURNED TO VENGEFUL GHOST” MOVIES: Ringu (the Japanese original) and The Changeling (1980), the latter of which features a ghastly reanimated wheelchair. And George C. Scott.

OUTSTANDING BIG GREEN MONSTER MOVIES: Gwoemul (The Host) and Gojira (Godzilla) - Joon-ho Bong’s creepily convincing and utterly dark take on the rampaging beast from under the sea is the best thing since the original big green beastie (who originally appeared in B&W), Godzilla himself - which scared the Hell out of this reviewer when he was - you guessed it - an impressionable youth. (I first “saw” Godzilla from behind the family TV set, where I was safe from catching a glimpse of the dreaded beast, but from whence I could hear the booming thunder of its footsteps and the ominous score that accompanied the terrible lizard’s destructive progress through downtown Tokyo).

Daughters of Darkness - both of them blondes

BEST “BODY PARTS TAKE ON A LIFE OF THEIR OWN AND ATTACK INTACT HUMANS” MOVIES: This may be my favorite category because of the camp quotient built into the genre. Representing here are two from the late ‘50’s: the unbelievably ambitious (from a marketing/PR point of view) The Tingler, and the wacky yet subconsciously disturbing Fiend Without a Face. In The Tingler, Vincent Price maintains a firm command of in-earnest mad scientist line delivery while director William Castle instructs his goofy gaffer minions in the wired manipulation of a gum rubber yard-long malevolent centipede extracted from the body of a deaf-mute who has been scared to death (and thus birthed the creature - which can only be whipped back into its microscopic condition through the screaming of its host). Couple this with the movie theater scene (where The Tingler gets loose in a darkened auditorium and everyone is instructed to “scream for your life!”), and you’ll see why this one is essential viewing.

The setup for Fiend Without a Face: over-achieving government research scientist combines nuclear radiation with telekinesis (and probably some red-dyed maple syrup) to unleash an army of living brains (and stems!), which fly around the room and use their trailing vertebral columns to strangle unarmed civilians. Which provides a great excuse for the military (and armed civilians) to deploy their .45 autos and .30 M1 carbines in the service of messy brain execution. This could have been a great video game - if video games had been possible in those days.

MOST ORIGINAL AND TERRIFYING SLASHER-THEMED HORROR SERIES OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM: Jeepers Creepers (2001) and Jeepers Creepers II (2003), which introduced us to a parts-harvesting 23-year cycle exotic zoological entity known as “The Creeper.” Offering both a fresh (and horrifying) take on the bogeyman super villain and an inarguable excuse for outraged, desperate and hormonal teenagers to take up arms in an effort to a) defend their soon-to-be-harvested body parts and b) exact glorious sanctimonious revenge against the evil non-human entity, this two-movie set is highlighted by one of the best anthropomorphic monster-critter portrayals in memory, as Jonathan Breck dons tons of makeup and prostheses to take on his grisly alien identity. (Talk about your scarecrows...)

Looks like Drac's got more on his mind than blood - I'm just sayin'

SEXED-UP FEMALE VAMPIRE MOVIES: Daughters of Darkness and The Hunger, both of which play heavily on the theme of polymorphous pan-sexuality that seems so well suited to vampire narratives. In the latter film, naive (in the sense of not believing in vampires) Susan Sarandon falls under the seductive spell of übervamp Catherine Deneuve, with a rapidly-desiccating David Bowie suffering in the wings. Daughters... takes a more decadent Eurotrash look at similar obsessive themes.

Honorable mention to Queen of the Damned - man oh man, Aaliyah might have been something big in Hollywood judging by her magnetic screen presence in this one.

And finally (drum roll, please)...

BEST HALLOWEEN HORROR MOVIE EVER (BOTH NOW AND EVER SHALL BE): Horror of Dracula (1958), with Christopher Lee inventing the genre of sophisticated-yet-menacingly-voracious vampire, exuding fleshly lust in the guise of bloodlust, while the saintly Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) employs the power of the Risen Christ to end the monster's (and thus sexuality's) evil reign by forcing him (it) into the light of day.

Van Helsing employs the ol' crossed candlesticks trick. (Nobody does it better.)

The final scene - where Van Helsing saves himself from Dracula's perverse embrace by grabbing two rococo candelabra and holding them up to form a cross - then leaping imp-like onto a sideboard to pull down a heavy curtain, thus beaming the sun's glorious rays onto the broiling vampire - is one of the most dramatic and well-staged climaxes in all of cinema. This action is buoyed along on the crest of composer James Bernard's relentless staccato scoring, which supports the build-up of tension.

CONTEST ALERT!!! - the first canny reader to identify, by comment, the connecting thread that ties three of the staff favorite film titles together wins a FREE DVD COPY of The Tingler, which includes some tasty extras documenting William Castle's goofy marketing campaign for the film. Fine print: the winning respondent is responsible for picking up the DVD from PegNews World Headquarters, and of course employees of Pegasus News are SO not eligible.