Research

Dreamscape 

When it comes to dreams, I know very little. I don’t remember mine or I just don’t dream. This means I have to get all my information from secondary sources and have no first-hand experience. They’ve always interested me due to the fact I’m missing out. Are they as interesting as they seem or are they really just useless thoughts from the subconscious?  

The word Dreamscape is a combination of the words Dream and landscape and it refers to a fantasy world that could only appear from a dream. Something akin to Wonderland in Alice in Wonderland. A lot of movies and books and so on have been based on the subject of dreams such as Inception, Paprika and Dreams. There are also movies that cover the darker side of dreams such as the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” series. Dreams are used in a lot of movies to show what’s going on in the head of the character and how they’re feeling at that second. It’s used a lot in the horror genre for “Fake outs” meaning false scares which don’t actually impact the story in anyway. They’re just used as a cheap way to get the audience riled up. They can also be used for foreshadowing, predicting events to come in the movie or hinting at a certain character’s fate. 

It can also have another meaning; A characters desire. For the villain this could mean killing the protagonist, wealth or world domination etc. For the main character in a romantic comedy it could be love, the perfect partner or something of the sort. It depends on the character. 

Lucid Dreaming

A Lucid Dream is a dream in which people are aware of the fact they are dreaming. This gives them the opportunity to take control of the dream. There are a few different ways this can happen, one being the person realising they are in a dream or when a person immediately lapses into a dream with no apparent lapse in consciousness. In the movie Inception (2010) it was a major plot device and showed people changing the entire landscapes of the dream world. I remember a particular scene in which Ellen Page and Leonardo DiCaprio are first in a dream together. They are sat at a café having a coffee and all seems normal. DiCaprio points out to an unaware Page that they are infact in a dream causing her to doubt him. He then asks how they got to the café. She then realises than she doesn’t know. I found this scene to be really interesting as it shows that logic doesn’t really exist in dreams and that literally anything is possible.

I also find it interesting that dreams seem to have figured out a way to combat Lucid Dreaming in the form of False Awakenings. This when people dream they have woken up but in fact haven’t, causing them to go back to a normal dream. Yet again in Inception this is used by the characters as they purposely put themselves into multiple layers of dreams with a total of 4 dreams occurring in one at a single point in the movie. 

Nightmares

Nightmares are dreams that are unpleasant to be in. They torment the dreamer and can cause them to lose sleep among other things. There are different causes to the nightmares, one being eating before going to sleep. It triggers to brains metabolism and causes an increase in activity. Other causes can be stress, anxiety or some forms of drugs. In some cases this has become a disorder in which the person constantly suffers from a series of Nightmares. These nightmares usually involve the person being put into dangerous situations. 

Sleep Paralysis 

Sleep Paralysis is when a person is either waking up or is just about to fall asleep suddenly finds them self-unable to move.  It can also include hallucinations in which there is another person in the room. A theory about why it happens is that the person is still partially in REM sleep, the part of sleep someone must be into experience dreams. It would mean their body is asleep while their mind is awake. 

The Sandman

The whole concept of this series is dreams and how they can affect people. It centres on the character of “Dream” or Morpheus as he rebuilds The Dreaming (the dimension where dreams happen) back up to its former glory and the people affected by it. At 75 issues it’s not a long series but it’s truly an epic one.

It started off as a horror series before moving into the dark fantasy genre. Neil Gaiman (the author) proposed to do a revival of the old DC series from the 1970’s The Sandman. It took a while before he was able to pitch it to the DC higher up’s but the pitch was a success under one condition. He had to create a new Sandman.

The new Sandman                                                                       The Original Sandman

 

The series is widely considered to be one of the best comic series out there and along with Maus, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen was one of the first Graphic Novels to appear on the New York Times best sellers list. The series’ combination of strange and brilliant characters, impressive scenery and art, amazing story telling and integration with other DC character caused it to become a fan favourite. It features appearances from various famous DC and Vertigo(Dc’s label for mature titles) characters such as John Constantine, Batman, Martian Manhunter and even William Shakespeare(He appeared in around 4 stories).

I think that the Sandman’s strongest point was its characters and its storytelling. Unlike most comics of the time which treated the readers like idiots, explaining every tiny little plot detail to them so they would definitely understand it The Sandman allowed people to figure it out for themselves. Some issues had a very abstract way of telling the story which went perfectly with the various dreams shown throughout it. Every character in the series is distinct, with none being extremely similar to another. Each one had their own personality no matter how minor. In a single issue we are introduced to several people in a café and witness it turn into a huge blood bath (Due to a villain stealing one of The Sandman’s tools). In most series each of the characters would all be dull and wouldn’t get much of a personality yet in this series it feels like each of them could have their own story written about them. My personal favourite character of the series is Death. Instead of being your average grim reaper kind of figure or an evil character causing Death, she’s instead a very kind and entertaining girl who shows the people she takes the upmost kindness. The character says at one point “Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.”  She doesn’t enjoy her job, but she has to do it. 

