Someone on a msg board asked me today to name a horror film I liked from the past 10 years. I was stumped. INSIDE and HIGH TENSION (if you can get over the unnecessary ending -- I guess it helps to understand the whole movie is from one character's point of view, therefore the implausibility makes sense) and some Japanese "sorta-horror" stuff (SUICIDE CLUB, VERSUS, and so on) were all great, but there wasn't really any cool giallo films, and as far as American films go......... Henenlotter's BAD BIOLOGY is great, and that's pretty much
it. I mean, I can list plenty of films that entertained me mainly because of their absolute stupidity -- MULVA, POT ZOMBIES, both versions of THE WORST HORROR MOVIE EVER MADE -- but if we're talking "serious" horror, most attempts were just lame (AUGUST UNDERGROUND and MURDER SET PIECES come to mind as lame as hell, especially when SCRAPBOOK came out way before them and did pretty much the same thing). Seriously -- where's the PREMUTOS? Where's the EVIL DEAD 2? Where's the DEAD ALIVE? Where's the SLIME CITY, BODY MELT, STREET TRASH, MANIAC, BRAIN DAMAGE, CHRISTMAS EVIL, etc? The horror film is sad. I mean, when I was 13, all I bought
were horror movies, I wouldn't even deal with anything else, I had 1200 horror VHS's before I got rid of my collection. And thinking about it now, BLOOD FREAK, BLOOD FEAST, GORE GORE GIRLS, EVIL WITHIN: BABY BLOOD, DON'T OPEN TILL XMAS, MANIAC COP 2, THE STUFF... all that shit was priceless, was almost
genius compared to the crap coming out nowadays. I mean, Japan has ALWAYS been the greatest country in the world for cinema, and I'm going to go ahead and say that if you consider certain Tsukamoto films as horror at all, then, yeah, VITAL and GEMINI (and a film he starred in but didn't direct called MAREBITO) were a few of the only "horror" films to do it for me. Also, can't forget STRANGE CIRCUS... WILD ZERO.... etc. They took chances... and succeeded wildly and brilliantly. Strangely, I actually liked Argento's THIRD MOTHER: MOTHER OF TEARS, despite thinking Argento overall has made a lot of stinky ass turds. But it was probably his best film since STENDHAL SYNDROME. Anyway, it all goes into what your definition of "horror" is, obviously the film REFLECTIONS OF EVIL was by far the greatest film of the 00's, I'm going to go ahead and say it's in the top 20 films of all time...
What a masterpiece. ESPECIALLY if you can get your hands on the 4 hour version. But at the same time, the "horror" aspects -- while truely horrifying -- are merely a facade, for the deeper social issues covered..
It's like.. man, where are the groundbreaking classics like GORE GORE GIRLS?
Where's our TORSO?!
....where are the groundbreaking, genius horror films of old?
So, I thought long and hard and while I concluded there'll never be anything that comes close to something like DEAD ALIVE, I think the best PURE horror film of the last 11 years is SUBCONSCIOUS CRUELTY...
The best way to describe it is Jodorowsky making a gore film, with Lynch occasionally peaking in to make suggestions. It's truely original, mindbogglingly well made, and genuinely disturbing. It's an honest-to-god great film.
Aside from that, it all just goes into what oyu consider "horror" I guess, RUBBER'S LOVER and PINNOCHIO 964 are masterpieces, though they are more cyberpunk, a genre perfected by TOKYO FIST, TETSUO II, some of Ishii's films, and DEATH POWDER....
Anyway, if you manage to see a good horror film in the 00's,
cherish it. It's truely a dying breed. As much as I have enjoyed Troma films like Combat Shock and Unspeakable, as much as I totally love and adore Something Weird, and countless other DVD companies -- they're sorta the problem. Horror films seem to all be schlocky and self-referential, without doing anything new. ,A bunch of people patting themselves on the back for making obscure references to horror films that are way better... all for the sake of them and thier friends to have a good laugh...
you just simply can't make a good horror film and expect it to find an audience. Helll, honest-to-god classics like NIGHTMARE IN A DAMAGED BRAIN and DEATH LAID AN EGG don't even
have U.S. distribution, while films like MESSIAH OF EVIL don't get bought once they ARE put out.
There is a creepy ambience to even the smaller, less-good (I don't want to say "bad") films like SUPERSTITION, that you won't find nowadays. Look at a great film like ROCK N ROLL NIGHTMARE; it's kinda crappy and hilariously bad, yeah (I still contend the final 10 minutes are the funniest 10 minutes ever put on film, EVER), but it still had a real ATMOSPHERE to it, one that can't be perfected; the recent sequel, INTERCESSOR, is the worst film I've seen in my entire life.
As a genre, I guess, horror must seem pretty limited to the people interested in making it, or it has to have a certain angle/hook to get people interested, to get produced or whatever... but I still think there are tons of brilliant things you can do with horror... like at Cronenberg. Very few of his films are traditionally "Horror" but even the films that ARE a bit more "horror", like VIDEODROME, really succeeded with a concept that had never been done before -- and will probably only be done again when they remake it as YOUTUBEDROME.
I just miss interesting horror films. The 300 or so giallos I currently have will just have to keep me company until the latest remake/rehash/homage comes out. Oh well.
fOR THOSE wondering, my top 10 horror films are:
1. MANIAC (1980)
2. Dead Alive
3. Evil DEad II
4. THE GATES OF HELL/CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD
5. Tenebre
6. VIDEODROME
7. TORSO
8. NIGHTMARE in a DAMAGED BRAIN
9. All the Colors of the Dark
10. PREMUTOS
Of course, there are films I'd love to incldue, like POSSESSION (1981) but I tired to limit to films that 99% of people would consider "horror". Probably a pretty cliche list, note I tried to keep it one-director-per-film also (otherwise, Argento would probably make another appearance)...
Man, I just think of little films like the grocery-store slasher INTRUDER, or Bava's simple-but-effective BAY OF BLOOD (which was later completely ripped off for FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3)... probably shot on a shoestring in a week but man, they were EFFECTIVE. They worked!
Anyway, enough ranting from this old fogey, carry on.