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Friday Night-Mare

Whether it be the adrenaline rush, the semi-erotic thrill from being scared or the macabre love of watching people die there really is a scary movie for everyone. Thus, as Halloween arrives, we are faced with the dilemma of selecting which horror movie we intend to scare ourselves with.

This somewhat odd impulse is by no means a new one as some two hundred years ago prim, Victorian women would gather together at book clubs and read pages from the latest Gothic novel, gasping and tittering at whatever scandals were to befall the innocent heroine. Then, in 1896, Georges Melies’ Le Manoir du diable was premiered, a silent film depicting supernatural events, arguably the first ever horror film. And so the blood soaked boulder has been rolling ever since and the genre refuses to be defined. Whether it is a suspenseful scene in which a dumb blonde investigates the ‘strange noise’ outside or lashings of blood as a horde of zombies devour an innocent bystander, providing the audience is never quite at ease then the scary movie is doing everything it says on the tin.

So this Halloween do you want to be scared witless, disgusted at graphic scenes of bloodshed or downright disturbed? Well, whatever your choice, below are five suggestions which will fulfil at least one of the above criteria:

Scream: a self conscious slasher movie in which a group of over developed teenagers are systematically killed off by a raging psychopath. Actually far funnier than it sounds as its blatant self awareness allows it to subvert and mock the genre. However, the scene in which a buxom blond is crushed in a garage door is somewhat extreme.

If you have ever wondered what you would do if zombies came knocking at your door then 28 Days Later is the film for you. It begins with a coma patient awaking to find London deserted. Things take a turn for the worse as he is attacked by hordes of virulent flesh-eaters and don’t really ever get better.

For those of you with slightly more discerning tastes there is El Espinazo del Diablo, a ghost story directed by Guillermo del Toro. Set in an orphanage in which a group of small boys try to discover the truth about the mysterious disappearance of their friend Santi. Meanwhile, the far worse horrors of the Spanish civil war break through the sanctity of the orphanage walls ensuring that the conclusion can only be tragic.

Horror also plays a large part in the world of sci-fi. So Spock and the Wookies can step aside as a small group of space travellers are stalked by a drooling, fanged extraterrestrial in Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, Alien.

 

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