Horror Movies

The Silent Era

In 1896 what’s considered to be the first horror movie was released, The Haunted Castle. It told the story of a meeting with the devil and various other phantoms. Despite being credited as the first horror movie it was instead meant to evoke wonder and amusement from audiences. Later in 1910 the first film version of Frankenstein was released by Thomas Edison’s company. It was considered a lost film for years until a collector purchased a print in the 1950’s, unaware as to what it was. He eventually realised what he actually had and it was reveal to the public in the mid 70’s. It was the first time one of the classic horror monsters appeared in a movie. In 1910 The Cabinet of Dr Cagliari was released. As a German Expressionist movie, the movie is known for its strange settings in which everything is distorted to strange angles with shadows painted across them. It takes place through the perspective of a man in a mental asylum, this being the reason for the distortion.  It’s sometimes described as being dream like.

 

In 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released starring Lon Chaney Sr. It was based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name and was Universal’s most successful silent movie. This movie and the later 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera are made great by one thing. Lon Chaney’s performance. He also did the make up for the characters and yet under all the cosmetics he still manages to show the emotion of the characters and get a lot of sympathy for them. Both are not evil people and are instead more tragic characters.

 In 1922 what’s considered to be the first vampire movie was released. Nosferatu. The movie is based of Dracula unofficially due to the fact the film makers were unable to gain the rights from Bram Stoker’s widow. There is evidence showing that there were in fact earlier movies based of Dracula; in 1921 there was a Hungarian movie released called “Dracula’s Death”. There are no known surviving prints of the movie though there are production stills and little bits of information around. It apparently didn’t follow the plot of the original book. There reports of a Soviet Dracula movie predating “Dracula’s Death” called “Drakula” however there is very little evidence of the movie and a lot of people question its existence. Nosferatu is the oldest surviving Dracula movie despite the Stoker estate winning a lawsuit and demanding that all prints of the movie be destroyed. One print survived and the movie is now seen as a masterpiece. I’m not saying it’s a bad movie but I don’t think it’s a masterpiece. It’s a creepy movie and its influence shows on various horror movies throughout he ages. It’s definitely important to horror film history and film history in general but I find it to drag at the beginning and we have to wait awhile before the movie gets interesting. This stopped me from watching it for years due to the fact I just couldn’t get into it.  

 

The Universal Monster Cycle 1930-1954

At the start of the new decade Universal started a series of films that would be known as The Universal Monster cycle. It began with Dracula in 1931 starring Bela Lugosi; a Hungarian actor who didn’t actually speak English. I think this actually helped his performance because it caused every word to sound strange in a way that can’t be described until you find out the actual reason for it. The movie set up the staples for the series; fog, gothic architecture and reoccurring actors.  At the same time as the English version was being filmed a Spanish version with a completely different case was filming on the same set. During the day Tod Browning would be filming and then at night George Melford would film the Spanish version. Later that same year Universal released Frankenstein. It was both more successful and (is widely considered) a better movie than Dracula. It stars Boris Karloff (Who would go on to become one of the most famous horror stars of all time) as the monster and Colin Clive as Dr Henry Frankenstein. Director James Whale knew what he was doing and it really shows that he embraced the new sound technology more than Tod Browning, who was already established as a silent movie director. As with most of universal’s monster horror the production design is spectacular. Both the sets and the makeup are top notch. In Dracula we had more focus on Gothic London and Dracula’s castle. In this movie we instead see more of the country side and an amazing library set. Unlike most Dracula movies, you’re instantly gripped into the story. It has a good start and it’s extremely well-paced. It’s not the best Frankenstein movie in my opinion but we’ll get onto that one later.

