25 Favourite Horror Movies: Introduction

Ok, so, a simple concept here. I thought it might be a good idea to devote December posting here to some kind of end-of-year countdown, like I do for ‘records of the year’ over on Stereo Sanctity. The obvious problem is though: whilst I keep in touch with new music pretty well, I barely ever watch any new films or read any new books these days. To give you some idea, I’ve only been to the cinema twice this year to see new releases (not counting the films I saw at Frightfest), and I only liked one of those. Not much of a list.

One list I DID make recently though was my twenty favourite horror movies, for Final Girl’s epic October countdown, and that got me thinking: usually on this blog, I write about films I’ve watched recently that made an impression on me for whatever reason, but I've rarely ever written about my actual *favourite* films – the ones I love and keep going back to, that have helped define my outlook on cinema and life and so forth.

Trying to write an all-in list of My Favourite Films and trying to find something cogent to say about each of them would be a pretty daunting task (so many eras, so many countries, so many genres, so many weird fuzzy memories of my own personal history..), but my Top 20 Horror Movies? Yeah, that I can deal with! That sounds like fun, and, as mentioned, I’ve already written the list, even. Then maybe I can do a Top 20 of something different next year, and so on. Sounds like a plan!

Actually it’s turned out to be a Top 25, simply because there were a few films milling about just below top 20 that I really didn’t want to leave out. I would have made it 27, but to be honest with you it’s a while since I watched either “Rabid” (David Cronenberg, 1978) at 26 or “The Beyond” (Lucio Fulci, 1982) at 27, and I can’t think of much to say about them at this distance other than that I thought they were really great, so 25 it is.

A couple of quick ground rules before we begin:

#1: This is not a list of the BEST horror films ever made, by any stretch of the imagination. This is a list of my FAVOURITE ones, that strike a chord with me and that I love watching. Many of my choices are pretty uncontroversial I’m afraid, but at the same time I also often love films that are ludicrous, goofy and badly made, particularly when it comes to horror, a genre I feel often works best when it seems to have blurted straight from the mind of a crazy person. So, er, deal with it.

#2: I’ve strictly limited my choices to ONE FILM PER DIRECTOR, simply because a list clogged up with multiple Bavas, Rollins, Romeros, Cormans etc. would make for pretty dull and repetitive reading. In some cases I’ll be taking one film as being kinda representative of the director’s wider work – you guys’ll know when to call it, I’m sure.

#3: Definition of horror, blah blah blah: in general, I’m just working instinctively, going on what I think of as being ‘horror movies’. If I doubt, I tend to just think about the circumstances of the film’s production, and whether or not the people concerned were thinking “we’re making a horror movie” at the time. For instance: I’m a huge fan of David Lynch, and indeed many of his films are more genuinely horrific than anything on this list. But he’s not on it, simply because a)I’ve never thought of his work as being horror, and b)I don’t believe he has ever approached a film thinking “I’m gonna make a horror movie”. A bit vague, but hopefully you get what I mean.

#4: I’ll be trying to post every day, or at least every few days, through the rest of December. We’ll see how that goes. No guarantees. Obviously these will just be relatively short “I love this movie because…” posts rather than full reviews. Hope that’s ok.

#5: A quick honour roll of some swell flicks that didn’t quite make the cut: “Daughters of Darkness” (only saw it this weekend, so haven’t really had time to process, but wow), “The Haunting”, “The House With Laughing Windows”, “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies?!?”, “Evil Dead II”, “A Bucket of Blood” (one of my all-time faves, but nixed in accordance with rule #2), “Horror Express”, “Santa Sangre”, “Horror of Beach Party” (man, I’ve gotta do a review of that one sometime) and “Simon: King of the Witches”. Check ‘em out, if you haven’t already.

Right, that’s that. Everybody ready for a month of raving, unfettered enthusiasm? Tomorrow we set sail!