will horror movies ever be respected?
 

i've heard, and i am sure most of you have heard that horror movies are in the same league as porno movies. so my question is will horror movies ever be respected in the world by non horror fans or will they always be at the bottom of the genre pool?

I think anybody who is a true lover of films and not just some art-house douche (I'm only a partial art-house douche) or censor-happy type can appreciate horror movies' signifcance as a genre.

I know a lot of people who are horror fans dislike Ebert (though I never understood why), but there's a quote of his from his review of Halloween I always liked.
"Credit must be paid to filmmakers who make the effort to really frighten us, to make a good thriller when quite possibly a bad one might have made as much money. Hitchcock is acknowledged as a master of suspense; it's hypocrisy to disapprove of other directors in the same genre who want to scare us too."


Basically, GOOD horror movies are already respected. Schlock horror, mindless gore-fests, and stuff like Friday the 13th (I'm a fan of the series, but I'm sorry, the majority of them were not good movies) aren't, and deservedly so for the most part.

No

Its always been a genre snobbed by mainstream audiences and critics but kept alive by true fans.

Just like porn.;)

and wrestling (which isn't movies, but I still say there are plenty of parallels between horror and wrestling)

What about porn and wrestling?

DAMMIT!!

I tried to attache that gif, but it didn´t work for me. Said the file was too big. THAT´S NOT FAIR!! God hates me..

"Hogan knows best"


Why did the chicken cross the road?






Kiss this or I'll kill your puppy.

thats pretty much what i was going to say.
In the 70's (my favorite rant) there were several well made horror films with real directors and older established quality actors. Real film scores performed by real musicians.

thank home video and the 80's slew of garbage horrors for giving the genre a terrible name... well deserved indeed.

occasionally someone makes a class film but its rare.


on the other hand - i never needed the respect of the masses to enjoy the things i like.

A lot of what does get respect is pure horseshit anyway.

Good horror is like a good film in any genre, it is made with intelligence, and at the very least, passion for the genre.


Movies like Alien are works of art by master artists. John Carpenter made good movies, or at least watchable ones because he had a clear passion for the subject matter and cared enough to create an atmosphere.

Most of what gets called horror these days could not be farther from it. It is a special effects movie, basically an action flick with horror trappings.

it comes down to the actors really ..


1) most no budget films cannot afford A list actors. Most horror no budget films employ pitifully untalented nobodies and try to make do.

occasionally a good no budget film is made by a clever filmmaker who knows how to make the most of what he has available to him.

2) most A list actors will review a project and have enough brains to avoid it if it's shit. Occasionally a good actor will make a bad film when fallen upon hard times/in need of work/doing a favor..etc

Shitty actors will do absolutely anything to be in absolutely anything.

3) great actors are respected - bad actors aren't.

this translates directly to the films they are in.


the other huge factor is music. I cannot stress this enough.

80's direct to video horror has either shitty synth music .. a la Richard Band,
or terrible metal music - usually provided by a friend of the filmmaker.

I dont know which i hate the most - probably the Richard Band style keyboard garbage - just because absolutely everyone does it - to this day still.

it has ruined more horror movies for me than any other element.

Last thing : Lighting.
Shitty movies always have this god awful lighting .. in labs/spaceships/the woods, where there is a green or red glow emanating from ... wherever.
A sad attempt to create atmosphere ...all it does is stamp yet another CHEAP ASS label all over the film.


Gregory Peck was in The Omen for chrissakes ... that commands respect.

Good points.. Ridley scott was bright enough to employ well established actors for that very reason. He took a chance on sigourney weaver, but padded the rest of the cast with people who had been in the business for a couple of decades already:

Veronica Cartwright
Ian Holm
John Hurt
Yaphet Kotto
Harry Dean Stanton
Tom Skerrit

All had been doing movies at least since the 60s.. Hell, Veronica Cartwright was a child actor.

Plus, he used Jerry Goldsmith for the music (he also did Poltergeist) who already had a loooong track record, including the Omen.

