Frivolous Friday-Horror movies have been around that long?!

Well this is a cool video. Horror movies have changed a lot in the past 122 years (hell, I didn’t know film has been around that long). Brazilian film critic and editor Diego Carrera has created a fascinating visualization of that evolution by creating a video with a short clip of one horror movie from every year starting in 1895 and ending in 2016. I was glad to see Halloween make the cut in this video, as it’s my all-time favorite horror movie. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen the film, but one thing remains the same no matter how often I see it: I still get scared shitless. I know exactly when Michael is going to strike. How he’s going to kill his victims. That he’s a sadistic asshole with a perverse sense of humor (seriously, he kills Bob and then pretends to be him in a ghost costume to fool his girlfriend Lynda whom he goes on to kill). It’s pretty amazing to think that Carpenter helped usher in the slasher genre by creating the movie on a shoestring budget. More, it’s a testament to the strength of his directorial ability that the movie largely holds up over the decades. Sure, certain aesthetics are different today (landlines with those damn cords that always get tangled up; fashion; vehicles, etc), but it wouldn’t take much tweaking of the movie to make it fit into the 21st century. Even the dialogue wouldn’t need much changing. Of course it wouldn’t fit well with today’s approach to horror movies since there was no blood, and filmmakers today love their blood spatter. I wish modern movie makers would take a few notes from the movies of yesteryear. Don’t know about anyone else, but I could do with less gore and blood and more tension and suspense in my scary movies.

Frivolous Friday-Horror movies have been around that long?!
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Five of my favorite horror movies

It’s the most fearful time of the year

With kids in scary costumes

And Hollywood filling you up with much fear

It’s the most fearful time of the year.

It’s the scar-scariest season of all

With those Satanist readings and de

monic meetings

When pagans come to call

It’s the scar-scariest season of all.

(apologies to Andy Williams for tweaking/butchering his widely loved Xmas song)

Obviously, this post is a Halloween-themed post. I don’t really think this time of year is particularly frightening (no more so than any other time of year). I was just channeling the whining of far-right fundie whackaloons. We all know how whiny and double-extra irrational they get around this time of year. I’m sure we’ll hear something from Pat Robertson about the dangers of dressing kids up or demonic energies (or other such nonsense). Me, I figured I’d take this time to list 5 of my favorite horror movies. Note that I said 5 of my favorite, rather than Top 5. The reason for this? Most of the movies I would even think to list in a Top 5 are ones I haven’t seen in a very long time. It’s hard for me to rate one movie over another when I haven’t viewed it in a while and don’t remember enough details. The only caveat here is that I *do* have a favorite movie, which I’ll be counting down to (it’s a movie I’ve seen repeatedly and it left an indelible mark in my mind, so I remember a lot about it). Here are four of my favorites, in no particular order:

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Five of my favorite horror movies