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There exist within the horror genre certain films that are concerned less with scaring you than with making you question the essential goodness of mankind. I don’t really want to write about most of these movies, because it means that I have to think about them. Nevertheless, if you want to kick your Halloween off with a bang - or you just enjoy counting gross-out coup with friends - you’ll want something from this list. Of their uniquely loathsome kind, these are the most perfect examples that exist.
5) Dead Alive
This image has nothing in particular to do with the moive, btw.
This gonzo kiwi zombie movie is actually pretty tame for this list, and that’s despite the zombie sex scene, the zombie baby, the disembodied zombie gastrointestinal tract, and the infamous “lawnmower” and “ear in the soup” scenes. Peter Jackson invests the proceedings with a dose of levity and humanism, and the central love story is just too sweet for words. Plus, where else are you going to find a kung-fu fighting priest who dives into the thick of a zombie uprising while shouting “I kick ass for the lord!” And yet… the various puppet effects ARE decidedly unpleasant, especially the aforementioned zombie gastrointestinal tract and the slow disintegration of the protagonist’s mother. And just when you think there’s nothing Jackson can do to gross you out physically any more (the lawnmower sequence required fake blood to be pumped onto the set through a fire hose), the climax of the film takes a startling left turn into psychologically disgusting territory. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so suffice it to say that it is very surprising. And gross. Definitely gross.
In the aftermath of the lawnmower scene.
On the whole, Dead Alive is a remarkably enjoyable film, so much so that I do sometimes sit down and watch it again. I always think I’m ready for that ending - that it will have lost it’s power over me. So far, it hasn’t.
[As we count down to Halloween, Overthinking It presents you with a guide to some of the best in horror, compiled by our resident master, Stokes. --Ed.]
At first we were just going to do a top ten list… but after three rough drafts, I got tired of comparing apples and oranges. Is Murnau’s atmospheric classic Nosferatu a better horror film than Hiltzik sublimely, uh, campy Sleepaway Camp? Well obviously it is (by most rational standards of goodness)… but that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily going to slap it in the DVD player at my Halloween party. So instead of one top ten list, we’re bringing you four top fives, beginning with the horror comedy.
A couple of notes on the selection process: I didn’t bother putting Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness on the list, because I couldn’t figure out anything to write about them. Suffice it to say that if you haven’t seen them already, you should do yourself a favor and add them to your netflix cue. I also disqualified all movies that are unintentionally funny, like the infamous Plan Nine From Outer Space. In my experience, these movies might make you laugh, but they don’t make you happy. That much failure crammed into 90 minutes is never anything but depressing. Now on to the winners!
In many cases, a movie’s soundtrack is just another piece of its marketing campaign. But occasionally, a song from a film actually becomes more popular than the film itself. Here are eight you can probably sing from memory (whether you want to admit it or not), from movies you’ve probably never heard of. Consider this a spoiler alert - if you read the name of a film and don’t want the plot described, just skip to the next one.
(NOTE: For a song to qualify, it has to have originally been released as part of a soundtrack. And I decided to stick to movies from the 60’s onward. Otherwise, this list might be all Gershwin and Porter.)
Let’s count ‘em down…
