The Criteria: Horror Stripped of Humour

So, thinking more about the criteria of these films. In order to reduce the near endless possibilities, I immediately excluded any horror movies that leaned too heavily on humour. Not because I believe humour is inappropriate in horror films—in fact, I've often said there's a direct kinship between the two emotions, laughter and terror, both of them allied in the release of tension, both so reliant on mood and timing, and both at heart so utterly serious—but because humour by its nature will leach away some of the more disturbing elements I'm attempting to privilege here.

Think of it like this: the horror/humour/jump scare alliance is akin to the funhouse at the carnival, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's your goal at the time, in the moment. Everyone loves the carny. But the movies I'm trying to find a common thread for here belong in the killing field, the charnel house, the autopsy room, the psych ward, the torture chamber, the impromptu pit dug by a human freak—real places breeding with infection and immersed in dread. I want disquiet, distress, despair, wretchedness, the bleak certainty of approaching desolation. Horror, in other words. Unadorned, pure, essential horror. Yet somehow artful or honest, at least. Even beautiful on occasion. Certainly something that stays with you, that you worry at, and turn over in your mind like some arcane puzzle. 

Sadly, the no-humour criteria immediately eliminates some of my favourites in the genre, including "the original Evil Dead films; the incredible, insane Reanimator; zombie parodies as tenuously related as Return of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead; and the stone-cold classic, An American Werewolf in London," as I put it in my inaugural Facebook post on this (albeit without the more grammatically pleasing semicolons). And many more besides. 

Anyway, let's get started. I'll post around four capsules at a time, beginning at number 40, and try to include clips and images as I go. Feel free to comment if you stumble on any of this in your travels through the brackish backwaters of the interwebs, but it's okay if you don't, as I'm doing this primarily for myself, to freeze in time a very personal, even idiosyncratic sensibility I don't expect a single other human to share, quite honestly.

Forty Shades of Terror

A few weeks ago, mainly for idle fun born of a misguided sense that my opinion even matters in an overcrowded world, I began to post a sporadic list of my forty favourite horror movies on my Facebook timeline. And not simply horror movies, but a specific kind of horror movie: one that stays under your skin or burrows inside your psyche and won't leave, one that truly disturbs, unsettles or frightens you... or, more accurately (since it's my list), me. I also wanted these films to burst, blur, and mock genre boundaries, somewhat. To be controversial in at least one sense or another.

After a while it occurred to me that this list, as fun and provocative as it was, would end up scrolling off and eventually become lost in the corporate purgatory of Facebook's dodgy, disposable theology. So I grabbed these little capsule reviews and impressionistic thumbnails with a view to reproducing and even building on them right here on my blog where, in theory, they will live a longer and more fulfilling life, even after their teeth wear down or fall from their drooling mouths.

But wait. This is a writing blog, not a movie blog, I hear you grouse. And not unfairly, either. Okay, somewhat lamely, I will justify it by arguing that if—by my writing—I can highlight and illuminate these cinematic gems for others, then the holy act of writing will have played its part in the greater scheme of sacred artistic endeavour. Or something. Look, it's a symbiotic thing, kind of like something you might encounter in the frigid interstellar void that crawls within your very DNA and begins to slowly chew and tear its way back out again...

So anyway, watch this space. You know, the one where no one can hear you scream. (See what I did there? Shut up.)