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Old 02-17-2008, 01:25 AM
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Traditional/ Pagan/ Ritualistic Horror


Rosemary's Baby (1968)




Suspiria (1977) (*Giallo*)



"Argento's bizarre witch story is a kaleidoscopic, grand spectacle; horror as goofy, gorgeous, gory high art.
Sure the plot is thin, unevenly paced, and has a fairly anti-climactic ending, but those (for me, at least) are lost in the film as a whole. It more than makes up for its shortcomings with style, composition, color; really everything else.
It has some of the strangest, wildest, most entertaining (often murder) scenes in the genre. And of course one of the strangest, wildest, most entertaining scores in the genre as well." - Fortunato


The Black Cat (1934)



"Modern horror with its current ethical standards does not usually give the censors much to be scared of. But in 1934, Universal was doing it in spades.
When most think of Universal monsters, they think of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman and the Mummy, but miss some of the greatest aberrations ever to grace the silver screen.
A little makeup used in the Expressionist idiom could create a special sort of monster: the deviant. This creature left the censors shaking and got horror films banned in England. Boris Karloff in The Black Cat, is everything polite society is not about. He worships Satan, he keeps a dead woman in suspended animation, he exalts in the chaos of the war that created him and he poses threats of all sorts to his hapless guests. Universal was showing the devil in the flesh. He threatens to destroy not only lives, but to undermine common decency and to bring misrule into the world. Director Edgar Ulmer, former expressionist set designer, projected the horrors of World War I and deftly and capably posed the same questions as Yeats and Eliot. Oozing charm and evil, he confronts his rival Bela Lugosi and challenges him to a chess game with Bergman-esque results. The two titans on screen together cannot help but remind us why they were the faces that spread horror throughout America and proved it a commercially viable genre.
One can see how this film's brilliant setup and sexually aberrant undertones inspired Kiss of the Vampire and thereby The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Though great as the Frankenstein monster, in The Black Cat Karloff shows us just what sort of moral entity Yeats felt was "slouching towards Bethlehem". " - Doc Faustus


The Omen (1976)




The Wicker Man (1973)



"Some could call The Wicker Man a confusing hippie artifact. Some could say it is more drama than horror, but there is horror at its core; the fear of ancient, primordial, hard to comprehend things. The Wicker Man is Lovecraft without tentacles. A contemporary Christian authority figure is forced to confront beliefs older than himself, which in certain ways are inspiring and beautiful, yet in others terrifying and harsh.
Christopher Lee is brilliant in his portrayal of a crafty pagan priest and Edward Woodward is stirring as the policeman who discovers "the true meaning of sacrifice". In an time where buildings are blown up in the name of faith and we wage a crusade in the Middle East, a film about the power of faith to do good and evil is more relevant than ever and more frightening than ever. An intelligent theological meditation and a cool, cerebral work of horror." - Doc Faustus


Honorable Mentions:

Beetle Juice (1988)

Candyman (1992)
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Last edited by _____V_____; 12-16-2009 at 11:10 PM.
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