For one, if you look at them realistically, about 97% of the victims, as well as the hero, deserve to die for one reason or another, if not their own naivete. Second, if you watch these things in your living room in broad daylight, well, they are more hilarious that horror-y.

And also, I can’t help but think fondly of the scary movie that took my scary movie V-card: Scream. That movie was a total 90′s classic, and here are ten reasons why you need to take a trip down memory lane with this awesomely bad throwback, even if you’re not a fan of the horror genre:

1) The Drew Barrymore sequence that starts it all. Because let’s be serious: what was a 90′s movie without Drew and that burgundy-nearing-black lipstick? More than ten years later, she’s still got it.

2) The Courtney Cox-David Arquette love connection occurs before your eyes. Goes to show that a horror flick isn’t a bad date idea, and maybe making one is even better. It obviously worked for them!

3) Matthew Lillard. He’s hilarious (“Liver alone… Get it? Liver? Alone?!”) and I sort of have an awkward crush on him. Don’t judge – a young, blonde Rose McGowan plays his girlfriend in the movie.

4) Skeet Ulrich? What happened to that guy? Remember the ten minutes when he was plastered all over Seventeen magazine?

5) Fonzie’s cameo as a principal? Get out!

6) Even though tons of people die and the main characters are awful, God it makes you wish you grew up in California. And it doesn’t hurt to check out the late 90′s fashion, either… many a midriff was harmed in the making of this film.

7) Ingenuity of the killer (I won’t ruin the surprise for those of you who haven’t seen it) to use a thrifty, generic costume.

8 ) Before Jamie Kennedy was funny, he spent his time putting nice-guy moves on Neve Campbell. And that’s just great awkwardness to watch, predictable as it is.

9) It’s so much better than the sequels… as always proves to be the case. Doesn’t Wes Craven know the meaning of “too much of a good thing”?

10) For its time, you’ve got to admit it was terrifying. You know, when you had to sneak into theaters to see it. And you feared bathroom stalls for months (or even years).

[Photo courtesy of: www.freewebs.com]

Something New: The Strangers (2008)

The Connection: Both feature the creepiest of horror creepshows, the lurky masked killer (or killers, plural, in the case of The Strangers)

Long before I had ever seen Halloween, Michael Myers scared the crap out of me. The iconic pictures of his blank white face, unmistakably human and at the same time utterly monstrous, the brief clips from the movie of him unhurriedly lumbering towards his hysterical victims; for me, Michael Myers was an exact representation of that thing that you suspect is lurking in your closet or following you down the street at night when you feel like you’re being watched. Michael Myers was, as young Tommy Doyle observes so astutely in the film, the quintessential Boogeyman.

But a terrifying killer does not necessary insure a good horror movie. And while I respect Halloween’s place in film history, and acknowledge that when John Carpenter made it in the late 70s, he was dabbling in uncharted territory, it just doesn’t quite gel for me. The movie opens with a six-year-old Michael Myers stabbing his older sister to death with a large kitchen knife while she babysits him on Halloween night. His parents arrive home shortly thereafter to find him standing on the lawn in a trance-like state holding the murder weapon.

Flash forward fifteen years to October 30th, 1978, and he’s being transferred from one institution to another under the supervision of psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis when he escapes, steals a car, and drives off in to the night towards his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. Hiding out in his now abandoned family home, he spots high school student Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) on her way to school and spends the day stalking her and her friends, hovering around behind bushes and the like in coveralls and his sinister white mask. That night, while Laurie babysits the aforementioned Tommy Doyle and another neighborhood girl, Myers picks off her drinking, drug-using, promiscuous friends one by one until the final showdown between Laurie and Myers.

As I mentioned before, the slasher film motif of Halloween that is so standard-issue now was, at the time, revolutionary. Not since the days of Hitchcock’s Psycho had the genre been so reinvented, not had it been so well received; while Halloween was made for a measly $325,000, it grossed around $55 million upon theater release. But, despite its historical significance, it’s not very good. Aside from Curtis (who deserves props, for sure) the acting is ungodly terrible, the plot is chock-full of the usual horror stupidities (Why does Laurie send the kids out of the house alone while she stays in it with Myers?), the murders are downright boring, and the film kind of slogs along. While the soundtrack does an amazing job of creating a truly creepy ambiance, the action of the movie fails to live up to it, and I was left feeling ultimately impatient for the film to end.

The Strangers, on the other hand, is an exceptional film that starts off uncomfortable and escalates to full-on nail-biting intensity that barrels on right up to the movie’s last frame. It begins with a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque voice over discussing the high volume of violent crimes committed in the United States every year, and then transitions to a shot of two young boys entering a ransacked house.

While the camera pans around the scene, we hear one of the boys make a panicked phone call to 911 asking for help. Flashback to the night before when James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) proposes to Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) at a friend’s engagement party; though the specifics of the situation are not explained, Kristen declines and the two head back to James’ family’s secluded summer home where they’re staying for the evening. Forced to stay in the house together, the couple is in the process of trying to discuss the awkward situation when suddenly there is a knock at the front door – disconcerting, considering it’s after four in the morning.

They open the door to find an odd teenage girl asking for “Tamaryn”; she wanders away when they tell her it’s just the two of them there. Shortly after, James leaves to go for a drive/pick up cigarettes for Kristen, leaving Kristen alone. After a series of creepy events, James returns home to a hysterical Kristen, and then sh*t really gets buckwild. Three terrifyingly masked individuals make appearances both in and outside the house, progressively cutting off all means of communication with the outside world while playing mind games with the protagonists’ heads. Ultimately, the movie comes full circle and ends on an entirely satisfying and scream-worthy note.

