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If you make a list of the all-time best horror movies --- even those that involve a lot of murder in the story --- you'll notice a common element: Very little actual gore. It's often suggested, but very few great movies rub your nose in it.
Exception: John Carpenter's The Thing. Great movie. Superb special effects. Wunnerfully creepy score by Morricone.
Cant understand anyone enjoying blood and guts, I like good thriller creepy style much more... you dont have to see a lot to feel creeped out.. its the music, editing, and filming that make a good movie
I'll do Roger Corman and Vincent Price......though some Vincent's can be rather opposite to each other. "Cry of the Banshee" is funner to watch than "Witchfinder General". Further, not all of the old movies are in the same ball park. "Mark of the Devil" was a bit harsh....but maybe that was the point of the theme.
I'll watch anything with Vincent Price and Christopher Lee, the two actors with the best voices of their time, one on this side of the pond, and one on that side of the pond.
Witchfinder General is one of my favorite Price movies, too.
Some stayed and applauded at the end. Wonder what kind of people there were if so many walked out?
I had a friend who said he knew a guy who wanted to watch all the horrible slice and dice movies since he had an abusive father. Wonder if they are trying to work something out from their childhood? Not on my dime.
I grew up a serious horror fan. As gore effects improved, I went right along. I loved supernatural beasts and suburban slashers. Tom Savini is an icon with more credits than you'll remember. Rob Bottin did those great FX for John for his remake of The Thing. Then there's the legend himself, Dick Smith, the guy who made you wince and cringe during The Exorcist, trip out during Altered States, and fist-pump (yes, really) as you were simultaneously "blown away" by the oft-referenced exploding head in Scanners.
So everyone in this thread was really not into this stuff growing up? Are we not fortysomethings? What, are you guys all in your 60s?
Seriously, gore did hit a plateau for me. The problem isn't the gore itself. It became more and more apparent that the movies, meaning the stories and the casts, were sucking more and more. You know, crap like House of Wax with whatsherface pretending to be an actress. The first Saw is a good movie, but hey, it's a James Wan film. Neil Marshall's The Descent was really cool. But that was much more about fear of the dark than fear of watching somebody spool your intestines around a fire hydrant. I also liked Scott Derrickson's Sinister.
Crap like House of Wax, Hostel, and myriad remakes (House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting, Halloween — wow, look at all those H's) sucked, not to mention they bored me. I never thought I'd see a horror movie that bored me, but they began coming out in droves.
One of the best recent horror movies that takes a sizeable page from Carpenter's handbook is It Follows, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Excellent premise. Check it out.
Exception: John Carpenter's The Thing. Great movie. Superb special effects. Wunnerfully creepy score by Morricone.
I don't know that I'd call that "gore" though, simply because so much of it is over-the-top unrealistic. It's a great movie --- don't get me wrong! --- but I have never once been afraid that a severed head is going to sprout legs and start walking around. Even as I'm wincing at the horror of it, part of me is giggling.
There is a huge difference between something like that and watching a murder eviscerate someone onscreen.
I'll watch anything with Vincent Price and Christopher Lee, the two actors with the best voices of their time, one on this side of the pond, and one on that side of the pond.
We must also remember that in real life Christopher Lee was a Certified Bad Ass.
I don't know that I'd call that "gore" though, simply because so much of it is over-the-top unrealistic. It's a great movie --- don't get me wrong! --- but I have never once been afraid that a severed head is going to sprout legs and start walking around. Even as I'm wincing at the horror of it, part of me is giggling.
There is a huge difference between something like that and watching a murder eviscerate someone onscreen.
It's gore, whether it's violence enacted on a human by a human or by a supernatural alien-beast-thing on another human or another supernatural alien-beast-thing.
If we want to get super-technical, the word gore itself refers to blood. It was first attributed to movies in the '70s to define cinematic body counts and blood spatter, aka "splatter."
But as an avid reader of Fangoria, gore was gore, like that great still from C.H.U.D. ably demonstrated with its depiction of a dude's lower torso and legs gone, in their place a blobby mass of waxy shredded flesh, intestines and Heinz ketchup.
Chris Lee was the Real Deal. We're losing actors like that, guys whose off-screen lives are arguably more interesting and definitely more impressive than their on-screen portrayals. (Hell, do we have ANYONE like that out there right now?)
I also love the fact that Lee portrayed Dracula many times, and he took many jobs that today's prima donnas would consider themselves above (like the villain in an old Captain America movie). That just gives us that much more screen time to enjoy.
Great article. The guy has a major goof about World War Z's release date (2013, not 2006), but I'm going to quickly forget that as I seriously busted up over that opening paragraph. That is some funny shyt. Dude kind of reminds me of myself!
One of the worst movies I've ever seen was Cannibal Holocaust. I'm not opposed to gore in movies, but this was one of the dumbest ones I've ever seen. Ironically, it got banned in a number of countries.
The director tried to pull a stunt that would later be emulated by Blair Witch Project by making it's lead actors disappear to give the public the impression that they had died during filming, only he got sued when he got back to Italy, so he had to call it off. Blair Witch Project is much more effective at doing horror and is a far better movie. Both are part of the found footage sub-genre of horror.
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