Mr. Flix

One should never judge the scariness of a movie if you first watched it with a group of teenagers. Nothing is scary in that scenario.

Alone in the dark, I would think the Exorcist, NotLD, and Texas Chain Saw Massacre would all still be at least a little unnerving.

Sean O'Hara

The use of undercranking to create spooky fast movement has been used in games like Silent Hill and its knockoffs.

hasslein

This

hanshotfirst1138

Got you. I've been out of the gaming loop for years and years too. Most of what I remember about JL is that sucker punch ending.

inri222

The first time I saw it like 30 years ago the end scared the shit out of me and still creeps me out to this day.

BuddyRevell

The Exorcist and Prince Of Darkness. Cripes!

Norm de Plume

Good to see some love for Don't Look Now, The Changeling, and Black Christmas.

Mike86

Well I think part of it for me personally is that I have seen so many horror films throughout the years that I'm just used to them and it takes a lot to scare me. I could be wrong but I've also sort of wondered if it can be attributed to the time period it was made as to why it isn't as effective now to people. It seems to me people were more God fearing during the time it originally came out and while religion is obviously still a big factor in many people's lives today I don't know if the fear of God exists to quite the extent it might have at that time. I could be off base on that but its kind of how it seems to me.

Norm de Plume

Could be. I was raised sans religion and have never found The Exorcist even the slightest bit frightening. On the other hand, I don't believe in ghosts either, yet The Changeling is in my top-20 horror films.

DaveyJoe

As I mentioned earlier, I'm agnostic but The Exorcist still scares me.

ddrknghtrtns

Old horror flicks don't give me the chills as much as a well crafted PSA. Recently while watching an old commercial compilation DVD in the middle of the night, I saw the old Joanna Cassidy / Smokey the Bear PSA. That creepy woman and demonic bear still send chills up my spine.

inri222

I was raised Catholic but am not religious and it still scares me because it is such a well made film. The combination of great acting, writing, direction and visual/sound effects help enhance the atmosphere of dread that make this film stand above all of its imitators.

Solid Snake

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DaveyJoe

Yep, it's very well made and holds up better than most films, period, not just horror. I mean we don't believe that Michael Myers or the ghosts in the Conjuring are real, so why do we get hung up on a movie like the Exorcist because of the religious aspects? It's all fantasy to me.

Trevor

I don't think The Exorcist would scare me nearly as much if I thought it was all fantasy.

inri222

I don't believe in witches but I love Suspiria and find it creepy because it feels like a living nightmare.

dhmac

People are talking about a lot of horror movies that I don't think remotely met the OP's assumption on "old" given that he was talking about the Bela Lugosi Dracula movie from 1931.

So I'll step forward and define old horror movies as ones from before the end of the Hays Code (aka the Motion Picture Production Code) censorship standards that stopped in 1968. Only then would movies be allowed to have explicit content that we now associate with most horror movies.

That means horror movies released in 1967 or earlier = Old Horror Movies

And horror movies released in 1968 or later = New or Modern Horror Movies


So now please just name any horror movies released in 1967 or earlier that still hold up.

DaveyJoe

The Exorcist came out 41 years ago, I'm 29. To me, that's an old horror movie. It's impressive that a movie made 12 years before I was born can still scare me. This isn't a definition that will fit all of us...

dhmac

I get that, but the thread isn't about your age. The time from the 1970s until about the mid-1980s is widely considered a Golden Age of Horror Movies. The movies from this time are all older but they are still better than most Horror Movies released today. When you look at lists of the greatest Horror Movies ever made, it's overwhelmingly movies from the 1970s and 1980s. Everyone knows that already. Saying that The Exorcist, the original Halloween, The Thing, (etc.) still hold up today isn't telling people anything they don't already know.

But if you look at the 1967 and earlier Horror Movies, most aren't remotely scary today. A lot of them are so tame, they are quite dull by today's standards. So naming a lot of horror movies from 1967 or earlier that are still scary is a real challenge. And that's what I'm challenging you to do!

inri222

Vampyr
Carnival of Souls
Cat People
Night of the Demon
Kill Baby Kill
Castle of Blood
The City of the Dead (Horror Hotel)
Repulsion
Toby Dammit

DaveyJoe

But that's not necessarily true. Just because these movies are classics for older people doesn't mean that there aren't a ton of film fans who haven't discovered them yet. Any horror movie made before the 90s is something that I would have had to discover on my own, years later, where there's a chance that it's all ready dated and tame. There are tons of young people who feel that way about the Exorcist, Halloween(78) etc. So I think those movies are perfectly valid in this discussion when there is all ready a growing portion of the audience that finds them underwhelming after hearing years of hype. I mean I haven't even seen the Omen yet, despite being a huge horror fan. It was made decades ago, and despite hearing so many good things about it, I may find it underwhelming, or it might creep me out and I'll consider it to still be effective, and I think my reaction to it should be valid in this discussion. Even if you guys have seen it, it's still new to me and I'll be watching it through the lens of our culture during a very different time.


Inri, good call on Repulsion, that one got under my skin when I watched it a couple of years ago. Several scary moments, and consistent atmosphere of dread, and a very unsettling ending.

brainee

I think the point isn't so much movies being made before you were born. Rather, it's movies that were made in an era where horror movies weren't allowed to be graphic. 1968 is a good cut-off date, but the late sixties in general was a key time. Finding scary movies that hold up today is a challenge (and a good topic). Just listing scary movies from the 70s and 80s isn't hard to do (and nowhere near as interesting a topic to me).

Some good calls there.

Not just Cat People, but a number of other Val Lewton productions from that era: Isle of the Dead, I Walked With a Zombie, Leopard Man, and Seventh Victim being my favorites. And despite Lewton's reputation for subtlety, Cat People is one of the earliest examples of a "jump scare" that I remember.

Night of the Demon is a really good one. So many monster movies of the 50s are let down by a silly creature (when finally revealed). But this movie must've blown people's mind when this got revealed:


I mentioned Bava's Black Sabbath, but you can't go wrong with Kill Baby Kill or Black Sunday either.

Toby Dammit ... Fellini really should've made a feature-length horror movie at some point. I'm sure he had it in him. But without that, this will have to do.

DaveyJoe

Graphic violence has nothing to do with being scary, besides, those standards are constantly changing. Halloween and The Exorcist are not graphic by today's standards. You guys say they are obvious choices, but there is a new generation of movie fans who are scoffing at them. Go to IMDB and you'll be stunned at how many people are bragging about how they found these "classics" to be laughably dated and cheesy.

RichC2

It depends on what you consider horror. Ideas are scarier than gore to me, but few movies utilize that.

brainee

And that's where these older movies can really surprise you. I didn't mean to imply that gore = scary. But when horror movies were limited by a production code, they were really handicapped in their arsenal for scaring audiences. Not just graphic violence, but themes and tones were censored as well. And damn ... if a horror movie gets in trouble for unsettling and disturbing themes/ideas, it's hard to make a scary movie. That's the essence of what makes something truly scary.