My Personal Top Ten Horror Films

I like horror a lot. It is frequently lumped in with fantasy and science fiction, so this is entirely natural, but I don't blog much about scary movies for two reasons. One, unless I am specifically enjoying them for how awful they are at a Bad Movie Night, I'm pretty picky. The second reason is that there are a lot of horror bloggers out there, and many of them do it better than I could ever hope to. (In particular, I recommend Wreckhouse Magazine, many awesome articles there.) I have my own taste in what I find scary, like anyone else, and these films are ones that got to me when I first saw them. I'm leaving out a few films that I personally love, but which didn't scare me (specifically, The Shining and Nightbreed) and a TON that others might call horror, but I'd classify under another genre (the Aliens series is science fiction, as far as I'm concerned.)

Counting down from 10 to 1 without further ado...

10. Suspiria (1977, Italian)

Okay, I'll admit, some people find this one dull, and most find the plot ridiculous at best, nonsensical at worst. For me, this is classic italian gore-splattered horror, with quality kill scenes. The filming of the individual scenes, the effects and use of color, light and music make the incoherent mess of a plot concerning witches at a dance academy entirely irrelevant. The mood created is disturbing and deeply unsettling, and even where the effects are subpar, the kills stuck with me.

9. Friday the Thirteenth, Part Two (1981)

The first of two sequels to get love on my list where I snub the original film, the sequel to Friday the Thirteenth is the first to have Jason Voorhees as the actual villain, as his mother is the killer in the first picture. He's missing his signature hockey mask in this one, preferring instead to hide his features under a sack with holes cut, and the disfigured being under that mask will forever be my preferred vision of the man behind the mask.

8. The Thing (1982)

Paranoia, extreme cold, an environment where something has gone horribly wrong, no one is coming to help you, and the creature could be any one of the people around you. John Carpenter touches a few of the triggers that get to me in this one, and the effects are spectacular, even if they almost killed several of the actors and burned down the set at least once in the filming. I actually think The Thing is at its scariest when we aren't looking at the monster, and don't know what (or who) it is at any given moment.

7. Hellraiser (1987)

Clive Barker has a problem. He writes great horror that, in general, doesn't translate well onto the screen. My love of Nightbreed doesn't excuse how far it falls short of the short story, and the less said about Lord of Illusions, the better (how you perfectly cast such a great story and screw up the script that bad is beyond me.) Hellraiser is the exception. This is Clive Barker's first movie as director, and he knocks it out of the park with demons, blood, a cursed puzzle box, and a twisted torturous sadomasochistic take on a tale of horror and revenge.

6. The Devil's Backbone (2001, Spanish)

A spanish ghost story from Guillermo del Toro, the story of an orphanage in the middle of the Spanish Civil War and a young boy who is plagued by an apparition of one of the boys who died there, saying many of the other children will die soon. Between the horrors of war, the menacing adults and their secrets and an unexploded bomb in the center of the school, this film drips with tension, and I actually like it as much or more than later del Toro films like Pan's Labyrinth.

5. Freaks (1932)

I'll just say this, Freaks is flat out great. A simple tale of revenge is made incredible by the supporting cast comprised entirely of actual circus freaks. The climax, with the Freaks closing in on the beautiful but treacherous trapeze artist who only marries the minute sideshow leader for his money, as they chant "One of us, one of us..." is still chilling today. Tod Browning cast the Barnum and Bailey troop members when actors of the day balked at sharing billing with "sideshow attractions" and the resulting film was considered so shocking it was banned by law in much of the United States and all of Australia.

4. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

As far as I'm concerned, this is the zombie movie. It is the first to address the perils of what to do once you are safe, as boredom and complancency set in once the survivors are holed up in a shopping mall. It most effectively also shows how dangerous other survivors can be, and is the least preachy of all of George Romero's zombie films. Though it has a bit to say about commercialism and the monstrous nature of man, it doesn't jam those things down your throat while you are trying to watch a horror movie.

3. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 3: The Dream Warriors (1987)

A controversial choice, I know, but I've always liked the third Freddy Kreuger movie better than the first, mainly because each of the kids who he kills are the best developed in this one. In the first attempt to solidify a coherent mythology for the series, each of the Dream Warriors realizes that Freddy can only kill them in their sleep, and that they can fight him with aspects of their own personality. Most of them lose, but it is one hell of a story along the way to the final showdown.

2. Halloween (1978)

Slasher films may be overdone, but Michael Myer's first appearance holds a high place on my list. From the creepy piano theme to the spray-painted mask of William Shatner's face, the escaped lunatic stalks his prey on the night he can move about when no one would find his costume odd. What makes this film is how subtle it is, and how it builds tension by showing the killer in the background, lurking... and he doesn't strike. Every time we think he'll make a move, he disappears, and the audience is left wondering when and how he'll kill.

1. The Exorcist (1973)

This movie has been parodied, analyzed and studied for years, and with good reason. This is the archetype for all other stories of demonic possession. Quick cuts to build unease, great performances from all the principal actors, creepy music and a story so scary that the Rev. Billy Graham claimed that the film's reels contained an actual demon, this is a classic without parallel. I highly recommend the DVD re-release with restored footage that corrects a few technical glitches and adds the cut "spider walk" sequence. If adjusted for inflation, this movie would be the highest grossing R-Rated film of all time.

Barely missing the cut is the only horror movie I own on DVD, The Ring, and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the first Saw film and the Amityville Horror. I'm not a huge fan of all the remakes going around, and I despise the campy, self-aware horror films of the 1990s and 2000s, and this list shows it. Happy Halloween!

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Review – The Wolfman (2010 Remake)

When I first saw trailers for the remake of the classic Lon Chaney Jr./Bela Lugosi monster movie, The Wolfman, I was excited. They changed the setting to Victorian Era England, which as a fan of Rippers I would hardly complain about, the casting had a long list of actors I like, Benecio del Toro, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving, Anthony Hopkins... even a cameo by Max von Sydow (though this got edited out and only appeared in the Director's Cut of the final film.) The more I read about it, the more excited I got. CGI would be used for transformation scenes, but whenever possible, traditional makeup and effects tricks would be used, and visually the original monster would be the inspiration for the new creature's appearance. They even went out of their way to specifically name and place even the bit parts from the original film, a detail only the most obsessive of us film geeks would even notice. This movie couldn't possibly be bad! Only... it was.

Not just bad, atrocious. How so much of the planning and concept of a film can be so right, and the execution be so horribly wrong baffles me. With all of the pieces they had in place, screwing this up so completely takes real talent. I can't fault the actors for what they did with the material they had to work with, aside from a few uneven moments in establishing a character with a consistent personality from del Toro and a little light scenery-chewing from Hopkins (which, let's face it, he'll do if given the chance,) the acting was good. Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving in particular gave great performances that were wasted here. The special effects, too, were well executed and looked good on screen (with an exception I'll get into later) and the environments were pitch-perfect. In many places clever details paying homage to earlier films were added, as extra “easter eggs” for those who caught them (or can surf IMDB.) That's all that was good about the film.

The number one issue is that the script and direction is laughably inconsistent, to the tune of it feeling like different teams worked on different scenes with no communication between each other. Here's where we start with the spoilers, you've been warned. From scene to scene, the locals go without any apparent cause from laughing at the idea of werewolves as utter stupidity to ready to kill del Toro's Lawrence Talbot for being one without any evidence and back to pish-poshing the idea again later. Apparently Emily Blunt's love interest character Gwen Conliffe originally got Talbot to return to the family estate by means of sending a letter to him. Later, they shot a scene where instead of a letter, she turns up in person, but later scenes refer to her letter not once, but twice. The script also can't agree on whether Talbot was in New York or London, telling us both at different intervals. This isn't “Oh, wow, that coffee cup moved 2 feet to the right, better report the goof on the internet” stuff... it is sloppy filmmaking.

Why are so many Victorian Horror films made so badly? Do bad directors just love top hats?

