Saturday, October 13, 2012

Weekend Weigh-in: What's Your Favorite Slasher Movie?

Yes, it's Saturday and we're still here. Scary Movie Month, everyone.

This space is mostly for you guys.

First, a couple of housekeeping things. You'll notice there's now a link to the Scary Movie Challenge thread at the top of the page; this should please those of you who hadn't seen it and have still been scrolling through to find the post every time you want to add an entry.

Second, there was talk in the comments a few weeks ago about wanting to do another Twitter fest during Scary Movie Month (à la F This Movie Fest). I still think October is too jam packed with stuff to do a full-on Twitter film festival, but would you guys be interested in getting together to do something on Halloween night? We'll wait until after trick or treating ends (in most of the U.S., anyway) and tweet our way through one horror movie. Might be a nice way to close out what has already been a kickass Scary Movie Month. Let us know below, and if there's enough interest we'll try to make it happen.

But what this post is REALLY for is to keep the conversation going even on our days off, so let's all chime in on our favorite slasher movies. Remember, "best" and "favorite" are not the same thing, so don't feel like you HAVE to say Halloween.

Have at it.

16 comments:

  1. HALLOWEEN (1978). And not because I feel I HAVE to answer that. It's truely my favorite horror film of all time.

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  2. Very interested if we started at 830 or 9....

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  3. Halloween. Hands down. I think the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise stayed fresh longer, and I think the Friday the 13th Franchise is the easiest to make fun of (and have the most fun doing it), but the first Halloween movie is the golden standard by which all slasher movies should be judged.

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  4. As long as the commented-on-tweeter flick is widely available and we or most of us have a copy (none of that 'Netflix on Demand decides' bullshit) doing a tweeter fest on the 31st is cool.

    Oh, and my favorite slasher movie of all time is the original "Sleepaway Camp.". Always has, always will.

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  5. The movie will be something that's widely available. And probably on Netflix. If that is bullshit, please feel free to not participate.

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    1. Not that you asked but really wish you'd stick to podcast commentaries.

      Voice inflection doesn't come across on Twitter. And you can't go back and enjoy it again.

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  6. Halloween (the original). Also like H2O when I pretend that was the last film.

    Other than that I'm not a huge "slasher" fan.

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  7. Scream (1996)
    Intruder (1989)
    The Prowler (1981)
    Club Dread (2004)
    Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
    and of course Halloween (1978)

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  8. I might be a little bias at the moment because my SMM Marathons have just taken me through the original Nightmare on Elm Street, but my favourite slasher film would have to be Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.
    This is solely chosen because of my fondness for it in my youth. While the first Nightmare is a classic, and 3, 4 and 5 are somewhat interchangeable due to the establishment of the Freddy formula, although I think 3 is objectively the better of the three and there is a gradual decline on the irony scale towards camp across them, it was 4 that I would rent over and over again from the video store simply because it was the movie I would rent over and over again from the video store (I was a boring creature of habit).
    In watching it yesterday for the first time since I was about 14 or so I sat there with a big smile on my face as I was remembering all these scenes I had seen many times before, and the surprise when I finally realised why today I have this image in my head of my arms snapping under the weight of a bench press (not a joke, I do have that reoccurring image, and I had forgotten where it had come from).


    The twitter film to end SMM is a perfect idea. I probably wont be able to join as it will be about lunch time on the 1st for me and that is a school day (i.e. ill be at work), but ill be sure to check my twitter feed to see how its going.

    #SMMIsAwesome

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    1. Like "Hellraiser III" yesterday (damn it, Brad, stop following me into MY dreams! :-P) I have a soft spot for "The Dream Master" even though the objective part of my brain can see that the original "NOES" and "New Nightmare" (#7) are the superior one's. From the so-80's-they're-perfect opening credits/pop song ('It's like a heart attack going one-way stream') to the mixed bag of cheesy and funny Freddy one-liners (he bombs as much as he scores, but when he does Englund's on fire) to the gore being not too gross but not for the squeamish either (you said it Brad: can't look at people lifting weights without imagining their elbows breaking like Freddy's female victim here), "The Dream Master" achieves kind-of a perfect-to- slightly-tilted-toward-bad balance that 2, 3, 5 and "The Final Nightmare" have point south at all times. It also helps that Renny Harlin was a young hungry foreign director in American trying to make his mark, so he directs the hell out of this movie. The practical SFX/set design are some of the best and most memorable in the series. Nobody forgets the 'pizza' gag with Freddy even if they don't remember from which "Nightmare" movie it came from, which is this one.

