# Horror Movie Fanatics Enter



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Anyone else love the mainstream, and some of the indy horror films? I do. What attracted me to them in my younger years was the dark characters and trying to understand their psychology.

Now I just find them fun and entertaining.

From Halloween to Suspiria (the original version), I love scary films. They capture my imagination!


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Me too. My favorite genre for the last 60 years. As a young kid I was utterly hooked on a TV series run by Universal called Shock Theater where they ran the old B/W horror films from the '30s and '40s. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, Wolfman...those were my heros! Something significant happened: my young ears became attuned to those great (and not so great) music scores. Waxman, Salter, Skinner...that was the musical style I learned to love which explains why I readily took to Mahler but found Mozart and Beethoven less interesting.

Then along came the Hammer films which I ate up. There have been some fine horror films in the past few decades and a lot of bad ones. I do not like slasher films or films that celebrate mutilation, torture and gore just for their own sake. To me, the Halloween franchise was totally boring and worthless. Same with Saw. There are certain things a good horror film must have and the most important is some element of religion or the supernatural. That's why the old classics like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby work so well. Hellraiser has it plus a terrific music score. A recent film, The Black Phone, was darn creepy. And musically, I love to play Halloween concerts...so much more interesting music than the schlocky Christmas concerts.


----------



## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I've always enjoyed horror as a genre. I particularly like many of the Asian horror movies which dont rely on cheap (predictable) scares and heightened volume of incidental music to create atmosphere. Many of the best horror movies of the last 20 years have come from the far East. Most of the 'Hollywood' horrors leave me bored. Give me a film like I Saw the Devil, Audition, etc any day.


----------



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I also love Bram Stoker's Dracula and some of the other "classier" horror films too. But I don't discount the slashers, they are fun for me.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I love horror as it is sort of science fiction's sibling genre. I don't care for the slasher or psychological thriller genres but I enjoy creepy atmospheric spookiness. Anything paranormal is fun for me, though I'm heavily into science. It's kind of a guilty pleasure.


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

Yes, early fan of Universal, Hammer, Jack Arnold (more sci-fi than horror). Less inclined to watch the kind of horror currently on offer (eg torture movies): I'm just less tolerant of the unpleasant, sometimes gratuitously sadistic and gory. My favourite is probably _The Thing_.


----------



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I love The Thing, great movie.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I love The Thing, great movie.


The original Thing or the remake? The original is still effectively scary and the Tiomkin soundtrack is fantastic! The 1982 John Carpenter remake is really good, really gory and having Ennio Morricone as the composer didn't hurt; but he's no Tiomkin!


----------



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

mbhaub said:


> The original Thing or the remake? The original is still effectively scary and the Tiomkin soundtrack is fantastic! The 1982 John Carpenter remake is really good, really gory and having Ennio Morricone as the composer didn't hurt; but he's no Tiomkin!


I've only seen the Carpenter version. I'll have to watch the OG!


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

mbhaub said:


> The original Thing or the remake? The original is still effectively scary and the Tiomkin soundtrack is fantastic! The 1982 John Carpenter remake is really good, really gory and having Ennio Morricone as the composer didn't hurt; but he's no Tiomkin!


If I'd meant the original, I'd have used its proper title. The last time I watched _The Thing From Another World_, it seemed less horror, more sci-fi social commentary and typically talkie for the period (cf _The Day The Earth Stood Still_ for example). _Them!_ was much better.


----------