The plot twist that was shoehorned into the basic framework was predictable and hamfisted. Like all the worst scripts, it asks the audience to believe that many characters suddenly stop behaving the way they have for decades based on incredibly flimsy reasoning. When the reveal of the sudden betrayal finally happens, it isn't met with a gasp of surprise, but a sigh and a “but that doesn't make any sense!” Also, the entire role of the gypsies in the film is poorly handled, they speak the wrong language, act inappropriately for their culture at the time, and create the largest nonsensical plot hole in the story. The mysterious old gypsy woman from Central Casting knows that Talbot is a monster, knows he cannot be saved, her people beg her to just kill him and be done with it. She refuses, spouting some vague philosophy and dooms dozens of people to die for no reason, as she tells Gwen later how to kill him. Not that the audience ever understands why Gwen has to kill him instead of just letting a mob with silver bullets do the job, mind you.

Somehow, despite the fact that he is portrayed as honorable, professional and only wanting to stop the werewolf attacks, the audience isn't supposed to like Hugo Weaving's Inspector Abberline. The film tells us again and again that Talbot is cursed, that the horror will only end in his death, but we're shown scene after scene meant for us to root for the monster anyway. Weaving is even given a charming scene with the locals, one that serves to make his character likeable again, but by the end of the film, I couldn't honestly answer what the point of his character was at all. He is portrayed alternately as hero and villain, doesn't really end up doing anything of consequence, and his injuries at the end suggest that he will fall to the curse next, basically because Emily Blunt knocked his weapon away for reasons never explained in a crucial moment. Okay, so someone who “loves him” has to end the curse, even though the relationship established is shallow and unbelievable... but if someone else kills him then... what exactly? Either way, at the end of the film, the creature and Talbot are dead.

The creature looks way cooler in this promotional still than he ever does in action.

As for the creature itself, I applaud the idea of making the wolfman look like an updated version of Lon Chaney Jr.'s original monster. Problem is, in practice, the monster just looked kind of silly. Despite all the screaming, severed body parts, action footage and gallons of stage blood, this Wolfman is a varsity jacket away from looking like Teen Wolf. Not scary. Every time he roared or howled, I winced, because for all the noble intentions of paying homage to the classic, the wolfman looked... stupid. It is a real shame, because when we can barely see the monster, it looks kind of cool, but the entire last bit of the film has the creature posing, snarling and severing limbs in the center of the screen. I was a little embarrassed for the filmmakers by the end of it all, as it took itself too seriously to even get filed under “campy, but stupid fun.”

I can't really recommend this to anyone. The best scenes were shot in a vacuum, the plot makes no sense and the object and focus of the movie looks ridiculous. When it isn't being ludicrous, it is being boring instead, as there is no sense of pacing or flow throughout the film as a whole. Honestly, go back, watch the original with Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains and Bela Lugosi and try to pretend that they never wasted anyone's time or money with this worthless remake. You'll be happier.

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Rippers – A “Cyberpunk” Twist on Victorian Horror Adventuring for Savage Worlds

This coming weekend, I'm getting back to running one of my very favorite tabletop RPG campaigns. I've talked about Savage Worlds before, but in preparation for my review of the new edition of the core rules that released at Gen Con, I want to give one setting in particular the full treatment, rather than the mentions in passing it has warranted in previous articles. I've described Rippers many times as “Van Helsing meets the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, if either of those movies had been good.” It is a monster hunting and slaying take on Victorian Horror gaming, but with an emphasis on action and adventure over experiencing fear. The twist on the setting is the “Rippertech,” a sort of unholy science that implants parts of defeated monsters into heroes who need the extra “edge” to oppose the forces of evil. This mixture of weird science and supernatural power is at the center of the Rippers setting, and it lends a little dash of cyberpunk to what might otherwise be Victorian Horror by the numbers.

Lots of werewolves, vampires, and other classic movie monsters here to be fought and stripped for parts.

The setting holds that there is a gathering darkness, and that werewolves, vampires and Count Dracula himself are very real. Exposure to these beasts usually means death for the unwary, but the mysterious Dr. Jack found not only that the beasts had weaknesses, but that their power could be turned against them. The creation of potions, powders and implants called Rippertech was pioneered by Dr. Jack and some of the greatest minds of a generation including Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau and Dr. Henry Jekyll. An organization using Rippertech, blessed prayers, sorcery, mentalism and good old-fashioned weaponry to destroy the growing supernatural menace was founded with Dr. Jack and his good friend Abraham Van Helsing at its head. That is, until Dr. Jack went mad along with his best students, and they defected to the other side, organizing an army of monsters and depraved cultists into the Shadowy Cabal.

