Yesterday, during the rain and gloom, I was chatting with my wife about our long history of watching horror movies together. In a fit of inspiration (though you may call it something else) I put together the chart below. The image is linked to a larger version on Facebook.
Imagine that you find yourself in a horror movie, being chased by... something. To survive, you need to figure out what subgenre of horror movie you're in, so that you can choose an appropriate weapon. Here's how to do it.
In the subgenres I've included, here are a few of my favorites. Some are more guilty pleasures than actually good movies, but I've enjoyed them all.
When animals attack. I'd put Jaws and The Birds in this category, but sharks don't have legs, and birds have only two. (Riddle: What animals have four legs and two heads? Answer: Two birds.) Pitch Black, then, even if they're alien animals, they fly, and it happens on another planet.
AI/Robot flick. The Day the Earth Stood Still and 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Not horror movies, but with some horror elements.)
Creepy crawly flick. Mimic (okay, it's pretty big), Eight Legged Freaks (okay, also big), The Fly (sort of), ...
Space alien flick. Alien and Aliens.
Space invasion flick. War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Thing (1982), They Live.
Mutated vegetable flick. The Thing from Another World (1951). I'd love to see a good Triffids adaptation, but none has yet been made.
Zombie flick. Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Re-Animator, Cemetery Man, Dead Alive, Shaun of the Dead, Les Revenants.
Vampire flick. Nosferatu, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (for sentimental reasons).
Vampire romance. No favorites. (Vampires deserve to be staked.)
Werewolf flicks. An American Werewolf in London, Brotherhood of the Wolf.
Psycho-thriller. No favorites.
Ghost flick. The Haunting (1963), Ringu.
Demon flick. The Exorcist, The Omen, Night of the Demon, Jeepers Creepers.
Scary country people flick. The Wicker Man, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Motel Hell.
Witch/warlock flick. Suspiria, Warlock, The Witches, The Blair Witch Project.
Torture porn. No favorites. (In fact, I dislike 'em all.)
Revenge flick. I don't have anything against the subgenre, but it's hard to think of something I've liked. Maybe Pumpkinhead, with Lance Henriksen.
Slasher flick. Psycho, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Session 9. I also like some giallo, but I'm not a huge fan of the gore.
Lovecraft pastiche. If only there were a good one... In the Mouth of Madness comes closest, and The Evil Dead series is clearly inspired by Lovecraft.
I'm probably forgetting a number of others, but I hope you've enjoyed some of these as I have.
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Comments
i did actually like final destination as a slasher pick, for all the "lessons" about "oh, we'll fix that someday" and thenthey don't,and a bolt comes unscrewed, bounces in a possible but very unlikely way, resulting in the death of fifty people.
And nice flow chart. I will print it out and put it behind glass; Break when Zombies come, which reminds me, Zombieland is really, really funny.
Also, the original adaptation of "I Am Legend" with screenplay by Matheson himself, called "The Last Man on Earth" could fit into a couple of categories, as could the original "Black Christmas".
And how about "Little Shop of Horrors" for the vegetative section? Feeeeeed meeeeeeee....
Trudge, Trudge, Trudge, ... if I had a bludgeon right now...
Hi, Lee. Thanks for the recommendation! I've never seen The Day the Earth Caught Fire, but it's in a period (early 1960s) and a place (the UK) where great sci-fi/horror movies were made. The plot reminds me a little bit of the Quatermass movies, though those were on less serious topics. I liked The Last Man on Earth, but I haven't seen Black Christmas.
Little Shop of Horrors would have been on my list, if I'd actually liked it... :-)
Also, I did notice that there's a huge amount of subgenre-crossing when I was putting this all together. Not just vampires and werewolves in the same movies (a la Underworld) but movies that combine elements that I wanted to keep separate for humorous effect. Near Dark, for example, is a redneck vampire movie (reuniting some of the cast of Aliens); Cloverfield is a space invasion creature feature; the Prophecy movies include slasher demons (well, fallen angels, really); Demon Seed is sort of a possessed computer; ...
