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Home > Blogs > Sir Critic on Cinema > Archives > 2006 > October > 26 > Entry
Horror survey SAYS (Clang):
I recently received a copy of the Zagat Survey 2007 Movie Guide in the mail and have been finding it quite intriguing.
With only 1,600 titles, the guide is hardly comprehensive. Most film guides list 17,000 titles or more. But what makes Zagat interesting is that its guide is compiled via a survey of 15,000 “avid moviegoers,” rather than a team of film critics.
The Zagat guide is also unique in that it indexes the movies into more categories and genres than you can shake a video store card at. So with that in mind, I plan to make Zagat my regular topic on Thursday, when I will list their favorites, my favorites, then ask for yours.
Since it’s almost Halloween, I thought the best place to start would be horror. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not my favorite genre, but I do like horror movies when they horrify me.
For each genre, Zagat has two lists: Classic (pre-1960) Modern (everything else.) Here are their voters’ faves, in no particular order:
Classic Horror
Frakenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein
Dracula
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Freaks
The Thing
The Invisible Man
House of Wax
The Wolf Man
The Fly (1958)
My comment: “House of Wax”? Really? Hey, I love the 3D paddleball too, but it ain’t that scary!
Modern Horror
The Exorcist
The Shining
Rosemary’s Baby
The Thing
Poltergeist
The Omen
Halloween
Carrie
Evil Dead
Night of the Living Dead
And now, on to my picks:
Classic Horror
Frankenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein — Actually a better movie than the original, but the original is scarier, the sequel more imaginative. Take your pic.
Freaks
The Thing (from Another World)
The Phantom of the Opera — For some reason, silent films are ignored in the lists, even though they are in the guide. But I’m including them.
Nosferatu — Ditto.
Modern Horror
The Exorcist — The original version, NOT “The version you’ve never seen,” with the tacked-on dialogue that ruins the ending.
Rosemary’s Baby
Halloween
Carrie
Night of the Living Dead
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
The Blair Witch Project — To heck with all those literal-minded people who said it wasn’t scary because you didn’t see the monster. That was the whole point.
28 Days Later
The Ring — It spawned a slew of mediocre imitators, but the American original still works.
Dark Water — This is one of the imitators that worked. I wish it had gotten more attention.
Scream — More for its cleverness than actual scares, but it still deserves a spot here.
Sleepy Hollow
FYI: Zagat classifies “Psycho” and “The Silence of the Lambs” as thrillers.
Come back tomorrow, when I ask about scary movies again, but in an entirely different way. In the meantime, feel free to comment; that’s my favorite part of blogging. What are your favorite horror movies?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Ask the Audience
Comments
By Mandy
October 27, 2006 3:00 PM | Link to this
I told Eric this but I’ll share it again. I saw The Blair Witch Project when it debuted and thought it was lame and uneventful. Days after seeing it, I was camping at Hueston Woods with a group of friends — we went there on days when we wanted to get away from parents. We were some of the only campers on the grounds. In the middle of the night as we were sleeping, two large dogs came from out of nowhere growling and rubbing up against the tent. They ran off and nothing happened, but suddenly The Blair Witch Project had a whole new meaning for me.By Sir Critic
October 26, 2006 4:29 PM | Link to this
Allie: I sure hope you mean Robert Wise’s 1963 film of “The Haunting” and not the lame 1999 remake! Neither version is the the Zagat guide, nor is the “The Changeling.” For that matter, “Candyman” is also absent. But I would like to make one addition to my own list: David Cronenberg’s 1986 version of “The Fly,” which is not only scary but truly upsetting.By SRCputt
October 26, 2006 2:54 PM | Link to this
On the modern list, I got to put Candyman ahead of most of those titles. I liked the way it linked fantastical scares with real scares by setting a lot of it in Cabrini Green, the notorious Chicago housing project.By Allie D
October 26, 2006 1:51 PM | Link to this
I was surprised at the absence of The Haunting on the classic horror list and The Changeling on the modern horror list!