Welcome to the 31 Days of Horror Redux

On this day, 10 years ago, I started a project called the 31 Days of Horror. Thirty-one horror movies in 31 days. It was a way of sharing my love for the genre by sharing some of what I considered, at the time, the greatest films in that genre. Now, 10 years on feels like the right time to revisit the project – but with a twist. Instead of my recommendations, I am going to be listening to the world’s recommendations and watching new films, myself.

Each day this month – October being the spookiest month, I think we can all agree – I will be watching at least one horror film that is new to me. I do not have a schedule planned, but I have a vague idea of the movies I want and need to see. I will write about each film in this space, each day, and share my thoughts on the world of horror.

There are no rules for this project, but I will try my best to seek out a variety of subgenres, marginalized filmmakers, and new voices. This should be exciting, hopefully as much for you as for me. At the end of this month, the goal is to be a better rounded horror film fan than I am as of this writing. I want to learn, I want to grow, and I want to understand the furthest corners (thanks, Frank) of what this wonderful genre has to offer. I hope you will come along with me on the journey.

However, before forging ahead, I thought it would be fun to take a look back. I have been in love with horror for essentially the entirety of my movie-watching life. From the time a misguided babysitter showed me Jaws at the age of 3 and I briefly avoided swimming pools like the plague. Or when that same babysitter, in an even more ill-advised moment, showed me Child’s Play at the age of 4. I had nightmares. I didn’t go to that babysitter much more after that.

The point is: Horror lives with me, and I live with it. I am neither dogmatic nor precious about it. Show me something new. Show me a new take on an old formula. Show me an old formula done well. Show me the schlockiest, most undercooked story and give me a cheap thrill. I love it all. I cannot vouch for the quality of it all, but my love is real. 

So, with that in mind, I thought it would be fun to kick off the 10-year anniversary of the 31 Days of Horror with a list of my 10 favorite horror films of all time. I have never done this exercise, and frankly, I am as interested to see how it turns out as you are.

A couple rules: First, I won’t repeat the same director, otherwise I imagine we’d be looking at a list of almost entirely Wes Craven and Sam Raimi movies. Next, single films only, no franchises, as tempting as it might be to highlight whole groups of movies. Third, I reserve the right to change my mind and update this list in 10 years. Fourth, this is about favorites, not best. While I think most if not all of the films below are legitimately great, my only endorsement here is that I enjoy watching them.

Finally, and this is less a rule than an observation: My definition of horror may differ from yours, and that’s okay. It’s great, even. That is the beautiful thing about horror. What is horrific to you may not be so to me and vice versa. I promise to play fair – no Jesus Camp, one of the most horrifying movies I have ever seen. Let’s see how this goes.

First a few honorable mentions and one jury award: Ginger Snaps, proof that when the right metaphor meets the right theme, magic is made; Paranormal Activity, without question the movie that scared me most as an adult; [REC], when people ask me the scariest movie of all time, there are a lot of candidates, but this is on the list; Trick ‘r Treat, just a ton of fun – all treats from minute one until its wonderful conclusion; and Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, a horror comedy that delivers laughs and gore in equal measure.

Jury award: Jaws. I had to break this out into a separate section because Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster is simply one of my favorite films of all time, but it teeters on the edge of what I would call “horror.” It certainly scared the hell out of a lot of people and continues to do so, but it’s mostly a drama that veers into thriller territory. Its moments of horror are suitably horrific, but they’re a little too few and far between for me to feel good about including it here.

Okay, onto the list. I wrote about several of these films at length in the original 31 Days of Horror series, so I will link to the longer pieces about each where applicable. Without further ado, my 10 favorite horror films of all time:

10. Leprechaun, directed by Mark Jones

Here’s my promise: Next year, on St. Patrick’s Day, I will devote an entire piece to my love of the Leprechaun films. We’ll get into the history of Trimark Pictures, the Jennifer Aniston of it all, Warwick Davis, and limericks. For now, I’ll just say this was a key piece of my starter kit as a child. There’s even a child as one of the leads. It’s not too scary. It’s not too gory. But it’s a helluva lot of fun, and it represents the kind of low-budget creature feature they don’t make enough of these days. And, it’s holiday-themed, to boot.

9. Carrie, directed by Brian de Palma

Some things that come to mind when I think about the greatest Stephen King adaptation (all due respect to The Shining): the hand at the end, of course; it is, perhaps, the most honest coming-of-age film ever made; the terror of religious fervor; Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie delivering all-time performances; the number of times I watched this late at night on TNT, sometimes as part of the Joe Bob Briggs show, which was very important to me. A masterpiece.

8. Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero

In 2014, I called this the greatest horror film ever made. Ten years later, that opinion has not changed. There was great horror before Romero unleashed his film upon the world – Psycho, Frankenstein, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, etc. – but this is the dividing line in modern horror filmmaking. This 1968 film sets the template for everything that would come after in terms of intensity, gore, and thematic depth. To this day, few films can match it in any of those categories, let alone all of them.

7. The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont

The feel-bad movie for all time (and the other Stephen King adaptation on my list). That ending. My god, that ending. For about 115 minutes, The Mist is some of the most intense and intensely allegorical filmmaking you are ever likely to see, then its final 10 minutes hit. Gut punch is too light a term. It’s more like one of this film’s monsters burrowed into you and exploded from the inside out. Not for nothing, but it also features one of the all-time great jump scares from my theater-going years, perhaps only matched by The Others. If you know, you know.

6. 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle

Back then, I wrote a lot about this film as a pandemic parable – really, that’s just the text of the movie, rather than parable – and at the time, we were in the midst of the Ebola panic, which turned out to be a blip on the radar. Since then, we have all lived through COVID. Along with Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, this provides a pretty accurate road map of how the world would feel in the grip of a pandemic. Suddenly, the parable that was always text became reality. That only made the movie more terrifying.

5. Tales from the Hood, directed by Rusty Cundieff

This omnibus of horror tales is the film that taught me movies could have a political consciousness. Not just horror movies, but movies in general. I cannot count the number of times I saw this Spike Lee-produced movie before I saw Do the Right Thing, so it was Cundieff who initially enlightened me on the abuses of police power, the scourge of domestic violence, and the false promise of “rehabilitation” in prisons. In many ways, this film is still a political guiding light for me.

4. Evil Dead II, directed by Sam Raimi

I could have gone with the original, The Evil Dead. I could have gone with the return to form, Drag Me to Hell. But if I am going to put one Raimi picture on my list of favorite horror films, it’s going to be this one every day of the week and twice on Sundays. This is the film where Raimi solidifies his status as a horror master. This is the film where Bruce Campell proves his bona fides as a leading man. This is the film where a man cuts off his own possessed hand and attaches a chainsaw to the stump. What else could you want?

3. From Dusk Till Dawn, directed by Robert Rodriguez

I waffled between this and the next film on the list a couple times. Two, three. Three, two. But I ultimately landed on this order because only the final 35-40 minutes of this film are actually horror. Everything before that is just an excellent crime picture. But, it’s that twist that makes this film so memorable. And, those last 35 minutes contain some of the gnarliest action-horror filmmaking you have ever seen. While the rest of you were watching E.R., this was my George Clooney of the ‘90s.

2. The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg

Speaking of, as a ‘90s kid, I should know Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park, and I should know Geena Davis from A League of Their Own. And, I do love those movies, although I actually prefer the Goldblum-led Lost World (a piece for another day). But, this is my Goldblum, this is my Davis, and The Fly is one of the most beautifully tragic romances ever put to screen. I knew that to be true, even as a child. That romance is ensconced in some of the most groundbreaking and influential body horror in film history, but it is a romance no less. 

The destruction of Seth Brundle’s body (pick your metaphor: cancer, AIDS, the ravages of age, what have you) is a brilliant effect, or rather a series of brilliant effects, but none of it means anything if we don’t care about the man at the center of it all and the woman who loves him. Cronenberg gets plenty of deserved credit for his work as a horror genius, but here, I must tip my cap to him as a master dramatist.

1. Scream, directed by Wes Craven

I’ve written about Scream a few times on this site, so I won’t rehash it here. I had seen horror movies before this, and heaven knows I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds since, but this is the one that changed everything. It spoke to me in a way movies had never spoken to me because it was about kids (played by obvious adults, but when you’re 8, teenagers and adults may as well be the same thing) who loved movies, just like I did. They knew everything about horror movies, just like I wanted to. One of the characters worked in a video store, which just seemed impossibly cool.

This film laid the groundwork for a decade of horror cinema that had more influence on my taste than probably any other era of any other genre. I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Final Destination, and the many sequels to all of them. I watched them all. I loved most of them. But, nothing holds a candle to the film that started it all. The direction is so smart. The writing is so smart. Within their world, even the characters are smart. All of which adds up to a film that treats the audience as smart, which is one of the rarest and most precious things in horror.

