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10. The Thing (1982) (8 of 20 lists - 125 points - highest rank #1 daggins) The Thing is a 1982 science fiction horror film directed by John Carpenter, written by Bill Lancaster, and starring Kurt Russell. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a parasitic extraterrestrial lifeform that assimilates other organisms and in turn imitates them. It infiltrates an Antarctic research station, taking the appearance of the researchers that it kills, and paranoia occurs within the group. Ostensibly a remake of the classic 1951 Howard Hawks-Christian Nyby film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter's film is a more faithful adaptation of the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. which inspired the 1951 film. Carpenter considers The Thing to be the first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy, followed by Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness. Although the films are unrelated, each feature a potentially apocalyptic scenario; should "The Thing" ever reach civilization, it would be only a matter of time before it takes over the Earth. The theatrical box office performance of the film was poor. This has been attributed to many factors, including Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which was released at the time and features a more optimistic view of alien visitation. However, The Thing has gone on to gain a cult following with the release on home video. It was subsequently novelized in 1982, adapted into a comic book miniseries published by Dark Horse Comics, and was followed by a video game sequel in 2002, with a film prequel currently in the works. Plot In winter 1982, an American Antarctic research station is alerted by gunfire and explosions. Pursued by a Norwegian helicopter, an Alaskan Malamute makes its way into the camp as the science station's crew looks on in confusion. Through reckless use of a thermite charge, the helicopter is destroyed and its pilot killed shortly after landing. The surviving passenger fires at the dog with a rifle, grazing George Bennings (Peter Maloney), one of the researchers. The passenger is shot and killed by Garry (Donald Moffat), the station commander. Not knowing what to make of the incident, the station crew adopts the dog. Unable to contact the outside world via hand radio, helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Copper (Richard Dysart) risk a flight to the Norwegian camp to find it destroyed, its personnel missing or dead (some of them committed suicide). Finding evidence that the Norwegians had dug something out of the ice, the pair return to the station with the partially-burned remains of a hideous creature which bears some human features. An autopsy of the cadaver by Dr. Blair (Wilford Brimley) is inconclusive, save to find that the creature had what appeared to be a normal set of human internal organs. At Bennings' request, the station's dog-handler, Clark (Richard Masur) kennels the stray with the rest of the station's sled dogs. Noises from the kennel cause Clark to return, finding almost the entire sled team in the process of being assimilated by the stray dog, which has transformed into a monster. MacReady summons the crew to the kennel and orders Childs (Keith David) to incinerate the creature with a flamethrower. A subsequent autopsy by Blair reveals that the stray dog was an alien capable of absorbing and perfectly imitating other life-forms. Realizing the implications of this, Blair quickly becomes withdrawn and suspicious of the others. A second helicopter expedition discovers an alien spacecraft unearthed by the Norwegian research team, revealing that the creature had awakened after being buried within the ice for thousands of years. Bennings and Windows (Thomas G. Waites) quarantine the remains of the dog-creature and the Norwegian cadaver in the storage room, but moments after leaving, strands of tentacle-like sinew emerged from the remains of the dog-creature and the Norwegian, and proceed to assimilate Bennings. The crew burns the Bennings replica before its transformation is complete. Discovering that all life on Earth would be assimilated in just over three years if the creature were to reach another continent, Blair goes berserk, destroying the helicopter and radio with an axe, and killing the remaining sled dogs, containing further contamination. The team overpowers him and confines him in the tool shed. With all contact to civilization cut off, the crew wonders how to determine who is still human. A torn shirt is found, confirming that the alien has indeed already assimilated at least one other person in the camp beside Bennings, but the name tag is torn out and the shirt cannot be matched to any one individual because they all wear the same size. Paranoia quickly sets in as the first attempt to develop a test using uncontaminated blood samples is sabotaged by an unknown party. Fuchs (Joel Polis), attempting