      Same way I have a crush on Amy Steel from "Friday the 13th Part 2" part of the reason I like "4" so much is Lisa Wilcox, who gets the rare-in-a-horror-movie distinction of not only surving her debut movie but the sequel ("The Dream Child"). Not even Heather Langenkamp's Nancy survived two "NOES" movies; it took Craven re-inventing the series in the meta-centric "New Nightmare" to bring back Heather (technically not Nancy), but Wilcox's Alice Johnson got to legitimately kick Freddy's ass twice in a row and live to tell the tale. That doesn't mean "The Dream Child" is any good (it blows actually) but that "The Dream Master" is all sorts of awesome. :-)

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    2. But unlike Part 5, Dream Master does the all too common kick in the nuts of, "You survived the last film? Good for you, but more accurately, Fuck you! Now you die". And there doesnt seem to be much reason for it. They went ahead and recast Arquette anyway so no reason to not keep her going through 4 and 5 really. They went to all the trouble of giving Alice her powers which basically makes her the same character anyway. This would have also made more sense for continuing the series rather than having to say each time: "oh, didnt we tell you, there is one more Elm Street child."
      But if Im going to nitpick 80s horror logic and continuity then im going to be here all day and ruin any sense of enjoyment they have left for me. :-)

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    3. I'm going to Screamfest in Orlando on Oct 26, and while conventions aren't normally something on my radar, I'm going because the entire core cast of Nightmare 4 is scheduled to be there. While I also recognize that quality-wise it's far from the strongest entry in the series, it's still the one that kicks me square in the nostalgia-nuggets the hardest. It hit theaters when I was in junior high, while I was getting my weekly horror fix watching the truly awful Freddy's Nightmares tv show on New York's WWOR late-night Saturday line-up. While the first and third are certainly better, Nightmare 4 is far and away the one I've watched the most often, as it was the first one my parents allowed me to see once it hit video in '89 (I think).

      All that being said, does Psycho count as a slasher film? If so, that's my choice, as it was the first movie to truly scare me, and to this day I never get tired of rewatching it. The first sequel is surprisingly solid and much better than it has any right to be, too. The rest, not so much, though Psycho III has some sleazy charms.

      As for a twitter-flick on Halloween night, it sounds like a great idea to me, I'm in!

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  9. A Nightmare on Elm Street

    I was always terrified of Freddy Krueger when I was a kid and would frequently have nightmares about him murdering me in gruesome ways. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I did not see this movie until I was a teenager-- I think subconsciously avoiding it out of association with those bad memories. However that turned out to be a boon, because when I did see it, I was far too old to be afraid of Robert Englund's old mug and the viewing became a cathartic, "reclaiming" of Freddy and the film as a whole.

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  10. Is it Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter that has the camp for um, "special" kids? The scene where the not-Jason kid axes another kid in the back really disturbed me for some reason - I guess I just wasn't expecting to see a "normal" person kill someone. Anyway, as bad as they may be, The Friday the 13th movies are my favourite slashers (not the best, just my favourite!), and that one is my favourite of those.

    And yes, pretty sure I'd be down with a Halloween night mini-twitterfest of a movie (or two? For the real night-owls?).

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    1. That would be Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (aka Killer Paramedic). That one guy with the chocolate stains on his face is one of the funniest and most offensive things in the history of the franchise (and my second favorite character in the series after Shelly from Part 3). You might be the first person I've ever known to say that one is your favorite -- but that's one of the "good" things about the franchise. Everyone has a different installment they like best.

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    2. Haha - maybe it's because I too frequently suffer from chocolate stains on my face.

      I'll get my facts straight thanks to AMC - this is the first year I've had it up in Canada and your post made me check my local listings - horror movies galore on that channel this month! My DVR is about to get a workout!

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