Granted all of this took money, but Ridley Scott took the time and effort to brow-beat as much out of the studio execs as he could.

and then he made a gothic horror in a sci-fi setting ...

smart and effective move ..

I think if there was any chance of some respect by the masses, it's been ruined by the remakes and shitfilms released in the last 4 years or so. Think about it. All new horror today isn't really released as a "movie", but more a popular pre-teen girls' activity. PG-13 "thriller" horror (I cannot believe they tagged 'Wicker Man' with one) is utter shit: The critics know it, anyone over the age of 16 knows it...the genre is actually losing respect.

The 60s can brag about Psycho.
The 70s can brag about Halloween.
The 80s can brag about Hellraiser.
The 90s can brag about Silence of the Lambs.

Today, we can brag about a fucking remake of The Fog, rated PG-13 for some frightening moments and mild sensuality.


For Chrissake...

I respect all horror......cept UWE BOLL.

Oh come on now.... He deserves respect.


Wait, does respect mean "Bludgeoning", because that is what i meant...

I hear ya homie.....I have more respect for Ed Wood.

Hey, Ed wood had enthusiasm. Uwe boll's movies are more like "hey, I bought a license! I can use it to make money. when im having some coffee and a smoke, ill write something"


*6 hours later*

I have a script! lets get filming. i have 3 more licenses!

The 90's could also brag about Se7en. I think 00's have a couple horror movies that are bragging-worthy. Kaïro, Shadow of the Vampire, American Psycho, Devil's Rejects, and Three...Extremes are all worth bragging about. Maybe not all of them to the extent that the ones you mentioned are, but we certainly have more to brag about nowadays than teen horror remakes starring actors from Lost

the 70's had a hell of a lot more going for it than halloween..

What? Not really.. Unless you count

Dawn of the dead
Crazies
Last house on the left
the hills have eyes
Alien
When a stranger Calls
Carrie
Suspiria
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Exorcist
The omen
Play Misty For me
The Amityville Horror
Jaws


should i continue?


Obviously, this want aimed at urge... alky you twit...

Listen, I was just trying to make a point...

I put one movie down for each era.

I could go on for pages about the 70s, which was my favorite era.

And yes, the 00s had some good ones. But even still. Two of the five you mentioned weren't even American.

How is that relevant?

Where it is from has nothing to do with the quality.

i think it gets the respect it deserves from the small pool of knowledgeable film critics that respect it as a genre, follow? the rest can stew in their own shit :D

Basically I'm trying to point out that American cinema is taking the horror genre less and less seriously, and it's becoming more of a business. I have nothing against foreign horror. I'm just trying to keep with the theme of American horror, and I'm saying that the only three we can think of right now are American Psycho, The Devil's Rejects, and Shadow of the Vampire (which was mediocre).

No hard feelings, guys, just trying to make a point.



And I'm fuming about the 70s shit. I totally respect the 70s, as I said before, it's my favorite era! I was putting down one film from each era, and Halloween is the undisputed most commercially popular horror flick of that decade.

its funny but i dont even think of halloween as a 70's movie ..
i think its a good movie but i think it's success opened the floodgates for the cheap ass 80s slasher flicks that soon followed.

Black Christmas was a 70's slasher ..
that still feels like a 70's film


when i think of 70's i think of the possession films

Rosemary's Baby (i know it's '68)
The Mephisto Waltz
The Exorcist
Reincarnation of Peter Proud
The Possession of Joel Delaney


etc, etc...

there was a certain grainy, gritty feel to those films .. they had a sort of 'weight' to them...


in my thinking i dont date movies by the exact time of release - more the feel and atmosphere of the film ..

a couple of years on either end dont matter.