The Rippers is comprised of seven Factions, six major and one minor. The Rosicrucians practice Enochian sorcery and have turned from the study of Rippertech as they saw what it did to their founder – Dr. Jack “The Ripper.” The Brotherhood of St. George also eschews the technology, as a loose organization of religious figures around the world who trust in spiritual power. The Old Worlders are Led by Jonathan and Mina Harker, and they watch over central Europe, the traditional seats of power for Vampires and Werewolves. The Witch Hunters focus on tracking and destroying cultists and evil magicians and are led by the puritannical Serious Chapel. The Slayers are the faction that is most likely to use Rippertech, originally a society of Vampire Hunters led by Van Helsing. The Masked Crusaders are a group of costumed adventurers and gadgeteers, mostly American, led by The Yankee. Finally, there is the small group called Frazer's Fighters, who are based in Egypt, holding back the mummies and other terrors from the sands.

A typical Ripper hero, complete with strap-on Wolverine claws,
in case the Hugh Jackman/Van Helsing connection was lost on anyone.

One of the other unique things about this setting is the creation and maintenance of the player's Lodge, which is founded after a few sessions of play (at Seasoned Rank, for those who know the system.) A base of operations is selected and outfitted with various facilities and staff, and the monthly maintenance of this “home base” is financed through wealthy patrons, some of whom may be the play characters themselves. Each of the areas that can be improved has in-game benefits and many missions will be dedicated to staffing or securing funding for the local Lodge. The Lodge also comes into play with the Take Back the Night strategic system which handles what all the NPCs recruited to the cause are doing in the long-term struggle against the Cabal. NPCs may fight and die to hold back the darkness, or in their triumph, it may be defeated, so that the scope of the Lodge's responsibilies may be increased beyond the local level.

The book comes with a Plot Point campaign and a system for allowing the players to direct what happens next, whether they want to hunt for a monster for better Rippertech, recruit new members, or handle social obligations to keep the coffers full. Victorian morality and status are modeled in points that are easy to lose for being seen carrying weapons or being rude when in the view of “those who matter,” and hard to regain (you can marry well, or attempt to gain the notice of Royalty.) The small adventure tempates are designed to be slotted in at GM discretion, like many plot point campaigns, a little improvisational ability is needed to fully make use of the material and give up some of the control over what happens next to the players. The group will travel the world, from London to Egypt, through Prague and Germany to the United States and beyond. A campaign will cover years of great change, wars and revolutions and a World's Fair held in Chicago. Society engagements or border crossings can be just as fraught with danger as fangs and claws on a foggy night, as the main plot has the heroes tracking down their Organization's missing leader, Abraham Van Helsing.

Cover Art from the Rippers setting/campaign book.

There are full-length adventures and a companion sourcebook available on RPGNow and Drive-Thru RPG as PDFs, and I highly recommend the companion for rules on Gypsy Curse magic, a revised Take Back the Night system and the Frazer's Fighters rules at a minimum, plus lots of new rippertech, items, monsters and adventures to flesh out a campaign. My personal home group consists of a Scottish Lord, a female Tomb Raider/Egyptologist, a German Rippertech Surgeon, a blind French Novice (Catholic Nun-in-training,) A Gadgeteer Hero with Electrical powers based on his work with Nicola Tesla, and a mysterious Gypsy Fortune-teller. (Yes, this particular gaming group is an even split, player gender-wise.) I highly recommend GMs who are interested in this setting to make a long list of named NPCs, as you'll need them to fill in when you have to fall back on a random adventure generator to not make the results bland and generic, and the NPC Rippers who achieve triumph or glory while Taking Back the Night are more dramatic with personalities and names.