to continue Blair's research, goes missing shortly after a power failure. Fuchs' body is found severely burned, MacReady speculates that Fuchs used a flare to burn himself before the Thing could get to him. MacReady comes under suspicion when a scrap of torn shirt containing his name tag is found at the camp, and he is locked outside in a severe blizzard. Somehow finding his way back to camp without a guide line, MacReady breaks into a storage room and threatens the rest of the crew with dynamite. In the course of the standoff, Norris (Charles Hallahan) suffers a heart attack. When Copper attempts to revive him by defibrillation, Norris' body transforms and kills Copper. Norris' head detaches from his body and the alien uses it in an attempt to escape as the others burn the body, leading MacReady to theorize that every piece of the alien is an individual animal with its own survival instinct. He then burns the head with his flamethrower. In an altercation that precedes a test proposed by MacReady, Clark in an act of mutiny tries to stab MacReady with a scalpel, but is shot in the head and killed by MacReady in self-defense. The rest of the crew complies with the test; blood samples are drawn from each member of the team including Copper and Clark and jabbed with a hot wire to see whose blood will react defensively. Upon Realizing that Clark was not infected, Childs begins to threaten McReady as a killer. Palmer (David Clennon), the backup pilot, is unmasked as an imitation, and manages to kill Windows before being destroyed by MacReady with dynamite, who also torches Windows' body with a flamethrower as it begins to transform. Confirming that MacReady, Childs, Garry, and Nauls (T.K. Carter) are still human, the surviving crew set out to the tool shed in order to administer the test to Blair, only to find that he has escaped by tunneling his way underground. They follow the path and discover that not only had Blair been assimilated, but he had been constructing a small flying vehicle of alien design underneath the tool shed in order to reach and infect the mainland. They return to the surface to witness Childs inexplicably abandoning his post at the main gate, followed by the facility losing power. Realizing that the creature now wants to freeze again so a future rescue team will find it, the remaining crew acknowledge that they will not survive and set about destroying the facility in hopes of killing the creature. While setting explosives in the underground generator room, Garry is killed by the infected Blair. Nauls follows the sounds of the creature and is never seen again. The only indication of Nauls' fate is sealed by a lone noise MacReady hears from the other underground chamber. Alone, MacReady prepares to detonate the charges when the creature, larger than ever, emerges from beneath the floor. MacReady attacks it with a stick of dynamite, which sets off the rest of the charges and destroys the entire facility. After some time, MacReady is shown wandering alone in the flaming rubble. He encounters Childs, who claims to have seen Blair and gotten lost while chasing him in the snow. With the polar climate closing in around them, they acknowledge the futility of their distrust, sharing a drink as the camp burns and the cold returns. Production The screenplay was written in 1981 by Bill Lancaster, son of Burt Lancaster. The film’s musical score was composed by Ennio Morricone, a rare instance of Carpenter not scoring one of his own films. The film was shot near the small town of Stewart in northern British Columbia. The research station in the film was built by the film crew during summer, and the film shot in sub-freezing winter conditions. The only female presence in the film is the voice of a chess computer, voiced by Carpenter regular (and then-wife) Adrienne Barbeau, as well as the female contestants viewed on a videotaped episode of Let's Make a Deal. The film took three months to shoot on six sound stages in Los Angeles, with many of the crew and actors working in cold conditions. The final weeks of shooting took place in northern British Columbia, near the Yukon Territory, where snow was guaranteed to fall. John Carpenter filmed the Norwegian camp scenes at the end of production. The Norwegian camp was simply the remains of the American outpost after it was destroyed by explosion. The Thing is notable in Carpenter’s career; it was his first foray into major studio film-making. The Thing was the fourth film shot by cinematographer Dean Cundey (following Carpenter's Halloween, The Fog and Escape from New York) and the third to feature Kurt Russell as the lead actor. Russell would appear in two additional Carpenter films following The Thing: Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from L.A.. Most of the horrifying special effects were designed and created by Rob Bottin and his crew, with the exception of the dog creature, which was created by Stan Winston. In the documentary Terror Takes Shape on