Peace On That

In honor of Halloween, I’m going to take the next two Fridays and celebrate the horror that we all love. This week I present to you my top ten horror films. There is nothing like a good horror flick. There are numerous horror films that were only good when you saw them at the drive-in. But who paid attention to movies at the drive it. Well, I did see E.T. at the drive-in so that’s one.

A horror movie is only good if it has some memorable scenes or at some point in your life, scared the pants off of you. Most of these are old movies because Hollywood has forgotten how to make a good horror flick. You don’t need a lot of blood and gore to make a good film – although there are a few on my list that do provide just that – but they did it in an artistic way.

Anyway, happy Friday and good fright.



1. The Exorcist – It took a while to convice my grandmother to let me watch this movie. Boy, I’m glad I did. It scared me senseless. My sister had nightmares for a week. My older brother and I teased her before she went to bed to make sure she remembered the movie. Ah yes, the cruelty of siblings. The part was when she sat up in bed and her head turned 360 degrees.


2. Nightmare on Elm Street – Little Freddy managed to get into the kids dream and rip them apart. Freddy is by far the most entertaining creature ever created. His lines are funny and the inventive ways in which he killed was something else. I was older when I saw this so it didn’t scare me that much. But walking home at night during the fall was… creepy.


3. Friday the 13th – Like Freddy, Jason just consistantly jacked folks up. Two of the funniest scenes were when Jason slammed a guy into a tree so hard that it left an imprint of his face in the bark. Then there was the time he trapped a woman in a sleeping bag and slammed her against a tree. He was not someone that you wanted to be in the woods with. What amazed me about Jason is that he never ran after anyone. He’d just walk and walk and before you know it, he had his victim in a chokehold ready to dismember them with a knife.


4. Hellraiser – Man, I love this movie. Pinhead is the man. I'm not sure what would make a woman have an affair with a dead man that is being chased by demons - but that the gist of it. She then starts killing folks so he can get new skin. But it is Pinhead that makes the movie. They are cruel and cold - there are some gross scenes but the movie is great.


5. Salem’s Lot – When I saw the vampire scratching on the window of the kids hospital room, I freaked. My bed was by the window and I had a hard time sleeping for a few days. It wouldn’t scare me now, but as a kid, there were just too many scary scenes in this movie. I loved it.


6. The Omen – This is probably the most satanic of all the movies on the list. Well, it is about the son of the devil. I saw the movie again last year and it wasn’t as scary. The best scene in the movie is when the raven attacks the lady on a country road and she runs on the road and gets smashed by a truck.


7. Children of the Corn – This is one of the few adaptations of a Stephen King movie that actually worked. Kujo was another but they are few and far between. Basically, a kid convinces all the kids in a small town to kill all of the adults. It was gruesome but it was good.


8. Halloween – A clone of Jason but Michael Myers was alive and well and was simply slaughter folks. There were several Halloweens but I didn’t get into them.

9. Psycho – Norman Bates was a weird man. And what top ten horror list is complete without an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I was sitting on the floor of my father’s bedroom when I first saw this movie. My brother and I were engulfed in it. There is a part when Norman takes a shovel and slams it in the back of an old woman that was sitting at the kitchen table. I’m not sure why but neither me or my brother could stop laughing. It’s a really good movie.

10. Night of the Living Dead – Low budget. Geesh was it low budget. But there is nothing better than a flesh-eating zombie unless you have a cemetary full of flesh-eating zombies. The amazing thing about this movie is that the brother didn’t die within the first five minutes of the movie. In fact, the brother was the hero but was gunned down by some crazy white folks in the end. I’m sure there is a political statement to this movie but today I”ll just focus on the fact that the zombies were out for brains.