The Book of Lists: Horror Read online

  MATCH THE HORROR FILM WITH ITS TAGLINE

  1. The Blob (1958)

  2. Last House on the Left (1972)

  3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

  4. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

  5. Halloween (1978)

  6. Alien (1979)

  7. The Amityville Horror (1979)

  8. Friday the 13th (1980)

  9. The Shining (1980)

  10. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

  11. Cannibal Ferox (1981)

  12. The Howling (1981)

  13. Scanners (1981)

  14. Poltergeist (1982)

  15. The Thing (1982)

  16. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

  17. Gothic (1986)

  18. Manhunter (1986)

  19. The Exorcist III (1990)

  20. Hardware (1990)

  21. Se7en (1995)

  22. Hannibal (2001)

  23. House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

  24. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

  25. Hostel (2006)

  26. Snakes on a Plane (2006)

  A. “In the 21st Century there will be a new endangered species . . . Man.”

  B. “Break the Silence.”

  C. “Man is the warmest place to hide.”

  D. “Do you dare walk these steps again?”

  E. “Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the fright.”

  F. “Let he who is without sin try to survive.”

  G. “Indescribable . . . Indestructible . . . Nothing can stop it!”

  H. “Welcome to your worst nightmare.”

  I. “A romantic comedy. With zombies.”

  J. “The night HE came home . . .”

  K. “Who will survive and what will be left of them?”

  L. “Imagine your worst fear a reality.”

  M. “The monster movie.”

  N. “A masterpiece of modern horror.”

  O. “For God’s sake, get out!”

  P. “Conjure up your deepest, darkest fear . . . now call that fear to life.”

  Q. “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

  R. “It’s just you and me now, sport . . .”

  S. “Banned in 31 countries.”

  T. “To avoid fainting, keep repeating ‘It’s only a movie . . . It’s only a movie . . .’ ”

  U. “A 24-hour nightmare of terror.”

  V. “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.”

  W. “They’re here.”

  X. “If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.”

  Y. “The most shocking tale of carnage ever seen.”

  Z. “10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can’t Breathe. 20 Seconds: You Explode.”

  Answers: 1-G, 2-T, 3-K, 4-V, 5-J, 6-Q, 7-O, 8-U, 9-N, 10-M, 11-S, 12-L, 13-Z, 14-W, 15-C, 16-X, 17-P, 18-R, 19-D, 20-A, 21-F, 22-B, 23-Y, 24-I, 25-H, 26-E.

  — Compiled by S.B.

  JOHNNY RAMONE’S TOP TEN FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES

  Johnny Ramone (left) on the set of Bride of Re-Animator with actor David Gale. (Photograph © the John Family Trust. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission. www.johnnyramone.com.)

  Johnny Ramone was the guitarist for the legendary punk rock group the Ramones. In 2003 he was named the sixteenth Greatest Guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. A lifelong horror fan, he compiled the following list himself prior to his death in 2004. Johnny’s widow, Linda, provides additional insight within the quotes below.

  1. Bride of Frankenstein (1935): The James Whale–directed classic was Johnny Ramone’s favorite horror movie of all time. Acquiring an original half-sheet from Bride was one of his happiest moments as a collector. Possessing one of only five known surviving copies of the incredibly rare “style B” half-sheet issued by Universal in 1935, Johnny even secured one of the best in the business to meticulously restore some minor imperfections in the vintage piece. Another of the five pieces in existence is owned by Johnny’s friend and fellow collector, Kirk Hammet, of Metallica, who coincidentally bought Johnny an original pressbook from Bride one year for his birthday.

  “Johnny never thought he would own an original piece from this film. That Bride half-sheet was his most cherished piece in his huge memorabilia collection. It was also the most money he ever spent on a poster.”

  2. The Invisible Man (1933): Another Universal classic directed by James Whale makes the top two in the legendary punk guitarist’s top ten list.