the DVD, film editor Todd C. Ramsay states that he made the suggestion to Carpenter to film a "happy" ending for the movie, purely for protective reasons, while they had Russell available. Carpenter agreed and shot a scene in which MacReady has been rescued and administered a blood test, proving that he is still human. Ramsay follows this by saying that The Thing had two test screenings, but Carpenter did not use the sequence in either of them, as the director felt that the film worked better with its eventual nihilistic conclusion. The alternate ending with MacReady saved has yet to be released. According to the 1998 DVD release, the "Blair Monster" was to have had a much larger role in the final battle. However, due to the limitations of stop-motion animation, the monster appears for only a few seconds in the film. Reaction The Thing fared poorly at the box office. It was released in the United States on June 25, 1982 in 840 theaters and was issued an "R" rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (limiting attendees to 17 and older without a guardian). The film cost $15,000,000 to produce, and debuted at #8 at the box office, with an opening weekend gross of $3.1 million. It went on to make $13,782,838 domestically. Carpenter and other writers have speculated that the film's poor performance was due to the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial two weeks earlier, with its more optimistic scenario of alien visitation (which received a "PG" rating from the MPAA). The Thing also opened on the same day as Ridley Scott's science fiction film Blade Runner, which debuted at #2. Critical reception "I take every failure hard. The one I took the hardest was The Thing. My career would have been different if that had been a big hit...The movie was hated. Even by science-fiction fans. They thought that I had betrayed some kind of trust, and the piling on was insane. Even the original movie’s director, Christian Nyby, was dissing me." - John Carpenter on the reception of The Thing The film's ground-breaking make up special effects were simultaneously lauded and lambasted for being technically brilliant but visually repulsive. Film critic Roger Ebert called the special effects "among the most elaborate, nauseating, and horrifying sights yet achieved by Hollywood’s new generation of visual magicians", and called the film itself "a great barf-bag movie". In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby called it "a foolish, depressing, overproduced movie that mixes horror with science fiction to make something that is fun as neither one thing or the other. Sometimes it looks as if it aspired to be the quintessential moron movie of the 80's". Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "Designer Rob Bottin's work is novel and unforgettable, but since it exists in a near vacuum emotionally, it becomes too domineering dramatically and something of an exercise in abstract art". In his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold called the film "a wretched excess". Jay Scott, in his review for the Globe and Mail, called the film "a hell of an antidote to E.T.". In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, "Astonishingly, Carpenter blows it. There's a big difference between shock effects and suspense, and in sacrificing everything at the altar of gore, Carpenter sabotages the drama. The Thing is so single-mindedly determined to keep you awake that it almost puts you to sleep". Legacy Despite initial mixed reviews, the film maintains an 80% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was listed as one of the best of 1982 by Filmsite.org and Film.com. The film ranked #97 on Rotten Tomatoes’ Journey Through Sci-Fi (100 Best-Reviewed Sci-Fi Movies), and a scene from The Thing was listed as #48 on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 17th scariest film ever made. The Thing was named "the scariest movie ... ever!" by the staff of the Boston Globe. In 2008, the film was selected by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. Awards The Thing received nominations from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films for Best Horror Film and Best Special Effects. Release After its cinema run, the film was released on video and laserdisc, and a re-edited version was created for television by TBS and Universal Studios. The edited version was heavily cut to reduce gore, violence and profanity; additionally it featured a narrator during the opening sequence (in the same manner as the original 1951 film), a voiceover during Blair's computer-assisted study, and an alternate ending. In the alternate ending, a "Thing" which has mimicked one of the sled dogs looks back at the burning camp at dawn before continuing on into the Antarctic wilderness. The Thing has subsequently been released twice on DVD by Universal in 1998 and 2005. The 1998 edition was a Universal Collector’s Edition, featuring The Thing: Terror Takes Shape, an extensive 83-minute