Horror Films

MayBee70

Pammie1

One of the scariest films I’ve ever seen remains Don’t Look Now. It was made in 1973. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play a couple visiting Venice while mourning the death of their daughter. They meet two elderly sisters who are psychic and things descend slowly into horror. It’s based on the book by Daphne DuMaurier, which I’ve read and I can recommend that too.

The other one that stays with me is an old black and white film from the 1940s called Dead Of Night. It’s a very rare British horror film because they were banned during WW11. An architect arrives at a country cottage - invited by the owner to consult on some renovations. On going into the cottage, he is introduced to other guests and tells them that, despite never having met any of them, he has seen them all in a recurring dream, and proves able to predict events in the house before they happen. He tells them that in the dream something dreadful happens later on. One by one, the guests then attempt to test his foresight with individual stories of strange events they experienced or were told about.

It’s one of the creepiest films I’ve ever seen with a twist at the end, which I won’t reveal. If you can find it anywhere I thoroughly recommend it.

That sounds fascinating! I’ll look our for it!

I found both Dead of Night and Don’t look now on IMDb and Dead of Night is available on Amazon Prime Video - you can watch a trailers of both films here

www.imdb.com/title/tt0037635/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3

Well worth a watch - but not alone !!

Grandmabatty

I absolutely love Horror films if they are about terror, not gore etc. I've never watched The Exorcist because I read the book and that was scary enough. The Others is a good scary film, as is The Turning of the Screw, as well as the others mentioned here. There are a number of science fiction scary films but the master is Stephen King adaptations. Salem's Lot, etc. I also find The Fog quite scary too

Have you seen a film called The Mist ? It’s an adaptation of a Stephen King novella about a group of people trapped in a grocery store as a strange mist rolls in ? Really creepy.

Pammie1

Bella23

I saw The Exorcist on Honeymoon [very Romantic} and when we got back I would not stay in the rented flat we had so slept every other night with DH at work.
Damien and Jack Nicholson in The Shining.The other I cannot remember the name starred Kathy Bates and James Cairn she had him locked up in her house with broken legs.
My DD when teenagers persuaded me to let them watch Nightmare on Elm Street when DH was away with work. We ended up all sleeping together in the same bed!!!
I still find any adaption of Wilkie Collins, the Woman in White unsettling as it was based on a myth and a house near where I lived.

The Kathy Bates and James Caan film was called Misery. I’ve not seen the film but I’ve read the book - it’s by Stephen King. It’s about a writer who is injured in a car accident and ends up being taken home and looked after by one of his fans who is a former nurse. She finds out he’s planning to kill off one of her favourite characters, it unhinges her and she decides to make him pay.

Thanks for reminding me of the title. The film is horrible, I wouldn't attempt the book. It would be like an episode of Friends I saw when Rachael had put her book in the freezer. Shortly after seeing it,, I saw Cape Fear with Robert De Nero and it didn't frighten me at all.

Bella23

Pammie1

Bella23

I saw The Exorcist on Honeymoon [very Romantic} and when we got back I would not stay in the rented flat we had so slept every other night with DH at work.
Damien and Jack Nicholson in The Shining.The other I cannot remember the name starred Kathy Bates and James Cairn she had him locked up in her house with broken legs.
My DD when teenagers persuaded me to let them watch Nightmare on Elm Street when DH was away with work. We ended up all sleeping together in the same bed!!!
I still find any adaption of Wilkie Collins, the Woman in White unsettling as it was based on a myth and a house near where I lived.

The Kathy Bates and James Caan film was called Misery. I’ve not seen the film but I’ve read the book - it’s by Stephen King. It’s about a writer who is injured in a car accident and ends up being taken home and looked after by one of his fans who is a former nurse. She finds out he’s planning to kill off one of her favourite characters, it unhinges her and she decides to make him pay.

Thanks for reminding me of the title. The film is horrible, I wouldn't attempt the book. It would be like an episode of Friends I saw when Rachael had put her book in the freezer. Shortly after seeing it,, I saw Cape Fear with Robert De Nero and it didn't frighten me at all.