  “He thought Claude Raines was amazing in the part because he had a great voice with such a strong presence that you felt he was there even when you couldn’t see him on screen.”

  Johnny had an original 1935 insert from The Invisible Man in his memorabilia collection.

  3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): The Ramones debut album released in April of 1976 on Sire/Warner Brothers includes a song titled “Chainsaw,” based on this cutting-edge classic directed by Tobe Hooper.

  “Johnny loved it. He thought it was crazy! He went to visit Ed Neal (the hitchhiker) at his house and kept in touch with him. After they met, Johnny said he thought Ed was a really nice guy, so different from his character the hitchhiker.”

  4. Night of the Living Dead (1968): “Johnny felt this movie [directed by George Romero] was shot amazingly and looked genuinely scary. He really got a kick out of seeing the footage from Night of the Living Dead intercut with footage of Ramones fans in Buenos Aires swarming the band’s van and trapping them inside.” (See the “Night of the Living Pinheads” scene from Ramones Raw, directed by John Cafiero.)

  5. King Kong (1933): “Johnny said that when he first saw it as a kid, King Kong seemed really scary to him. Whenever he liked something he’d watch it over and over again. He watched King Kong all the time on WOR’s Million Dollar Movie. Years later he would write to Fay Wray to get autographed photos for his collection.”

  Johnny is immortalized in an eight-foot tall bronze memorial statue located in the “Garden of Legends” at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles alongside the final resting place of Fay Wray, who passed away the same year, 2004.

  6. Re-Animator (1985): “He loved this film. He watched it all the time. Anytime anyone would come over to our house, he would always push it on them and try to get them to watch it. He thought the lead [Jeffery Combs as Herbert West] gave a great performance and he met him at a poster show in L.A. He even visited the set of the sequel (1990’s Bride of Re-Animator) while it was shooting here in Hollywood.”

  7. The Evil Dead (1981): “He really enjoyed the inventive camera work in this one. Johnny always said he felt the director [Sam Raimi] had started a new technique in the way people were shooting horror films.”

  8. The Wolf Man (1941): “He had the one-sheet, and whenever he collected an original poster from a movie he loved, it was a big thing for him. He thought the makeup for the original Wolfman looked great and was hard to compete with even in modern movies. He loved the Universal monsters and the look of those classic films.”

  9. Freaks (1932): The line “Gooble Gobble” from the infamous wedding scene in Tod Browning’s cult classic (released by MGM and later banned for years), inspired the soon-to-be equally infamous phrase “Gabba Gabba Hey” penned by the Ramones in the song “Pinhead” from their 1977 sophomore release Leave Home. The band’s fascination with pinheads would also carry over into their live show. A masked pinhead mascot appearing on stage wielding a “Gabba Gabba Hey” sign quickly became a staple in their live performances. The Ramones would revisit the Freaks theme with photos of many real-life oddities featured in the packaging of the album Animal Boy (1986). A UK 12-inch single (“Something to Believe In”) from the 1986 release included Freaks star Prince Randian aka “the Living Torso” on the sleeve.

  “Johnny owned two different original 1932 half-sheets, the one-sheet, and a set of the original lobby cards from this film. He loved Freaks and so did the Ramones.”

  10. Psycho (1960): Rounding out the list at number ten is Alfr
ed Hitchcock’s classic starring Anthony Perkins.

  “Johnny thought Janet Leigh looked great in it and that the shower scene was one of the scariest ever shot. He was a big fan of Bernard Herrmann, who did the score for the movie.”

  Thanks to Ron Moore and John Cafiero for their assistance.

  PROFESSOR LEO BRAUDY’S ELEVEN FAVORITE

  MOMENTS OF HORROR VS. TERROR IN FILM

  Professor Leo Braudy teaches seventeenth- and eighteenth- century English literature, film history and criticism, and American culture at the University of Southern California. He has written the books The World in a Frame: What We See in Films, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History, and From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. He also coedits, with Marshall Cohen, the widely used anthology Film Theory and Criticism,now going into its seventhedition.His most recent book is On the Waterfront in the BFI Film Classics series, and he is working on a book about the idea of the monstrous.