documentary. It details all aspects of the film and features interviews from many of the people involved. There are detailed stories from the cast and crew concerning the adapted screenplay, the special effects, the post-production, the critical reception, and more. Other features include deleted scenes, the alternative ending shown in the television version, a theatrical trailer and production notes. Additionally, John Carpenter and Kurt Russell provide commentary throughout the film. An anamorphic widescreen transfer was not included, but this omission was remedied with the second DVD/HD DVD release in October 2004, which featured identical supplements to the 1998 release, with the exception of the isolated score track from the documentary. The film was released on Blu-Ray in Europe on October 6, 2008. Unlike the American version of The Thing released on Blu-Ray, the European version features most of the extras from the 1998 and 2005 DVD releases. These extras include the documentary The Thing: Terror Takes Shape although several extras, most notably the alternate ending, were not included. The Blu-Ray version also includes various Blu-Ray only features, such as a HD version of the film (although the extras are still presented in 480i/p, depending on the extra) as well as a picture-in-picture mode that pops up at various points of the movie. Although the feature is new, the footage included in the picture-in-picture mode are all taken from the "The Thing: Terror Takes Shape" documentary. The Blu-Ray versions of The Thing are Region Free, making any version playable in any BD player. The original soundtrack, composed by Ennio Morricone, was released by Varese Sarabande in 1991 on compact disc. It was also available as an isolated score track on the 1998 DVD release, but is not present on the 2005 edition. The soundtrack is currently out of production. Legacy Sequels and prequel In 2004, John Carpenter said in an Empire magazine interview that he has a story idea for The Thing II, which centers around the two surviving characters, MacReady and Childs. However, Carpenter felt that due to the higher price associated with his fee, Universal Studios will not pursue his storyline. Carpenter indicated that he would be able to secure both Kurt Russell and Keith David for the sequel. In his story, Carpenter would explain the age difference of the actors between the two installments by having frostbite on their face due to the elements until rescued. The assumption of the sequel would rely on a radio signal being successfully transmitted by Windows before Blair destroyed the communications room. Thus, after the explosion of the base camp, the rescue team would arrive and find MacReady and Childs still alive. Carpenter has not disclosed any other details. In September 2006, it was announced in Fangoria magazine that Strike Entertainment, the production company behind Slither and the Dawn of the Dead remake, is looking for a writer or writers to write a theatrical prequel to The Thing. Production is said to be continuing. As of early 2007, there have been two announced projects to expand the franchise. The Sci-Fi Channel planned to do a four-hour mini-series sequel to the film in 2003. Carpenter stated that he believed the project should proceed, but the Sci-Fi Channel later removed all mention of the project from their homepage. In February 2009, a positive review of the abandoned screenplay for the Sci-Fi miniseries was published on Corona's Coming Attractions. A prequel to the film focusing on the Norwegian crew that first discovered the alien is due to be filmed in 2010 and released in 2011. It will be directed by Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. which is currently shooting in Toronto. Theme parks In 2007, the Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, the film property was designed as a haunted attraction called The Thing - Assimilation. Guests walked through Outpost 3113, a military facility where the remains of Outpost 31 were brought for scientific research. Scenes and props from the film were recreated for the attraction, including the bodies of MacReady and Childs. In 2009, the event's icon house, Silver Screams, contained a room based on the film. Books and comics A novelization of the film based on the second draft of the screenplay was published in 1982 by Alan Dean Foster. Although the novel is generally true to the film, there are minor differences: the Windows character is named Sanders, and an episode in which MacReady, Bennings and Childs chase after several infected dogs which escape into the Antarctic tundra was added (this sequence was featured in Lancaster's second draft of the screenplay). The disappearance of Nauls is also explained in the novel; pursued by Blair-Thing into a dead end, he kills himself rather than allow it to assimilate him. Dark Horse Comics published four comic miniseries sequels to the film (The Thing From Another World, The Thing From Another World: Climate