Well, Entertainment Weekly decided it deserved time off and devoted its latest (double) issue to the Top 100 of all things pop-culture -- top 100 movies, top 100 shows, top 100 albums, etc. They had sidebars ranking the Top 10 different genres of movies or shows, including the Top 10 Horror Movies, which I'll post below. I know lists like these don't amount to much in the end, but I found the issue to be a little infuriating, as it tried too hard to pick "unobvious" or "intellectual" choices. (Meaning Scorsese's Mean Streets was ranked ahead of his other, better known films, while Bill Murray's apparently only worth anything if he's in a Wes Anderson movie -- Ghostbusters failed to make the list at all, not Top 100 nor Top 10 of Comedy -- at least AFI recognizes it.)
EW's picks for the Top 10 Horror Movies:
1) Psycho
2) King Kong (1933)
3) Rosemary's Baby
4) Frankenstein (1931)
5) The Silence of the Lambs
6) The Shining
7) The Night of the Living Dead
8) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
9) Carrie
10) Alien
I disagree with about half of that list, and certainly with the ranking. What really, really pissed me off is The Exorcist being excluded -- not only from the Top 10 Horror list, but it didn't make the Top 100 movies either. And I know damn well that EW used to rank The Exorcist in lists like these, but I guess because Mad Men kept referencing Rosemary's Baby this season, they decided that would be the "cooler" pick.
But The Exorcist -- come on! How many movies on that list caused people to faint in the theater? Do you think King Kong did? The Exorcist caused pandemonium! Rosemary's Baby was described by EW as being "more artful" than The Exorcist, but how many Oscar nods did the latter have compared to the former? The Exorcist got mostly good reviews, scared the pants off of audiences, is a well-crafted, well-acted film that was a genuine phenomenon. Not only that, but the movie still holds up. Even when Friedkin did the unthinkable -- unnecessarily tinkering with the movie, George Lucas-style -- he didn't manage to mess it up, its power wasn't diminished, he even found room for MORE scares. The Exorcist has such a unique atmosphere, (literally) painstakingly created by Friedkin, and fills the viewer with dread from the first frame to the last, the film staying with the viewer long after its over. Does Psycho do that? As far as I'm concerned, Psycho lost a lot of its cred with the terrible Gus Van Sant remake -- contrary to belief, remakes *can* negatively influence perception of the original, and for all of its acting and technical achievements, it's hard to shake the bad memories of the ill-conceived shot-for-shot remake while watching the original. I recognize its importance to the genre and I'm not saying it *shouldn't* be on the list, but...number 1? And it's also the fifth best of the Top 100, EW calling it the "most profound" horror movie. OK...
(Some may think it's preposterous, but I also think the first A Nightmare on Elm Street should have made the Top 10 Horror films. My bias for that franchise would like for it to be in the top half of the list, but realistically, I know it would be more appropriate for it to be in the bottom half of the Top 10. The concept is ingenious and actually terrifying when compared to what other horror movies were doing at the time. I guess we can thank the comedic and inferior sequels for smearing such a negative perception onto the original. I know diehard horror fans would take issue with the omission of John Carpenter's Halloween, so I suppose slashers were overlooked, likely dismissed as exploitational junk. But one could argue that Carrie is exploitational. Not to mention the fact that horror would have been dead for two decades without the slashers of the '70s and '80s.)
ANOES and The Exorcist have something in common that I think can be a rarity in horror: they both can keep you terrorized hours and days after you've finished watching the movie, in a very real-time and real life way. Four hours after watching ANOES, when you settled into bed, did you not tremble a bit at surrendering consciousness to possible unknown forces in the dream world? Later the same evening after rewatching The Exorcist on Halloween, would a flickering light bulb in a church window not cause your heart to race?
The stories and themes of these two horror films stay with you. They are grounded in a sense of reality, of a feeling of "what if it could really happen" that keeps the scares coming well after the credits have rolled.
I think discrediting The Exorcist is an appalling oversight by EW. Was it simply too obvious of a choice for them? Well, it's not like Citizen Kane isn't a predictable choice for the number one spot.
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