The last fortnight has been simultaneously depressing, boring and un-adventurous. It is surprising to think that when a director has the power to frighten an audience, how uninterested the majority go about it. I feel this is the case with most films, particularly horror. The majority of horrors which I watched didn’t seem to exploit the fact that I am a human, that I have fears, that I have weaknesses. Some merely came across as an exercise in killing, and others managed to make murder and rape as disturbing as a five year old, pink-dress-wearing-pig-tailed girl holding a placard saying ‘Boo’. Good horror is about style not content. Getting a serial killer to murder someone isn’t necessarily scary, but rather: the context, the atmosphere and the way the scene is constructed.
To contrast this, some of the films I viewed this fortnight were quite memorable. The majority of these were the camp B-movies ones. The horror-comedies, or just the comedies which had a grizzly subtext. I think I might re-watch Teeth and The Terror. I’ve also come to the conclusion that Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth is one of the greatest ‘so bad it’s good’ films ever made.
Frontiers is a landmark of extreme-political cinema and I desperately wish I was in the correct mood for watching it during viewing; I also wish there were more films like it.
Now what? Well, now I’ve listed all 18 films from worst to best. Oh, and The Terror is below Detention even though The Terror got 0.5 stars higher in my mini-review of it. I think I was too generous when I wrote it.
ANYWAY. Enough of the rambling. Here goes…
18. Bloodlust
17. Detention
16. The Blood on Satan’s Claw
15. The Blood of Fu Manchu
14. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
13. 99 Women
12. The Final
11. Red Mist (aka. ‘Freakdog’)
10. Scream 2
9. The House on Haunted Hill
8. Night of the Living Dead
7. Ju-on: The Grudge
6. The Beyond
5. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
4. The Terror
3. Bloodbath at the House of Death
2. Teeth
1. Frontiers
Star Reviews 