! Previewed: Every new scary movie you need to see
RATED!
SLATED!
25 best HORROR MOVIES
50 WORST scary FLOPS including Shark In Venice! Troll 2! Disco Exorcist!
As voted for by Carpenter, Craven, Romero, Hooper, Landis, Del Toro…
FROM T MAKERSHE OF
AND
Digital Edition
Your Definitive Guide
psycho
To Nightmare Movies
let the right one in
texas chain saw massacre
PLUS Bruce Campbell • Eli Roth • Roger Corman Martyrs • top video nasties • Stephen King’s IT
CONTENTS
13
HORROR: THE ULTIMATE CELEBRATION 8
25 greatest horror movies 16
SLASHERS
Slasher School 26 Peeping Tom Vs Psycho 28 Friday The 13th 34 Scream 38 The 13 Franchises That Just Won’t Die! 42
14
THE PARANORMAL AND THE OCCULT
Haunted Houses 50 The Blair Witch Project 52 True-life Horror 58 The Wicker Man 62 The Omen 64 Dario Argento 68
38 21
PREVIEWS
The Dark Tower 16 Annabelle: Creation 18 Big bada Blum 19 The Ghoul 20 Death Note 21
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60
42
CONTENTS
Hammer Horror and vampires
Dracula 74 Byzantium 78 Twilight 81 The Lost Boys 82 Let The Right One In 86 DVD Marathon 86
78
94
ZOMBIES, WEREWOLVES and MONSTERS
Giant Monster Movies 94 Behind The Scenes Of The Asylum 96 Roger Corman 100 It 102 An American Werewolf In London 106 George Romero 108
108
86
Hardcore, gore and video nasties Guide To Video Nasties 114 Saw 116 Eli Roth 120 Martyrs 122 Bruce Campbell 126 DVD Nasties 132 The Human Centipede 136
116
138
THE 50 worst Horror FILMS Horror The Ultimate Celebration | 7
POLL
5 The Thing 1982 Score 152
Updating the ’51 original via eye-saucering latex FX and a pessimistic Aids allegory, John Carpenter’s gloomy reboot of The Thing From Another World found little love on its release. Critics baulked at the crippling claustrophobia and outrageous gore, while audiences preferred Spielberg’s cuddly E.T. The director’s career never quite recovered, though today it’s rightly lauded as a sci-fi/ horror classic. Definitive moment The chest cavity-turnedmouth/Spider-head sequence: “You gotta be fucking kidding…”
2 The Exorcist 1973 Score 256
4 The Shining 1980 Score 154
Murder for everyone on set, Kubrick’s horror movie was a horror of a movie. Principal photography stretched to a year, Shelley Duvall had to endure over 100 takes of a single scene and Jack Nicholson would return home exhausted each night. Life was imitating art: Stephen King’s bestselling novel was all about the madness of creation, a writer’s solitary mental disintegration in a haunted hotel during a long, cruel winter. “Kubrick took a second-rate book and turned it into a first-rate psychological thriller,” says Duvall. “And, as he said, ‘Nothing great was ever accomplished without suffering…’” Definitive moment “Heeere’s Johnny!” Nicholson’s novelist loses the plot.
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3 Psycho 1960 Score 166
“To me, Psycho was a big comedy. Had to be,” reckoned Hitchcock as his monochrome murder movie opened in 1960. “Don’t give away the ending – it’s the only one we have!” joked the ads, but audiences didn’t always see the funny side of the film’s gleeful horror: women fainted, men bolted for the exits and Janet Leigh refused to take a shower again, period. Beneath the funhouse scares lies something that Freud would dig. Hitch retools the lurid story of Wisconsin necrophile Ed Gein (corpses, cannibalism, transvestism) into a meditation on ordinary madness, playing up the Oedipal angst and kooky craziness. Every slasher movie since owes it a debt, although few boast such a sympathetic killer. Anthony Perkins’ twitchy, vulnerable performance nails the genius: no vampire bats or Frankenstein’s monsters here, just a boy and his mom. Horror’s coming home. Definitive moment The shower scene where jabbing violins and frenzied (editing) cuts murder Marion.
