5 GREAT HORROR MOVIES YOU MAY NOT HAVE SEEN

I love scary movies. 

I could make a long list of horror films I like. This is 5 random movies that freaked me out in different ways, and not all of them are horror in the traditional sense. I picked these 5 because they are movies that many people have not seen. Below is a brief description of each movie and some of their horror highlights. 

1. A TALE OF TWO SISTERS 2003   dir. Ji-woon Kim

"There was a girl under the kitchen sink."

This is a scary movie. It starts with two sisters returning home after spending time in a hospital. In true creepy fashion their step-mother is clearly crazy and violent and their father is emotionally absent. TWO SISTERS  is a ghost story, and has a creepy female ghost with long black hair over her face, the same one used in many movies. But TWO SISTERS remains original, mostly in the creepy characters in the film. The family scenes, over meals mostly, are off putting and confusing. Early in the film you get the feeling that something doesn't add up, the conversations they have don't make sense at times, like a piece of the puzzle has been left out.    Watching it the first time my fear was increased as I struggled to make sense of everything. My mind raced to understand what was really going on and that added to my panic. The good news is on my second viewing, it all held together and made sense. A truly great, gory and suspenseful horror flick.   The best image used is a trail of blood being made by a dragged potato sack full of what sounds like a crying girl.

2. PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK1975   dir. Peter Weir

"What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream."

This isn't the scary movie to get when you want gore and screams and killers. It's really more of an art film, but it is very creepy and bothered me for awhile after I first saw it. The story takes place in Australia in 1900, following a group of girls who attend a privet school. On a field trip to Hanging Rock several of the girls go exploring and vanish. Their disappearance haunts many people, including two boys who spied on the girls as they started their exploration, and an orphan student who has a crush on one of the girls who goes missing, and who is not allowed on the field trip because her guardian  is behind on payments. The school also suffers financially as more and more girls are pulled from the school following the incident. This makes the head mistress rather mad, and she takes it out on the poor orphan girl. The costume designs are wonderful and the music is both lovely and haunting. While slow paced at times, the film builds to a devastating conclusion that leaves the audience horrified and curious as to what really happened to the missing girls. 

3. BLACK CHRISTMAS1974   dir. Bob Clark 

"Filthy Billy, I know what you did nasty Billy! "

The original and maybe best slasher movie ever made, BLACK CHRISTMAS is scary! It takes place in a sorority house over Christmas break as girls are murdered one by one. It opens with a POV shot through the killers eyes as he climbs up the side of the sorority house into their attic. The killer is creepy, never being seen, because he is always talking to himself and in a baby voice saying really creepy and gross things. Inside the house are two phone lines and the killer uses one to make obscene phone calls to the rest of the girls, after each phone call, he kills a girl. The reason this slasher film is superior to the hundreds that followed is the characters are not one dimensional. They are given personality, relationships and problems. It also offers a terrifying ending as the final girl learns the killer is in the house but can't leave without trying to get her friends out. We know they are all dead and that only the killer is left with her, but she bravely tries to get to them in time, knowing that a mad man is hiding near her. If you are a horror movie fan this is a must see. (Do NOT watch the remake, it is awful) 

4. REPULSION1965    dir. Roman Polanski 

 "I must get this crack mended"

This disturbing tale of madness was made several years before the more popular ROSEMARY'S BABY and shares several themes. REPULSION is the story of a beautiful young woman who is on the edge of insanity. She lives with her sister and works at a hair salon. Early in the movie there is a scene of her walking home from work past a construction sight, one of the workers watches her, blonde, long legs and calls out to her. We see this from his point of view, making us the spectator also. Soon the young women is left alone for a weekend when her sister and boyfriend go out of town. Immediately the young women begins to unravel. She stares at the cracks in the ceiling, thinking she can see them growing. She buys meat but forgets to put it in the fridge and it begins to rot. A man comes to visit and when he attempts to rape her, she kills him and this sends her over the edge. She barricades  herself in the apartment with the body and rotting meat. The cracks grow in size and soon she sees hands coming out of the walls to grab her. The cinematography is great in this movie and Catherine Deneuve as the young women is both sympathetic and terrifying.

THE BROOD1979 dir. David Cronenberg

"Thirty seconds after you're born you have a past and sixty seconds after that you begin to lie to yourself about 

it "

One of my favorite Cronenberg films, this gross movie has some of the scariest monsters I have seen. They are particularly scary because they look like children but have demon faces. One warning, much of the acting in this movie is bad. The lead actor is awful and scenes with him can be funny they are so bad. But, being a B movie this doesn't ruin the movie, just enhances its cheese factors. My favorite scene in the movie is one where a preschool teacher is beat to death by several of the monsters that look like children, in front of her class of real children who, of course, freak out and cry. The end reveal is grosser then gross, giving audiences some of the sickest imagery of breast feeding and child birth ever put on film. Not a movie to watch while eating.