Choose carefully.

Fright Night........

It appears we have a winner! Here were the results (note: I am aware that Werewolf received five votes first, but it was technically tied with Fright Night and, as I said, I prefer one to have more votes than the other):

An American Werewolf in London: 6 (The Villain, knife_fight, Giganticface, MichaelMyers, Anthropophagus, and V)

Fright Night: 7 (xX_StarChild_Xx, Sculpt, natedog722, Greenskeeper, realdealblue, bamahorrorfan87, and tiberius)

The Lost Boys: 1 (hammerfan)

Thus, after a really close round Fright Night came out the winner (without me having to cast a vote, although it was very close)!

If I would have voted, I would have gone with Fright Night. I thought the film was relatively brilliant. It had a really interesting, unique plot and the acting was pretty good. I also thought it was really funny, while still being clearly a horror movie. I especially liked how it parodied the classic days of horror (for example Peter Vincent, a combination of Vincent Price and Peter Cushing-two of the biggest horror stars of their day), while bashing the very popular slashers. I just want to note, that I consider horror comedies as horror the same as regular horror movies. I have never seen The Lost boys and for American Werewolf it is really good and like Fright Night it has comedic elements, while still being serious (I just believe that Fright Night did it more effectively).

Zombies Finals: Choose one film. The first to five wins (unless of course there is a tie again before I can check it)!

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L'Aldila'...

Just for anyone that does not know L'Aldila's English title is The Beyond (I forgot to write the translation below it).

Day of The Dead

If Dawn of the Dead were on the list, I'd probably choose that, since its been a long time favorite, but between those three, easily The Beyond. Eyeball injuries and flesh eating spiders FTW.

Return of the Living Dead, for Linnea's boobs alone.

Return of the Living Dead

I am a rabid Fulci fan and Linnea Quigley is probably my favorite scream queen, but Day Of The Dead is still top of the Zombie peak for me. It took me a long time to realize it, but I now believe it's George's true masterpiece.

The Beyond or Day,Day or Beyond.................argh the agony.Ok,i go for.................Day of the Dead.But only by a whisker.

I vote Return of the Living Dead. A movie that knows what it is, and does that well. Day of the Dead is a solid movie, I liked it more than Dawn, because it had a little more substance and story. For Dawn, I get 1978 mall consumers are like walking dead. That said, it pales in comparison to NOTLD.


I just watched The Beyond last night from Youtube. It's in english with subtitles in I don't know what language. It has that spaghetti western sound, where all non-music is recorded after it's shot, even though the mouths appear to be speaking english. Anyway, people have different opinions, I respect other opinions. My opinion is Beyond wasn't very good, because I thought it was a bit silly, and weak script/characters:

(SPOILERS) Like a guy is 'invisibly nudged' off a library ladder and then bitten by non-indigenous tarantulas, which wouldn't kill him, unless he was allergic to the mild venom, or maybe the 10 foot fall killed him. He was pushed by a dead, or not dead, conjurer who was killed by acid 40 years ago. There's a mother in a hospital corpse room, with the dead acid guy, and her unconscious head ends up under a tripped vat of acid, and her 13yr old daughter comes in just in time to see the first drip, and she does nothing but watches for a minute (maybe she was a gore horror fan). And a blind woman, with a seeing eye dog, runs out of a house, and down the porch steps, with her dog trailing behind her. Later the dog attacks the acid man, and then the dog attacks and kills the blind woman. And the dead/patients at the hospital attack, and you have to shoot them in the head to put them down, even though the acid man didn't seem to need a healthy brain (there's limits, or not). And the last scene is the heroes run down the hospital basement steps, but end up in the hotel basement, decide to walk through a hole in the wall, and are trapped in an 'other world' desert limbo. Movie was sort of some gore scenes, with a premise, but no reasoning or convincing story or characters behind it. And something I don't like, it wasn't about the beyond or gates of hell, except the last 20 seconds of the movie. Just my opinion. = )

The Beyond

Return of the Living Dead

Day of the Dead

The Beyond was in Italian and dubbed into English other than David Warbeck and Catriona MacColl I think. Also, it was Fulci's idea of "Absolute Film" where it doesn't really have a plot per say. His idea was that it should be more like a nightmare where things don't make sense. Example, go in your basement and suddenly you're in some other basement, just like in a dream. The main idea, as he said, is there is a Hotel that sits on one of the Gates Of Hell, there are some people and some living dead and this is what happens. You have to remember the movie was also made for less than the catering budget of most American films at the time. Fulci was a magician who was usually given pretty much nothing to work with and had to pull a rabbit out of his ass to make a movie that most directors couldn't have made anything out of. You're welcome to think it's silly or not very good, but it also helps if you understand more of the background of what Fulci had to work with and what he was trying to achieve at the time. For me it was a very revolutionary film.