Now Watch This: Assault on Precinct 13

By Sean Patrick Leydon

Contributor

The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by a group of natives.

The Lone Ranger turns to Tonto and says, “Indians. Indians all around! Well, Tonto, ol’ Kimosavee, it looks like we’re finished.”

Tonto replies: “What you mean … ‘We?’”

– Mad Magazine No. 38 (1958)

Modern action films are much more predictable than their predecessors. With many action movies containing similar pacing and messages, the genre has become thoroughly homogenized. What makes Saving Private Ryan feel similar to Mission Impossible or other action films? They bombard the senses with big, flashy action sequences, and they pull at many of the same heartstrings: family, honor, respect, martial prowess, patriotism, etc.

Today, we’re taking a look at John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. It covers a lot of genres: cop flick, drama, thriller, cult. These days, we’d call it action, but now, that implies top-tier CGI budgets and the slickest editing known to man. Assault is different. Its moments of violence are more sickening and human. The feeling of the film is akin to Crash being bludgeoned over the head with Night of the Living Dead – a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of gang violence and racial tension.

There’s a trend in recent action films to ignore a character's ethnicity until it can become the subject of a shallow joke. I see this often when action films have a gang of heroes from racially diverse backgrounds, as in the remake of The Italian Job when Mark Wahlberg introduces his crew. We meet a crew of stylin’ white men with cool specialties and one black guy who likes to blow stuff up. It’s easy to pick on a flashy action movie, but do you remember that one time in Full Metal Jacket? When the troops are negotiating with a prostitute and the black soldier becomes the butt of the “too beaucoup” joke? Amid the horror of war and mounds of existential searching, Kubrick manages to find room for a well-hung black man joke.

There is a different atmosphere in Assault. The actors are different shades, but race is addressed in more serious and realistic ways. As Ethan, a black lieutenant, familiarizes himself with the police station he just took command of, the white receptionist Leigh asks him if he would like coffee. As Ethan accepts her offer, she asks, “Black?” to which he responds with a smile and says, “For over 30 years.” The joke falls on its ass with her. There’s no ribaldry. The conversation just continues as they get to know each other.

Another aspect that sets Assault apart is a sense of equality between the law and the outlaw. Criminals and police are both capable of bumbling stupidity or impressive insight into the real world, and this holds true in Carpenter’s vision. This pleases me to no end. The relentless othering of antagonists in film grosses me out. The distillation of conflict into a Smart Good Guy-Dumb Bad Guy binary is neither inclusive of what we observe in life nor conducive to good storytelling. Still, this staid form of conflict has become the expectation of the action genre.

The film opens with a negative depiction of police. As the film progresses, we meet characters we like and dislike on either side of the law. Conflicts blossom among many characters and groups, and we encounter the kind of classic inter-group conflict that arises in every zombie siege flick.

On a filmmaking level, parts of the film read as both more brutal and quainter than other similar films. Some of this is due to the inventiveness of Carpenter, while some of it is due to the era in which it was made. Of the many subtle aspects of Assault that set it apart from the action genre, my favorite is the treatment death receives. When characters die in action movies, we are accustomed to melodrama: “Tell my wife thing X,” or pulling the pin on the grenade, whatever. There’s a brief second life in which dying characters set things right in the world. In Assault, when you die, your ruined body falls to the ground – because you are dead, and that is what dead people do.

Mad Magazine No. 38 (1958); drawing by E. Nelson Bridwell

We’re familiar with rhythm in action films as simple as: The terrorists did X, so the commandos must complete Y. The sense of foreboding that Assault manages is largely due to the mysterious motivations of its silent antagonists. The result is that the film feels like less of a gimme and more layered with dread than other films. The violence depicted in Assault is random and chaotic. In action films, the main draw is the risk of death and how our hero overcomes it, but the hero is always aware of the source of the danger.

In Assault, characters die in the middle of mundane chores, unaware of the risks they were running being in an action film. Some of the tensest action occurs when Leigh needs to free prisoners so they can help fight off invading gang members. The pacing and editing do no let up. Everything needs to happen at exactly the right time, or our heroes die. The sequence brings together all of the film’s major themes – race, the threat of violence, the commonalities between cops and criminals – and the ultimate message is interesting. Teamwork is important. At one point, Leigh turns to Wells, a prisoner she has freed who is tempted to make a run for it. She says: “No sides to it. We’re all together.” A far cry indeed from “What you mean … ‘We?’”

