Monday, May 16, 2016

Best Horror Movies Ever Challenge

Guys. GUYS. I’m starting something very exciting today – well, I think it’s very exciting, but your mileage will likely vary based on your tolerance for black and white, subtitles, and melodrama (I realize that may not be very many of you, but who needs a blog that gets read all the time, right?!). That’s right – I’m starting a movie challenge! And not just any movie challenge, but, as you might have guessed, it’s a horror movie challenge. The BEST horror movies, in fact, according mainly to Timeout’s Best Horror Films Ever Made List, but with some others sprinkled in for flavor. Because although I’ve seen nearly every relevant horror movie from the mid-90s on, my practical knowledge of earlier horror films is woefully underdeveloped. And we should always be learning, shouldn’t we? I mean, I can probably outline the plots of most of the movies on the list below, or ruin the big twists, but I haven’t actually sat through the majority of them, start to finish. That changes today! Or, you know, over the next many years it will surely take me to work through this rather ponderous catalogue.

So here’s the deal: I got rid of all the old chestnuts I’ve already seen a million times (Halloween, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, etc.), though I kept a few goodies that I’ve seen before but wouldn’t mind refreshing my memory on (The Shining, Don’t Look Now, and everything else in bold below). And then there were a few movies like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? – movies I’ve seen a million times but couldn’t bear to take off the list because I love them so much and would gladly watch a million times more. I’ve also made some creative substitutions, based on other “best of” lists and my own curiosity. For example, I’m not sure a lot of people would put Halloween III: Season of the Witch on a great horror movies list, but I’ve wanted to see the film that angered so many Halloween fans way back when, and so I put it in the original Halloween’s place on the list. Anyway, without further adieu, the list:

Fills you with a squishy sense of anticipation, doesn't it? Lucky for you, I’ll be starting on the challenge this week. Although I can’t promise a new entry every week, or every-anything (because life is crazy, and I live with my husband who doesn’t necessarily want to watch old horror movies every night of the week, gosh darn it), I will try to keep it regular enough that no one forgets the goal here: to watch a hell of a lot of great horror. I’ll also try to forewarn you of the next movie I plan to watch so you can watch along with me if that’s your jam. So get excited, people – tonight, we ride.

First on the chopping block: Black Christmas (1974).

(Oh and hey - you can follow the goings-on of this challenge on Twitter, too! I'll be tweeting about the movies as I watch them under the hashtag: #100BestHorrorMoviesEver)


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