It’s hard to single out the quintessential cult classic horror movie out there, but House is for sure a contender. Helpfully, it’s remained within the realm of “cult classic,” become more well-known in the decades since its 1977 release, sure, but not so well-known that it’s pulled a Blade Runner or The Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of thing and elevated itself from “cult classic” to just an outright/normal classic.
House is about a crazy house that forever changes the lives of a group of young women who have the misfortune of staying there. It’s an absolute fever dream of a movie, and probably more of a surreal comedy than a horror film, but it’s great. Anyway, the following films might well be even better, or even if you’re a die-hard House fan, maybe you’ll agree that these are equally good. Most of them scratch the same itch, too, being either comedy/horror movies or horror films with a good deal of camp and/or general weirdness.
8
‘Suspiria’ (1977)
You can’t deny the sheer style and visual spectacle on offer throughout Suspiria. Maybe that overwhelming part of it is so at the forefront that little else really matters in the same way, but style over substance is okay if the style is sufficiently stylish. So, Suspiria is about a dance academy where bad things happen, but whatever, because what really matters is how the bad things happen, not why, nor necessarily “what” bad things happen.
Also, the score of Suspiria is perfect, composed by the singular progressive rock band Goblin, and it’s firing on all cylinders on a technical front to the point where it stands tall as perhaps Dario Argento’s single greatest film. It’s most certainly a cult film, too, because it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea entirely, though the great stuff here could well make it everyone’s cup of tea partially. Does that make sense? Maybe not, but neither does much of Suspiria.
7
‘Gozu’ (2003)
Even compared to various other cult classic horror movies, Gozu is a lot to take in, and an all but impossible film to actually summarize. There’s a mystery introduced early on after a recently deceased man’s body suddenly goes missing, which prompts the murderer – a gangster – to go looking for it, but then this puts him on a super strange odyssey that gets progressively more surreal and unsettling as things go along.
Ultimately, Gozu is a pretty twisted film, and also not one for the faint-hearted. You will see things that cannot be unseen, though if you’re in the mood for something that’s pretty much tailor-made for sickos, then there is – thankfully (?) – a lot here to be sickened by. It’s a horror movie and a bunch of other genres all at once, but that sense of the unexpected is, funnily enough, often to be expected when the director is Takashi Miike.
6
‘An American Werewolf in London’ (1981)
While it is both a horror movie and a comedy, An American Werewolf in London might well work a little better as the former than the latter, especially as it goes along. It makes werewolves genuinely quite frightening, particularly the whole “transforming into one” thing, which is done with some unnervingly good special effects here that still hold up and sell the horror of the moment brutally well.
Before then, though, yeah, it’s kind of a comedic road trip movie that’s a little eerie, and things get more violent/horror-focused when the inevitable werewolf attack happens, but then the real intense stuff comes later on, with the transformation and then the finale, too. An American Werewolf in London works a whole lot better than you might expect, and it’s up there quite comfortably as one of the easiest-to-recommend cult classic horror movies out there, and of all time.
5
‘Near Dark’ (1987)
Near Dark has held up remarkably well as the years have gone on, to the point where it might well be more compelling for those checking it out for the first time nowadays than it would’ve been in 1987. Maybe that’s an indication that it was ahead of its time, or something else, but whatever the case, it really is one of the best – and most underrated – vampire movies of all time.
Much of Near Dark plays out like a neo-Western, too, but with a supernatural spin, and that’s inherently fun. It’s heightened, and a bit over-the-top, yet not exactly comedic; there’s a certain intensity to much of it, sort of in line with Kathryn Bigelow’s other (admittedly, not horror-related) movies. Also, cast members Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton are giving career-best performances here, and considering those two are pretty great in just about anything they appear in, that’s really saying something.
4
‘Dead Alive’ (1992)
If you want entertainment out of the zombie movies you watch, above anything else, then Dead Alive is required viewing. It’s pretty silly stuff, so you’re not likely to be particularly frightened watching it, though there is some unpleasantness and horror here on account of just how far it goes with its gross-out elements. It’s so bloody, gruesome, and chaotic that even with most of it being comedic, it’s still a lot.
The plot here is business as usual for a zombie movie, albeit with that New Zealand sort of sense of humor, on account of this being an early Peter Jackson movie. Dead Alive is great, though. It’s hard to demonstrate its greatness without just reiterating how beautifully bloody it all is, and you kind of have to see that to believe it, but it really is something to behold, so long as your stomach’s sufficiently strong and all.
3
‘The Hitcher’ (1986)
A movie that’ll effectively make you never want to pick up a hitchhiker again (if that was something you still wanted to do, for whatever reason), The Hitcher is one of those quintessential “things going from bad to worse” horror movies. It’s incredibly intense, to put it mildly, and has what could well be the best performance Rutger Hauer ever gave in a movie that wasn’t Blade Runner.
He gives a remarkable villain performance here, and proves to be a big reason why The Hitcher remains so nerve-wracking and engaging throughout. It’s got a toughness and grittiness to it that might well make it something of an acquired taste, and probably not the best movie to watch if you just want to relax or sink into something escapist, yet as far as underrated white-knuckle horror/thriller movies from the 1980s go, this really is one of the very best.
2
‘Evil Dead II’ (1987)
You could put any of the original Sam Raimi-directed Evil Dead movies here, and there’s an argument to be made that all three of them should’ve been here, but also, maybe the person writing at the moment is kind of lazy and only wants to include one, because time is finite and precious and a top 8 can be written faster than a top 10. Honesty is a good thing, right?
Evil Dead II is the most Evil Dead of all the Evil Dead movies, since it gleefully rides a line between the horror found in The Evil Dead (1981) and the absurd comedy found in Army of Darkness (1992).
Anyway, here’s Evil Dead II, which is the most Evil Dead of all the Evil Dead movies, since it gleefully rides a line between the horror found in The Evil Dead (1981) and the absurd comedy found in Army of Darkness (1992). It’s the best of both worlds, and it’s uniquely bizarre and compelling. It’s also got one of the wildest endings of any horror movie, and one that perfectly sets up the absolutely wild – and aforementioned – Army of Darkness, which is as unconventional as it is oddly satisfying, as a trilogy capper.
1
‘Dawn of the Dead’ (1978)
Okay, Dead Alive was mentioned before as being a pretty great zombie movie, but Dawn of the Dead is essentially the zombie movie. If, for whatever reason, you were only allowed to watch one, then the original Dawn of the Dead is your best bet, since it takes the core/expected premise (there are some survivors and they have to go somewhere to survive, here picking a shopping mall) and does everything right with said premise.
There’s a certain amount of fun to be had with Dawn of the Dead, since you can easily put yourself in the shoes of the main characters and see how, initially, there would be something liberating about having an entire mall as a playground of sorts. There’s humor inherent there as well, but then when Dawn of the Dead wants to get a little grittier and more serious, it succeeds on that front, too. It’s incredibly well-balanced for something so sprawling and varied on an emotional front.
Dawn of the Dead
- Release Date
-
September 2, 1978
- Runtime
-
127 minutes
-
David Emge
Stephen “Flyboy” Andrews
-
Ken Foree
Peter Washington
Source link