 

 

The next monster added to the cycle was The Mummy in 1932. The Mummy, Imhotep, is played by Boris Karloff with other returning cast members. The movie focuses on an Egyptian priest attempting to resurrect his long dead love after he has been resurrected himself. He finds the descendant of his lost love and decides to use her body as a vessel for his lost love’s soul.  Like Frankenstein’s monster, the priest is not a truly evil character. Dracula was evil. The monster was lost. The Mummy was more of a tragic figure, completely infatuated with his deceased lover to the point of killing someone else to get her back. It’s actually quite sad. As with the other two movies the production design is perfect. The only complaint I have is The Mummy’s make up. It hasn’t aged very well and it looks like he has sand paper attached to his face. It didn’t really make him look that much older.  The sets of the Mummy’s tomb are a particular highlight. They set up the classic look in which we’d see in movies for years to come. The script on the other hand is a little lacking. It’s not as memorable as Frankenstein or Dracula. The Invisible Man was released in 1933 and is the least horror of the cycle. It’s more of a science fiction movie but he’s always paired with the other horror monsters so I feel obligated to talk about it. The movie stars Claude Rains as Jack Griffin a man who after testing a drug called monocrane on himself gets the ability to turn himself invisible. He eventually turns into a complete lunatic. The movie has a more comedic feel than the others and the character of the Invisible Man is more amusing than scary. He has a lot of monologues and throughout most of the film he is seen wearing bandages or he’s not seen…as in he’s invisible. The special effects are still amazing and I think they still hold up to this day. It’s a very good movie but I overall don’t think it should be counted as one of the Universal monster movies. 

 

At the same time as Universal was releasing its monster movies, Paramount released Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) starring Fredric March, who was so good in the role that he won an Academy Award for it. One of the only two times in which an actor has won an Academy Award for a horror movie (the other being The Silence of the Lambs). He portrays Jekyll with a huge amount of charisma. I generally liked this character and hoped that he would get out of the movie fine. Mr Hyde on the other hand is downright horrible. A vile man who you can't stop watching due to some greasy charisma. Its a perfect reverse of the character as they steal maintain a few similarities. The film has some very impressive POV shots for its time and some ambitious camera work in order to show you the dual nature of the titular characters. The directing and the acting is what carries the film. Some of the dialogue is really dated which has caused some unintentional laughs, particularly the over use of “By jove!”. The next Universal horror movie to join the cycle was the Wolfman. As the final movie of the first wave it really ends it extremely well. The Wolf man is a great horror movie in all regards. The only down points to the movie are minor ones. There's no werewolf transformation sequence and there's no shot of the full moon, two of the main components from werewolf movies. Nowadays a lot of people think the wolf man looks silly but I really like the look. He doesn't just look like a huge wolf he instead actually looks like he's part man and part wolf. The films sets are up to standard with the rest of the series and the again, one performance really give the movie a boost. Lon Chaney Jr is great as Larry Talbot, The Wolf Man. He portrays a sympathetic and tragic character. Like most of the Universal monsters, he doesn't want to be a monster but he's forced into the role due to a disease he can't control. I also think credit has to be given to the writers for not making the main love interest's fiancé a complete jerk like a lot of movies. On a side note Lon Chaney Jr is the only actor to portay all 4 of the main Universal monsters. He played The Wolfman in the previously mentioned movie and its sequels, He played Frankenstein's monster in Ghost of Frankenstein, Dracula in Son of Dracula and The Mummy Khraris in the Mummy sequels.

 

The final monster of the Universal Cycle to be introduced was The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Some call him The Gill Man) in 1954. A full 13 years after the Wolfman. During this time there was a lot of sequels to the other monsters but now they were not longer used. After Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein the characters were retired for years before this movie came out and caused a resurgence in the popularity of the movies. It was because after the second world war and the world witnessing the devastation caused by the nuclear bomb people weren't scared of these monsters. People were more scared of real life now so horror movies became more for amusement than anything. Monsters from this era were usually either aliens or some kind of nuclear radiated animal that grows to a gigantic size. The movie focuses on a group of scientists travelling to the Amazon to try and find the origin of a mysterious fossil they found. When there they find The Creature and attempt to capture him. This is quite a unique entry into the series as we've now moved away from the Gothic architecture and the civilization settings to deep in the Amazonian jungle. We lose some of the cool sets but the directing and the cinematography in this one really make up for it. It looks amazing. I'm just come out and say this right now, the creature looks stupid. The suit itself looks good but the face. The face looks so dumb. He looks like he's in a constant state of day dreaming. When he's attacking people I burst out laughing. All I can see is him walking towards a person slowly saying “Duuuuuuh”. That’s really my only complaint with the movie though and it still is a good one.