(eg. hippies carried over beyond the 60's .. they didnt cease to exist January 1 1970)

i think there is more respect than there used to be. . . at least in academic cricles you see more serious treatments of popular horror as legitimate art form. . . there are good books on horror and philosophy (Noel Carrol's Philosophy of Horror; Cynthia Freedland's The Naked and the Undead) and history (Kendall Phillips' Projected Fears or Andrew Tudor's Monsters and Mad Scientists) . . . so I think people are starting to recognize horror as important

I absolutely understand, respect, and even agree with your thinking.

I'm just saying, anyone over the age of 13 has seen Halloween, no matter their taste of movies. It's (with the exception of maybe The Exorcist) the most known.


You and I might think of Black Christmas, but the majority of the population thinks of halloween.

i think they recognize the impact on the genre in society .

"why do we seek it out, rollercoaster phenomenon, etc .."

but i agree that 90% of movie goers arent horror fans .. at least not once past their teens.

i also think that the people who are dedicated to horror ONLY are some of the most sad individuals on the planet.

So yeah, some learned folks are interested in the interest of horror - but not so much the genre as a whole.

trust me - these are my peers - i know.
these guys think horror movies are stupid .. and its because they've had too much exposure to horror movies that are stupid .. or they just have no need for fantasy/escapism in their lives ..

i wasnt actually arguing with you .. i just wanted to talk a little bit of why i like 70's films ..

more good 00-era horror (and I even narrowed it down to the American ones for Xenophobic Alky)

One Hour Photo
Insomnia
Wrong Turn
Dawn of the Dead '04
Land of the Dead
Session 9
From Hell
The Ring

For the ones i have actually seen, i agree 100%

pretty loose definition of horror though ...

And as for the "America doesn't take horror seriously anymore" or whatever it was he said that I'm too lazy to go back and look up, every country/region/whatever has had its 'golden era' for horror. The silent era was Germany, the 50's and 60's were kindof a general European era, 70's were America, 80's just kinda sucked in general aside from a few standout exceptions, and now it's Asia. After that, the Middle East era, the Mexican/South America era, and the Eskimo era, it'll all loop back around again to Germany. We'll get another golden era here when we're about 60.

i dont think horror is condusive to all cultures ..

mexico/south america .. maybe - but spiced with politics (Devils Backbone)


I dont think you'll see very much from the middle east - if anything at all - ever.
When you live with horror day to day - it doesnt make for great escapism ...

I was kidding about the Middle East. But I'd love to see an Arabian horror movie

i figured you were .. but the point stands ... many countries have no film industry whatsoever and the ones that do - culture dictates what will get made ..


We keep forgetting australia ..
they've made a mittful of decent fright films ..

We can't brag about...

The Descent?
The Devil's Rejects?
The Blair Witch Project? (99, I know.)

Tagging The Fog is over-exaggerating things a LOT, buddy. It was pretty much one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and everyone agreed. Even those of age 13 who it was targetted at.

One could pick out the worst movie of any decade, and label it "Look at this shit. This decade was good for NOTHING."

It's not true. You may feel that our decade is a sad time in horror, and compared to the films of the past, it is. But it's not completely wasted.

You lean toward the older classics, the black & white. This is YOUR taste. Who are you to say that movies we enjoy today are "bad films"? For you, they might be. But others enjoy them. How is it right to tell someone that a movie THEY enjoy is a failure. Is that not what movies were first created to do? Entertain? If it does that, to one - it's not a failure to them.

This whole bussiness of some people around here complaining about films other people like is really starting to anger me. At first I was like this, I admit. But I realized... how stupid I sound. It's fine to give YOUR opinion of something, but when you tell someone as a whole that the film THEY like is bad, and they have BAD taste for liking it. That's pushing it.

Just because someone has a different taste then you... does not mean their taste is 'bad'. Who's to say that yours isn't worse?

Taste is per person. I remember a quote from Miss Olivia, comparing our opinions to assholes. It was probably the most truthful thing I have ever heard.

I don't know what a mittful is, but I guess they could replace the Middle East. I still say the Eskimos could make a good horror film if they put their cold little minds to it. Hell, The Thing may as well have been an Eskimo horror movie.