Blockbuster, controversy-magnet, video nasty: most people think that The Exorcist is a truly terrifying Devil movie. Actually, it’s the best advert for Christianity ever put in cinemas (move over Cecil B DeMille). At its heart is a metaphysical conundrum: if the Devil exists, God must too. And if God exists, why be afraid? “The leaders of the Catholic Church endorsed The Exorcist,” claimed director William Friedkin, “because it represents a literal depiction of the Roman ritual of exorcism, which still exists in the Catholic faith.” Of course most audiences back in 1973 didn’t see that. They were too busy squirming as 14-year-old Linda Blair’s demonically possessed nipper unleashed pea soup projectile vomit and a stream of profanity that would make a US Marine blush. Combining state-of-the-art grossout effects with po-faced metaphysics, The Exorcist petrified audiences who were convinced their very souls were in jeopardy. Catholicism’s never seemed the same since. Definitive moment The 360° neck twist. Let’s hope there’s chiropractors in hell.
Top 25 greatest horror movies ever made!
1 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974 Score 257
Tobe Hooper wanted to make a film that would be noticed. His remake of Frankenstein hadn’t done the trick, but then he was only eight when he made it. More to the point, his $100,000 experimental debut – death-offlower-power drama Eggshells (1969), beautiful, boring and baleful – hadn’t done it, securing just 50 play dates. Then it happened. Standing in front of a rack of chainsaws in the packed Sears department store in Austin, Texas, he fantasised about cutting through the crowds to the exit. Then he thought about ’50s flesh-flaying serial killer Ed Gein (“I was about 11 and my Wisconsin relatives used to scare See saw: Leatherface on the loose in Hooper’s classic.
the crap out of me with the stories”), and about bleedingedge movies like Spider Baby, Frankenheimer’s cruelly underrated Seconds and his own favourite horror movie, Psycho, itself inspired by Gein. The result was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a $150,000, 16mm exploitation flick shot in 32 straight days. Essentially an old, dark house tale fitted with mallets, meat hooks and power tools, it tells the “true-life” tale of five kids travelling through rural Texas and stumbling upon a dilapidated farmhouse, home of Leatherface and his dysfunctional family of cannibals. We see nothing, feel everything, the aggressive
camera, brutal cutting, clanging sound design and grainy, grubby, snuff-movie visuals striking home like a sledgehammer to the skull. Oh, and it’s funny, too… TCSM buzzes with the angst of its time – Vietnam, Civil Rights riots, the oil embargo – but it’s a film for always, impossible to shake off. “Were you worried viewers wouldn’t be ready?” TF asked Hooper in September 2010. “No,” he replied. “I wanted to destroy ’em… Definitive moment The climactic dinner table sequence, as Sally (Marilyn Burns) is trussed to a chair while the frenzied family mercilessly torment her. Shot over 27 hours in 120° heat, the pain is palpable.
TOBE HOOPER Interviewed before his untimely death, meet the man behind the chain saw… How is it having the number one horror film? It’s… I couldn’t be… What word am I looking for? [Big pause] I’m pleased, I’m honoured. I feel it emotionally. I’m thankful. Anyway, far out. Absolutely far out. Did you ever think, when you set out, you’d make a masterpiece? I knew that people would go see it. I knew it was so different it was going to make a noise. I don’t know that I expected it to be some kind of Citizen Kane of the genre. It was a brutal shoot… By the end, everyone was angry. Everyone was talking crazy. Pissed off. I’d pushed them so hard. The crew and the cast hated me. At the wrap party I was sitting on the porch of the house and there was one group of the crew having one party and some of the cast having another party. It was pretty stretched out... When did you hit upon the title? We were bouncing ideas around and there was Headcheese at one time, and Leatherface, I think. Texas Chainsaw Murders… I had to think about Texas Chain Saw Massacre. “Is it too over the top?” Then one guy in the crew said his girlfriend said she’d definitely never see it. And I knew it was the right title! But only three people die. Shouldn’t it be The Texas Chain Saw Kerfuffle? Yeah, we should have gone with that! [Laughs] But Chain Saw Massacre... It’s a title you can’t forget. JG
Horror The Ultimate Celebration | 15
slashers
O H C SY R PPSYCHO KIILLLLEER K In 1960, two horror films terrorised audiences. One was a box office smash. The other was labelled trash. We celebrate the violent visions of Psycho and Peeping Tom... Words: Jamie Russell
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psycho/peeping tom
M Everyday horror: (top and above) voyeuristic villain Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) captures his victims in Michael Powell’s ahead-of-its-time thriller, Peeping Tom.