 

Hammer 1950’s – 1970’s

In the late 1950’s British movie studio Hammer started to remake the old Universal horror movies one by one except this time it was in colour and was filled with blood and sex. The first movie in the series was Curse of Frankenstein and it surpasses the Universal one by far. Right off the bat Peter Cushing is amazing. He is a completely different Frankenstein than Colin Clive (The actor who played Frankenstein in the original). He is malicious, scheming and evil. In the original Frankenstein regrets his creation and tries to fix it. In the Hammer version Frankenstein is just evil. He kills people to get pieces for his monster and he allows a servant he was sleeping with to be killed because she was threatening to tell people about the monster.  The set design as in the Universal movies is spectacular. The whole movie is filled with gothic architecture with Frankenstein’s lab being my favourite. It does actually looks like he’d taken parts from different places and put them all together. The monster…looks bad. Due to Universal threatening to sue if it bore any resemblance to the classic Karloff monster they were forced to invent a completely new image for the monster. The Monster in this (Played by Christopher Lee, who’s career in this movies would be 70% choking Peter Cushing) I have mixed feelings about. I like the amount of scars he has on him and his different coloured eyes (Due to one being pecked out by vultures) the rest of the face looks really bad. His skin looks like a thinly applied layer of cling film and his hair looks like a bad bowl cut. The script and directing are both good but I think its Peter Cushing which really carries the film.  His acting is just spectacular.

The next movie remade was Dracula with Christopher Lee playing the titular character and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. It had a similar atmosphere to Frankenstein with the same type of gothic architecture. The script for this movie is surprisingly good with Peter Cushing explaining vampires being one of the highlights. It’s so good that they repeat it for every Dracula movie he appears in and it somehow still remains great to watch. Christopher Lee is impressive as Dracula, showing himself as a pleasant host for the first scene of the movie before become a vicious animal for the rest of the film.  I don’t think he’s as good as Bela Lugosi (Who originally played Dracula in the 1931 movie) who managed to combine the pleasant host and vicious animal into one performance. It’s a shame that Lee doesn’t get more lines as he has a great voice. The final scene is probably my favourite with Van Helsing and Dracula fighting. Van Helsing manages to pull down some curtains which allow sunlight into the room and Dracula burns to a crisp. The effects were amazing for the time but a lot of shots were removed by the censors.These shots were considered lost for years but someone in Japan managed to find a print of them so we can now finally see what we missed. 

Despite releasing other Horror movies, we’re going to focus on their remakes of the universal monsters. The next movie remade was The Mummy in 1959 starring the same combination of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The sets in this movie aren't as cool as in the previous two Hammer movies. I think Gothic architecture really works well for Hammer movies. Peter Cushing, as always, is amazing though its worth pointing out how he some times forgets the limp his character is supposed to have.  Christopher Lee is also surprisingly effective underneath all that make up. You can actually see the emotion of the mummy quite well. This movie might be my favourite of the mentioned Hammer movies due to its quicker pace and interesting script. Its actually based not on the original Universal Mummy movie, but on the sequels featuring a different mummy. I think this movie has the best showdown of any of the movies. Unlike in the Dracula movies and Frankenstein movies this movie has neither enemy really knowing much about each other and for some reason, this actually creates a tense fight. Overall this movie has the most rewatchablity of the main hammer movies.

Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock is considered to be one of the best of the genre but it’s also partially considered the start of the slasher genre. It’s definitely one of the inspirations for the genre but what can be considered the real starting point is Black Christmas (Which we’ll get onto later).  As with most of Hitchcock’s work the whole movie is tense throughout. I don’t think I could really say much about the movie without spoiling it (Something Hitchcock was determined to not happen. He literally bought up all copies of the book he could in order to prevent it.) So I’m not going to go into depth about it.

Night of the Living Dead is one of the most important horror movies of all time for a few reasons. Firstly for introducing one of cinema’s most well-known monsters; the zombie. It also showed film makers that you didn’t need to have a huge budget to create a successful movie and finally it was one of the first movies (possibly the first) to have a black man in the lead role. On the negative side it’s also partially responsible for the creation of the rating system. The whole movie has a very cheap look but this also adds a sort of realism to the movie and unlike most movies of the time which spent the first act of the movie explaining the plot and setting everything up but this movie dives right into the action. Within the first 10 minutes the main characters are attacked by zombies and one is killed. The movie is about a group of people trapped inside a house as a zombie apocalypse begins. Of all the characters in the movie my favourite is Ben, played by Duane Jones. He’s a resourceful man and is the only one who really knows what he’s doing. Throughout the movie he has clashes with another man in the house, Harry cooper. It’s due to these clashes that the movie gets it satire. People believe that it has a racist under tone because Harry immediately starts an argument with Ben. These satirical undertones continue throughout the rest of the dead trilogy.

