Tag Archives: List

Post 100 – One Hundred Years of Horror Films

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

So here’s a bit of a milestone. A little more than a year and a half in, this is my 100th post on this here blog (and also marks passing 200,000 words – a decent length book). In that time, I’ve reviewed 112 movies and 8 books (reading goes more slowly), I’ve composed 50 poems, and I’ve done essays on a range of topics from trying to define the genre and tracking how I got into horror to the often sadly toxic nature of fandom and issues of gender or queerness in horror. I’ve also put together quite a few lists.

And as 100 is a nice round number, that is what we’re going to do again today. I thought it could be fun, or at least interesting, to build a list that somehow looks back on the last one hundred years of horror films, highlighting one from each decade. I’m not making a claim that these are the “ten best” horror films or that each is the “best” of its decade, but rather, I’d like to draw attention to one film that is worthy of consideration, that might be a bit off the beaten path, and that might be somehow representative of the time in which it was made (also, I’m not allowing anything I’ve written about previously – which will sometimes rule out a film I would have otherwise chosen). I might not succeed on all counts for each entry (when it gets to the 30s and 40s, I just haven’t seen enough films to really offer a hidden gem that most people haven’t seen), but I’ll do my best. And hey, I’m the one paying for hosting, so let’s say that’s good enough.

So, here are Ten Great (or at least pretty good) Possibly-Underseen-Possibly-Representative-Films from Ten Decades (that I’ve not written about before). With catchy headings like that, how have I not taken over the internet?

2020s – Freaky (2020)

It’s still early in the decade, but I do think this one stands out as worth mentioning. For one thing, this combination of Freaky Friday and Friday the 13th, with Millie (Kathryn Newton), a shy teen girl accidentally swapping bodies with a Jason-esque slasher killer (embodied by Vince Vaughn), is just a ton of fun. It’s a great, high concept premise and it takes both its Teen Comedy and its Slasher tropes seriously, committing to both the laughs and the violence. But in addition, I do think it’s a good example of a recently identified trend.

In one of my earliest posts, I discussed a presentation at an academic conference given by Dr. Steve Jones on what he termed the “metamodern slasher.” Whereas from the mid-90s through the early 2000s, many slashers took an ironic, postmodern turn, resting on a self-referentiality that made a joke of its own subject matter (see, e.g., Jason X (2001) and its holodeck scene), recently there has been a recurrence of (still self-aware) emotional sincerity and Freaky is a good example of that. This is a funny movie, and while I don’t know how scary it is, per se, it is violent and gory. But it is also very emotional. Much of Millie’s story revolves around her father’s recent death and what this has done to her relationship with her mother and older sister. The film does knowingly play with genre tropes for comic effect, but the journey is actually one of healing and reconciliation. And along the way, Millie is rooted in friendships with other young people whom we are meant to like and hope won’t get killed, no “disposable teens” here.

There are still (and I expect always will be) actually scary, hard, disturbing movies being made, so I don’t think this trend threatens the bona fides of the genre, but I think it’s great that there’s also a place for work with as much heart as this. Kudos to Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, who directed and co-wrote, respectively.

2010s – Bliss (2019)

It’s hard to choose a characteristic film from this decade. I think the biggest trend was probably films like The Babadook (2014), The VVitch (2015), or Hereditary (2018) reminding everybody that horror can deal with serious ideas and strong emotions, and feature significant performances and artistry (this is nothing new of course, but I guess from time to time, non-horror-fan pop culture writers need a refresher), launching the much derided phrase, “elevated horror.” And I really love all of these, but I feel like everyone knows them already and thus, they don’t need much support.

Joe Begos’s Bliss is a smaller film that may not be on as many people’s radar, but I think should be. The premise is that a young artist whose trouble finishing a commissioned painting coincides with her sobriety, after getting some bad news, goes on a bender, and in the process of doing a lot of drugs, happens to become a vampire. The metaphor of “vampiric bloodthirst as addiction” is not novel, but the addition of the artistic drive to the mix clicked for me. The film finds the parallels between the self-destructive, self-erasing drive of drug addiction, the outwardly destructive violence of being a vampire, and the mesmerizing thrill of being lost in creativity – of a place where the line between subject and object is obliterated and the action of making is the only thing that remains – the artist lost in the art – creation as oblivion.

This makes it all sound philosophical or heady, but it must also be said that this low budget flick goes hard. The violence and gore is intense and well executed. And the whole ride was very satisfying for me as a vampire story, all artistic pretensions aside. One of my favorite recent discoveries, I definitely want to check out more of Begos’s work (I also rather enjoyed his Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022), which was just released for the last holiday season.) Finally, in works that revolves around a painting like this, we usually don’t really get to see it, but in this case, the artwork, painted by Chet Zar, is present throughout, and I found it so refreshing to see it evolve with the main character. Plus, it’s pretty cool looking.

2000s – Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

This is another case where the dominant trends of the decade don’t seem all that necessary to get into. We know that there were loads of slick/gritty remakes of classics from the 70s and 80s, and past that, everyone was talking about “torture porn.” There were also a bunch of great movies that didn’t fit either of those categories. The Descent (2005), The Strangers (2008), Shaun of the Dead (2004), and the House of the Devil (2009) are all stand out examples, but I want to focus on an earlier film that I suspect is underseen.

Shadow of the Vampire tells the story of F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) filming the iconic, essential, early vampire film, Nosferatu (1922), but posits that rather than hiring a professional actor who had performed with the acclaimed Max Reinhardt company (as happened in “real life”), he sourced an actual old world vampire (Willem Defoe) to lend the production authenticity. It is a fun, often hilarious, premise, but though it’s frequently quite funny, it is all played straight. Joining the ranks of the real Max Schreck and Klaus Klinski (who was great in Herzog’s 1979 remake), Defoe’s vampire is genuinely creepy, while still evoking real pathos. It’s a carefully crafted, very physical performance, and it may be one of my favorites.

While the vampire is a direct physical threat, the actual villain of the piece is Malkovich’s Murnau who is so intent on creating his art that he’s more than willing to sacrifice his actors and crew to that end. The rest of the cast is just great (Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, and Udo Kier are a treat), and the film is quietly haunting, even if it’s not short on laughs along the way. It is beautiful and funny, and occasionally even a bit scary.

1990s – Cemetery Man (1994)

The 90s are oft-derided as a poor decade for the genre, but of course some flicks have stood the test of time. In the wake of Scream (1996), there was a fresh teen slasher cycle. Before that, there were a number of reality benders that all have warm places in my heart such as Jacob’s Ladder (1990), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), not to mention what may still stand as my favorite horror film of all time, Candyman (1992). But instead I’d like to focus on a quirky, weird little treat: Michele Soave’s Dellamorte Dellamore, released in America as Cemetery Man in 1996.

Based on an Italian comic by Tiziano Sclavi, this was my introduction to Italian horror well before I’d heard of Argento, Fulci, Bava, or Soave himself for that matter (who’d earlier made one of my favorite horror films of the 80s – Stagefright). It was even before I was particularly into horror movies – I mean, I’d watch them occasionally, but wasn’t really a fan yet.

I’ll always remember seeing this with one of my best friends in high school. We’d checked the newspaper to find out what was playing at the mall and while every other film came with a short description, this had nothing. When we got to the cinema, there was no poster and the title of the film was just written on an index card with a magic marker. We soon found that we were the only two people who’d come to see this mystery of a film and in the first few minutes of weirdness, assumed that we’d found some silly, bad B movie and figured at least we could crack jokes with each other. But we soon shut up because it was freaking amazing!

Set in a small Italian village, Francesco (Rupert Everett) is the cemetery caretaker whose main responsibilities include waiting for the dead to rise, as they always inevitably do, shooting them in the head, and re-burying them. He falls in love with a young widow at a funeral who is unfortunately bitten by her husband’s reanimated corpse as she and Francesco make love on her spouse’s fresh grave. He then has to kill her again and again and again; but she always seems to return.

