The Ten Most Overrated Horror Films of All Time



October is the month to wax lyrical about the horror genre, a time to celebrate a misunderstood and much maligned form of cultural and cinematic expression. In the total opposite spirit of Halloween I’m proud to present The Celluloid Highway’s guide to the most grossly overrated and over-appreciated horror films in cinema history. Those films which critics, academics, and fans have convinced us over many years are essential landmarks in the development of the genre. This article is partly inspired by a recent post celebrating the most influential horror films from the 1930’s to the 1980’s by Brian over at Cool Ass Cinema, and partly by my own review of Night of the Living Dead (1968). I was finally able to get my dissatisfaction with Romero’s over rated debut film out of my system, and in so doing discovered that my dislike of this sacred cow could be joined by numerous others. If you’re one of these mentally ill people who actually get upset when a film you like is criticised you may wish to avoid this article. Or it might help you just to repeat this mantra - To avoid fainting repeat….Its only a blog post, only a blog post, only a blog post…you get the drift.

DRACULA (Tod Browning, USA, 1931)



This version of Dracula, which features a side splitting performance by Hungarian ‘actor’ Bela Lugosi is a cinematic disaster. At no point does Tod Browning’s turgid direction escape the stiff and static theatricality of the play upon which the film was based. This is a film of immobile and stagnant tableaux, with a camera that lacks the courage to do anything other than stay motionless. It also lacks the valour to explore the manner in which Dracula deals death, and in one of horror cinema’s most unforgivable decisions has Dracula vanquished off screen. The concurrent Spanish language production directed by George Medford and featuring Carlos Villarias as the bloodsucker is far superior. The only people too emerge with credibility from this incredibly dull film is Karl Freund due to his expert lighting (and who was rewarded with the direction of The Mummy (1932)), production designers John Hoffman and Herman Rosse and actor Dwight Frye who provides some distraction as Renfield.


CAT PEOPLE (Jacques Tourneur, USA, 1942)



The horror films of producer Val Lewton which were made under the auspices of RKO are amongst the most over rated films in horror history (with the honourable exception of the brilliant The Body Snatcher (1945). Cat People is an unimaginative riff on Universal’s far superior The Wolf Man (1942) and features an incomprehensible performance from Simon Simone. Lewton’s films have been much praised for their subtlety and their suspense, but they also do something which is unforgivable in the horror genre - they offer no pay off. Universal at least understood the necessity to reveal their monsters, Lewton opted to adapt to his low budget by showing precisely nothing. A balance between subtlety and show is surely the route to success in the horror genre, unless of course you’re making film noir like Lewton was.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (George A. Romero, USA, 1968)


 

Amateurish in execution, heavy handed and juvenile in its social and political allegory, Romero’s film has become everything the director wouldn’t have expected. That the product of a handful of hippies fed up with their day jobs would be held in such high esteem must amaze these pensioners to this day. It has enabled Romero to continue making dreadful films in the name of a series of social statements made with all the style and grace of a sledgehammer. Night of the Living Dead is the final twenty minutes of Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) stretched out to feature length, and if copying one Hitchcock film wasn’t enough (Romero would probably say it was a homage), he then pilfers numerous shots and strategies from Psycho (1960). Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I suspect Hitchcock wouldn’t have seen it that way. Almost every aspect of the film that is now used in its defence was achieved by accident - even the filmmakers have admitted that. This suggests that there was little in the way of intellect behind the production, a view borne out by Romero’s later films in the series. In a critical way the film also lacks a sense of timelessness, and is now more likely to illicit laughter rather than terror, which is the total opposite to the far superior Rosemary’s Baby which was also released in 1968.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (Wes Craven, USA, 1972)



This cinematic offal is the product of two perverts who shamelessly evoked the conflict in Vietnam to defend a brand of sadism they clearly hoped would turn on people as depraved as them. Craven is so self-conscious in the manner in which he tries to defend the film at a socio/political level that it is clearly something cooked up between him and producer Sean S. Cunningham. One defence might be an association with the art cinema of Ingmar Bergman and the film The Virgin Spring (1960), but I think its more likely Craven realised after he’d written this film that the plot was lifted, and instead of using his imagination too adapt his story in a more original way, decided to evoke an art film. This is the art of misogynistic sadism, and the filmmakers even see fit to mock the torment of two young women at the hands of a ridiculously cruel criminal gang with comic interludes featuring a pair of bungling cops. Those who defend the film may talk about the realism, the documentary quality, and the unflinching attitude to screen violence as though the filmmakers had a philosophical or metaphysical point on the nature of human cruelty - unfortunately they don’t. This was intended to make money, and Craven et al, obviously believed having women being ordered to piss their pants would make a quick buck - they were right!