Though one can tell that The Strangers is made by a first-timer (Bryan Bertino), the movie is surprisingly good. Tyler and Speedman, both good-looking in that believable, non-Hollywood mutant way, are well cast and do a damn fine job; Tyler is particularly adept at portraying believable, gut-heavy fear with understated actions. The storyline and script (also Bertino’s handiwork) are convincing as well without a whiff of the usual contrivedness that comes with horror flicks, and the eerie folk-heavy soundtrack is downright unsettling. But beyond all that cinephile crap, The Strangers is frickin’ scary.

While I was watching it in the theater, my fellow audience members were constantly jumping out of their seats, screaming, moaning at the impending horror that we know is coming but the protagonists are not yet aware of. This movie does the difficult job of being subtle and restrained yet still frightening in a way that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater.

BOTTOM LINE

Halloween: Worth watching once to pay homage to its place in cinema history but is a little outdated for today’s savvy audience members.

The Strangers: An excellently disturbing first release from a promising young director.

I like to think of the term in a broader sense, disregarding the time in which it was produced and whether or not it won any awards or are on any ‘best-of’ lists. No, a classic to me is something that has or will stand the test of time because of its brilliance, or its entertainment value, or its strong characterization, etc. And a movie like Shaun of the Dead has all of these things and more.

At first, it may seem like a silly zombie movie, but Shaun of the Dead, in all of its silliness, may actually be one of the most perfect movies ever made.

Shaun is a lazy television salesman, too caught up in the routine of his life to notice that he’s on the verge of losing his girlfriend, he’s neglecting his family, and, oh yeah, there is a horrible zombie outbreak. Fighting off the zombies in his favorite pub, The Winchester, Shaun has to come to terms with his own mortality and the loss of the people that he loves. At its heart, Shaun of the Dead is a movie about accepting one’s adulthood, and all the varied and often scary implications of that.

Going back to the idea of ‘classic’, if we apply the idea of the ‘classic’ movie or literary structure to the film, it has very strongly delineated acts and the main character, Shaun, goes through an inner emotional journey that reflects and is affected by his greater outer journey. This is some Chekov-level sh*t.

More than that, though, the movie is thoroughly and in every single scene absolutely entertaining. It incorporates aspects of different genres of film from the zombie movie, obviously, to romantic comedy (it’s even billed as a ‘zom rom com’), to a family drama, to a buddy film.

The director, Edgar Wright, and Simon Pegg, who plays Shaun and helped to write the script, is so good at setting up jokes and paying off what seems like throwaway plot points. In fact, it’s something that Wright and Pegg pull off to great effect in their second movie together, Hot Fuzz, as well.

What it comes down to, though, is that I can watch Shaun of the Dead over and over and still laugh at all the right parts, still gasp at all the right parts, and still tear up when I’m supposed to, even though I know how the movie ends and could probably quote it beginning to end if I had to. I can’t think of a single thing I would change in this movie and I can’t really say that about many other movies, even my very favorites. I will stand by my assertion that this is an absolutely perfect film and should be considered as such even outside the somewhat limiting horror genre. Especially because it subverts all of the familiar constructs of that genre so beautifully. It’s brilliant, entertaining, hilarious, shocking, and even sweet. It’s a classic.

With Halloween coming up, it’s prime-time to watch a horror movie – but where? Are any movies worth watching in theaters this weekend? What’s new on DVD? Do drive-in theaters still exist?

No worries, moviegoer – these questions and more will be answered after the jump.

In theaters:

Saw IV is the obvious choice to satisfy your lust for blood this weekend. The series, while being a tad overripe, has been consistent pulling out all the stops in the name of all that’s gruesome. Even if Saw IV‘s gimmicks get old, the gore doesn’t…well, at least this weekend. 30 Days of Night is a great choice if Saw IV is sold out; it’s a fine flick for fans of the genre, even moreso than Saw IV.

Horror movies not your thing? Do you have a date that’s not into blood n’ guts? Try Dan in Real Life – you can’t go wrong with Steve Carrell…but you can go wrong with his co-star, Dane Cook. Nonetheless it looks worth the gamble.

If you really want to give yourself a scare watch Tyler Perry’s trainwreck Why Did I Get Married? – it’s horrifying for all the wrong reasons.

At home:

Not into the movies featured this weekend? Neither am I; but there are plenty of essential movies out on DVD worthy of a weekend watch.

Two icky flicks, one compound word: Grindhouse. While it’s debatable the Grindhouse experience will be as good at your apartment as it was in theaters – both movies are separate releases on DVD; buy both for maximum effect – a heaping pile of nachos, a case of Natty Ice and a metric-ton of weed will mimic the vibe to a T.

If you’re down for a horror marathon I recommend the Nightmare on Elm Street series, with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors being the favorite of the bunch. Avoid the new breed and dig Krueger’s classics. Other notable marathon picks include the Friday the 13th, Halloween and Hellraiser series. Want more thrills and less gore? The Seventh Sign should suffice.

At the drive-in:

No, no, no – when I say “At the drive-in” I don’t mean the seminal punk group of the late 90s; I’m talking about the outside movie venues that provide a great alternative to overpriced, cramped theaters. Pull up your car and check out the following classics:

Evil Dead – Bruce Campbell and flesh-eating demons = Cult Horror Classic

Rocky Horror Picture Show - Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and bizarro circus freaks = Campiest Horror Musical Ever

Night of the Living Dead (original) – Low-budget zombies, buckets of blood = Crummiest Horror Ever

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! – Scientists, killer tomatoes, panic = Fruitiest Horror Ever

Killer Klowns from Outer Space – Killer clowns, outer space = Goofiest Horror Ever

…Or you could get wasted and bother the local kids. That’s pure entertainment.