It is an odd film to say the least. Gory, funny, sexual, morbid, poetic, and phantasmagoric, it somewhat defies description. But in its absolute weirdness, it is really something fresh and fun and challenging. It is a cheap b-movie. It’s also an existential meditation on living and dying. It’s also full of political subtext. It’s also dreamy and beautiful. I’m so glad we rolled the dice and went to see it. 

1980s – Intruder (1989)

I think it’s obvious that the 1980s were the era of the slasher. There were of course, the big franchises, but also literally hundreds of smaller pictures capitalizing on the simple premise of some (generally human) madman stalking and killing a hapless group of young people.

But rather than focus on any of the big names, I’d like to draw your attention to the deliriously fun late 80s supermarket-set entry, Intruder. Directed by Scott Spiegel, one could be forgiven for thinking it just might have been filmed by Sam Raimi, given how prominently his name was featured on the poster (he plays a small part, along with his brother, Ted, as well as the always enjoyable Bruce Campbell – I guess Spiegel worked on Evil Dead I and II, and all of them had been friends in high school). But the style feels quite similar as well – high praise indeed.

This is a pretty simple set up – the young workers of a small grocery store are doing a nightshift inventory when they all get locked in with a killer who picks them off one by one. But however straightforward the premise, it is filmed within an inch of its life. The creativity and energy that suffuse every shot is thrilling, making it a really fun, exciting movie, full of over the top murder set pieces, and a few actual twists and turns as you try to unravel the mystery of who is behind the killings and why. The camera is always finding new surprising places to watch the action from, and the bloody, bloody practical effects are great. This grimy little “dead teenager picture” was clearly made with love and glee, and its creative enthusiasm is unmistakable. One of those films that feels like it’s so much better than it possibly needed to be, it really deserves to be seen.

1970s – Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

John Hancock’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is one of my favorite kinds of horror movies: hard to pin down or categorize, uncanny, and just beautiful. Is it a vampire movie? Maybe. A ghost movie? Possibly? A psychological drama about a woman struggling with mental illness, desperate to keep a grip on an ever more slippery reality? Definitely, but it’s probably those other things too. It is also an exemplary sample of where horror cinema was in the 1970s.

Along with such stand out films as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Messiah of Evil (1973), this is a deeply unsettling, independent feature with a real artistic, poetic sensibility. There is a story, and an emotionally affecting one at that, but more than anything else, this movie is a mood. The atmosphere is so hazy, eerie, and beautiful, and I adore dwelling in that space.

The film follows Jessica (Zohra Lampert), recently released from a mental institution as she, her husband, and their friend, Woody, relocate from the stress and anxiety of the city to the supposed peacefulness of a run-down farm house upstate, only to find it currently inhabited by an intriguing, alluring drifter named Emily. All free-love, counterculture types, they let her stay on and things get immediately uncomfortable as Emily seems to be seducing both of the men. Also, she just might be a vampire/ghost who’s resided in the house for over 100 years, holding the creepy, elderly, seemingly exclusively male denizens of the town in her thrall.

Or Jessica is just paranoid, letting her mind run away with her. With frequent voiceover on her part, the whole film clearly has an unreliable narrator and nothing we see can fully be trusted. But something is definitely wrong (besides the clouds of poison they’re spraying in their newly purchased apple orchard).

The whole ordeal is a mesmerizing death trip, both seductive and threatening, and it’s clearly worth a watch if you have the patience for its languid, spooky, and ultimately unresolved vibe.

1960s – Repulsion (1965)

Speaking of mental instability, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion is really at the top of the game. In choosing a film that encapsulates this decade, my first impulse was his Rosemary’s Baby, easily one of my favorite horror films, but everyone already knows how good it is, and I think this striking, black and white piece from just a few years earlier might not be on as many people’s radar. Nonetheless, its exploration of urban paranoia amidst an epoch of great social change and shifting sexual mores is equally captivating.

Primarily taking place within a small London apartment, we follow Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a quiet young woman, left alone for some time as her sister has gone away on holiday with her lover. She seems tormented and repulsed by male attention and the notion of sex (for reasons that seem apparent by the end of the film), and left to her own devices, starts to unravel. Beset by recurring nightmares of rape and assault, Carol retreats into her domestic space, but even that does not feel stable or inviolate, its boundaries breached by men either blithely oblivious to her fears or explicitly predatory, its walls seeming to crack open, allowing in the external masculine threat. By the end, plenty of blood has been spilled and her mind has been shattered.

It is a boldly filmed, emotionally intense piece, clearly the work of a hungry young artist, eager to show off his vast potential. I remember the first time watching it, thinking, “Why aren’t films shot like this anymore – so expressively, making such strong choices?”  And past just being a triumph of style and technical prowess, the psychological terror really lands. Carol may have stronger, less controlled reactions than many, but the danger she feels is real. The world is full of men who will not respect her limits or her agency, who will force their wills upon her, men like the director himself perhaps.

1950s – The Giant Claw (1957)

So, this decade is a bit tricky as I just haven’t seen that many 50s horror films. Furthermore, I’ve already written about many of my favorites, such as The Bad Seed (1956), House of Wax (1953), Godzilla (1954), or Les Diaboliques  (1955). And so, rather than write about a good terrifying movie that was made in the 50s, I want to write about a terrifically fun movie that might typify a dominant trend in those years. Hence, we have one of the most deliriously enjoyable, silly, red-threat adjacent monster movies of the time, The Giant Claw.

Do we have a giant alien bird from an “anti-matter galaxy” as big as an aircraft carrier that can only be defeated by the square-jawed American military? You betcha! Is the monster puppet as lame as could be hoped for, with eyes that can never focus in one place? Oh yeah! Is the film’s gender politics hilariously out of date, featuring such delightful tropes as the “lady mathematician” whose primary role is making sandwiches for all the very-serious men, and who responds to what today would be considered mild sexual assault by falling in love with the guy? But, of course!

Apparently, there is an unsubstantiated report that the marionette of the interdimensional beastie was made in Mexico City for only $50. While that hasn’t been proven, it isn’t much of a stretch to believe. But I don’t want you to think that I’m saying this is a bad movie. I mean, it is. But it’s also a great movie. At least, if a film can be judged not by abstract, and perhaps outdated, aesthetic concepts like ‘quality,’ ‘logical consistency,’ and ‘technical adequacy,’ but rather, by how much unadulterated joy it can instill in its viewers, then this is a masterpiece for the ages.

1940s – Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Again a decade that I’m not that deeply versed in – what stands out most for me would be the Val Lewton produced pictures made for RKO like Cat People (1942) or I Walked with a Zombie (1943), but I’m already in the middle of a series of posts about them, so let’s look in another direction. Coming at the tail end of Universal’s second horror cycle, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is one of the earliest and best horror comedies. Truth be told, it is pretty much exclusively a comedy, with the horror elements all played for laughs, but it is genuinely funny in ways that have held up well through the decades, and it is so steeped in the horror films that came before to make it a a treat for any lover of the classic monsters.

Bela Lugosi returns as Dracula, the mastermind of a nefarious, multi-monster plot. Lon Chaney Jr. reprises his doomed Lawrence Talbot, the wolf man. Karloff had long since stopped playing Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange, who’d played the monster twice before, stepped in), but Vincent price does ‘show up’ as the voice of the invisible man, a suitably silky replacement for Claude Rains. And of course, there’s Bud Abbott and Lou Costello bumbling in and out of danger. I’ve read that its success was blamed for the downturn the genre took in subsequent years, the formerly terrifying monsters reduced to a series of jokes, but it really is funny, and I can’t imagine being angry at it. When I was a little kid I wasn’t ready to seriously be scared, but I loved monsters. This is the perfect film for that. I can establish no certain causal link, but I wonder if without this, we would have ever gotten such kid-friendly, fun, horror-themed works as The Munsters, Scooby-Doo, or, The Monster Squad.