THE EXORCIST (William Friedkin, USA, 1973)

Much of my dislike for this film centres on the man who directed it. Friedkin is a monstrous personality, an egotist of the highest order, desperate at the time to be regarded as highly as Antonioni or Godard. He used William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist as his vehicle, and fills it with compositions that mindlessly evoke the Italian art cinema of the 1960’s. The subtle and impressive build up that opens the film is not to be dismissed, but at a certain point Friedkin seems to remember he is making a horror film, and then the film rushes headlong into absurdity. The patient storytelling and adherence to a sense of realism is totally assassinated by the need to include ridiculous moments such as head spinning and crucifix masturbation. The Exorcist is unusually repulsed by adolescent sexuality and seeks to make abject the female form. This is a deeply retrograde and highly conservative film which wishes to contain female sexuality within patriarchal institutions - in this case the catholic church. The threat to the status quo lies with sexualised children, the metaphor is a demon. The film was cast carefully to keep Friedkin’s ego satisfied, because he was determined to emerge from this film as the star. The hype and the gimmick’s recall the days of William Castle and confirmed that the ‘B’ movie was a viable proposition for big budget Hollywood production. Although it would take several years, The Exorcist effect ultimately led to the dissolution of low budget independent horror production in the US.

DAWN OF THE DEAD (George A. Romero, USA, 1978)

George A. Romero’s second entry in his series of zombie films is a reductive exercise in obviousness. The most successful metaphor of Night of the Living Dead was the zombie as a nightmarish (but logical) extension of a consumer driven capitalist society - one which literally begins to eat itself. Romero obviously felt that audiences hadn’t sufficiently got this message back in 1968, so he decided to conceive a statement on consumerism that literalises what existed in metaphorical fashion in his first film. Romero adjusts the racism of his first film (in which the zombies are all white) and expands the ethnic range of his zombies, although this seems as much to include an hysterical early sequence which distils immigrant tensions in a mouldy apartment block. The film drags along at the pace of an average Romero zombie, and subsequently huge pressure falls on the shoulders of Tom Savini to provide distraction with his impressive special make up effects. The narrative is so dreary that a number of cuts exist, a sure sign of the flabby egotistic hubris of the director.

FRIDAY THE 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, USA, 1980)

Not a single aspect of Friday the 13^th is original yet the film is lauded as an important landmark in horror history. The only thing that was different about it, is that a major Hollywood studio (in this case Paramount) produced it. It was by no means the first slasher film, it wasn’t even the first ‘body count’ horror film, and even the ’shock’ ending is lifted from Carrie (1976) so what’s all the fuss about? This is no better or no worse than the myriad of slasher films that proliferated in the 1980’s, yet it is seen by many as being a cut above. The reason for this has never been explained to my satisfaction. I welcome anybody to explain to me the significance of this film.

INFERNO (Dario Argento, Italy, 1980)

The creative poverty of Dario Argento’s films in the 1990’s and beyond did not come as a surprise to me - it’s all there in his 1980 effort Inferno. Much of the stylistic success of Suspiria was due to the Technicolor cinematography of Luciano Tovoli, the trick doesn’t work as well the second time. The set pieces are more incomprehensible than ever, the surrealism self conscious and forced. A gallery of motiveless characters stroll around looking self important and making stupidly prophetic statements about this and that, and the music by Keith Emerson is shockingly bad (with the exception of a rousing theme at the films finale). The dialogue is worse than in a Lucio Fulci horror film, and delivered in an equally bland way. Inferno is an excessive empty headed and empty hearted film.



THE BEYOND (Lucio Fulci, Italy, 1981)

The horror productions of Lucio Fulci are almost completely unknown outside the circles of horror and cult fans, so the elevation of The Beyond is purely the result of fan worship aimed at reclaiming the status of Fulci, unfortunately this means that the majority of Fulci’s career is ignored in favour of a few cheap horror films. The Beyond’s nonsense narrative is usually defended with adjectives like ‘dream-like’ or ‘hallucinatory’, with critical assessments almost always concentrating on atmosphere and ambience at the expense of a discussion about continuity and narrative. So determined are horror and cult fans to recuperate Fulci and acclaim him as a horror ‘auteur’ that those aspects of cinematic language deemed crucial to such value judgements are flagrantly ignored. I’ve never been convinced that the illogic of The Beyond is the result of a coherent strategy, but is either down to accident or incompetence. Fulci fills his film with second rate actors giving second rate performances, characters make doom laden pronouncements and are then forgotten, set pieces exist purely for the sake of gore and violence. This is a vast improvement on the earlier City of the Living Dead (1980) which is without merit, but not a patch on Zombi 2 (1979).

HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (John McNaughton, USA, 1986)

Henry is so committed to its grim and tawdry conception of reality that it forgets to have even a basic sense of humanity. Its vision of a ghastly and alienated urban landscape is unremitting, and there is no conduit of relief from it. This film is not designed to entertain, but neither does it possess the metaphysical or philosophical narrative strategies of an art movie; in short I’ve never understood exactly what Henry is designed to do. One major intention of the film is to shock, and in placing this to the forefront of his strategy McNaughton’s earnestness to shock becomes too obvious. The performances are very committed but with an emotional blankness that leaves any attempt at identification or sympathy wasted. This is a powerful film, but the power is hamstrung somewhat by the fact there doesn’t appear to be coherent message or position within the film.

OTHER HONOURABLE MENTIONS (Not worth writing about)

Black Christmas (1974)

The Omen (1976)

Tenebre (1982)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Army of Darkness (1993)

Scream (1996)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

28 Days Later (2002)

The Descent (2005)