In 1973 what is considered to be the scariest movie of all time was released, The Exorcist. It’s about a young girl becoming possessed by the devil himself. Everything in this movie is top notch, the script, the directing, the writing and the effects. Everything.  The voice of the demon (Mercedes McCambridge) is downright scary. I’d rank it as one of the scariest voices in movies (Along with “Billy” from Black Christmas.) I imagine that’s what a demon would sound like. The writing is also extremely good. The movie is full of religious talk and intelligent dialogue. This makes the Demon’s foul mouth all the more startling. Linda Blair as Regan (The possessed girl) has to be the best performance of a child actor to date. Despite all the great scenes later into the movie, I think my favourite is the opening in which archaeologists find a statue of the demon Pazuzu in Iraq. It’s such an eerie scene that you just know horrific things are coming. It’s one of the only horror movies to be nominated for the best picture Oscar. It’s a great movie that deserves its reputation.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, despite its title, doesn't rely on gore to scare the viewer. Instead it sets up gritty and realistic atmosphere that only gets creepier as the movie gets older. Because of the age of the movie and the camera work it feels a lot like a documentary more than a movie. The acting, as in most low budget movies, is pretty bad. But I think the cannibal family is convincing, especially the father played by Jim Siedow. He's still nuts but not on the same level as the other characters. The movie has a very slow pace which builds tension due to the audience knowing that something horrific is going to happen. The movie actually has very few chainsaw kills with most of the kills coming from Leatherface's sledge hammer. The first kill of the movie comes out of no where. The first time I saw it it caused me to jump. This was due to the camera itself. It was placed in a long shot in which it seems like nothing was going to happen. It seemed like just another establishing shot. In the remake they have it lower down, facing up towards where Leatherface was going to appear. That gave away that something was going to happen.

The real start of the Slasher genre was Black Christmas. I consider it to be the scariest movie I've ever seen due to the atmosphere and the creepiness of the villain. His phone calls are very disturbing and the fact you never find out who he is causes it to linger in your mind. To this day we still have no idea who he is or why he killed people. It makes it unique entry in horror movies due to this. It has a eerie atmosphere, where you know the killer is listening to every conversation the girls have. The movie surprisingly has quite a few famous faces in it; John Saxon, Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder all have major roles. Margot Kidder is the most entertaining, spending most of the movie drunk and the house mother is a similar sort of character. I find the scariest part of the movie to be either the ending or the scenes with the killer in the attic. He roams around screaming in anger and the fact that a corpse, its head covered with a plastic bag, makes it horrifying. It’s just a basic sorority house slasher but it’s a damn scary one.

Usually when a sequel to a movie is released, its god awful but in this case it’s actually better than the original by a huge amount. Dawn of the Dead is the follow up to Night of the Living Dead. Instead of taking place in a single night and all the characters hating each other we get it taking place over 6 months (That’s a guesstimate. It starts on the same day as Night but they survive a lot longer in Dawn. The biggest clue to the timespan is how far along a pregnant woman is) and all the characters getting along. At the start there are a few arguments but they all eventually get on the same page. Unlike in Night, all of the characters are likeable. There are two AWOL SWAT officers and couple of news reporters who all start living in a shopping mall. The social commentary in this one is that mall shoppers are like zombies. This one is probably the funniest of the Dead movies with some good one liners, zombies being hit in the face with pies and the Hare Krishna zombie. The makeup effects done by Tom Savini are spectacular despite looking quite blue the realism of the wounds on the zombies makes them both amusing and creepy at the same time. The best scene for the special effects is what I’m going to name “The Zombie Chow Down Time”. It’s basically that point in a zombie movie where everything has gone to hell and most of the characters are being devoured by zombies. In this one, a group of bikers break into the mall and a lot of them are eventually eaten by the zombies in a gory fashion. Overall it has better direction, better effects, better characters and it’s just a better movie than Night of the Living Dead. It really is one of the best horror movies of all time.

One of the lesser known movies on this list is Phantasm. It’s about two brothers facing off against a mysterious mortician. Originally the movie was supposed to be a lot longer and focus more on the younger brother, Mike having to deal with his brother leaving. In the original script the ending was supposed to reveal the whole thing to be a dream. It was supposed to be Mike’s way of dealing with the death of his brother but the director changed the ending due to how disappointing it would seem. This is one of the most unique horror movies out there and I can’t really think of much else like it. This being said for the most parts it’s pretty subpar.  A lot of the acting is bad and the script is bad but the originality really does make up for it. We have weak moments and extremely strong moments. The character of the Tall Man makes up for any of the other bad acting parts. I can’t think of another villain quite like him.