ovie murder wasn’t invented in 1960, but it was definitely perfected. It was the year when two Englishmen – one in Hollywood, the other at Pinewood – unleashed a frenzied attack on cinemagoers, censors and actresses. The first was Alfred Hitchcock, the rotund Master of Suspense who shocked audiences into submission with his fiendishly sadistic Psycho. The second was Michael Powell, the critically-acclaimed director whose sordid, controversial Peeping Tom allegedly dragged British cinema into the gutter. Psycho was a manipulative, masterful shocker, sinisterly styled and shot through with jet-black humour. Peeping Tom was a cerebral meditation on cinema and violence that lured in the dirty mac brigade with its top-shelf, X-rated title. Both films terrified. Both films titillated. And both films would become defining examples of the modern slasher movie… >> Horror The Ultimate Celebration | 29
The paranormal and the occult
stranger than fiction Terrifying true tales and the movies they inspired Words: Emma Thrower
the mothman prophecies 2002
Mark Pellington This spooky melodrama sees reporter John Klein (Richard Gere) discover sketches of a winged creature done by his late wife. Reported sightings of a similar being lead him to Point Pleasant, where he attempts to decipher the mystery.
the scary truth...
Reputedly seen in West Virginia between 1966 and 1967, the winged-thing dubbed ‘the Mothman’ was brushed off by many as a large bird. UFOlogist and journalist John Keel thought otherwise, publishing his thoughts in a 1975 book about the sightings, linking them to the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse that killed 46 people.
when the lights went out 2012
Pat Holden 1970s Yorkshire-set thriller about a violent spirit who haunts the Maynard family’s new abode during nationwide blackouts. Starts a bit Poltergeist, goes a bit The Exorcist, ends a bit silly.
the scary truth...
After moving into their new home in the 1960s, the Pritchard family discovered they were sharing digs with the ‘Black Monk Of Pontefract’, a cowled apparition who appeared to the Pritchards after wobbling their furniture and leaving puddles of water on the floor. Was the hooded figure the ghost of a monk hanged for the rape and murder of a young girl? Or was it the Pritchards’ teenage son faking it all along? 58 | Horror The Ultimate Celebration
true horror
audrey rose 1977
Robert Wise Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins) stalks the Templeton family, believing Ivy (Susan Swift) to be the reincarnation of his dead daughter, who burned to death in a car accident.
the scary truth
the exorcist 1973
William Friedkin This multiple Oscar-winner focuses on young Regan (Linda Blair), who is possessed by a demon she refers to as Captain Howdy. Bad skin, verdant puke, blasphemy and a potty mouth leave her mother (Ellen Burstyn) pleading for an exorcism.
Novelist Frank De Felitta’s six-year-old son had never shown any musical talent until he started playing Fats Waller-style jazz at the piano in their LA home. He told his father his fingers were making him do it. Occultist Barbara Ryan believed the boy’s soul had lived many past lives, inspiring De Felitta to pen his 1975 novel Audrey Rose and its subsequent screenplay.
the scary truth
‘Roland Doe’ (a pseudonym) was an American boy in the late 1940s who was thought to be possessed after he monkeyed around with a Ouija board. Strange phenomena reportedly included flying objects, scratching noises and a shaky bed while Roland talked in a guttural voice and developed welts. Eventually a number of exorcisms were performed, apparently putting an end to Roland’s troubles, though other explanations proposed included Tourette’s, OCD and schizophrenia.
the entity 1982
Sidney J. Furie Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) is raped by invisible demons in this bizarre sexually charged sci-fi horror. When her doctor doesn’t believe her, she joins forces with a team of dynamic parapsychologists.
the scary truth
Thirty-something former abuse victim Doris Bither claimed to have been repeatedly assaulted by three different ‘entities’ in her California home in the early ’70s. Paranormal investigators at the time reported seeing clouds of greenish mist form the shape of a man, although no evidence of their claims was ever caught on camera. Bither’s alcohol addiction and turbulent relationship with her three sons may have been an influence.
the amityville horror 1979
Stuart Rosenberg The first entry in the haunted house franchise (13 movies in total so far) sees the Lutzes (James Brolin, Margot Kidder) find their new dream home plagued by flies, imaginary friends and toilet ooze. After learning the house’s history, they flee.
the scary truth
In 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six family members in their Long Island home. Moving in a year later, the Lutz family claim to have experienced levitating and rapid aging, though some believe they were just cashing in. Reporter Laura DiDio had a seance at the house after the Lutzes had left. She said it was like hosting “a psychic slumber party”.
the haunting in connecticut 2009
Peter Cornwell A family move to a new home to be closer to their son’s cancer treatment facility, only to discover the house used to contain a funeral parlour. Visions, corpses, possession, necromancy – surprisingly, this time it does end well.
