| Psycho And Carrie And Rosemary's Baby | |
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Posted by: |
steven_stuart 12:47 am UTC 10/21/13 |
| Why a remake of Carrie? I loved the original and I am glad to see it makes this list. Sissy Spacek will always be Carrie. To me. Entertainment Weekly's Top 20 horror movies ever (not necessarily most scary - they point out): 1. The Shining 2. The Exorcist 3. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 4. The Silence of the Lambs 5. Jaws 6. The Ring 7. Halloween 8. Psycho 9. Seven 10. Rosemary's Baby 11. Poltergeist 12. 28 Days Later 13. A Nightmare On Elm Street 14. The Thing 15. The Evil Dead 16. Carrie 17. Night of the Living Dead 18. The Omen 19. An American Werewolf in London 20. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer I include the write up for Psycho because I know that Ryan and Jim rank it as the best movie ever: Psycho: (1960) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock The mother of all scary movies (and don't even think of judging Psycho based on Gus Van Sant's remake). Many of its most renowned features are readily apparent: those startling cuts (more than 50 in the shower sequence alone), Anthony Perkins' neurotic mama's boy, Bernard Herrmann's shrieking-violins score. But Psycho's sneakiest tricks manifest themselves more subtlely. Take Hitchcock's decision to use a handful of different stabbers in Janet Leigh's slice-and-dice sequence: ''He kept changing it so the audience wouldn't be able to get a fix on Mother,'' says Leigh, who spent seven days in that shower. ''At one point it was Tony's stand-in, at one point it was a woman. Never Tony.'' Bottom line: It still works. The write up for Carrie: Carrie: (1976) Directed by Brian De Palma De Palma's adaptation of Stephen King's first novel is set in the lurid, oversexed world of high school, where persecuted telekinetic Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) transcends catty rivals and a psychotically religious mother (Piper Laurie) to become prom queen — only to be doused in pig's blood, go on a murderous rampage, and kill just about everyone. ''I got tricked into doing [Carrie],'' remembers Laurie, who, like Spacek, won an Oscar nomination. ''It seemed so over-the-top, I thought it was going to be a satire. When De Palma stopped me in rehearsals, my heart just dropped. Whoops!'' Pioneering moment: the best final scare ever. Period. Did Jim have something to do with De Palma? I hope he also likes Carrie. At least I know for sure that he did Tanz with this director, who also makes the top 20 list: Rosemary's Baby: (1968) Directed by Roman Polanski More conspiracy thriller than horror movie, Baby nurses a mother lode of phobias. As Rosemary (Mia Farrow) slowly intuits she's been raped by Satan, she wrestles a myriad of believable demons: uncaring doctors, intrusive neighbors (primarily Ruth Gordon, who copped an Oscar), and a monstrously self-centered husband (John Cassavetes). Farrow's alarming enactment of emaciated desperation got a spur from then husband Frank Sinatra's offscreen behavior: She was devastated when he initiated a divorce in mid-production. Meanwhile, Charles Grodin's turn as a chilly obstetrician made him an unpopular dinner guest. ''When I sat, women moved,'' he recalls. ''I had to go on Johnny Carson to show people I'm a nice guy.'' No mention of another Jim favourite Anti-Christ on the list. Hmm. I don't know why. I watched it after Jim raved about it and I found it to be both tense and scary. | |
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