Surprisingly it wasn’t until 1978 before someone finally named a movie Halloween. This movie is the one that set up the slasher genre.  Despite the slasher genre being known for being a very gory the movie actually has very little blood and instead using suspense along with extremely creepy music. Director John Carpenter chose to draw out every scene as long as possible. This causes people to expect Michael Myers (The killer) to appear at the end of each scene. You can feel his presences throughout each scene and the music just enhances this. The music really I what makes the movie scary, without it I doubt it would be as effective. In each of these main slasher movies there’s always a veteran actor to kind of give the movie more credibility, in this it’s Donald Pleasence who is just spectacular in the role of Dr Loomis. This is one of the scariest slasher movies around but this being said, it hasn’t aged well. The female dialogue is cringe worthy and most of the characters you just wait to be killed off. But overall it’s one of the classics of the genre and deserves all of the praise it gets.

1980’s

Friday the 13^th took what Halloween did and added a whole lot of gore to it. It basically set up the formula every slasher movie would follow for years. It also established the camp setting as a popular location for slasher movies. I’m going to be completely honest and say that this movie is trash. Complete and utter trash. But its good trash. The only real good point of the movie is Betsy Palmer as Mrs Voorhees and just how good her character is. There’s only two real scary points in the movie. The second you realise that Mrs Voorhees is the killer and as the movies winding down, our protagonist gets onto a canoe and floats out to the centre of the lake. We have a few minutes of silence as the police arrive and it’s all very pleasant. When suddenly Jason Voorhees leaps out of the lake and pulls her in. When I first saw this I was just about to turn the movie off and it gave me a heart attack. The rest of the series slowly goes downhill with each become worse than the other, hitting the pinnacle of terrible with Jason goes to Hell. The series would then progress on to have a cross over with Freddy Krueger of a Nightmare on Elm Street.  

The Evil Dead series is definitely my favourite horror series out there. It manages to maintain a high level of creativity throughout the whole trilogy. The movies follow Ash Williams, a man who goes on vacation to a cabin in the woods only to be attacked by demonic entities throughout his stay. They are summoned by a book called the Necronomicon, roughly translated; Book of the Dead. It allows the summoning of said demonic entities. The camera work in these movies is just out of control. It’s definitely the most creative camera work I’ve ever seen. Director Sam Raimi really thinks of unique ways to use the camera. Widely considered to be one of the greatest horror characters of all time, Ash has gone from cowardly victim to badass hero to arrogant misogynistic douchebag. I like all versions of the character but he's at his best in Evil Dead 2.  The first movie had some spooky atmosphere and some really good effects. At such a low budget it’s a very impressive movie despite some amateur acting. The second movie is definitely the best as it’s an improved movie all around. The character of Ash has more personality and Bruce Campbell’s acting has really improved. Instead of being a serious horror movie with some unintentionally funny moments, Evil Dead 2 is more comedic movie with the blood and gore being exaggerated to the point where it becomes funny.

The most unique Slasher movie out there is likely to be A Nightmare on Elm Street. The movie focuses on a group of teenagers who are being killed off one by one in their sleep by a burnt man who’s seeking revenge for his own death. The movie’s main character is Nancy played by Heather Langenkamp and unlike most of the typical final girls; she actually looks more like a teenager than every other 80’s horror heroine.  She’s a charismatic and very likable character who you root for through the whole movie. The only side characters worth talking about are her dad played by John Saxon. He’s infuriating because he never believes his daughter despite the fact it’s literally obvious something is wrong. The other is Glenn played by Johnny Depp who’s only worth talking about because he’s played by Johnny Depp. He’s actually one of the weakest performances of the movie. The most remembered character by far is Freddy Krueger played by Robert Englund. In the sequels he’d lean towards being more comedic than anything but in this movie he’s downright scary. He’s killing the kids and he’s enjoying it. He does have a few one liners but they’re used more for scaring his prey than making the audience laugh. They mostly keep his face in shadows which I really think makes him scarier. As with most Wes Craven movies, the ending is terrible. Originally it had a definitive ending, something that would end the story and wouldn’t leave any room for sequels. Sadly the studio interfered and made Craven shoot a sequel hook. It’s still a good movie but that ending really is terrible.  

 

 The closest we got to an 80's style Frankenstein movie was the movie Re-Animator loosely based on the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name. It’s about a scientist named Herbert West who creates a serum that can bring back the dead. People begin to fight over it to the point of murder. The funny fact is that the serum doesn’t even work right. It brings them back as savage animals instead of the people they used to be. The movie is full of an abundance of gore and humour. The best part of the movie is Jeffery Combs as Herbert West; the character is such a jerk and Combs really shows the best of this. He’s 100% focused on his experiments and nothing more. He moves into a house with some fellow university students and uses their basement to perform his experiments. The film has some really great effects but also some really cheap ones which give the film some goofy charm. It’s one of the two H.P.Lovecraft movies released by Stuart Gordon in the 80’s and both had recurring cast members.