The Return of the Living Dead

Thx, Realdeal. Yes, that does make more sense, it being meant as a bad dream. I wouldn't have guessed that. I thought a movie like Lenora, was similar, but with much better results. I tend not to give extra points for being low budget, unless I actually liked it over all. As always, it's personal taste. I lost an appreciation for a movie like this around 14 (just when I happened, not saying it's an adult thing). But that does help to know the intent. Still, a movie should stand on it's own; easy enough for the director to indicate it's a dream (in the movie itself, though it may just have escaped me) -- such as the indications of 'dreamish' in Jacobs Ladder, Johny Darko, etc.

Once again we have a tie, despite one film getting five votes first. I will give this tournament until tomorrow. If a film does not win by tomorrow (I do not know exact time, it could be midnight, could three P.M.), then I will, for the first time, break the tie.

Do the right thing, metternich. The lure of the choice is great, but beware...with great power comes great responsibility.

Well, today has arrived, so I will cast the deciding vote. I will vote between the two tied items. My vote goes to Return of the Living Dead (I will explain why I like it in the results section).

It appears we have a winner! Here were the results:

The Beyond: 3 (MichaelMyears, Giganticface, and tiberius)

Day of the Dead: 5 (The Villain, realdealblues, Anthropophagus, knife_fight, and xX__StarChild_Xx)

Return of the Living Dead: 6 (V, hammerfan, Sculpt, knife_fight, natedog722, and metternich1815-tie breaking vote)

Thus, after an incredibly close match and with the thread creator participating, Return of the Living Dead has come out the winner!

Unfortunately, I have never seen Day of the Dead and this is the primary reason I could not vote for that film (it is in my Netflix DVD queue though). If the tie would have been between The Beyond and Return of the Living Dead, it would have been much harder, but unfortunately it was not. With that being said, I believe that Return of the Living Dead is a brilliant spin on the zombie sub-genre. It is both funny with numerous one-liners and an intentionally over-the-top ending, while also remaining quite dark. Plus, this is the film where people get the idea that zombies eat brains (also the director of this film, Dan O'Bannon, was the principal writer of Alien). Definitely a worthy film to represent the zombie sub-genre in the 1980s.

We will now move into our final round. Deciding which film is the best of the 1980s.

1980s Horror Movie Tournament Final Round: This section will be organized according to sub-genre with the first sub-genre going first (the other sections were organized according to release date). Choose one film (to represent the best horror film of the 1980s). The first to five wins! (If there is a tie, I will cast tie-breaker. If no one achieves five, I will probably allow a maximum of two weeks if we do not have a winner by then, then the film with the highest number of votes wins.)

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A great line up but The Thing wins it for me.

Tough...

A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Nightmare on Elm Street

It was between Fright Night and The Thing for me, but I'm going with John Carpenter's Masterpiece "The Thing".

The Shining.

The Thing........

The Shining...

A Nightmare on Elm Street, the 80s were all about the slashers and this was one of the best.

I vote: The Thing

This one is actually pretty easy for me. What doesn't The Thing have? Follows the excellent short story 'Who Goes There' well, creates the paranoia well, acting is excellent, setting, music, mood is so effective. The special effects are great, and they aren't CG. I'd say it's Carpenter at his epoch.

I think it represents the 1980's well too. By far, the top grossing films of the 80s were science fiction fantasy: Empire Strikes Back/Jedi, ET, Blade Runner, Tron, Raiders Lost Ark, Dragonslayer, etc. There's kind of a upbeat realism to sci-fi/horror 80s films. The Thing is classic sci-fi horror. Not only that, but 1980's sci-fi horror was huge too -- The Thing, Poltergeist, Aliens, The Fly, Day of Dead, Scanners, Terminator. Shinning plots more like a 1970's film, as opposed to breaking ground into the 80s.

Definitely between The Shining and The Thing; the others can't hold a candle to those two.

Hm, I'll with The Shining, though. But it's tough.

Nightmare on Elm Street

So very tough. But it's for the 80s, so I find the best one for the 80s would be 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'. I vote that.

The Thing all the way! Carpenter's The Thing is the best paranoia film ever. Invasion of the Body Snatchers gets the runner up in that category.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The Shining.....

Well, I allowed a little more than two weeks, but I will now announce the winner. Here were the results:

A Nightmare on Elm Street: 6 (V, The Villain, MichaelMyers, natedog722, TokyoTenshi, and Kandarian Demon)

John Carpenter's The Thing: 5 (Anthropophagus, realdealblues, tiberius, Sculpt, and natesvault)

The Shining: 4 (Giganticface, xX_StarChild_Xx, fortunato, and fearsonarms)

Creepshow: 0

Fright Night: 0

Return of the Living Dead: 0

Thus, after a close match between A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing, A Nightmare on Elm Street emerged the winner of the tournament!

Personally, it would have been a pretty tough call between the top three, but ultimately I would have gone with The Thing. It is an all-around amazing film, in my opinion. Definitely Carpenter's best film.

I would like to thank everyone who has participated in this tournament, it has been quite fun and interesting. Anyway, thank you.