Carrie (1976)- A shy, telekinetic girl who is mentally abused by her religious zealot mother, pretty much flips her lid when the asshole kids at school push her too far... This is a great movie, filled with all sorts of impalings, deaths by explosion, electrocutions, crushings, and a finale filled with a gym full of burning students. Depalma masterfully directs this Stephen King story, and gives us one of the best movies of the 70's. It's also pretty cool to see John Travolta as one of the jerks who gets what he deserves; the rest of the cast is great too, all around. The last scene in this movie gave me nightmares for weeks... Carrie is a classic horror movie in every sense of the word.
Re-Animator (1985)- How can you not love a movie where a re-animated corpse uses its own severed head to perform oral sex on a hot chick? That's not even counting that the corpse in questions looks oddly like John Kerry... This movie is all kinds of twisted fun; based loosely on a Lovecraft story, it's an explicitly violent and yet often times humorous movie, that rose above the sequel dominated tripe that horror gave us towards the end of the 80's. Jeffrey Combs is, as always, the perfect "mad scientist" type, and Barbara Crampton is not only hot, but she gets naked a lot too! To see Re-Animator is to absolutely love it; in any other decade this movie would have been at least top 10 material (and it still is, though the 80's had a TON of quality horror flicks), so if you haven't yet had the pleasure, go check it out.
Candyman (1992)- Say his name five times into a mirror, and crap your pants! Clive Barker and Stepehen King honestly gave us a ton of cool horror stories in the 80's and 90's, and Candyman is among the best of them. Tony Todd is perfect as the creepy title character, hook hand, creepy voice and all... to this day I won't say Candyman five times aloud, let alone within sight of a mirror. There are plenty of scares to be had here, although some of them are more subtle than others, but damn this is a good flick.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)- Ooh, controversy! A remake of one of the best horror movies of all time making a best of list? Yes, and it's simple really; it was actually pretty damn good. It didn't shit on the original (which is still the better film), it was dark and filled with tension, it was brutal and bloody... It just worked as a horror movie. Most remakes infuriate me, and this one is no different, but at some point I realized that I just need to relax and see what the movie has to offer. My advice is to pretend this isn't a remake of one of the best horror movies ever, sit back and watch it, and enjoy what it has to offer.
See you tomorrow with #18...