1930s – The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

In previous entries, I often tried to choose some underseen treasure, but here I’ve just got to go with one of the biggies. Honestly, I think any of James Whales’s films for Universal could qualify as exemplary of the era, but I’ve already at least briefly discussed The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933), and in my opinion, The Bride of Frankenstein is just untouchable.

In it, I think Whale takes everything that he’d already brought to the first entry and dialed it up to eleven: its gorgeous gothic atmosphere, its wicked, subversive sense of humor, and its real pathos for the creature – a figure of both fear and pity. Also, it is just really, really weird. I mean, just consider Dr. Pretorius’s collection of tiny jar people – something Mary Shelly somehow failed to include in her seminal work.

It is such a fun, funny movie. From the high camp of Ernest Thesiger’s Dr. Pretorious, to Una O’Connor’s hilarious screaming/fainting servant, to the bizarre, aforementioned miniature jar-folk, the film sustains a wild comic streak. But in spite of that, it is also creepy, sometimes a bit scary (for its time), and surprisingly heartfelt. I can’t imagine someone watching this without sympathizing with the poor creature, however many bereft villagers, still mourning the death of their children, he strangles. A lonely outcast, shunned and hated by society, he stands in for the disenfranchised writ large and the return of the repressed, and Karloff shines (as he generally did – he was outstanding) – his performance physically expressive and emotionally nuanced. And of course, when the Bride finally appears (my only gripe being that the absolutely iconic title character, played by Elsa Lanchester, is barely in the film), she is granted a kind of tragic agency. She may have been constructed solely to wed the creature, but on first seeing him, she recoils and screams. It is heartbreaking for him, but at the same time, oddly empowering to see her allowed her own will, her own desire – or lack thereof.

It is a sad, haunting, odd, dramatic, very funny film. What a combination – just whistling through the graveyard. It also feels quite personal. James Whale was an out gay director working in Hollywood in the era of the Hays code and morals clauses. Knowing a bit about his biography, it is impossible not to view this film through that lens – the monster a social pariah, feared and hated for what he is, seeking companionship and community (not to mention the film’s campy sensibility and that the driver of the story is Dr. Pretorius coming to his old colleague, Dr. Frankenstein on his wedding night to take him away from his new bride so they can create life in their own special way, without recourse to the womb), this queer reading ascribing further depth to what was already a moving, unique picture.

—

And so, there we have ten films from ten decades that I wholeheartedly recommend. Some are big hitters in the genre, and others are a bit more off the beaten path, but all are great in their way, and all demonstrate some characteristic features of their era.

And also, there we have one hundred posts, covering the last roughly year and a half. This blog has been and continues to be an interesting project for me, and I still have plenty of ideas of what I might write about in the weeks and months to come. That said, I must admit that I sometimes feel I’m throwing words into the void. Google Analytics tells me I have visitors, but I don’t really know who any of you are, so if you feel like it, maybe drop a comment and say hi (it will be a nice break from the endless Russian Spam-Bots pushing online casinos and porn). What would be on your list of highlights form the last ten decades?

But also, if you don’t feel like commenting, no worries. Thanks for being here. I’m honored to have you.

Ten Great Horror Themed Songs

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Sometimes, you’re not actually looking for the big scare, nor are you looking to be particularly disgusted or disturbed, but you still want to enjoy that horror vibe. Sometimes, it’s just really satisfying to hang out with horror-themes and imagery even while the tone is playful, silly, or outright comic. And sometimes you want all that while you’re driving someplace or getting work done on the computer. And so I thought it could be fun to throw together a short list of some horror themed songs that I really enjoy.

These aren’t necessarily from any particular soundtracks (though of course, some have been used in a film here or there). For some of my favorite tracks used in horror movies, you could check out this list, and for my favorite scores, here’s another post. Generally, I’m also trying to stay off the beaten path a bit – so no Monster Mash, Season of the Witch, or anything by The Cramps (though perhaps I should have made room for ‘I was a Teenage Werewolf‘). Also, I make no claim these are the best horror songs out there, but just songs I really like. There are bands that specialize in riffing on horror flicks, but I don’t always get into them. I get that Ice Nine Kills does some really cool stuff, for example, but I just haven’t clicked with their sound. What can you do? I’m also not including anything that’s just straight out Satanic as there is just too much to choose from. While I love the eponymous title track on Black Sabbath’s first album, Iron Maiden’s ‘The Number of the Beast,’ or Ghost’s infernal inversion of Christian rock “praise music,” ‘He is,’ I feel like that constitutes its own whole sub-genre, so maybe it’s a post for another day.

Ok, enough about what I’m not including – let’s get into what I am, in no particular order…

Night of the Vampire – Roky Erickson

Roky Erickson - Night of the Vampire

How did I not get into Roky Erickson sooner? He has one of my favorite tracks on the soundtrack to Return of the Living Dead (“Burn the Flames”), but I’d never looked into the rest of his output. Then a couple of weeks ago, while looking for information to fuel my post on Val Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie, I came across Erickson’s song of the same name and proceeded to go down a real rabbit hole.  I learned that he’d had a couple late 60s hits with the psychedelic rock band The 13th Floor Elevators, and apparently struggled with some serious mental health issues over the course of his life. He also released some absolutely rocking horror themed songs.

‘Night of the Vampire’ is included on his 1981 release, The Evil One, along with other slamming tracks about zombies, fire demons, ghosts, and a creature with an atom brain. There is something essentially playful to it all, but at the same time, this stomping garage rock sound explodes with an absolutely rabid ferocity – atmospheric, wild, dangerous, and just plain fun – I’m so glad to have recently discovered it.

This song encapsulates much of what I love about his sound. There is a creeping, building sense of menace and drama, all riding on top of a kind of rock-march and bellowed without a hint of irony or equivocation. It’s a real blast.

Curse of Millhaven (Przekleństwo Millhaven) – Nick Cave / Kinga Preis

04 The Curse of Millhaven (Przekleństwo Millhaven) - Kinga Preis

Originally released on the 1996 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, Murder Ballads, ‘The Curse of Millhaven is a glorious, feverish first person song from the perspective of a sweet little girl who recounts the terrible killings that have been taking place in her small town, before it is (unsurprisingly) revealed that she’s been behind them all along, that “It is I, Lottie, the Curse of Millhaven – I’ve struck horror in the heart of this town – like my eyes ain’t green and my hair ain’t yellow – it’s more like the other way around – I got a pretty little mouth, beneath all the foaming…” It’s pretty great stuff.

While I love Nick Cave’s original version, I was really struck when I came upon Kinga Preis, a Polish actress-singer, performing a translation of the song on Youtube some years back (for regular readers, she played the singer in The Lure, the Polish Mermaid Horror Musical I wrote about last summer). I assume most of my readers don’t speak Polish, but especially if you’re familiar with the original lyrics, I don’t think you need to understand her words to go on the ride, and it is a wild one: unhinged, physical, manic, and dangerous. Also, I understand the translation itself is really quite good (if you do speak Polish and have the ability to compare) – it captures the spirit of the song, while really speaking in a different, culturally specific idiom. There’s also a video out there of her doing ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ with Mariusz Drężek, but I don’t think it quite holds a candle to the intensity she brings in this performance.

Gingerbread Coffin – Rasputina

Gingerbread Coffin

I first came to Rasputina due to their song, ‘Transylvanian Concubine’ being featured on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“Surprise” – when Drusilla has a birthday and gets an arm). I really got into their ‘chamber-rock,’ cello forward sound, and back when CDs were still a thing, bought all of theirs.

