Apparently, as an author of creepy books, I have some sort of occult knowledge of good scary movies. “Jenny,” people say accusingly, “You’re an author of creepy books. You must know something about scary movies that we don’t.”
Well, that is patently false. I only know as much as the next person about a good horror movie. If it scares me, it’s good. But, to paraphrase the theme from Different Strokes, what might be scary for you might not be scary for some. So, keeping that in mind, here are my favorite “scary” movies, perfect for this time o’ the year:
The Ring Some people find this movie a little so-so. I absolutely freak out when I watch it. I almost pee my pants when the phone rings for about two days after I see this. I guess to some people, like, young people, the fact that it’s already really outdated (what the hell is a video tape? Is that some kind of stone-aged entertainment device, like they dug it up at Pompeii or something?) makes it less scary. Well, I’ve got news for you, teenagers! In the olden days, we had to watch movies on VHS because we didn’t have Xbox and we had to make our own fun! Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, The Ring. Yeah, it’s a scary movie.
House Of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects You have to watch these two together, because watching just one by its self is unfulfilling. You have to watch them back-to-back to get the whole, awesome story. You know that trash house in your town? The one with the empty hanging flower baskets and broken down cars on the lawn and they keep their Christmas lights up and on all year round and maybe they don’t come outside much and when they do they look kind of unfriendly? Yeah, if you watch these movies, you’ll be even more afraid of those freaks.
Cube These people wake up and find they’ve been trapped in a labyrinthine prison of deviously booby-trapped cubes and the only way to escape alive is by solving a complex mathematical equation. WHAT?! WHO THE HELL DOES THAT KIND OF THING? HAVE THEY NO SOULS?! Seriously, that is TERRIFYING. Whoever thought that up is a twisted person who should probably not be trusted to babysit for children. Man. People thing Saw is a scary movie, but Jigsaw could take a page out of whoever made the cube’s book. Sawing off your own leg is not scary. Math… math is scary.
From Dusk Til Dawn This is one of those movies where you’re like, “Wait, what is this? Is this a comedy? Is this a crime drama? Is this a retro-pop-culture-pastiche?” and then the vampires come. And they are awesome, evil vampires. Just like I like ’em. Awww yeah.
Now, since I have very little else to share today, I’m going to leave you with this, my new favorite commercial:
I watched the “Jeffersons” episode of South Park last night – now THAT was scary!
Have a lovely day! 🙂
Even the covers of the Saw movies freak me out. I'm definitely a horror movie wuss.
OMG, Cube! For a while I thought I must have dreamed that film when drunk because nobody else had ever heard of it. Then I found a copy and made lots of people watch it and freaked them all out. I HATE it. And yet I LOVE it.