I remember that episode wasn’t she reading Kujo while Joey was reading Little Women ? If you didn’t enjoy the film you definitely shouldn’t read the book !! I love Stephen King, but he doesn’t leave much to the imagination and I would think the film is significantly toned down, believe it or not !!

Just thought of another"The Others", with Nicole Kidman. I've watched it twice and even though I knew the story I was still frightened.
'Don't Look Now', is another very unsettling film I would agree Pammiel

Pammiel. Daphne DuMaurier has written some great novels that have been made into films - The Birds, Don't Look Now, Rebecca. I have read most of her novels. Some of her short stories are quite disturbing. I loved The House on the Strand which is a time travel story. I don't think it has ever been made into a film though.

I watched Dead of Night on Talking Pictures a while ago.

I love the old black and white horror films where they relied on psychological scares rather than blood and guts.

I have Night of the Demon downloaded. It was made the year I was born - 1957.

Another film I have never forgotten was Eraserhead. I am not sure how you would categorise it. It was David Lynch's first feature films. He is better known for Twin Peaks. Its very surreal. Nothing much happens but it just sucks you in. I think its the soundtrack.

The Mark Kermode programme is quite educational and worth a watch if you like horror

Pammiel I did watch The Mist! It was quite scary. I forgot a couple recent ones, Birdbox, A Quiet Place and some of M Night Shyamalan films

I've seen The Mist too - I can remember the basic film but the only bit that really stayed with me was the ending, which was the really horrific bit for me!

I agree, Arewethereyet!

I remember seeing the film and being terrified when I saw someone lying in bed asleep with their arm over the edge of the bed, then the felt a hand clamp onto theirs and it was dismembered 😳🤪

I hate to admit this but I never sleep with any part of me hanging over the edge of the bed 😨😨

I can't remember why that started or what affected me but I felt a lot of sympathy for Miss Matty in Cranford who always rolled a ball a ball under her bed before sleeping to ensure there was no one hiding under her bed 🤣

I love horror films .
I plan to see the new Exorcist one .
A horror film that made me really laugh was Dr Phibes -brilliant !
It gets to Halloween and I have to watch horror films .
Some of them have scared me silly and I include -
The Shining , Jeepers Creepers , Nightmare on Elm Street and Don't Look Now .

Am I the only one who has seen"The Others",with Nichol Kidman? Ralph Fiennes also stars in it. I found it even more disturbing when talking to an Irish friend about it and she said there used to be a custom in Ireland of posing the dead and then taking pictures of them. I was never sure if she was pulling my leg.

I mentioned up thread that I had seen it Bella23. The actor isn't Ralph Fiennes though but Christopher Eccleston

Grandmabatty

I mentioned up thread that I had seen it Bella23. The actor isn't Ralph Fiennes though but Christopher Eccleston

I often wondered why Ralph Fiennes had such a small part,maybe I needed new glasses. Sorry I missed what you said, I often do it I get accused of skim reading by the family.

My 'comfort' horror film which I can watch anytime snuggled up with a cup of hot chocolate is Island of Terror. It's a Hammer Horror film with Peter Cushing and some hilarious monsters which suck your bones and leave you like jelly. They look like a giant tortoise with a long snaking neck, and every few hours they split open, produce masses of tinned spaghetti and duplicate into two. It has to be seen to be believed. 😂😂😂

No worries Bella23 😄. Chestnut I love that one too! It's very cheap and cheerful and not a bit scary nowadays.

The first Hammer Dracula film came out when I was maybe 14, and I found it seriously scary.

TBH I’d been petrified of the mere thought of vampires ever since seeing a B&W film poster (in a railway station!) when I was only about 7. It showed a particularly horrific vampire with fangs bared, about to pounce on a petrified looking woman in her nightie.

The caption (I still remember it!) read, ‘Every night he rose from his coffin bed to seek the warm flesh and fresh blood he needed to keep himself alive.’