If you like the idea of the setting, but aren't really into the tabletop RPG thing, there is a Facebook game, and a setting book for using the Savage Worlds combat system as a Miniatures Wargame, though the RPG and the minis sourcebook have little crossover outside of shared history and a few characters who have statistics as hero units. Personally, I'm perfectly happy with Rippers as a setting for a home campaign. I am getting a lot of use out of my Ravenloft Masque of the Red Death Materials for rounding out the alternate history aspects, and got to work in elements of the book “Devil in the White City” for our Lodge's trip to Chicago, an inevitability considering that is where we're all from.  Saturday Morning, we're back at it.

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When the Stars Are Right – The Cthulhu Mythos

With the notable exception of Edgar Allan Poe, there is no other writer whose works influence the modern horror story more than the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. For those of a geeky persuasion, I'd argue that Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos is even more important than Poe's body of work. Concepts, if not specific names from the stories and books written in the 1920s are found in film, comics, games and other books, even those who hold no official connection to the mythos. I've written about the Lovecraft-inspired board game Arkham Horror before, in brief, but today I'd like to go into the bigger picture of the Cosmic Horror subgenre.

The man... er, thing Himself, Great Cthulhu.

Lovecraft himself grew up a sickly, highly intelligent and obstinate boy who loved the antique and obscure, feared insects and night terrors that haunted his dreams, and was vaguely contemptuous of anyone not of Anglo-Saxon descent. His life was characterized by poverty, limited social interaction with any outside of the (usually female) people he lived with, and he wrote mostly in obscurity during his lifetime. His publication of horror stories in pulp magazines of the time (most notable Weird Tales) starting with Dagon, in 1919. His stories began a friendly correspondence with other authors of his time, including Robert E. Howard (of Conan the Barbarian fame) August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith.

His friendship with Derleth, his tendency to “ghost write” tales for other writers while incorporating elements of his own pseudomythology into the works, and his openness concerning other writers using elements from his writing in their own works are largely responsible for his modern popularity. Elements of Lovecraft's stories appeared in the works of his contemporaries, Howard and Derleth in particular. The phrase “Cthulhu Mythos” was coined by August Derleth, who took up the mantle of writing stories in the fictional universe created with Lovecraft's ideas upon the author's death in 1937.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft.  1890-1937.

The Lovecraftian style of horror stories, also known as cosmic horror, are characterized by common themes, the primary of which is the utter insignificance of all of humanity, and the rejection of any belief in a benevolent deity. The intentional or accidental pursuit of Forbidden Knowledge in the course of science, art or even forensic pursuit of mysteries allow characters in Lovercraft's tales brief glimpses into terrible truths about evils vast and alien with death or insanity in short order a typical result. Gods in these stories are ancient beings usually ignorant of the human race with terrible powers best left unknown. Cthulhu himself is neither the most powerful of these entities, nor is he the theological center of the mythos, but the short story The Call of Cthulhu was notable in that it was the first tale where all elements now recognized as components of the style were used.

One of the most popular creations within Lovecraft's stories, the fictional Grimoire called The Necronomicon, has become so popular and entrenched in the world of horror fiction that there have been many who insist it is real. It was first referred to in the story “The Hound” in 1924, as the creation of the fictional “Mad Arab” Abdul al-Hazred, originally titled al Azif. Since inclusion in Lovecraft's stories and those of his contemporaries, the Necronomicon has appeared in many films, comics, games and other horror stories and novels. Several books bearing the title “Necronomicon” have been published by various authors over the years for sale in bookstores.

A Shoggoth, a creature made mostly of eyes and tentacles that has nothing to do with Japan.

The deities and alien races of the Mythos are many and varied, most stemming from a particular fear of the author, and given elemental associations/affinities later by August Derleth. Cthulhu himself, a great winged horror who lies dreaming in the sunken city of R'lyeh is worshipped by cultists, and will one day awaken “when the stars are right”. Nyarlathotep, a god of many names and faces, has had more contact and interference with the human race than any other deity in the mythos, at one point in history taking the form of an Egyptian Pharaoh. Yog-sothoth, Dagon, Shub-Niggurath, Azathoth and many other deities haunt both the waking world and the Dreamscape, where more than a few of Lovecraft's stories are set, with their dread influence. Elder and Alien races and creatures such as the Great Race of Yig, the Flying Polyps, Nightgaunts, Elder Things, Hounds of Tindalos and Shoggoths are more commonly physically encountered by humanity, usually with fatal consequences.