‘Gingerbread Coffin’ kicks off their 2002 album, Cabin Fever. It’s a solid, morbid, gothy jam about a group of young girls that find a broken old doll and proceed to build a black mass around it, burying it in a gingerbread coffin and knowing that when they need her, “she’ll rise to the light.” The song details the elements of their created ritual (a set of old knives they brought, but didn’t use, passing around an old tea cup all filled up with dead flies, etc.) and looks forward to the imagined future magical payoff. Trading in a dark childhood spiritualism, the romantic sense that things have power, that the world is a more mysterious, darker, more magical place than we come to inhabit as adults, Rasputina evokes some secret, arcane potency that can perhaps only exist between children and their imaginations. It also always makes me think of Heavenly Creatures (1994).

Creepy Doll – Jonathan Coulton

Amanda Palmer/Neil Gaiman w/Jonathon Coulton "Creepy Doll"

While on the subject of creepy dolls, how about a song about just that? I apologize for the quality of the video, but I really wanted to share exactly this version of the song, from a tour that Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman did together, mixing readings of short stories and songs (It’s available on the 3 disc set, An Evening with Neil and Amanda). In addition, they also brought out a couple guests, one of which, Jonathan Coulton, had this gem of a silly, eerie song to share.

It paints a story for you, wherein you come to this spooky old house, find a creepy doll in the attic and are thus doomed to have it accompany you forever, being, you know, creepy, and also passive aggressively suggesting that you don’t eat particularly well. It’s all a silly lark, but the picture it creates is still so rich in the tropes of a certain kind of scary story, and it is just great fun. Gaiman narrates one verse in this version and it’s a pleasure. Again, this video is not good so here’s a link to a cleaner version of the song itself, but honestly, I find it a bit over-produced and really prefer the stripped down guy-with a guitar rendition from the concert.

Walk Like a Zombie – HorrorPops

Walk Like A Zombie

A Danish psychobilly band, HorrorPops has put out three albums of poppy-punky, double bass driven horror themed boppers and this one is no exception. Perhaps the danciest song on this list, it’s a really upbeat love song to a paramour who happens to be an undead monster. They may ‘wanna hold hands in the cemetery,’ and they may ‘wanna be lost for all eternity,’ and everything might be ‘dark and kinda scary,’ but she doesn’t care. She’ll follow her love into the grave, bopping along all the way in a retro fifties groove. It’s a fun tune.

On a heavier note, in 2020, frontperson, Patricia Day was diagnosed with cancer. Apparently she beat it, but still has a GoFundMe page open as I guess there are ongoing medical bills to deal with. If you’re a fan, I guess she could still use the support.

Steven / The Awakening – Alice Cooper

ALICE COOPER/Years Ago\Steven

The climax of Alice Cooper’s first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare, this is a spooky, dreamy song that actually brings a solid horror kick when it’s revealed that through the whole album, things have not been as they seemed. The concept album leading up to this moment had taken us through the nightmares of a young boy named Steven, featuring devilish stuff, a spot of necrophilia, and a black widow set to conquer the world (with a delicious spoken word intro from Vincent Price).

In ‘Steven,’ the nightmares reach their culmination in a vertiginous sequence of murder and regret, possibly involving a newborn baby, all through the eyes of this tortured young boy. It’s not 100% clear what exactly is going on, but that’s part of the disquieting charm, and all through it, someone is calling his name, as if to wake him up. And then awake he does, and we learn he is no child, but a grown man, and in his dream state, he has committed real acts of violence. It’s a great, chilling, cool turn to cap off an album that has largely had its tongue firmly in cheek. If you like Cooper’s sound and have never listened to this album, sit down some time and take it for a drive – critically panned on release as melodramatic and cheesy (representing a clear change in style from the original band, which had just broken up), I think it stands the test of time as some of Alice Cooper’s best work, and it marks the moment that he came into his own as a dark vaudevillian showman.

No One Lives Forever – Oingo Boingo

No One Lives Forever

Propulsive, chaotic, tight, quirky and just a bit spooky, ‘No One Lives Forever’ finishes Side 1 of Oingo Boingo’s 1985 album, Dead Man’s Party in explosive fashion. It’s a great record with some of their biggest hits (such as ‘Dead Man’s Party’ and ‘Weird Science’), but somehow I’ve never seen this song get the attention it deserves. I guess the two aforementioned songs got featured in bigger cinema hits (Back to School and Weird Science), whilst this up tempo ode to death and dying plays during the bridge scene at the start of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, which I’m guessing might not have done the same box office numbers – I mean, I love it, but it is an odd flick.

Circling around an ominous bit about how we should have a party with the “full moon in the sky – it’s the hour of the wolf and I don’t want to die,” the singer alternatingly claims to be too clever and quick for the reaper to catch and councils us to live it up now cause no matter how many tricks we think we have up our sleeves, there’s no way to outrun his scythe. It’s clearly a song about mortality, but it also carries such a lively carpe diem spirit of dancing through the graveyard. 

Bloodletting (The Vampire Song) – Concrete Blonde

Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)

Centered on a really simple, but still driving bass line, the title track of Concrete Blonde’s third album, released in 1990, is a whole mood. “There’s a crack in the mirror and a bloodstain on the bed – You were a vampire and baby, I’m the walking dead.” The song both feels like a gothic celebration of eternal undeath set against a sultry New Orleans nightscape and possibly also like a much darker song about abuse and personal trauma, the fall-out of a toxic relationship rightly ended. The vibe is rich and cool to hang out in, but there is a sense of something emotionally painful at the heart of it all. Both elements make it a great horror song. I dig the fun vampire stuff, but I appreciate how it’s also grounded in genuine feeling.

Nature Trail to Hell (in 3D) – Weird Al Yankovic

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Nature Trail To Hell

They sometimes say that to parody something well, you need to really love it, and I’ve always felt that when Weird Al does his spin on someone’s song, he never seems to be putting the artist down. I’d say the same is true in this mind-blowingly great send up of don’t-go-in-the-woods early 80s Slasher flicks. It advertises, “Coming this Christmas to a theatre near you – the most horrifying film to hit the screen – there’s a homicidal maniac who finds a cub scout troupe – and he hacks up two or three in every scene!”

Released in 1984, this came out after the peak of the first big slasher cycle, and it’s interesting to see this pop culture reference to what was probably a bit of fatigue with the formula, including the reference to it all happening “in 3D” (Friday the 13th pt. III brought 3D eyeball pops and yo-yo tricks to cinemas the year this was recorded). At the same time, it really sells it, and makes it sound just awesome. I would watch this movie.

Also, just a note on the link – this isn’t an official Weird Al video, but rather a fan edited compilation of loads of appropriate slashers of the time (mostly, but not exclusively Friday the 13th movies). It’s pretty great and the song works so well with it. Enjoy. Sadly, as it’s filled with violence and has a touch of nudity, it’s “age restricted”, and you’ll have to click through to Youtube to see it.

Excitable Boy – Warren Zevon

I have always loved this song. It encapsulates one of my favorite sub-genres of music – the peppy, sweet, upbeat, positive song…that is really about terrible, terrible things if you actually stop and listen to the words. This could play in supermarkets or waiting rooms if no one paid any attention to what he was singing about. With a bouncy sax line and doo-wop backup singers sweetly repeating “ooo-wa-ooo ooo-ooo excitable boy,” Zevon spins a tale of a young man who first starts exhibiting simply odd eccentricities, but who rapidly grows dangerous, until he rapes and kills a girl at the junior prom. Then, “after ten long years they let him out of the home – excitable boy they all said – and he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones – excitable boy they all said – well, he’s just an excitable boy.” You could say it gets dark.

I also really appreciate how, for all that the song morbidly plays with awful events, it also feels like an ironic excoriation of a culture that happily accepts ‘boys being boys’ and looks the other way, whistling a jaunty tune and allowing horrors to carry on unchecked. It is not a “message song,” but I feel it does have a satirical bite in this respect.

