To think horror films are horrible

[Somethingthecatdraggedin7]

I have never understood why people enjoy horror films.
By that I mean the genuine films of that genre not crime/action whatever which have violence in them.
I watched part of a horror film at a freind's place when I was much younger (late teens) and was completely freaked out and left my friend’s house. The film was so shockingly nasty that it took me years to block out the images.
If you enjoy horror, why do you like them? Is it a thrill akin to a rollercoaster for you?
I honestly don’t understand why people like watching torture etc.
YABU = Horror films are great fun and I can’t get enough
YANBU = Horror films are horrible and I avoid them

@BlakeCarrington i had such a crush on you in 1983 😂

Why thank you, I was very tasty if I do say so myself.

The Night of the Hunter?

I've bookmarked this thread to take note of the Korean recommendations: thanks for posting these. I'll make a point of watching some, time-permitting.

You were also the voice of Charlie in Charlie’s Angels’ - <swoon>

I didn’t actually know that about myself @ghostyslovesheets, so forgetful of me.

In my next incarnation I might come back as Dex Dexter - double swoon…

@SerafinasGoose check out Huesera: The Bone Woman (Mexican I think), Also the Hell House films (if not seen already- American but good) REC. (Spanish?)

So much good horror for us uncultured people to share!

Get OUT of here if you come back as Dex I might implode ❤️❤️❤️😂

I feel a name change coming on… but that would be very disloyal to Blake. Dex was HOT.

Ahem, anyway back to the horror. Yes REC brilliant and I binge watched all the Hell Houses. There are so many amazing horror films that hit at so many different levels. What about the Babadook, such a great film. Definitely horror but so much besides.

I'm with you OP I can't bear them. Even this thread is freaking me out!

Babadook is a great scary film worth the watch

I love horror/ Sci-fi so Alien, Event Horizon

not sure there’s a sub group I don’t like - I didn’t like watching Hostel for example but the message- wealthy (men) people exploiting poorer countries was a good one - both they murdering billionaires and the young youth hostellers wanted the same thing.

Anyway our very educated friend has gorn to bed as should I - work tomorrow although I’m not doing important work narrowing the minds of our young creatives just bog standard social working

night my lovely creatures of darkness and gore xx

Think we’ve seen them off. Nighty night creatures of darkness, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Thank you all the recent posters for recommending films. As I said earlier in the thread I’m fairly new to the genre as I avoided for years due to being terrified as a child 😂 but had to watch a bunch for work, but it was a fairly limited selection even then and it’s been interesting to see some of the recommendations, I’ve added some to my letterboxd to watch in the future

I can recommend some:

Titane, French body horror
Raw, French cannibal film
Mandy, brilliant cult film
Roh, Malaysian folk horror

Jeez, all the "It's not great art" talk was so annoying. Who cares? It's not even what the thread was about.

Some people (well, person) seem to forget that, for most of us, film is about ENTERTAINMENT. We want to have fun, be moved, scared, saddened, shocked, thrilled, whatever... to be entertained.
Who wants to sit there on a Saturday night with their pizza and lager, and watch some po-faced academic's narrow and boring idea of a 'great film'? Not me. Give me REC or The Descent any day!

Aah The Descent… another absolute corker! Yes we just enjoy them, it doesn’t have to be great art fgs (although I’m still annoyed at the suggestion that it’s all a pile of lowbrow crap. I think the film studies lecturer needs to watch more films!)

Okay, if Barry Lyndon is your top Kubrick film, then it's clear where your taste is. I like Barry Lyndon, but for a film studies teacher to write off the rest of Kubrick apart from that and 2001 is wilfully perverse. You seem fixated on a narrow canon, and that's fine. But it doesn't make you any kind of high authority on greatness, art, meaning or on what is or isn't strictly a horror film. I studied film, work in film now, and this is the kind of ivory tower angle that puts me off ever going back within those hallowed walls. Which are weirdly more like Hollywood than arthouse now that it's all about what your students will pay 10k for than what makes really great teaching.

I think a lot are just silly.
but things like
jaws
eden lake
the descent
hostel
seven

Have an element among the silliness that is actually a real fear (sharks, dark places, behaviour of men, or out of control teens, nightmare on elm street - the sucked into the bed bit).
True crime can be scarier as seeing the normalish husband etc...

I dont like things with a rubbish plot. Final destination is on some level believeable to me in that life is dangerous and you survive many things that could have killed you but it wasnt your time yet.
I mean michael schumacher (sp) all that motor racing then it was skiing.

There was a person who died at go karting but it was a heart attack.

I completely agree. There's room for a bit of everything! I enjoy some highbrow stuff - the modernists and some of the epics are a tonic to me - but there's a place for middlebrow and popular culture too. I could melt my brain nicely forever on a diet of the beats, the glut of work available on Warhol and his clan, and some good old-fashioned POMO. I can enjoy an art-film and then go off and watch John Hughes or a back-to-back streaming of Alias: terrible dross but a whole lot of fun and goes down really nicely with beer and a pizza!

I also love a good 80s slasher and couldn't care in the least whether people mock. Likewise, disparaging Stephen King for committing the atrocity of being a 'bestseller' <pauses to spit in grass> is an attitude straight from the antedilvian days of Q D Leavis, and even she was roundly mocked for it. King is patchy - a lot of his writing is clunky and convoluted - but he draws on very American-specific cultural anxieties that are well worth exploring and would make for teachable moments. Wes Craven is also onto something, I think. Many of those Nightmare movies were terrible but the original really taps into something of the psychology of troubled teenagers, which is the reason it sold.

I'll be watching some of the Korean films recommended upthread for sure. I might also have a rewatch of The Return of the Living Dead and Amityville Horror. Reminds me of my friend's lovely movie nights when her parents went out!

Nostalgia and🍕🍺all round ...

NB. talking of obscure horror, has anyone seen Tracy Moffatt's BeDevil? It's on YouTube but I think it's a great shame it's apparently only ever been released on VHS - I've not been able to find a DVD anywhere.

This is really three short films in one: I've seen a couple of instances where short film has been presented as one feature-length film - Usborne's The Acid House does that - although the discussion of whether the distinct short-film genre translates well into feature length is another question.

But BeDevil is an interesting one: I believe Moffatt was the first ever First-Nation Australian film director and the three stories focused on ghost/uncanny stories of their ancestors. I'd so love to be able to obtain a high quality copy of this.

Speaking of Australian horror, Wolf Creek put the fear of the gods into me! I've never fully got through the second instalment but won't be watching it in the dark ...

Just started watching Eden Lake right now. It is my day off work, will I regret it?😬
I don't think I'll handle it before bed.

Maybe! Eden Lake is bloody horrible. And I have a very high tolerance for such stuff. Feral teenagers are far scarier than monsters and demons... because they exist!

Pans Labyrinth was an amazing film. I was hooked all the way through.

Not sure why the twilight zone descended on the thread last night. Did that poster ever say what is classed as a horror film or what their favourite film was?

Ha, I don't know but I'm waiting for them to return to tell us that Pan's Labyrinth is a dark fantasy not a horror, even though del Toro insisted it had its UK premiere at Frightfest as its second festival outing after Cannes, eschewing the 'higher brow' LFF. Of course Frightfest doesn't limit its definitions and will take all kinds of genre as well as horror, from thrillers to sci-fi, but that's because horror fans tend to be very open-minded and expansive about the canon, unlike some :)