Sean Patrick Leydon is a photographer, artist, and contributor to Last Cinema Standing. You can check out more of his work at nonotthought.blogspot.com.

31 Days of Horror: Night of the Living Dead

They're coming to get you, Barbara, and they are coming to get all of us in Night of the Living Dead.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 30: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Barbara and Johnny drive to the countryside to visit their father’s grave. It is a pleasant day, and the cemetery is mostly empty, except for one older man in the distance. Barbara’s discomfort with their surroundings is apparent, and like any good older brother might, Johnny begins to tease her.

“Barbara. They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” he says. About this much he is correct, and for the next 90 or so minutes of screen time, they come to get Barbara and anyone else unlucky enough to be in their path. They are the dead, brought back to a grim simulacrum of life by unknown causes, and their mass re-animation means no one is safe.

Some might say The Exorcist or Dracula or maybe The Shining, and there are legitimate cases to be made for all of them and many more, but for me, there is no other choice. Night of the Living Dead is the greatest horror film ever made. Until Pulp Fiction came along in 1994 and opened the floodgates on a thousand hyper-literate, highly stylized crime films, it would be hard to name another movie that influenced the future of its genre and film in general more than George A. Romero’s fright night masterpiece.

The zombie as known by the popular culture was invented in that Pittsburgh cemetery, and movies have not been the same since. Like how your parents said you can be anything when you grow up, zombies can be anything now – Nazis, strippers, heartbroken teenagers, classic literary characters – but with rare exceptions, they are all Romero zombies.

In whatever form they come, they are implacable, uncaring, and devoid of the thing that once made them human. You can stand and fight or you can run and hide, but most likely, you will be frozen with fear, and in the next heartbeat, you are one of them. You are a convert to their cause, and what anyone you love might recognize as you is gone, replaced by the coldness of your stare, the pallor of your skin, and the insatiable nature of your appetite.

But, influence is one thing. Films become influential because they are great, sterling examples of the best of their form. Night of the Living Dead is an unimpeachably brilliant thriller from start to finish with any number of social messages buried like gold pieces among the ghouls. It rewards repeat viewings by showcasing the kind of subtlety and nuance often missing from even the most austere dramas, let alone scary drive-in flicks.

Virtually none of the political commentary or cultural critiquing was intended by the filmmakers, but simply by doing what came naturally, a subversive work of art was born. As a general rule, only the best films are deemed dangerous enough to be banned – A Clockwork Orange, The Last Temptation of Christ, etc. – and in a country torn apart by Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and endless social upheaval, you better believe Night of the Living Dead was considered dangerous.

Our hero is Ben, a smart, resourceful black man played by Duane Jones, who had never acted before and would act only rarely after. Just casting a black man as a hero would have been considered shocking at the time, but Romero and his team just saw the right man for the job. Thank god they did because Jones’ performance is a vital breath of fresh air in a film culture that to this day is desperately lacking in strong black heroes.

He battles hordes of mindless drones, a ready-made metaphor for almost anything. Just take your pick – consumerism, television, political party loyalty, mobs of any kind, and basically all situations in which a large group of people comes together in thoughtless destruction. Joining Ben in the fight, to the limited extent they are able to help him, are Barbara, a young couple, and a family of three.

Of these side characters, the family and particularly the father is the most intriguing. Played by Karl Hardman, who performed multiple behind-the-scenes tasks on this film, Harry is a panicking, petty man interested in his own survival, the survival of his family, and everything else, in that order. In storytelling terms, he is a perfect foil for the calmly logical and eminently capable Ben, but if we dig deeper, we find a pointed jab at the patriarchal structure of American families and the myth of the “You can count on me” dad.

Some of this is there, and some of it is not, but all of it depends on your context for viewing. Because the zombies can be anything, anywhere, and anyone, the audience can plug itself into the terror, which means that no one will have the same experience as anyone else watching Night of the Living Dead. Whatever your deepest fears are, they are manifest in the form of zombies. You can run until you drop and hide until you cannot breathe, but they are coming to get you, me, Barbara, and everyone else. That is the gift of this movie, and the power of horror.

Tomorrow: (yells out the window) “Boy, what day is it?” “Why, today, it’s Halloween day.” And thus had Scrooge found his inner goodness. We wrap up the 31 Days of Horror with a swan song you will perhaps agree is appropriate.