Games and gaming in particular have taken elements of Mythos stories to tell horror stories and act as background for horror games. Chaosium, Inc. produced the definitive Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG in 1981, and many editions later, it remains one of the most popular horror RPGs, with player-character “investigators” typically encountering mythos elements in the course of solving some sort of mystery in a 1920s setting. Video games have also embraced the Mythos in many, many horror titles, notably in the Alone in the Dark series of games, the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth game released for PC and consoles, and recently the popular indie horror title Amnesia: the Dark Descent.

The incredible cover of Call of Cthulhu, 6th ed. Also a song by Metallica.

I've personally done a lot of reading, research and work in the area of horror gaming, one of my greatest campaigns to date was a Call of Cthulhu game set in the back room of the hobby shop I'd managed at the time where the table was set up in the middle of 4 “walls” of black curtain to produce a theater “shadowbox” sort of effect. The light was a single bulb on a dimmer switch set to only allow enough light to read character sheets, and I was fortunate enough to have as a co-game master a former theater associate who sat behind the curtains controlling lighting, music and sound effects during sessions. These elements, combined with my pre-game speeches reminding players to fight the urge to crack out-of-character jokes to break the horror mood which is why we're really all playing, made for a very, very effective horror campaign where the group successfully completed the mega-scenario Masks of Nyarlathotep. Anyone else out there have any mythos-related experiences?

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Zombies, Were-sheep, The Devil and Bruce Campbell

This weekend, I made it out for a monthly tradition in my circle of friends, the “Bad Movie Night.” As a group, we turn up on a Saturday evening, usually each bringing some dish or other item for a kind of pot luck dinner, and we watch movies so terrible that they are entertaining.

Usually, horror and science fiction produce the “best” bad movies, but regardless of whether we bring in DVDs or have something we've found on Netflix streaming, there are a few guidelines for selection, and a couple vague guidelines for conduct collectively known as “The Rules.”

1. No Porn. This includes softcore “Skinimax” stuff. Some of the best films will have some nudity, but there needs to be something else going on.
2. The Movie Must Not Be Boring. There's a difference between “bad” and “boring”. If, as a group, we can't sit through something because nothing is going on, we change it.
3. Commenting on the Film is Encouraged, But Make Sure Anyone Who Wants To Can Hear the Dialogue. This is just a minor point of etiquette, to make sure being a wiseass doesn't replace watching the movie.
4. Don't Question It. We know characters will behave illogically, and there will be holes in the plot that you can drive a zombie-infested spaceship through, don't waste everyone's time by pointing these out.

There may, at one point, have been more rules, but these have been the main ones that have endured. This tradition has been going on for a long time now, and this is the 2^nd such event I've been a part of. I think a lot of us grew up watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, and developed a taste for the remarkably bad film, and commenting on the same.

There's something really cool about seeing a subpar script, terrible acting, bad editing and laughable special effects come together to make something that entertains a group of adults for a few hours. You wonder “what were they thinking when they made this?” Some of these, in theory, were actually made with the idea of making a profit on the project, and you question why anyone thought THAT would work.

The pictures throughout this post are from the best of the worst films we've encountered so far. Skeleton Key, and its sequel by John Johnson is camcorder, splatterhouse horror with senseless violence and nudity, toilet humor and a hilarious character in a bathtub. Most of the script was an outline, with all specific dialogue ad-libbed during filming, and it shows. Frog-g-g-g! is intentionally terrible, a throwback to 1970s horror with rubber monster suits, and was obviously made by and for fans of this genre. Black Sheep was made in New Zealand, the cinemaphotography and location scouting was top-notch, and it was poorly (or well-) spent on a film about... were-sheep.

Most of our other offerings are crazy overproduced and over-the-top foreign films, and almost anything starring Bruce Campbell. I'm currently searching for a copy of The Barbarians, with a pair of twin wrestlers in a horrid swords-n-sorcery epic, and doing research on some of the best bad Kung Fu out there, to break up our constant stream of zombies and spaceships.

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