  In the late eighteenth century, when folktales, novels, and paintings were busy spreading the fear of darkness in contrast with the Enlightenment proclamations of progress and a new world, horror was considered a lesser form than terror, not just the synonym it is today. To inspire horror was to cause a physical reaction, much as the word itself came from a Latin root meaning to make your hair stand on end.

  Terror, as in Matthew G. Lewis’s Tales of Terror (1801), was a different matter entirely. The physical might enter into terror, as it did in the period of the French Revolution called the Terror, when thousands were sent to the guillotine. But in essence terror was a spiritual reaction, a sense of awe and dread that sank into one’s soul. Writers who produced a sense of horror in their readers were doing something lower-level, akin to a skeleton popping out of closet in a fun house. Horror made you fear for your own safety, while terror shook the foundations of your belief in an orderly universe and a benevolent God.

  It’s easier to choose my favorite moments of horror than terror in the movies, perhaps because movies depend so much on what my wife calls “the jumping out effect.” She means mere surprise, the gruesome figure beyond the frame you didn’t know was there, the unexpected dump into a pit filled with poisonous snakes, the seemingly comfortable easy chair that turns out to be a torture device. But the moments of juicy horror must have a bit of terror in them, something eerie and unexplainable.

  Horror

  1. Alfred Hitchcock was the master of anticipation. One of his great moments occurs when Arbogast, the detective in Psycho (1960), goes up the stairs to investigate the room of Norman Bates’s mother, and Norman (disguised as his mother, although we don’t know that yet) comes out with chef’s knife raised to kill him and slashes away. Hitchcock shoots this from overhead in longshot until we are close up on Arbogast’s bloody face. All of us (except Arbogast) knew it was going to happen, but it still chilled the blood when it did.

  2. Another anticipation moment is the first sight of the Thing in Christian Nyby’s ThingfromAnother World (1951). After its body has been chopped out of the arctic ice, it escapes when a fearful soldier drapes the ice cake with a working electric blanket, only to have Its arm ripped off by sled dogs. But that severed arm revives on its own, and so the motley crew of scientists and military people in the polar station know it’s still around. Their Geiger counters show that it’s in the greenhouse behind the door. They open the door and there it is. I never knew what it looked like in that scene until years later when I taught the film. I guess my ten-year-old eyes must have been closed the entire time when it came out of the greenhouse door and they slammed the door on its arm, chopping off its chitinous fingernails.

  3. Another, even more gruesome moment, from The Thing, this time the John Carpenter remake (1982), which goes back more closely to John W. Campbell Jr.’s original short story. The inhabitants of the isolated polar station have this time gradually realized that there is a shape-shifter among them (no Tom Corbett outfit this time!) and suspicion falls on the outsider MacReady, the helicopter pilot, whom they try first to freeze outside and then to gang up on. In the fight, one of the men has what seems to be a heart attack. They put him on a gurney and the doctor applies the obligatory paddles. Suddenly his chest opens into a mouth with giant teeth and bites off the doctor’s arms at the elbows, as the patient’s head turns into the body of a crab that scuttles out of the room pursued by flamethrowers. (I’ve left out a few gory details.) A Rob Bottin triumph.

  4. In the first scenes of George Romero’s original Dawnofthe Dead (1978), paramilitary police attack a ghetto apartment building where radicals have holed up, at the same time that a disease has begun to rage, which animates the recently dead. One of the men killed by the police rises up and staggers back into his apartment. His wife, overjoyed that he is still alive (or seems to be) rushes into his arms to embrace him. He hugs her enthusiastically and then bites a huge chunk out of her bare shoulder. A large part of the rest of this film takes place in one of those big shopping malls, which was a rarity at the time, and I saw it in something called the Golden Ring Mall outside of Baltimore. That’s the film’s eerie side, the potential horror that lurks in otherwise bland public spaces.