And, at my wife’s suggestion, one bonus song:

I Eat Boys – chloe moriondo

I Eat Boys - chloe moriondo (official music video)

This feels appropriate to follow the last song, given the theme of young men and privilege. Responding to the kind of threat women often feel in public spaces, this turns that on its head and creates a young, female predator, out to “eat boys” and “get them gory,” defiantly stating, “you can’t control me – cause I wrote this story.” The sound is all minor key light pop, but its ethos is all to do with making the other side feel that fear instead, warning “hands off kid, or you’ll wake up in my basement.” In its juxtaposition of a light, poppy sound, the threat of violence, and a sense of social commentary, it has a few things in common with the previous song, though it is the flip side of the coin. Perhaps there are echoes of the line in Bit (2020) about making all women vampires and letting men be scared to jog at night for a change.

Also, the video is great – very cool, bloody fun (it’s what my wife did for her most recent Halloween costume); its look really gives me a Jennifer’s Body kind of vibe, and its lyrics bring to mind a line from that film’s trailer (which was inexplicably left out of the final cut): “You’re killing people?” “No, I’m killing boys.”

—

And there we have it, ten eleven great tunes that bring the horror vibes. May they put a bop in your step and a chill in your heart…

Top Ten (New To Me) In 2022

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Sitting here the morning of New Year’s Day, staring down the fresh new year ahead of me, I want to take one more day for the past. I’m not alone in observing that it’s been a really strong year for horror. I’m not good at keeping up to date with new releases (last year I hadn’t even watched enough 2021 horror films to do a top ten list), but this year I’ve seen about 20, and I think that’s more a testament to how good things have been rather than how diligent of a fan I’ve become.

Lately, I’ve seen countless posts where people list their best (or worst) of the year and I want to hop on that bandwagon. But as I don’t want to be too repetitive on the blog and write about the same stuff again and again, some of the best films I’ve seen are ruled out (as I’ve already discussed them).  So, as I did last year, here, in no particular order, comes a list of the top ten movies (new or old) that a) were first time watches for me and b) I haven’t written about yet. I notice, looking at my list, that it leans hard into entertainment. There have been many films this year that were rich in idea and feeling, which I really felt the need to write about at length and explore. Most (though not all) of the films on this list were just a really good time, and I want to highlight them as well, and not only headier fare. I’ll mostly avoid spoilers, but in some cases, that won’t be possible, so tread lightly.

Night of the Comet (1984)

As we’re still in the holiday season, this seems a good place to start. I don’t know how I hadn’t gotten around to watching this before – it seems like something I would have seen as a kid but somehow missed. Thom Eberhadt’s post-apocalyptic/zombie-hellscape/sci-fi-comedy/Christmas-timed romp is just a hoot and a half. Two teen sisters are some of the very few survivors on earth (or at least LA) after a close call with a comet vaporizes most of the population and transforms the rest into bloodthirsty zombies. As you are here reading a ‘horror’ blog, don’t go in expecting much from the ‘zombies’ – they get about 5 minutes of screen time, but this modestly budgeted film is greatly entertaining and not lacking in horror. A tonal smorgasbord, the film features playful scenes of the two teenagers enjoying the run of the city to do whatever they like, haunting imagery of Los Angeles as a ghost town that is at once beautiful and eerie, surprising moments of depth and weight (such as when, pre-comet, Kelli Maroney’s stepmother full out punches her across the room in a shocking moment of domestic violence – no one mourns her being reduced to a pile of dust), and some narrative twists and turns that really got me. The film goes to some disarmingly dark places, but never loses its sense of fun along the way. And it’s set at Christmas, so it’s still seasonally appropriate.

Barbarian (2022)

Zach Cregger’s breakout film is on many end-of-the-year lists right now for good reason. If you don’t take too much time to think about some details, moment to moment, it’s possibly the best time I’ve had watching a horror movie in a good while. I can’t remember the last time I was actually compelled to yell at the screen, “Don’t go down there you idiot – what are you doing?!?” And at the same time, rooted in very real dangers and concerns that have been highlighted in the post #MeToo era, it lands a punch of relevance and resonance. When Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at a double booked AirBnB and meets the other tenant, Keith (Bill Skarsgård), she is understandably extremely cautious, as are we. Even after the movie has taken some hard left turns and gone to totally unexpected places, it’s hard not to feel that Keith, such a seemingly nice guy, is actually a dangerous sleazebag. But as time goes on, that caution gets exhausted and then it’s shouting at the screen time. And that’s only the first act. When Justin Long appears at the top of the second, it is such a hard but refreshingly sunny and musical pivot, and what his character represents is an interesting inclusion to the film’s thematics in terms of the dangers of predatory men and their inability/refusal to take responsibility for their actions. But beyond those weighty concerns, this is just a blast – also, how weird is it that I watched it on Disney+? (Though I’m still waiting for the new Hellraiser, Disney…)

Puppet Master (1989)

Here’s another case of “how have I never seen this before?” Of course, Charles Band and David Schmoeller’s direct-to-video cult classic has always been on my radar, but I had never actually picked it up back in the video store days, so I was delighted when it came to Shudder this year. Though its modest budget is evident, the creative joy it takes in bringing to life its killer toys, such as Jester, Tunneler, and Leech Woman, is just infectious; its kill set pieces are creepy and weird; and its story is, if somewhat strained, still pretty effective, with a satisfying final act reversal. I really appreciated William Hickey’s turn as the puppet maker and “last true alchemist,” André Toulon, who discovered the secret of eternal life before being chased down by Nazis. The opening scene of him gently and with loving care, placing all his dolls in a chest, hiding it away, and committing suicide before the Reich can extract his secrets really lent an unexpected pathos to the story – you know, before dolls with drills for heads bore through anyone’s guts or sexy female puppets regurgitate leeches onto a prone victim. Endearingly lurid and lovingly nasty, this first entry in the nigh endless series (I think there are 15 so far), with its ever shifting mythology and chronology (sometimes the dolls are kind of good, and when they’re not, they’re Nazis), endures as a low budget gem.

Lux Æterna (2019)

Gaspar Noé’s short film (thankfully under an hour – it’s hard to imagine enduring much more) is not made to be enjoyed. But it is fascinating, captivating, intriguing, intense, sometimes hilarious, cruel, and as ambivalent as the day is long. Filmed in real time with multiple long tracking shots in split screens tracking different characters, this work of sensory overload follows Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others, through a chaotic film set where she is to be burned as a witch. Conflict abounds – between the cinematographer, the producer, and the director – between actresses and costume designers – between pushy guests who have their own projects to pitch and anyone cornered by them. It is a non-stop sea of noise and action and roiling emotion. Finally, as the scene is being filmed, a technical mishap sends the lighting into a colorful strobe effect which would be unsafe for any epileptic and is almost unendurable for the viewer. And it goes on. And on. For at least ten minutes, but it feels much longer. And what had been a fictional martyrdom seems realized in life. And the camera keeps rolling – long after the director has stormed off the set and the other actresses playing witches have escaped – the cinematographer keeps the lens trained on Gainsbourg and captures something transcendent. But does he? Here lies the ambivalence at the heart of the piece. Through the ending, the screen is filled with quotes from directors, including Noé himself, presenting the “auteur” as the sole conduit to true artistic purity, to the divine, demanding any suffering necessary to achieve that sublimity. This can be taken as the point of the piece – how the filmmaker cuts through the tumult and noise and, even if it means violently assaulting the actor, making a martyr of her, reveals truth. But it also feels deeply, deeply ironic – as if it is all to send up this very notion – and at the end of the day, the valorization of the auteur simply excuses pointless, artless cruelty and exploitation – both to the actors, his co-workers, and us, the audience. Whatever it was, it has stayed with me, and I’m very glad to have sat through it, though I must say, it’s not for everyone.

