An Armchair Roller Coaster Ride of Unimaginably Horrific Proportions (What makes a really good horror movie?)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	What makes a really good horror movie?
Date:	11/03/07 (998 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets us all worked up

Disadvantages: Horror flicks with little or no story

Horror is a funny genre isn’t it? Well, for the most part, it isn’t…usually but then that’s the rub: why do we like horror movies at all? I mean, there’s usually an element of gore; there’s often a dose of terror and the whole exercise is designed to frighten the bejesus out of us. But why? Well, it appears that we react in the same way to a horror movie as we do during a fairground ride or any other strenuous activity that gets you excited. Adrenaline kicks in, endorphins (the body’s happy drug) start to spark and we generally get excitable/aroused during the horror phenomenon. I guess there’s a lot of psychology in there and as long as it’s controlled enjoyment then fair enough. I can only really speak for me in terms of explaining why I like horror movies and what makes a decent horror flick in my eyes but then that’s the beauty of debate; you can agree or disagree as appropriate.

I started watching horror movies when I was a young boy - maybe 7 years old or so - can’t recall exactly. In those days, Hammer horror movies were all the rage and the kings of the genre were Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. It was notable then how influential the British movie makers were in adapting classic works like Dracula and Frankenstein for the big screen and just how well studios like Hammer did on such small budgets. I fell in love with the thespian style of the male entourage above. Christopher Lee was always magisterial as the Count Dracula with close up shots of him draining some poor maiden’s neck of blood often curtailed by a swish of his cloak as the virginal victim disappeared beneath his garment. Vincent Price with his velvety vocal chords was always the man to bring the latest Edgar Allan Poe tale to life with him in his pomp in movies like “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”. And Peter Cushing forever known as Professor Van Helsing spending much of his time pursuing the deadly Count Dracula and, more often than not, catching his man with a wooden stake in one hand and a wooden mallet in the other. When I reflect on why I loved these movies so much, I start to realise that they were great theatre in the spirit of the demented Dr Phibes and all those other camp characters that verged on a Rocky Horror but retained some credibility without stumbling into out and out parody. Movies that were influential in those early days open to suggestion included other classics from a bygone era like Lon Chaney in the werewolf movies, Boris Karloff in those Universal studio black and whites as Frankenstein and the watershed “The Tingler” starring the immortal Vincent Price which captured much of the psychology of fear and how it affects us as individuals but, sadly, the movie looks worn and dated today as I discovered when I sat down to watch it again recently.

Of course, the genre has moved on now and we live in a time when graphic violence is the order of the day and, to an extent, we border on desensitization when it comes to on-screen violence. There are lots of examples I can think of but the most obvious is the sequence of “Saw” movies featuring the deadly Jigsaw and a rather curious trike. Personally, I haven’t got a problem with gore and violence as long as it’s part of a coherent story and this is the crucial aspect for me: a coherent story. When I think about the writers I love to read, I think of James Herbert, I think of Stephen King and I think of all those other writers who could pen a decent tale. There are plenty of them including Richard Lamon, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe and all those other writers that have spanned the decades like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley. What they all have in common is the ability to spin a yarn; a story that we can sit and listen to around a burning campfire and be scared; scared enough to jump at the breaking of a twig or the movement of a shadow as the story reels us in and spits us out. For me, this is the essence of good horror with a borderline between horror and fantasy blurred only by the imagination and the need to classify something that could sit between two stools. Conversely, this is where good horror films go bad in their desperation to scare us. I’ve always baulked at watching movies that don’t have a decent story. I won’t watch cheap horror flicks that simply sensationalise the art of dying and death just for the sake of it. All those video nasties are usually just that - video nasties although they do conjure up a “Young Ones” moment for me of watching Vivien the punk watching a video nasty on his brand new VCR only for the band - The Damned - to do a routine much to my delight in the 80s! (showing my age now. Bah)

Where horror movies fail in spades is in the exploitation of the story/plot for the sake of a franchise. I’ve never been a fan of sequels as they are inevitable honey traps set up to fleece viewers by rehashing the original movie just to screw more money from us. I could point to an exhaustive list of movies from all genres that do this and, for me, the producers should be hung up upside down, smeared in jam and secreted into a rather large bee hive for at least a week. It’s naughty, it’s reprehensible, it’s extortion and it’s common place. Still, we have got the right to say “no” but too many people get suckered into to a Pirates of the Caribbean scenario and parted from their cash like docile sheep. Horror franchises are just as culpable. The Jason movies got rapidly worse as we worked our way through to “Jason X - Lost in Space” or whatever it was called. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is a wonderfully inventive movie from the crazed mind of Wes Craven only for the producers to crank out a further string of Freddie inspired movies that simply re-engineered the original theme and, as usual, we were treated to a string of teenage deaths done in increasingly bizarre ways. Then again, maybe that’s the American capitalist culture kicking in where the mighty dollar is king and the cinema is full of necking teenagers on the back row, willing to pay to see anything as long as they get a chance to sow their wild oats to a heavy rock soundtrack and another bandstand character suffering a grim demise.

With a subject like this, I could go on and on ad infinitum and you would be thoroughly bored by the time I’d finished so with that in mind, I’ll sum up. The horror/fantasy genre is my favourite of all the movie themes that you will encounter at the flicks. I’ve seen too many wonderful movies to list here (“American Werewolf in London”, “Hellraiser”, “The Devil Rides Out” and so on) and what makes a good horror movie is a good story. There are lots of peripheral factors like special effects, acting and violence and gore but I honestly don’t consider these essential. Most horror movies will have lousy acting, rubbish special effects and ridiculous ways to get rid of the cast list but these all play second fiddle to the strength of the story. Horror movies will always be popular because they take us on a roller coaster of imagination and we love theme park rides; especially when we can just sit there and experience everything with a coke in one hand and a packet of popcorn in the other!

Thanks for the read

Mara

Summary: What makes a good horror flick according to Mara