  5. Two moments in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) stand out. In the first, before the credits, the witch Princess Asa Vajda is being executed by the Inquisition. She is bound to a post and the executioner approaches carrying a metal mask furnished with enormous spikes that will pierce the face of whoever wears it. From Asa’s point of view we see the mask placed over her face. Then a well-muscled executioner lifts a huge hammer and, with an enormous thump, smashes the mask into her face and the stake behind her (all oddly reminiscent of the beginnings of J. Arthur Rank films). A century later, a skeptical professor manages to destroy the crucifix that kept her body in bondage, cutting his hand on the glass front of her tomb in the process. We watch her dead face with the bugs crawling in her empty eye sockets until the vivifying blood does its work, and her eyes float up into place from inside her skull.

  Terror

  I associate the purer forms of terror with the lack of special effects, now infrequent in this age of CGI. Terror traffics more in eeriness, which connects it to what the eighteenth century called the sublime. It makes you feel small and alone. It doesn’t usually jump out; it advances slowly, inexorably, and lets your imagination fill in the blanks. Maybe horror is more the mode of film, with its overwhelming visual immediacy, while terror is more the mode of fiction, pioneered by writers like Poe, Le Fanu, and Lovecraft, for whom almost every monster was unspeakable and indescribable.

  1. In Les Diaboliques (1955), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the murdered tyrant husband, whose body keeps appearing and disappearing much to the fright of the mistress and wife who murdered him, finally appears to his wife fully dressed and floating in a bathtub. He then begins to rise from the bathtub, slowly, with no jumping out, like the slowness with which the naked ghost woman rises from the bathtub in room 237 to meet Jack Torrance in Kubrick’s The Shining. It’s the slowness that gives you time to wonder “what is going on here?” The wife finally has a heart attack, and if you haven’t seen the film, I won’t spoil it by telling you the rest.

  2. Virtually any late scene in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) would qualify as terror because, except for the pods in the backyard greenhouses, it all seems so normal. Lovely suburbia, dear hearts and gentle people, the best friends and acquaintances of a perfect small town—except for the fact that they have all been turned into pod people by extraterrestrial visitors and want to convince the hero and heroine to join them. If I had to pick one scene, I suppose it would be the one in which the townspeople gather at the village intersection to welcome unsuspecting bus riders from nearby and bring them into their fold. The 1978 remake has its charms, but the whole sense of a seemingly normal world gone terribly wrong is gone. It was set in San Francisco, after all!

  3. Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick�
�s version of The Shining (1980), and I have a lot of trouble with it myself, especially when Kubrick and/or his coscreenwriter Diane Johnson seem to go to such great lengths to show that “shining” makes no difference at all. But there are still a lot of great things in it. I love that helicopter shot behind the credits with the tiny Torrance Volkswagen making its way amid the sublime scenery of the mountains, while Berlioz plays on the soundtrack. But the great terror moment for me is when Jack gazes down at the model of the maze in the lobby of the Overlook and we gradually realize we are seeing the tiny figures of Wendy and Danny walking in it. It’s the first moment that it’s clear that the hotel has started to take Jack over and absorb him into its malevolent spirit.

  4. Horror often comes when we are tied to the victim’s point of view and don’t know when the monster is going to jump out. Maybe terror comes when we are associated with the monster’s point of view, or at least the point of view of some monsters. An early scene in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) delivers some of that. It begins with a leafy suburban street, perhaps descended from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with a young boy and his babysitter strolling along talking about Halloween and horror movies. Then they come to the Myers house, vacant since the horrific events of fifteen years before. As they talk about the house, we get a shot from inside the house. Just a cinematic convenience? No, there is heavy breathing on the soundtrack, and the shadowy side of a face and shoulder come into the frame. Someone is there. The young woman walks down the street and the heavy breathing continues. Whose side is this movie on?