Prey (2022)

Another, “what a blast!” movie, Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator prequel manages to be both excitingly fresh and so true to the original that it could be accused of being an empty retread if it weren’t such a deeply felt and rollicking good time. Amanda Midthunder just kills it as a young, early 18th century Comanche woman determined to hunt, though the tribe has other expectations for her. To prove herself, against orders, she goes out to track down the biggest predator she can and finds herself squaring away with an alien presence seemingly here on earth to do the same. Along the way, there are thrilling action sequences, comedy bits that land, and brutal, tense alien violence – which is of course, overshadowed by the looming specter of European colonialism which will do more damage to her people than this single alien invader ever could. I’d long felt that Arnold in the first movie was basically a male slasher “final girl,” and here that gender flip comes full circle, the degree to which she is discounted as a possible threat (cause she’s a girl) being instrumental to her success. Also, it’s refreshing to see native people presented as just that, people – not “noble savages” or somehow “magically connected to the land,” but just intelligent, tool using people (with a different degree of technology, sure), as capable of pettiness and valor as any others. It’s up there with the original in my book, and I have hopes for the recently announced follow up which will take place in feudal Japan.

Pearl (2022)

So I must admit that I preferred Ti West’s X, released in the spring, to this prequel, delivered mere months later (both filmed back-to back in New Zealand during Covid lockdown), but a) I already wrote about X, b) this is still an interesting, bold piece, and taken together, they make a fascinating character portrait (though we now have to wait for the follow up, Maxxxine), and c) I think it’s more than worthy of discussion and promotion without any connection to the other movie. Filmed in a dreamy, technicolor, old Hollywood style ala Wizard of Oz or a Douglas Sirk melodrama, we once again follow Mia Goth, now as the young Pearl (who will grow up to be the murderous, elderly, physical-affection starved antagonist of X), a young girl trapped in a life of simplicity and familial obligation, dreaming of getting out and, (as Maxine will later repeat) becoming the star she knows she is. She chases after her aspirations with sociopathic fervor, but having seen the earlier film, we know it is all for naught – she’s never leaving the farm. The result is a strange mix of bloody psychodrama, dreamy hopefulness, and simple tragedy. Chekhov’s 3 sisters will see Moscow before Pearl escapes her dreary life of boredom and service, no matter how many people or geese she kills. At the same time, while Pearl is a largely sympathetic character, West pulls no punches in also presenting the inherent self-centered greed and coldness that drives her ambition (and sheds rivers of blood). We are pressed into an uncomfortable identification with her need for the thrill of independence, fulfillment, and joy, while fully cognizant of the callous sacrifices being made. What can we accept – in a protagonist? For ourselves? Where is our line between the demands we can slough off to chase our own stars and the responsibilities that burden us, pinning us down to the earth?

The Father (2020)

Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his own play, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman, may strike most as ‘clearly-and-in-no-way-a-horror-movie-what-is-it-doing-on-this-list?,’ but I contend that this tale of an elderly man with dementia, losing his grip on reality, progressively less sure of his relationships with those around him as he loses his own certainty of self is absolutely a work of psychological horror – and it is tremendous. Clearly based on a play, characters largely come in and out of the same rooms – there are no special effects or psychedelic sequences, but it is a profoundly horrifying mind-trip. The woman he thinks is his daughter walks out and another woman enters who eventually explains that his daughter lives in Greece. But maybe this is his daughter. Does he actually have a daughter? Does he live with her, or in his own flat, or in a care facility? We watch through his eyes, losing any sense of solid ground as the film goes on. No one involved with the production sold it as a genre piece, let alone a horror film, but I think it’s one of the most effective works of horror I saw this year – beautiful, tender, and sad, and so deeply unsettling and scary. It isn’t the kind of mood I think most come to horror for, but I think it deserves a place among other psychological pieces like Jacob’s Ladder (1990) or Repulsion (1965).

Glorious (2022)

Rebekah McKendry’s Lovecraftian bottle movie concerns a man, Wes (Ryan Kwanten), trapped in a highway rest area Men’s room with a post-break-up hangover, talking to an ancient eldritch horror (voiced by J.K. Simmons) through a hole carved in the wall of the stall (get it? “glory”…). This being, Ghatanothoa, explains that Wes must make a kind of self-sacrifice to help Ghatanothoa escape before his father (who is essentially god) can use him to destroy humanity. It is pretty high concept stuff, but where it lands by the end is so emotionally grounded, getting to the core of who and what Wes is and what he and Ghatanothoa have in common, that it really justifies the world-building flights of fancy that get us there. I enjoyed most of the movie – it is frequently funny, often very weird, briefly quite gory, and consistently admirable in how big of a film it can be in a single, small location with almost only one physical actor and one voice (a few others, some significantly, get a few minutes of screen time, but mostly Kwanten and Simmons carry the flick – it almost feels like this was filmed during a global pandemic). But while I was enjoying the movie, I wasn’t in love with it until the final 10 minutes when the penny finally dropped and it kind of floored me. It’s a gorgeous, unique, small-scale piece and more people should know about it.

Orphan: First Kill (2022)

I don’t think any useful discussion of this can be had without revealing very significant spoilers of the first film. I’m going to say that if you haven’t seen Orphan (2009), please go watch it now before you read any further. DO NOT watch the 2022 film first, even though it’s a “prequel.” So go now – first Orphan (2009) and then Orphan: First Kill (2022). Thank me later.

Ok, I’m going to assume that anyone remaining has watched both films or will never watch both films. Wow – I must say I had my doubts when I heard that Isabelle Fuhrman, who had starred in the first film in 2007/8 when she was 10, now 24, was going to do a prequel, reprising the role of Esther at an even younger age, and that it was going to be done without computer trickery, but just with body doubles and in-camera effects (ala the hobbits in Lord of the Rings). But it really works! I mean it works by not working – hopefully everyone who saw this had already seen the original film and already knew that earlier film’s twist – that Esther is actually a grown-up with a form of dwarfism, masquerading as a little girl to infiltrate families via adoption, hit on the adoptive father, take what she wants, and kill anyone in her way. Here, we all know from the first frame that this ‘little girl’ is actually, as one character later incredulously says, “a grown-ass woman,” and having an adult woman clearly playing her (though we suspend our disbelief to accept that no other characters can see through her dastardly ruse) helps us watch and enjoy the act all the more clearly – though when she breaks that character, driving a stolen car, listening to ‘Maniac,’ wearing sun glasses, and smoking a cigarette, it’s pretty frickin’ fantastic. The first film turned on such a big reveal and I wondered what they could do here without getting repetitive, but the eventual twist is a doozy. I can’t make any claim of thematic depth or significance, but this movie is just a thrilling, ridiculous, delightful ride.

Rope (1948)

This list has not been any kind of countdown, but I have saved the best for last. For years, I’d been meaning to check out this Hitchcock thriller, most famous for its technical trick of appearing to all be done in one take, but I had no idea just how great of a movie it is, how exciting, how funny, and how chilling. The one take gimmick (which is a bit obvious – every time there’s a “hidden” cut, the camera passes behind someone’s back for a moment) is impressive, and is instrumental in the success of the piece, but it is just one part of a significant whole. Mainly it helps establish the breathless urgency of events playing out in a kind of theatrical “real time” (significantly, this real time is not realistic – events take as long or as short as the drama requires, but the exigency is palpable). The film begins with a couple, Brandon and Phillip (striking how in the late 40s, a clearly gay couple could be shown so openly – if unremarked on – there were probably some viewers who assumed they were just “roommates” – but really, how?), murdering a friend, David, and hiding him in a chest in their living room before hosting a dinner party comprising David’s closest friends and family – all in order to experience pulling off ‘the perfect murder,’ achieving a kind of aesthetic perfection. They even invite an old professor (played by Jimmy Stewart) who used to lecture about a Nietzschean ascendancy which would entitle the ‘superior’ man to kill as he sees fit, free from the morals of the herd.