the scary truth
In the ’80s, the Snedecker family moved to a house in Connecticut in order to be close to where their son Philip was being treated for cancer. The place was apparently once a funeral home where morticians were accused of messing with the corpses – the Snedeckers claimed it was riddled with demons. Paranormal expert Lorraine Warren investigated the case, saying it was “much, much scarier than any movie could ever be”.
the exorcism of emily rose 2005
Scott Derrickson A lawyer and a priest (Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson) find themselves tangled up in a potential homicide case in this chiller-cumcourtroom drama about a girl (Jennifer Carpenter) who died during an exorcism.
the scary truth
The daughter of a strict Catholic family, 16-yearold German girl Anneliese Michel was an epilepsy sufferer who experienced hallucinations and thought she heard voices telling her she’d “rot in hell”. Her family became convinced she was possessed and when she proved unresponsive to anti-psychotic drugs, she underwent 67 rites of exorcism and eventually died from starvation in 1976 aged 23, weighing under five stone.
Horror The Ultimate Celebration | 59
Zombies, werewolves and monsters
The Fannish Inquisition
GEORGE ROMERO
Did he watch The Walking Dead? How about zombie porn? And just how strong were those glasses? George Romero answered your questions before his tragic death in 2017 Words: Jamie Graham
George Romero Romero was offered a directing gig on The Walking Dead.
The baseball game had taken a nasty turn.
Becky Leveson, Stockport: If you could rewind time, go back to any of the Dead films and ‘fix’ any details you’re not happy with – however big or small – what would you change?
© nicolas genin, Creative commons
W
hen Night Of The Living Dead shambled on to screens in 1968, George Romero animated a new breed of zombie, his Pittsburgh walking dead leaving African voodoo slaves trailing in their messy wake as they revived to gorge on human entrails. The zombie apocalypse had descended upon us… Romero returned five times to the subgenre he created. Still churning out fresh ideas for films involving rotting-flesh adversaries right up until his death, he was long established as the Don of the Dead. And yet he seemed bemused by the whole phenomenon. “I think my films are particularly political and I’m sort of doing social satire, you know?” he said from his Toronto home. “I have to admit that I get fed up… All of a sudden there are zombies everywhere!” At the time of writing, Romero was in fine fettle, his warmth and wit quickly establishing why Lucas isn’t the only filmmaker tagged with the affectionate sobriquet ‘Uncle George’. “There are a lot of questions to get through?” he chuckled when advised to make himself comfortable and take a deep breath. “Well, let’s get started…”
Well, I can’t shake the concerns I have over the very first one. There were 101 things that I fouled up on. Eye direction, things like that. When two characters are talking to one another, they’re supposed to be looking in opposite directions so that it gives you some orientation as to who’s standing where. I had people having conversations and both looking in the same direction! Basic mistake.
Craig Iversen, Wirral: I’d love to see a Dead film that’s set a long time after the zombie apocalypse – maybe 30 or 40 years later – and shows how much society has changed in the years since. Have you ever thought of doing a movie like that? I’ve had little thoughts about what if I really went Beyond Thunderdome, if I went to an almost barren
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“There were 101 things that I fouled up on in Night Of The Living Dead” Horror The Ultimate Celebration | 109
Hardcore, gore and video nasties
They might not come on video these days – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still very, very nasty... Words: Callum Wadell
I
f Saw never made you wince and Hostel only succeeded in sending you to sleep then look no further than the following 20 movies – all must-see shockers for anyone who thinks that they’ve seen it all. Sure, torture-porn may have captured a few headlines of late, but the fact is that The Human Centipede is positively lightweight when compared to, say, Cannibal Holocaust – and don’t expect the British censors to ease up and pass the likes of The Untold Story or Thriller: A Cruel Picture any time soon (at least without cuts). However, most of the films featured here can be found on import DVD sites, meaning that if you really need to endure the full version of Faces Of Death you can. That said the following flicks are only for those of the toughest disposition. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…
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dvd nasties THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE (1974) Hell hath no fury…
Also known as They Call Her One Eye, this superobscure Swedish shocker gained a new generation of attention after Quentin Tarantino paid homage to its eye-patch-wearing femme fatale in Kill Bill (Daryl Hannah complained about being made to watch the movie). In truth, though, this is an extremely perverse guilty pleasure with Euro sex-siren Christina Lindberg playing a mute drifter who is drugged, raped and imprisoned in a local brothel. She eventually escapes and takes her revenge. Most worrying, however, is the film’s inclusion of actual hardcore sex during the rape sequences. Because obviously people really get off on that sort of stuff...
ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS (1975) The ultimate Nazi nasty!
Never given a British release, this shocking ’70s effort is set in a World War Two prison camp where the top-heavy dominatrix of the title beds the POWs and castrates any bloke who cannot keep up with her ludicrous libido. As if male viewers won’t already be crossing their legs at the sight of men having their junk removed, Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS really hits the gross-out button with an endless display of Nazi torture: faceburnings, prisoners boiled alive and harassment with an electric dildo. Maybe the last word in bad taste, Ilsa is a squalid and brutal picture.
BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (1976) Only a freak would approve...
This poverty-row New York nasty encouraged demonstrations from feminists outside its original theatrical screenings. Not hard to understand, either – the entire movie is based inside the operation of an off-Broadway stage show wherein a pair of men torture and kill women for the consumption of a paying audience of sadists. A genuine hands-over-the-eyes viewing experience, Bloodsucking Freaks reaches an all-time cinematic low when a woman has her teeth extracted so that she can be made to perform fellatio “safely”. Somewhat fittingly, Z-movie outfit Troma is the American distributor and, surprisingly, the film was finally released on disc in the UK – on Blu-ray no less.
FACES OF DEATH
(1978) Not so dead on arrival Probably the most famous fake snuff movie ever, this notorious ‘documentary’ still warrants a barf bag thanks to its inclusion of gruelling abattoir footage (the director is a vegetarian), real-life autopsies and simulated, but still sickening, scenes of human mortality. In a sequence once described by ex-Tory MP David Mellor as “particularly offensive and revolting”, a live monkey has its brains smashed in by diners so they can feast on the raw grey matter. Thankfully, this particular stunt is just special effects (Spielberg actually contacted the Faces Of Death crew for advice on a similar scene in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom).
THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978) The last word in misogyny?
How is this for an opening half hour? A masked
man walks around various apartments and kills semi-naked women with a variety of tools. In the Grand Guignol centrepiece a masturbating female is nail-gunned to a wall. Sounds sick? It is. In fact, The Toolbox Murders is one of the original video nasties and if you want to see it in all of its obnoxious glory you will need to look abroad. However, what makes Tobe ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ Hooper’s film essential is a bonkers performance from B-movie mainstay Cameron Mitchell, who – clearly aware he’s onto a no-hoper – gives a hilariously unhinged acting turn.
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST
(1980) The granddaddy of gore movies Italian-made faux documentary which focuses on an obnoxious film crew being captured and cooked in the Amazon jungle. Think of this one as the ultimate endurance test – with rape, genocide, actual animal butchery and a truly grotesque sequence wherein a woman is bludgeoned and violated with a large stone dildo. Banned in the UK for decades, Cannibal Holocaust rests on the shelves of HMV with almost six minutes of censor cuts – but an international DVD contains all of the carnage deemed unfit for normal people...
NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980) Sasquatch splatter action
The world’s first Bigfoot gore flick, this is another one-time video nasty and, despite considerable fan demand, is not presently available on DVD anywhere (an old UK release is missing almost all of the bloodshed). Interestingly, Night Of The Demon is actually something of a progenitor of The Blair Witch Project with its story of a group of students traipsing into some sparse woodland to investigate a sinister local legend. Naturally, they finally find Bigfoot, who is less than happy with the intruders – leading to a man having his penis torn off and another poor slob whipped to death with the intestines of his girlfriend.
CANNIBAL FEROX (1981) Good enough to eat!
More gore from the heyday of Italian horror, Cannibal Ferox claims to be banned in 31 countries (it is heavily cut in the UK) and is also known by the Ronseal-esque alternate title Make Them Die Slowly. Which, unsurprisingly, is exactly what happens when a group of explorers in South America are captured, tortured and killed by some hungry natives. As with Cannibal Holocaust, a whole zoo full of animals is also (reprehensibly) sacrificed in the director’s search for verisimilitude – while the fake gore includes a man having his willy chopped off and a woman being hung up by hooks through her chest. Anyone for dessert?
PIECES
(1982) Continental chainsaw action “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!” screamed the original poster for Pieces, a silly Spanish gore epic featuring a mysterious maniac taking his power tool to nubile women attending a local college. Unintentionally hilarious, thanks to its bad Horror The Ultimate Celebration | 133
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