of Fear, The Thing From Another World: Eternal Vows, The Thing From Another World: Questionable Research), featuring the character of MacReady as the lone human survivor of Outpost #31 and depicting Childs as infected (The Thing From Another World: Climate of Fear Issue 3 of 4). Questionable Research explores a parallel reality where MacReady is not around to stop the Thing and a suspicious scientist must prevent its spread, after it has wreaked destruction on Outpost 31. The comic series was titled The Thing from Another World after the original 1951 Howard Hawks film in order to avoid confusion and possible legal conflict with Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four member, the Thing. Video games In 2002, The Thing was released as a survival horror third-person shooter for PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox, acting as a sequel to the film. The video game differs from the comics in that Childs is dead of exposure in the video game, and the audiotapes are present (they were removed from Outpost 31 at the start of The Thing from Another World: Questionable Research). At the completion of the game, R.J. MacReady is found alive and helping the main character complete the last mission. The game used elements of paranoia and mistrust intrinsic to the film. Some retailers, such as GameStop, offered a free copy of the 1998 DVD release as an incentive for reserving the game. In Spore Galactic Adventures, there is a Maxis-made Adventure called "It Came from the Sky." It was based on the movie.

11. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) (8 of 20 lists - 106 points - highest rank #7 daggins) A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film directed and written by Wes Craven, and the first film of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film features John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film debut. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio, the plot revolves around several teenagers who, if they fall asleep, will be killed by Fred Krueger in their dreams, thus causing their deaths in reality. The teenagers are unaware of the cause of this strange phenomenon, but their parents hold a dark secret from long ago. Craven produced A Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of just $1.8 million, a sum the film earned back during its first week. An instant commercial success, the film's total United States box office gross is $25.5 million. A Nightmare on Elm Street was met with rave critical reviews and went on to make a very significant impact on the horror genre, spawning a franchise consisting of a line of sequels, a television series, a crossover with Friday the 13th, a remake, and various other works of imitation. The film is credited with carrying on many clichés found in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s, originating in John Carpenter's 1978 horror film Halloween, including the morality play that revolves around sexual promiscuity in teenagers resulting in their eventual (usually graphic) death, leading to the term "slasher film". Critics and film historians argue that the film's premise is the question of the distinction between dreams and reality, which is manifested in the film through the teenagers' dreams and their realities. Critics today praise the film's ability to transgress "the boundaries between the imaginary and real", toying with audience perceptions. Storyline Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) has a dream in which she is stalked through a dark boiler room by a mutilated figure with distinctive razor-sharp knives attached to the fingers on his right hand. Just as he catches her, however, she wakes up screaming, only to discover four razor cuts in her nightdress identical to the cuts in her dream. The next day, she finds out that her friend Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) experienced a similar dream involving the same sinister figure, but Nancy is convinced that all is well. That night, Tina, Nancy and her boyfriend Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) have a sleep-over to make the distraught Tina feel better, as she is still troubled by her nightmare. Tina's rebellious boyfriend, Rod Lane (Nick Corri), crashes the party. He and Tina have sex in her mother's bedroom. However, Tina has another nightmare, and this time the killer catches and murders her brutally. Rod wakes up to find Tina being cut open by invisible knives, then dragged up the wall and across the ceiling. Rod, being the only other person in the room at the time, is accused of the murder, flees the house and is caught the next day. Nancy then has three violent nightmares in which she is viciously stalked, then attacked, by the same terrifying figure who attacked Tina. These nightmares cause her to talk to Rod in jail, who tells her what he saw in Tina's mother's bedroom, and also remarks he had a nightmare involving the fiend with the "knives for fingers". Much