31 Days of Horror: Return of the Living Dead III

Melinda Clarke plays Julie, who hates herself and what she has become in Return of the Living Dead III.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 26: Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

The Return of the Living Dead series starts out as essentially fun horror-comedy in its first two installments, but the third entry almost demands that you sit up and take notice. I will say right off the bat: Things are going to get pretty dark in this post. We are going to talk about depression, self-harm, and the Holocaust. If you want no part of it, I understand. No hard feelings.

Zombie movies are at their best when they reflect something back about our culture, be it consumerism, racism, proclivities toward war, or anything in that realm of social consciousness. We have strayed from that ideal lately, thanks in large part to straight-to-video cheapies trying to turn a quick buck on an easy premise – coming to mind immediately are Zombie Strippers!, Zombies vs. Strippers, and virtually any title that comingles the promise of nudity with the promise of flesh eating.

The Return of the Living Dead movies, parts one and two anyway, were fun horror parodies of George A. Romero’s classic Dead films. They never forgot the horror aspects and featured a ready-made punk attitude that fit the early 1980s like a glove. I liken the evolution of Return of the Living Dead III from its predecessors to the way one might compare grunge to its heavy metal and hair metal forefathers: The fun is replaced by full-bodied nihilism, and the attacks on who we were and who we are now come fast and furiously.

Director Brian Yuzna and writer John Penney did not leave a big footprint on the film world, and stars Melinda Clarke and J. Trevor Edmond are probably more recognizable from their television work. But, for one film, they proved masters of macabre social commentary in ways the genre has been sorely lacking since.

Clarke and Edmond play lovers Julie and Curt. Curt’s dad, Col. Reynolds, is part of a U.S. military project testing a serum that will reanimate the dead with the goal of providing cheap, disposable meat for the American war machine. Already, we are into some pretty heady stuff, and the plot has not yet begun. As Col. Reynolds and his group continue their experiments on the undead, Julie dies in a motorcycle accident with Curt at the helm. Using his father’s serum, Curt brings Julie back to life, whereupon she becomes a self-hating flesh eater.

That is a lot to chew on, and this movie is often wrongly dismissed as the big-budget, needlessly weird cousin to the first two films in the series. So let us break this down slowly and try to see where its greatness lies and from where its critics are coming.

We will start with Clarke’s Julie, who has become something of a cult icon, and it is not hard to see why. While the first two installments have the punk walk and talk down, they lack the feelings of self-loathing, self-doubt, and nihilism behind the familiar pop culture tropes. This film brings all of that back in spades within Julie.

Julie does not want to hurt anybody, but as a zombie, it is in her nature. In an effort to avoid acting out and harming those around her, she resorts to self-harm. Raise your hand if this sounds familiar and not in a fantasy, sci-fi way. She hurts herself to fight the urge to hurt others. She hates who she has become but cannot fight it.

If this reminds you of a teenager you know – or, hell, even an adult – this is not by accident. The pain is a release, as it is for so many people like this. I know because I have walked up to that edge and stared into that abyss. There is nothing there but darkness, and no matter what beauty lay behind or in front, it is impossible to stop staring down into the pit, so you dive in.

This film is commendable for having the courage to go there, and when it does, it just keeps going. Yuzna and Penney venture all the way to the darkest period of our shared history, which you may recognize in the abstract but will be struck by if you choose to see it.

The zombies are in this place because the military has brought them here. The army performs experiments on them that force you to question what humanity is capable of when it classifies another group as less than human. It is nothing less than torture for the sake of seeing how far torture can go. The unsuccessful experiments, along with incalculable others, go to the furnace – the crematorium if you will.

Maybe it will seem like a stretch to compare the third film in a zombie horror series to the Holocaust, but if you can watch the army experiments, the prisons, and the abuse of a misunderstood and vilified minority without thinking of Josef Mengele, Adolf Hitler, and the one of the greatest atrocities of our time, you are not watching closely enough.

Perhaps you do see it, and it offends you. You may think films have no right to trade on the murder of millions of innocents. Well, wake up. We live in a culture in which violent crimes and serial murders are no longer shocking. They are primetime television, fictional and not. We filter everything through sound bites, pop psychology, and end-of-the-world drum beating. Return of the Living Dead III is a violent, angry critique of humanity’s past crimes and a warning for what the future could become. Unfortunately, it is a future we were unable to avoid.

Tomorrow, we try to recover with one of my favorite films of all time from any genre.