Brandon, the dominant of the two (their relationship dynamics are wild), gleefully plays with how close he can get to the fire without being burned, without the crime being revealed – serving dinner on the fateful chest or tying up some old books to give David’s father using the rope with which he had strangled his son a half hour earlier, while Phillip just gets drunker and more terrified as the evening progresses, and hence, more erratic and incautious. Hitchcock is absolutely impish in his game of tension, with what enters the frame and what doesn’t, with how close they get to being caught. Finally, there is the element that I think really qualifies this as horror. Watching Jimmy Stewart’s Rupert slowly piece together the clues staring at him in plain sight and the dawning realization of the role he has played in inspiring this crime is a horror beat. Additionally, the very concept of murder for aesthetic entertainment – of characters delighting in venturing into a post-moral space – is more than a little chilling – bringing us to a more horrific (though still essentially thrilling) territory than a crime of passion or greed. I can’t overstate how great this was and, even if only ‘horror-adjacent,’ I think it’s more than worth the time of any fan of the genre.

—

And so, there we have it. Ten movies that were new to me that I hadn’t previously written about. That was 2022, and at least in terms of movies, it was pretty great. Let’s see what ’23 holds… Thanks for joining me here – I hope your new year treats you well and we can all keep the horror on the screen and page and otherwise, at bay.

10 Final Girls Who Don’t Get Enough Credit

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

So lately, I’ve been digging into the trope of the Final Girl. One reason for this is that I recently guested on the great podcast, Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No. 9, and the film we discussed was the 2015 eighties-summer-camp-slasher set dramatic comedy, The Final Girls. It was a really fun discussion, and I invite you to give it a listen. As an avid listener of horror-podcasts for years, it was an absolute treat to be on a really good one and I thank Jeffrey and Cecil for the opportunity!

And inspired by the movie under discussion (which I really like, but won’t detail here – check out the podcast for that!), I wanted to throw together a list of ten great final girls. So I started checking out what was already out there, and a quick google search yields loads of lists of the “best Final Girls,” but I noticed that I was seeing the same names over and over on list after list, and for good reason. Ginny from Friday the 13th, Part 2 is great (maybe my favorite), with her empathy, resilience, and no-nonsense demeanor. Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street is awesome (also maybe my favorite) with her book on booby traps and being so “into survival.” Ripley in Alien (a stretch to call it a slasher exactly, but she is certainly a final girl) is aspirationally tough and sensible (if they’d only listened to her and followed quarantine rules, it wouldn’t have even been a horror movie). And so many, many more.

But I felt I wouldn’t really be contributing much if I just listed famous movies that everyone, whether they watch horror or not, has heard of, if not seen. So I tried to dig a bit deeper to shine a light on final girls who don’t always get so much attention. I can’t guarantee that none of them feature on any other list (the internet is a big place), but these are at least somewhat deeper cuts – also, I can’t promise that all of their movies are exactly “good,” but each does have something to recommend it.

That said, I am no slasher expert. There are so many and I’ve but scratched the surface. Out of more than 200 that came out between 1978, when Halloween’s success kicked off the first cycle (between 1980-1982 alone, there were at least 72) until 1989 (because I have to choose an end-point eventually, and horror took a dip in the early 90s), I’ve seen maybe 30% – the most famous and then the fairly well known, with a small spattering of more obscure titles. So please accept this list with that caveat.

And now, without further ado, here is my list, in order of appearance, of great Final Girls who don’t get enough credit:

Courtney – Final Exam (1981) Cecile Bagdadi

Most of this film seems more like Animal House or Revenge of the Nerds, but with a killer on the loose (whose story we never learn). A bunch of frat guys are trying to ride out the year without doing any work by putting a lot of effort into elaborate pranks to help them cheat (one of which, featuring a fake mass shooting, is quite disturbing through contemporary eyes). In a world of rich, entitled brats who don’t take anything seriously, Courtney stands out as the only person actually studying for her “final exam.” She isn’t a prude (if anything, she’s trying to get a particular boy to notice her) but she has more consequential things on her mind. The boy is nice enough (though his obsession with mass shooters and serial killers seems like a red flag), and it’s a shame when he doesn’t make it as they’ve just had a sweet moment. It all builds to a solid chase where she acquits herself well, but in the final shot of the film she seems so traumatized by the experience. While this is a common image, it is still quite effective here. Courtney grounds the horror of these killings and her own survived ordeal in a way that the other victims in their frivolity could not.

Anne – Graduation Day (1981) Patch MacKenzie

Anne has a different vibe from the very beginning. She’s an active military member, coming home to honor her dead sister at what would have been her high school graduation, only to find everyone else on her late sister’s track team getting murdered. We first meet Anne in a truck where she’s hitched a ride and she capably and aggressively fends off the lecherous approaches of the driver, instantly endearing her to us. She starts as a tougher final girl than many, and that self-confidence is fun, but in the final reel, she still has to go through it, fighting to overcome this particular psycho. I think what prevents her from ranking higher on many lists is the fact that we lose her in the middle stretch of the film when she is one of countless red herrings (everyone in this town owns a grey sweat suit and black leather gloves – what we see the killer wearing). In one scene, she is even made out to seem crazy and threatening to a potential (and eventual) victim, distancing us from her even more. But by the end, when the killer is revealed, it is satisfying to return to this level-headed, tough-minded final girl to take him out. Plus, the film is fun and the rest of the cast is solid.

Pam – The Prowler (1981) Vicky Dawson

Pam is great. It seems like she’s studying journalism – at the top of the movie, she’s just published an article about the killing that happened 35 years ago which is why this college stopped having the annual graduation dance (isn’t that more of a high school thing? Anyway…). Thus, when she has to go back to her room to change and narrowly escapes the returned killer, who is dressed as a masked WWII soldier and carrying a pitchfork for some reason (in an exciting sequence that had me wondering if she was in fact going to survive to be the final girl), she can’t not investigate and see this through to the end. There’s a fantastic moment when her boyfriend, the local deputy left in charge for the weekend, tries to drop her off back at the dance so she can be safe. She is just not having it – the resolve with which she threatens him and then gets back in the car foreshadows the strength of character that will help her turn the killer’s own pitchfork on him before blowing his head clean off. Also, just in a connection to another great final girl, Pam finds herself hiding under a bed with a rat, just like Ginny in Friday the 13th Part 2, but at least this one didn’t pee (they were basically filmed at the same time though, so I think it’s a coincidence). In addition, while some elements really don’t make sense, this is one of the better slashers on this list – it’s tense, the killer’s costume looks cool and scary, some scenes are genuinely exciting, and the gore effects might be the best work that Tom Savini ever produced – really effectively grisly and horrifically realistic.

Constance – Just Before Dawn (1981) Deborah Benson

I’ve written at greater length about this backwoods slasher before. Constance stands out as both exemplifying and subverting the still developing tropes of the final girl. Filmed in the summer of 1980, she really offers a different spin on the role. At the beginning of the film, she seems like a typical final girl – reasonable, capable, the only person appropriately dressed for hiking a difficult trail. But she feels that she’s too mousy, inadequate compared with her friends who are bolder than her, braver. And so, as the film progresses and things get progressively more difficult, so does she, changing her physical appearance in the process. In an inversion of the trope, she becomes more outwardly feminine and sexual, donning shorter shorts, showing more flesh, putting on makeup, letting down her hair. And she is more sexually aggressive with her boyfriend. In a way, it’s like she’s putting on the mask of a different role, one you might expect to get killed much earlier in a film like this. However, wearing her mask, she is freed – she can be the wild, primal figure she needs to be to take down this hulking killer in what might be the most satisfying moment of a final girl killing a slasher on film. You may see many final girls rise in violence to take down the killer, but no one quite does what Constance does – just watch it – I don’t want to spoil the fun. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the “Final Girl’s” will to life, her stubborn, desperate determination not to be erased. And the film itself, while a bit slow in the middle, is a pretty enjoyable watch as well.