to the dismay of her mother Marge (Ronee Blakley), Nancy becomes increasingly convinced that the figure appearing in her dreams is the person who killed Tina. After Nancy has another dream in which she sees the mysterious killer in Rod's jail cell, she and a skeptical Glen rush to the police station late at night to help Rod, only to find that he's been strangled by his own bedsheets. To everyone except Nancy, it appears to be a suicide. Nancy's mother takes her to a Dream Therapy Clinic to ensure she gets some sleep. Once again, she has a horrendous nightmare. This time, her arm is badly cut, but she finds that she has brought something out from her dream: the killer's battered hat. It arouses concern, but also other feelings in Marge, who is clearly hiding a secret. Eventually, while drunk, Marge reveals to Nancy that the owner of the hat, and the killer, was a man named Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), a child murderer who killed at least twenty children over a decade earlier. Furious, vengeful parents burned him alive in his boiler room hideout when he was released from prison on a technicality due to an improperly signed search warrant. Now, it appears he is manipulating the dreams of their children to exact his revenge from beyond the grave. Nancy's mother, however, reassures Nancy that Krueger cannot hurt anyone, pulling Krueger's bladed glove from a hiding place in the furnace as proof. Eventually, Marge installs bars on all the windows and begins to lock the door as "security". Nancy and Glen devise a plan to catch Krueger, but when Glen falls asleep that night he is pulled into his bed and regurgitated as a spew of gore and bone. Nancy is left alone with Krueger after pulling him out of her dream into the real world. She runs around her house and forces him to run into booby traps she had set earlier. After setting Krueger on fire Nancy locks him in the basement and finally gets her father, police lieutenant Donald Thompson (John Saxon) and the rest of the police to help. After discovering that Krueger has escaped and that fiery footsteps lead upstairs, Nancy and her father witness Krueger smothering Marge with his flaming body, disappearing to leave her corpse to sink into the bed. After sending her father away, Nancy faces Krueger on her own and succeeds in destroying him by turning her back on him and draining him of all energy. She wishes for all of his victims, including her mother, to be back as she walks out of her mother's bedroom. The scene changes to the next morning as Nancy gets in a car with Glen and the rest of her friends, on their way to school. Krueger possesses the car just as she gets in. The car drives away with Nancy screaming for her mother, and Marge being pulled through the door window by Krueger's bladed hand, while three little girls sing his song. Cast and crew The task of creating Krueger's horribly burnt face fell to makeup man David Miller, who based his creation on photographs of burn victims he obtained from the UCLA Medical Center. The cast of A Nightmare on Elm Street included a crew of veteran actors such as Robert Englund and John Saxon, as well as several aspiring young actors including Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp. The low budget curtailed the number of well-known actors that Craven could attract, and most of the actors received very little compensation for their roles. * Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson: Nancy Thompson is an intelligent teenager that has recently been plagued by eerie, sadomasochistic dreams of a man in a dirty green and red sweater, later revealed to be Fred Krueger. Craven claimed he wanted someone very "non-Hollywood" for the role of Nancy, and he believed Langenkamp met this quality. Langenkamp, before becoming an actress, worked as a newspaper copy girl, and saw an advertisement for extras needed on The Outsiders earlier that year, which was being shot in Tulsa. She did not get the part, but it encouraged her to continue acting and she eventually landed the role of Nancy Thompson after an open audition, beating out more than 200 actresses. Langenkamp returned as Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), and also played herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994). * Robert Englund as Fred Krueger: Krueger is a child murderer who killed at least twenty children over a decade before the film takes place. Furious, vengeful parents burned him alive in his boiler room hideout when he was released from prison on a technicality. Now, it appears he is manipulating the dreams of their children to exact his revenge from beyond the grave. * Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz: Glen is Nancy's boyfriend and is also experiencing eerie dreams, although he does not react strongly to them. He is killed prior to the film's climax by being grabbed by Krueger and pulled into his bed, then sprayed out onto the ceiling as a torrent of blood and gore. Depp