2008 Woodie Awards
Obscure movies have best scares
By: Phil Hornshaw
Issue date: 10/31/07 Section: Lifeline
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No Halloween experience is complete without "Halloween."
Nor should any true-blooded ghoul skip over "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "The Night of the Living Dead" or "The Shining."
And if you really want to earn extra credit, pop in "Ghostbusters."
At a time when scary movies mean cutting off fingers or characters falling into pits of hypodermic needles, these are films that got fear and foreboding right - without torturing tourists or filleting their friends.
So before you devote your Halloween to "Saw IV," consider heading to a video store instead. The Ghost of Halloween Past has a whole section of movies you haven't seen, haven't seen lately or ought to see again.
Here's a set of three you might not have thought of to set the Halloween mood.
"John Carpenter's The Thing"
Five out of five stars.
Sometimes overlooked, "The Thing" is a horror movie that turns gore and mystery into a highly effective set of scares. There's a creepy monster in it, but that's not what is really scary about "The Thing" - it's the fact you don't know where the monster is.
Set in Antarctica, "The Thing" follows a group of American army scientists who stumble upon an alien crash site, and unwittingly, the alien itself.
The team quickly realizes the creature has the ability to mimic any other creature it touches - and so begins an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" style suspense-thriller of paranoia, backstabbing, and characters getting torn in half by slimy alien tentacles.
It might be older, but "The Thing" doesn't skip on monster action or cool animatronic gore. Some of it might look a little hoaky in an era of CGI, but there's so much that's cool about this movie that it's easy to overlook.
"Feast"
Four out of five stars.
A B-movie from the "Project Greenlight" crew and including executive producer credits for Wes Craven, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, "Feast" strings out horror conventions and clichés, smashes them one at a time in hilarious fashion, and then proceeds to let the monsters tear its characters apart.
Nor should any true-blooded ghoul skip over "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "The Night of the Living Dead" or "The Shining."
And if you really want to earn extra credit, pop in "Ghostbusters."
At a time when scary movies mean cutting off fingers or characters falling into pits of hypodermic needles, these are films that got fear and foreboding right - without torturing tourists or filleting their friends.
So before you devote your Halloween to "Saw IV," consider heading to a video store instead. The Ghost of Halloween Past has a whole section of movies you haven't seen, haven't seen lately or ought to see again.
Here's a set of three you might not have thought of to set the Halloween mood.
"John Carpenter's The Thing"
Five out of five stars.
Sometimes overlooked, "The Thing" is a horror movie that turns gore and mystery into a highly effective set of scares. There's a creepy monster in it, but that's not what is really scary about "The Thing" - it's the fact you don't know where the monster is.
Set in Antarctica, "The Thing" follows a group of American army scientists who stumble upon an alien crash site, and unwittingly, the alien itself.
The team quickly realizes the creature has the ability to mimic any other creature it touches - and so begins an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" style suspense-thriller of paranoia, backstabbing, and characters getting torn in half by slimy alien tentacles.
It might be older, but "The Thing" doesn't skip on monster action or cool animatronic gore. Some of it might look a little hoaky in an era of CGI, but there's so much that's cool about this movie that it's easy to overlook.
"Feast"
Four out of five stars.
A B-movie from the "Project Greenlight" crew and including executive producer credits for Wes Craven, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, "Feast" strings out horror conventions and clichés, smashes them one at a time in hilarious fashion, and then proceeds to let the monsters tear its characters apart.
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