Sandy – Humongous (1982) Janet Julian

I can’t really say this is my favorite of the bunch, but Sandy rises to the occasion in the final reel. The film starts strong (though quite disturbingly) and then falls into a long stretch of poorly lit muddling along on an island where some kids have been stranded with a killer. For a while I was wondering who the final girl would be – as it seemed that the one unattached girl with glasses was the first to open a photo album and start piecing together the back story, but she snapped under the pressure of it all and Sandy, evidently the most stable of the bunch, finally figures things out.  When things kick into gear in the last 15-20 minutes, Sandy leads a great chase, seems to rip off (not sure when it was filmed, but it was released more than a year after Friday 2) Ginny’s idea of playing the killer’s mother, races to the boat house where she traps him with fire and blows him up before finally staking him. Still, having learned his sad story, she feels sympathy for this poor, burned, deformed creature (no action or words, but there’s something in her eyes). He may have killed all her friends, but she can still pity him. In this, she balances all of the investigativeness, proactivity, ability to violently do what needs doing, and heart of a classic final girl, even if her movie is…just alright.

Valerie, Courtney, & Trish – The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Robin Stille, Jennifer Meyers, & Michelle Michaels

Is this the first “meta” slasher? I mean, no, but it is so self-aware – written as a parody, but filmed more or less straight, it subverts the tropes that by 1982 had already calcified, delivering in my opinion, a subversive, hilarious, effectively scary, feminist slasher classic. One twist here is that three girls survive by fighting back together: Trish, who had thrown the party to have one last hurrah with her childhood friends before adulthood pulls them apart (sadly none of those friends make it to the end), Valerie, a new girl who, for all of her beauty, brains, and athletic skill, is still an outsider, and Courtney, Valerie’s little sister, a boy-obsessed teen eager for more adult thrills than she is yet allowed. Each of them is granted personality and real feeling. Trish starts the film throwing away childhood toys and looking to the future, a future which, by the end of the day, she will have been thrust into too soon, too harshly. Valerie feels the most like a classic final girl, the responsible one, staying home to look after her sister instead of going to the party (until she has to). Courtney is a firecracker, funny, impulsive, insistent. And all of the other girls (or boys) who are murdered by the nameless killer with an improbably long bit on his cordless drill (what kind of battery does he have?) are also people whom we can like and root for. This is a fun movie, with sly, knowing shots taken at its genre and possibly its audience, but it has emotional weight. By the time the girls finally symbolically castrate and dispatch the killer, they are deeply traumatized by the horrific events – there’s been so much death, so many friends lost, so much horror. They’ve done what they had to do to live, but their lives won’t be the same after this. The degree to which they get to mourn, cry, be broken at the end makes this often funny, light slasher land harder than expected.

Joan – Silent Madness (1984) Belinda Montgomery

Joan is great, a breath of fresh air – something really different – and she’s surely the most highly credentialed final girl on the list. A doctor at a psychiatric hospital which has accidentally released a psycho killer because of a computer error, Joan is surrounded by men who just refuse to do their damn jobs, (other doctors, administrators, the sheriff, even her reporter love interest). Either no one believes her as she investigates this major screw up which is getting kids killed at the college where the psycho was long ago arrested for a massacre, or they are all just covering their butts, hoping that if no one talks about it, no one will notice the pile of dead sorority sisters. Either way, Joan has to take care of everything all on her own, both hunting after the killer, navigating bureaucracy, and avoiding the murderous orderlies from her hospital, hot on her trail to shut her up.  Along the way, she uncovers buried truths, tries (and generally fails) to protect the sorority girls in question, and finally takes out the ‘bad guy,’ only to then discover a deeper cover-up. She is a self-assured, mature adult, bringing the final girl’s typical responsibility, but with full confidence from the beginning. However, while she is a self-assured professional, she is not some kind of fighter, so exploring creepy basements where a killer lurks is still effectively terrifying for her. This was a really fun watch and she rises above the crowd.

Allison – Chopping Mall (1986) Kelli Maroney

This may not be a slasher, but Allison is a great final girl. And though the threat in this case consists of a set of killer robot security guards in a mall, the film follows the classic slasher pattern of a group of kids partying somewhere and getting picked off until only one girl remains (who knows if she’s ‘virginal,’ but she’s the only one who doesn’t have sex that night) – who overcomes adversity and triumphs. Played by Kelli Maroney, a mainstay of 80s B-movies, Allison balances being really sweet with also being a tough cookie who’s a crack shot with a firearm (apparently because her dad is a marine). The set-up is that a group of young people, some of whom work at a mall, stay after hours to party in the furniture store where one of them works (and try out the beds). There are two couples (one of which is married, which is a rarity in this kind of thing) and then Allison has been set up with a nice, dorky boy with whom she actually hits it off (the two of them bond while watching old horror movies while everyone else fools around). They are really cute together and it’s easy to root for them. The film can be silly and fun, and also exciting, but by the end, it of course comes down to Allison and the final killbot. By this point, she’s in full trap-setting, robot-exploding, badass, final girl mode and she even gets to blow up the last bot with an action star quip. Otherwise, the film is just a blast: a great cast (including Barbara Crampton and Dick Miller), a really cool score, and a bunch of killer robots.

Kit – April Fool’s Day (1986) Amy Steel

This is a really fun, different spin on the whodunit-slasher (though its twist may be the most famous thing about it – if you can go in cold, it’s worth it) – spring break happens to fall on April first and Muffy invites all her friends, about to graduate college and with no idea what to do next, to her island mansion for the week. Being April Fool’s, she’s got a lot of pranks in store, but soon the practical jokes become a series of murders and we’re off to the races. Everyone is so well played that it took me a while to peg who the final girl would be, but it should have been obvious that it would be the one played by Amy Steel. Her Kit is a solid, investigative final girl who solves the mystery of the killings (though still having one big surprise in store), and who also really cares about her friends, even if some of them are kinda jerks. There’s one moment when she could get away, but she has to go back cause she can’t leave Muffy behind (even though it’s been implied that Muffy might be the killer). Amy Steel brings a similarly grounded, clear headed, empathetic quality that she did to Friday part 2 – which helps the terror land, and it gets exciting when she’s put through the paces in the final act.

Stretch – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) Caroline Williams

This is also not a slasher, but it’s a sequel to one of the most influential proto-slashers, and Stretch undergoes a true final girl experience, just without much of a body count. (Also Clover referenced her when defining the role, so she surely counts). A tough talkin’ Texas rock DJ who is pulled into the Sawyer family’s shenanigans after fielding a call from some kids getting chainsawed on her radio show, Stretch is just cool. She really doesn’t fall into any kind of bookish, innocent little “virgin” role – rather, she is an adult woman who wears short shorts, navigates a world of pushy, aggressive men, brings the rock ‘n roll, and chooses to court danger in order to get the story, to do something important. As a result, she almost literally goes through hell, suffering in a similar fashion as Sally before her, experiencing debilitating terror, seeing a friend’s face skinned off before having it draped on her own and being made to dance in order to pacify a chainsaw wielding man-child before climbing out, grabbing a chainsaw of her own and eviscerating the man who’s chasing her, and subsequently dancing around crazily with her chainsaw in the air, mirroring Leatherface at the end of the first film. The fact that Stretch starts the film so together and tough means that her descent into violent, triumphant madness is all the more intense. It’s a weird movie – funnier than the first, but that comedy brings its own horror. Plus, it features Dennis Hopper, fresh out of rehab, screaming maniacally and running around with a chainsaw in each hand. What’s not to love?

—

And so, there we have it, ten final girls that don’t always get mentioned.  As I said at the beginning, I’ve only seen about a third of what’s out there, so I’m sure there are many others worthy of inclusion who I am overlooking, but perhaps that’s fuel for a future list.

And for a fun discussion of a funny film which revolves around the concept of the final girl, check out the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.