 

Now stuff really gets outs of control. The movie Hellraiser is sometimes counted as a slasher movie but I don’t see it to be that. It’s way too elaborate and has way too good of a story. It’s about a man named Frank who acquires a puzzle box which opens a gateway to hell, which allows demons called The Cenobites through. They tear Frank into pieces. His brother Larry later moves into the house where Frank died and as he’s moving furniture, he cuts himself. The blood drips through the floorboards and resurrects Frank. He then coerces Larry’s wife Julia, who Frank had an affair with, into bringing him more people to kill. This is one messed up movie. It’s based off a book called “The Hellbound Heart” written by Clive Barker who also wrote and directed this movie. The effects, acting and sets in this movie are just scary. The attic in which Frank is resurrected is one of the creepiest rooms I’ve ever seen in a horror movie and this is definitely one of the freakiest ones out there.  

1990’s-2000’s

Brain Dead is usually considered to be the single goriest movie of all time and I think that is very likely correct. It’s about a zombie outbreak in New Zealand. It starts when a man named Lionel who is under the complete control of his mother takes a date to the zoo. He is followed by his mother who ends up being bitten by a Sumarian Rat Monkey which carries the zombie plague. We then follow Lionel as he tries to deal with the outbreak. This movie is just hilarious. It’s similar to Evil Dead 2 in that the gore is exaggerated to the point of hilarity but it also has a lot of slap stick and some moments which will really test how squeamish you are. It’s definitely not the kind of movie you watch while eating. Unlike Peter Jackson's later work, the movie is full of close up and strange camera angles (Inspired by Evil Dead perhaps)  which I thinks very well for horror comedies like this. The high level of gore and the setting makes it a unique zombie movie.

Another Clive Barker movie (He only wrote this one) and it manages to be scarier than Hellraiser. It’s about a couple of university students doing a thesis on urban legends. They hear about one named Candyman and try to find out if its real. The whole movie has a very foreboding atmosphere all leading up to the big reveal of Candyman; played by Tony Todd.  He's very intimidating and creepy in the role. They try to make him out to be a more sympathetic villain by giving him a tragic backstory but it doesn’t work because in the movie he's just so sadistic. This is actually one of the few movies that are way better than the book. The book doesn’t have much build up, it doesn’t cover any of the racial issues, Candyman's description is just silly and it’s way too short. It set up a good premise for the movie to follow but the book was unsatisfying.

The movie Ringu focuses on a video tape; if you watch the video tape then in 7 days you die. A woman investigating the death of her niece ends up watching the tape and is then forced to find a way to try prevent her own death. Nowadays the movie has lost some of the scariness of it due to the fact that video tapes are now obsolete. Never the less the movie still has a very foreboding atmosphere which is helped by the poorer quality of the movie (This could be some kind of filter but I’m honestly unsure). It was intentionally darkened which makes the movie all the creepier. I think that the movies strongest point is not showing the villain much. Sadako rarely appears but when she does, it’s terrifying. The scariest scene of the movie is the ending. We believe our heroes have survived and everything is winding down when suddenly the TV turns on (I’m not spoiling what else happens). I consider this to be one of the greatest J-Horror movies out there.

  

The Blair Witch Project is an independent movie released in 1998. To this day some people believe the events of the movie to be real. In actual fact it benefited from clever marketing and word of mouth. Parts of the promotional material for the movie were Missing posters for the main actors and there was actually a TV documentary portraying the events as real life. Because of this it caused people to go into the movie under the impression what they were seeing is real. This helped the movie along because you never see the Witch. To this day it’s a mystery to what she actually looks like (There was an action figure of her released but most people disregard it) but this makes the movie even scarier. Another huge part in this movie (and all found footage movies) is the acting. In this its top notch, the cast and crew went above and beyond in creating a realistic movie. Each actor is believable in their role and they all do a great job of showing everything slowly getting worse and worse. It has one of the creepiest atmospheres from any movie and definitely one of the scariest endings.