"The Day the Earth Caught Fire" really is a minor classic. If you get a chance to see it, it's worth the effort. And agreed about "Little Shop" -- too campy or something for us to have it in the permanent collection ... but Cloverfield is there.
:::Trudge runs and hides in the broom closet stuffed with bodies:::
I'm actually quite the pacifist. I don't know what it is that's appealing about these movies. (For what it's worth, I'm also usually pretty cheerful, even though one of my favorite genres of music is the blues.)
L C, I really liked Dead Calm, too. Three of my favorite actors; I especially like the way Billy Zane played against type.
And Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear--whew! The Night of the Hunter, too. He could manage an impressive aura of menace.
Let the Right One In(yeah, now this is a vampire movie. I like zombie movies to be grossly funny and vampire ones to be disturbing)
Night Watch & Day Watch (kind of like a Russian version of Underworld- they got panned, but I liked both- decidedly not scary, just fps kind of spastic- which is probably why they did poorly. The ideas were good though.)
there were 2 other ones that I can't seem to locate the names of, even using Rotten Tomatoes as a crutch :p *frustrated hair pulling*.... I'll find out from Karen and post them later.
Another vamp movie that was a sleeper but is worth checking out is "Near Dark" It is trailer trash vampirism at its very finest.
Venessa, I agree--there are all sorts of spoofy, one-of-a-kind horror movies that are cult classics. Mars Attacks, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Eraserhead, Rocky Horror... They just don't fit my categories.
Roger, this was the first time I've had fun doing a chart like this.
Scarlett, Verbal Remedy recommended Fido to me last year, and I watched it for the first time. Excellent.
Julie, I haven't seen Let the Right One In, but I did like Night Watch a lot. It had an interesting Russian vibe. I don't know if it's characteristic of Russian sci-fi/horror (it's different from Solaris and Stalker), but it was a lot of fun. Haven't seen Day Watch yet.
Give us a hint on the two others--or the one that's not Near Dark, if that's it.
Jeff, I also liked Ginger Snaps. Sometimes there are some nice metaphors in horror movies, and that series was quite a bit better than I'd expected it to be.
The other was a gritty feeding on others sort of vampire tale, where the main character decides that that is not the way he/she wants to live, and ends up killing them-self instead of others. I liked the honor of it. Being able to look at the situation and think- yeah, I can't do that, not even to save myself. I think if there were such things as vampires they would have to be antisocial to start out with, or the feeding would break them mentally. (and not in a charming way like Interview With a Vampire...sigh, that is probably over thinking the whole thing, but the glorifying of anti-socials is very disturbing to me, and our culture does it alot in movies)
Laugh, now watch, Karen will remember exactly which movies they are and I will have remembered them all wrong :D somehow cobbling 2 or 3 stories together.
I also liked The Descent.
Would the second movie be Innocent Blood, with Anne Parillaud as a vampire who mixes it up with mobsters?
I also found the Descent pretty scary. And the set-up in the beginning, on the road--that was a shocker.
I'm with you on the glorification of bad stuff. It's unfortunate. It's tempered my enjoyment of some movies, like the Silence of the Lambs (Lecter's a monster) and the Matrix (the good guys kill a lot of real people).
And you've reminded me of another vampire-related movie that I liked: Cronos, directed by Guillermo del Toro. It's a nice twist on the basic vampire story.
The second one she had no clue about, oh well. Off to add Innocent Blood, Cronos, Fearless Vampire Hunters to the Netflix queue. Thanks for this post Rob!
Thanks, Stim! There are definitely well-known movie types I've left out, including The Mummy (Boris Karloff!) and Frankenstein (and again!) I guess there are too many different ways to be dead and scary to fit on my chart. The Blob (the Steve McQueen version, of course) would be a space invasion flick, even if souped-up fire extinguishers are hardly WMDs...
Hey, Smithery! It's nice to see you (virtually) again. I'd thought I'd write up a post about our meeting in Philadelphia, but I never got to it, like so many other things. Hope you're doing well.
M Chariot, doesn't everyone have a Mr. Hyde who comes out every once in a while? My Hyde thrives on frivolity.