It’s October and with that comes the smell of burning leaves, busting out your fall clothes from the boxes stored in the back of your closet and, of course, the best event of the whole year…Halloween. And with the trick or treat holiday approaching comes Hollywood’s horror pictures ready to be rolled out like a red carpet. Whether your talent is acting, writing, directing, producing or any other trade in the “movie biz,” it’s time to get your mind around the scariest pictures ever produced in tinsel-town and pick your favorite horror film of all time!
For the sake of volatile disagreement, we’re going to keep the horror remakes out of the discussion, though some of you (who probably didn’t see the originals) might think these projects were well-made and entertaining, where as most of you (who probably grew up on the originals) think the remakes of all the horror classics are a complete disaster and horrific waste of celluloid. So, again, we’re sticking to the original films that put the horror in horror films and still hold up today with the genius style and creativity that was shown to the cinema world back then.
Of course we couldn’t start off the list without paying due credit to the one main film that practically created the slasher genre of horror cinema. The granddaddy of them all – John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” True, there were other “slasher” films released before this masterpiece, such as Bob Clark’s “Black Christmas” and Mario Bava’s “Bay of Blood,” but neither film nor any other before came close to “Halloween.” It’s style, subtext, music (written by John Carpenter himself) and overall scare factor really set this one way, way above the rest for all that came before it and, quite frankly, all that was to follow it. Carpenter’s score is synonymous with modern day horror and as Carpenter referred to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” as his Granddaddy of Horror back then, we consider “Halloween” the granddaddy since then. Carpenter, being the big Hitchcock fan, used elements of “Psycho” in his masterpiece, including Donald Pleasance’s character, “Sam Loomis,” which was actually one of the character names in “Psycho”…And of course the biggest bridge between the two films, Jamie Lee Curtis, the star of “Halloween,” is the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of “Psycho.”
Released in 1978 and made on a shoestring budget of $300,000, this “indie” project was originally made as an exploitation film. An exploitation film is a movie that would play to a certain young adult demographic (mostly college kids) and would play for a week or two in one town at a time before moving on to the next town, city-hopping at local drive-in movie theaters across the country. But before they knew what hit them, this little slasher flick, originally titled in the development process, “The Babysitter Murders” (the exploitation title), blew up from coast to coast, raking in about 75 million dollars at the box office. With nearly everyone having a chill move up their spine upon hearing the name “Michael Myers,” the film became the biggest horror phenomenon ever, and until recently, held the title for the top grossing indie horror flick of all time.
And from then on out, as always with anything in pop culture, came a hoard of similar pictures (the carbon copy movies). The films that all wanted to be like “Halloween” but never could match it. Some fell just a bit short; some couldn’t even hold a candle to it. However, a few did manage to become popular hits themselves. For example, “Friday the 13th” slashed its way into theaters and the money poured in just the same. Not even close to the depth, feel and structure of “Halloween’s” plot and characters, it still struck a chord with audiences, spawning a large handful of sequels itself. Everyone knows the name Jason Voorhees, the infamous hockey mask and the chilling sound of “Ha-Ha-Ha, Che-Che-Che” as he’s just about to slash away his next victim.
Going into the more supernatural area, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” came out in 1984. The incredibly talented Wes Craven directed this magnificent horror classic, which garnered critic acclaim and commercial success. It was inventive, new and horrifically brilliant. Wes Craven, like John Carpenter, became an iconic figure as one of the top horror directors of his time. The film’s success also brought on a string of sequels to follow, some bad (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2), some good (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors). No matter how good or bad the sequels were, one thing is for sure, everyone knows the name Freddy Krueger.
Another film that is definitely up there in the horror classic category is a film from 1974 entitled, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Directed by Tobe Hooper and made for 83.5 thousand dollars, it was shot as independent as they come. Tobe and a bunch of his college friends set out to make this film, very loosely based on Ed Gein, the serial killer from Wisconsin, and it went on to gross 30 million dollars in the box office. It, like all the other films mentioned so far, spawned a handful of sequels, prequels and remakes as well as producing another horror iconic character (like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger) – Leatherface.
There are a ton of other classic horror champions we could go on and on about as well. Films like “The Exorcist,” “Alien,” “The Shining,” “The Omen,” “Hellraiser,” John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” “Dawn of the Dead” and many, many more. But we will leave it here, as there are many other horror films to watch from now until October 31st. But just make sure you get to the true best of the best in that time…watch some of these classics mentioned above throughout the fight-night month and end the horror marathon on the 31st with, of course, the best in my opinion, John Carpenter’s “Halloween.”
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