I think The Evil Dead is supposed to be hilarious. It is to me, anyway.

And again, I have no problem with people who love the gore in horror films. As I have said, it can be entertaining and even add to the film (particularly with a zombie film. A zombie is much more disturbing if it is coming at you with half of its face hanging off than, say, a little moss on the corner of its mouth and some eyeshadow.) My only beef is with those people who MUST HAVE GORE in a horror film, otherwise they'll think it sucks.

But, you're not one of those people. :D

Sorry...I think I have to agree with your friend on that one...Not sure about "hilarious"...But, certainly funny :)

Okay...Let me share a little of my perspective here, as I think I may have been misunderstood...

I love a dark, creepy, atmospheric feel...a psychological, sanity twisting mind fuck...heartbeat accelerating, pulse pounding, gut wrenching, spine tingling, afraid to turn the lights out, have to check under the bed before you go to sleep with your head covered and no limbs hanging over the edge, brain screaming terror....I mean isn't that fear induced, endorphin releasing, adrenaline rush what hooks us in the first place, and the neverending quest for that feeling, that KEEPS us hooked?.....Unfortunately...I just don't see that happening anymore, I think it pretty much ended when I was around 15, a drawback of growing up on horror?...Early burnout?....and so THAT is why I want the blood, guts and gore...So that I will at least have SOMETHING.....Now, if you COULD manage to make a movie that actually scares me, I would be eternally grateful and extremely surprised...and I'm sorry Stingy Jack, but Blair Witch Project DEFINITELY isn't it...And we actually watched that one at the drive-in, in the dark, completely surrounded by woods, with bats flying across the screen...now THAT is atmosphere:cool:

something else you might think of is something that f13 and scream knew. sometimes you just want the people to die. why do you think most of the victims get on your nerves. its important for some people to support the bad guy. sure, they were trying to say drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex are supposedly wrong, but maybe they just wanted the nerds to have someone to cheer for. lol.

Horror
 

The atmosphere, the sound effects and the visual effects.

No, no. I understood you. :) But I really enjoyed this post! Good description of fear. And you're right: it is the feeling of being scared that thrilled us in the first place. For some of us, fear has been the most powerful emotion we have felt, making the horror genre the one we identify with the most. I, myself, don't get scared like I used to. Like you, I haven't had any trouble turning out the lights at night since my mid teens.

But there are ways for me to get to creeped out pretty good, and that usually (if not always) involves me having to use my imagination. Again, let me go back to The Blair Witch Project (which I know you don't like, but hear me out). The ending shows Mike standing in the corner of the basement, and then Heather gets the camera knocked out of her hand. Silence ... the camera rolls for a bit, filming nothing but the basement floor ... then black. Now, according to the Rustin Parr story, we can assume that Heather will be disemboweled first, and Mike shortly afterwards. That's really all that the story gives us. I, for one, am glad that they don't show it. If they had showed it, I would have left the theater knowing what happened, and how it was done, and how bad it really was for them. But since they did not, I was stuck with all sorts of questions: What was in the basement with them? Was it Josh, being controlled by the witch like Rustin Parr was? Was it the witch herself? What did she look like? Like that horse-hair thing the crazy woman described? What really happened after the camera was turned off? Were they disemboweled, as the story goes? Or ... was it much, much worse? And this type of questioning led me down paths in my mind that creeped me out for hours. My wife was really bothered (we were living in the woods, at the time), and didn't want me to leave for work (I worked the night shift at a gas station then). Sure, they could have shown us the guts and the blood and the whole act of disemboweling ... but it would not have been nearly as effective.

The Evil Dead, for me, is a classic because of it's comedy. It was one of the first horror movies to really achieve that level of comedy.

I agree. The Evil Dead is supposed to be funny. That's what makes it great! It would not have been the same if it didn't have Bruce Campbell. Same with Bubba Ho-Tep. What's your favorite line from that movie, anyway? I totally cracked up when Elvis was trying to explain to the doctor about the bug in his room, and couldn't do it ... so he ends up saying: "What do I care? I got a growth on my pecker."

I just want to say one more thing, sort of continuing with my last post. The only thing that can really creep me out nowadays is my own imagination ... a movie needs to leave plenty for my imagination to chew on if I am to get creeped. It was not knowing what happened to the characters in that movie that scared me. And this also why, I think, Lovecraft is so great a writer. He said (and I will probably misquote) "The oldest and strongest emotion in man is fear. And the oldest and strongest type of fear is fear of the unknown." I think this is true, and will always be true. And his writing really reflects this philosophy. If you've read him, you'll notice that he never really shows his reader the scary stuff. Even when his protagonists encounter something truly frightening, he always describes it as "too horrible to be described" or something similar. He's one of those authors who puts something really nasty behind the attic door, then gives us just a peek at it before he ends his story. This is more satisfying to me, both emotionally and mentally, than if he spelled out exactly what the bad thing was and what it looked like and what it did. If you leave us with something to think about, we can always imagine: "It could have been worse ... " and then our minds will make it worse.

Anybody follow me? :confused:

Agreed....you want gore..go watch some anime....its so tired in horror movies...suspense and music for me...

I actually haven't seen Bubba Ho-Tep. I thought it was supposed to be a comedy up until a couple of days ago, and you can't tell from the cover that Bruce Campbell is in it.