Skip to main content

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 6

 

"They're Here..."

Happy Friday, everyone! We really want to close out strong for this first week, so these next couple of recommendations will eventually lead us into the more terrifying entries of our list!


Day 6 - Poltergeist

Another great entry in the "How was this a PG rated movie?" category. Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist is one of the great haunted house movies and a melding of two great filmmakers coming together to produce a true horror classic. Directed by Hooper (more on him in a later entry) and produced by Steven Spielberg (with a screenplay co-written by him), the film follows a family that gets a new home and are soon haunted by evil ghosts. While Poltergeist might have the PG rating, it certainly uses it to its absolute breaking point by showcasing some truly frightening imagery (the face peeling scene is an all-timer) that pushes the intensity to new levels. There are plenty of scares from Poltergeist that have been parodied or imitated to death, but none have reached it, in terms of sheer horror. Whether it is the clown scene, the final duel with the spirit, or even the skeleton pool, Poltergeist is a film that delivers the goods thanks to Hooper and his collaborators, including a hauntingly ominous score from Jerry Goldsmith. Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Zelda Rubinstein, and a scene-stealing Heather O'Rourke star in this seminal classic that moves the haunted house trope away from isolation and into the very heart of 1980s suburbia. 


*All of the recommendations that we make can be found at the El Paso Public Library Catalog!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 16

  We are officially less than halfway through with our list! Yay! As you all have probably noticed we are fully in R rated territory and today's pick is a genuine slasher classic, not to mention a phenomenon that is still going strong 27 years later!  Day 16 - Scream (1996) The late, great Wes Craven was one of the masters of horror and Scream (1996) remains one of his crowning achievements. Following the Jason Lives model, screenwriter Kevin Williamson and Craven team up to deliver a film that practically revolutionized horror in the process. Having changed the face of horror in the previous two decades ( The Hills Have Eyes , and A Nightmare on Elm Street ) Craven does it again with Scream by crafting a movie that both references and adores horror but isn't afraid to criticize it. The story of Sidney Prescott and her fight for survival against the deadly Ghostface killer has all the trademarks of a fantastic Craven film, including incredibly suspenseful sequences, a terrify...
Post a Comment
Read more

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 31

  HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  We have officially made it! If you've been watching along with us and choosing all our recommendations, then thank you! There's nothing else to say, other than without any further ado... here is our final pick! ( Cue the JC score ) Day 31 - John Carpenter's Halloween "The Night HE Came Home!" Of course it was going to be John Carpenter's classic! The alpha and omega of slasher films is the quintessential Halloween watch. The story of Michael Myers, or as he is better known in the film as The Shape, stalking a babysitter has basically become classic. A true watershed film and a benchmark for the genre, Halloween not only changed the game but it spawned countless of imitators leading to the entire slasher subgenre boom in the 1980s. This is another one of those films where direction is everything - Carpenter takes a page from Hitchcock's textbook and allows suspense to become the key ingredient of the film. Originally titled "The Ba...
Post a Comment
Read more

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 23

  Do not be surprised if a lot of these next titles are consistent classics, because what else are we going to do as we get closer to Halloween! For today's recommendation, it only seems fitting that we start the week with a pick that was based on a novel from the King of Horror... Stephen King, that is. Day 23 - Carrie (1976) Of course we're going with the original 1970s Carrie , directed as a stylish symphony of horror by Brian De Palma, and starring Sissy Spacek and the late, great Piper Laurie. Carrie , based on King's first novel of the same name, tells the story of a young girl who attempts to navigate high school life as she starts to develop psychic powers. Everything from the unflinching view of high school life, the film starts with an incredible opening credits sequence that informs the viewer exactly what the tone of the film is going to be, to the Academy Award nominated performances to even the last act of the film scream "classic". By telling the s...
Post a Comment
Read more