My father explained that there was no such thing as a vampire, it was just fantasy, but it was many years before the fear died away.
I just don’t do horror any more - last was probably The Shining, and that was bad enough!

Not really a horror film, but very disturbing was Fail Safe. The black and white film was from the sixties I think - based on the accidental launch of a nuclear attack by the USA on the Soviet Union. If I remember rightly one plane got through and bombed Moscow so the US president had to order an attack on New York as reciprocation to avoid all out war.

There was a remake as TV movie starring Richard Dreyfus, set in real time and really unsettling.

I've seen that on Talking Pictures TV Chestnut 🤣🤣

If you haven't seen it , our favourite 'comfort' horror is Fiend Without a Face - the monsters suck the brain stems out of peoples' bodies with a lovely slurping sound. We sit and slurp along with them 🤣

Watched Quatermass and the Pit last night.

MayBee70

Chestnut

As a teenager I was a big horror fan but it was mostly Hammer horror in the 1960s, perfectly fine and I still love them. But whooaah! When the 1970s arrived everything went crazy.

In 1973 along came The Exorcist and my friend and I were so freaked out we took weeks to recover. I was literally looking behind doors. Nothing was the same again for me. I did watch numerous horror films after that, but never anything about possession. I think it all depends on whether you believe that evil actually exists. People who have no spiritual side will probably not be scared by films with demons and ghosts.

For those who like it The Exorcist is on TV tonight and there have been follow up films I believe. Also, The Exorcist: Believer is coming out at cinemas this month. I shall keep well clear.

What channel is it on? I really must have the telly off. It was once on on the telly in the living room. I turned it off but then realised the tv was on in the kitchen! Panic! After I’d seen the film at a cinema I spent a weekend at a remote farmhouse in Wales. My husband went to visit friends in the Saturday night; a window started rattling upstairs and I was terrified.

I have a spiritual side. I’ve seen 2 ghosts. Of course I believe in evil because as Thomas Aquinas said Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good so as we know we have good in the world.

I wish I’d never watched it. But it was of its time I suppose and everyone was going to see it. It doesn’t help that my flatmate and I used to have seances when we lived in a very old Manor House several years before I saw The Exorcist, and scary things happened.

I’d been petrified of the mere thought of vampires ever since seeing a B&W film poster (in a railway station!) when I was only about 7. It showed a particularly horrific vampire with fangs bared, about to pounce on a petrified looking woman in her nightie.
I think that might have been Nosferatu if the fangs were at the front (not canines). A really horrible image and just awful to have it on a poster where children can see it. Little ones shouldn't see such scary stuff but you can't always prevent it. There are people who decorate their front gardens for Halloween with the most horrendous things which are really frightening for young children walking down the street. Why would they be so unkind?

Another time we went to a movie wax museum with a 'horror' section. There was a woman with two pre-schoolers (one in a pushchair) showing them the Texas Chain Saw Massacre tableau. WHY?

AreWeThereYet

I've seen that on Talking Pictures TV Chestnut 🤣🤣

If you haven't seen it , our favourite 'comfort' horror is Fiend Without a Face - the monsters suck the brain stems out of peoples' bodies with a lovely slurping sound. We sit and slurp along with them 🤣

Watched Quatermass and the Pit last night.

Quatermass and the Pit is another comfort movie for me! Interesting that the scene where the Major is burnt to ash kneeling at the side of 'the pit' has been removed from one TV version although I'm sure it was there for another one. It is one of those shots where they shock you by suddenly showing his face with no warning (and cue scary music at the same time).

BBC4 is showing a long and detailed programme about The Exorcist tomorrow night (Thurs) followed by the movie (2nd time this week). So lock up your daughters if you don't want to be freaked out yet again. I have never been able to watch that movie since I last saw it 50 years ago because it's still inside my head unfortunately.

When I was about 17 I went with a friend to see Psycho at the cinema and it scared us to death. My friend lived about four miles away and normally caught the bus home but she was so terrified I took her to my house and my Dad drove her home. Years later in the late 1980s I watched The Thing with my ex daughter-in-law and that was very scary too.