The Ju-on Series has not only the most confusing timeline out of any horror movies but is also one of the most difficult series to follow as the first 4 entries in the series aren’t available in English speaking countries so they have to be viewed through Youtube. The series starts with two shorts; 4444444444 and Katasumi which were shown as part of a Television movie called “Gakkō no kaidan G” which roughly translates to “Haunted school”. It was a group of shorts all set in a school. The shorts are both about 3 minutes long and are both pretty good for what they are. A couple of years later Ju- on: The Curse was released direct to video as was the sequel in the same year. Both are creepy low budget movies in their own right but The Curse 2 has a big problem. A huge part of it is a recap of the first Curse. It’s infuriating to watch. Another 2 years later and we had the first theatrical release of one of the series Ju-on: The Grudge. This is the one most people have seen and it’s usually considered to be the best of the series. The movie has the same eerie atmosphere throughout in that you know some horrific things are going to happen. Some of the scares of the movie fail but the ones that succeed are downright terrifying. The next year The Grudge 2 was released and I consider it to be as good as the first Grudge. It’s got fewer scares but it’s more understandable. It doesn’t help the timeline I’ve been trying to set up but it’s a lot easier to understand than the other instalments. On the tenth anniversary of the series two hour long movies were released called The Grudge: Black ghost and White Ghost. White ghost is easily the best of these two movies and the only one that feels like a Grudge movie. Black ghost falls flat for the whole thing. I really would not recommend watching this. The series has now been rebooted with Ju-On: The Beginning of the End which hasn’t been released in English speaking countries yet. Overall the series is really mixed bag but I still recommend sitting through them. 

In the 2000's there were few original horror movies. They were either remakes, reboots, sequels or prequels. Finding an original horror movie was difficult but the Devil’s Rejects proves to be a horrific movie in all senses of the word. Its a sequel to Rob Zombie's earlier movie “House of 1000 Corpses” but you don't have to watch the it in order to enjoy this one. This is by far the better movie and it shows Rob Zombie's directing skills have vastly improved. House of 1000 Corpses felt more like a hug Rob Zombie music video, with the whole soundtrack being composed of his songs. In this Zombie instead uses various country and Southern Rock. The movie focuses on three psychopaths from the previous movie who are now on the run from a sheriff who's brother they killed. The thing that really makes the movie, are the characters. The character of Otis played by Bill Mosely is one of the most convincing psychopaths I've seen in a movie. He's constantly angry with everyone he talks too and doesn’t seem to get along with any of the other characters.  Baby(played by Sherri Moon Zombie, the directors wife) is now a much more enduring character. In the previous movie she was extremely annoying because she always had a very grating laugh which did nothing but irritate me. The final psychopath and the best character was Captain Spaulding. He's both hilarious and scary. It’s a tense and horrifying movie with a strangely sad ending.

Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi is the director of the Evil Dead series; Drag me to Hell and the original 3 Spider-Man movies.  He’s known for his strange camera manoeuvres and his over the top moments in his movies. He has a lot of sequences in his movies inspired by The Three Stooges shorts which gives his movies a real goofy tone to them. This is especially noticeable in the Evil Dead series as it progresses from a fully-fledged horror movie to what Bruce Campbell described as “A demonic Looney Tunes cartoon” to a Slapstick action movie. Its works best with Drag Me to Hell and Evil Dead 2 as it makes the scarier moments a lot more jarring.

Peter Jackson

I’m focusing on his earlier horror movies as it’s the part of his work that offers the most inspiration. He’s done two horror movies, Bad Taste and Brain Dead. They are both horror comedies and both have a lot of dark humour when it comes to violence (Brain Dead in particular). The effects in Bad Taste were made by Jackson himself and cause for a lot of amusement during the movie. This is the kind of thing I’d like to emulate due to the fact my effects will also probably be as cheap looking.

ABCs of Death – U is for Unearthed

This is part of 26 short movie anthology. It shows a vampire being hunted down by villagers from its point of view. They eventually capture it, tear out its fangs, stake it and decapitate it. The short itself is one of the better parts of the movie but this really isn’t much of an achievement; Its Impressive due to the fact that it’s more creative than a lot of the other entries.

ABCs of Death was a really mixed bag. It had a few good shorts but I really wouldn’t recommend watching it without a group of friends who would make fun of it or if you’re intoxicated.

Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse

Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse is the first and titular part of a anthology book feature three different stories. It’s about a brother and a sister trying to hide the dead body of one of their friends after she was killed by the sister. I'm gonna state that I think this was a decent story but it’s the worst of the three stories. My biggest complaint is that the narrator (The dead girl) somehow knows the events that are going on when her corpse isn't even present. This ruins the point of having the corpse as the narrator. One thing that made the story less effective was the brother (He's 12) character. He didn't talk like a kid and he didn't act like a kid. He actually kind of reminds me of Dexter Morgan in that he was in complete control of situation, manipulating everyone. It was ridiculous.

Of the three stories, the final story (Black Fairy Tale) is by far the best. Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse is a forgettable story.