was another unknown when he was cast; and initially went to accompany a friend (Jackie Earle Haley, who went on to play Freddy in the 2010 remake) so he could audition, yet eventually got the part of Glen. Johnny Depp made a cameo appearance in the sixth installment, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). * Amanda Wyss as Tina Gray: Tina is Nancy's best friend and is also being traumatized by Krueger in her dreams. She is killed when she is slashed in the chest in bed by Freddy's blades and dragged over the walls and ceiling. Wyss was a stage actresss prior to being cast in this role, with very few screen acting credits. * Nick Corri as Rod Lane: Billed as Nick Corri, Rod is Tina's boyfriend who is charged with her murder, as he was the only one present during her death. He is hung in his prison cell by his bedsheets by Krueger, however nobody but Nancy sees this. Corri also made a cameo appearance in New Nightmare (1994). * John Saxon as Lt. Don Thompson: Nancy's father and local police lieutenant. He reprised the role of Nancy's father in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). He later played in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, both as Lt. Thompson and as himself. * Ronee Blakley as Marge Thompson: Nancy's alcoholic, but caring mother. Production Development "It was a series of articles in the LA Times, three small articles about men from South East Asia, who were from immigrant families and had died in the middle of nightmares—and the paper never correlated them, never said, ‘Hey, we’ve had another story like this." — Wes Craven on the film's creation A Nightmare on Elm Street contains many biographical elements, taking inspiration from director Wes Craven's childhood. The basis of the film was inspired by several newspaper articles printed in the LA Times in the 1970s on a group of Cambodian refugees, who, after fleeing to America from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, were suffering disturbing nightmares, after which they refused to sleep. Some of the men died in their sleep soon after. Medical authorities called the phenomenon Asian Death Syndrome. The condition itself afflicted only men between the ages of 19-57 and is believed to be sudden unexplained death syndrome and/or Brugada syndrome. The 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright sealed the story for Craven, giving him not only an artistic setting to "jump off" from, but it provided synthesizer riff from the Elm Street soundtrack. It has also been stated that he drew some inspiration after studying eastern religions. Other sources also attribute the inspiration for the movie to be a 1968 student film project made by students of Craven's at Clarkson University. The student film parodied contemporary horror movies, and was filmed along Elm Street in Potsdam, New York (the town in the film was named Madstop—Potsdam spelled backwards). The film's villain, Freddy Krueger, draws heavily from Craven's early life. One night, a young Craven saw an elderly man walking on the sidepath outside the window of his home. The man stopped to glance at a startled Craven, and then walked off. This served as the inspiration for Krueger. Initially, Fred Krueger was intended to be a child molester, however the decision was changed to him being a child murderer to avoid being accused of exploiting a spate of highly publicized child molestations that occurred in California around the time of production of the film. By Craven's account, his own adolescent experiences lead to the naming of Freddy Krueger. He had been bullied at school by a child named Fred Krueger, and named his villain accordingly. In addition, Craven had done the same in his earlier film The Last House on the Left (1972), where the murderer and rapist's name was shortened to "Krug". The colored sweater he chose for his villain was based on DC Comics's Plastic Man comic book character, and Craven chose to make Krueger's sweater colors that of red and green, after reading an article in Scientific American in 1982 that said the two most clashing colors to the human retina were this particular combination. Writing Wes Craven began writing A Nightmare on Elm Street's screenplay around 1981, after he had finished production on Swamp Thing (1982). He pitched it to several studios, but each one of them rejected it for different reasons. Interestingly, the first studio to show interest was The Walt Disney Company, although they wanted Craven to tone down the content to make it suitable for children and pre-teens. Craven declined and moved on. Another early suitor was Paramount Pictures; however the studios passed on the project due to Nightmare on Elm Street's similarity to Dreamscape (1984), a film they were producing at the time. Finally, the fledgling and independent New Line Cinema corporation—which had up to that point only distributed films, rather than making its own—gave the project the go-ahead. During filming, New Line's distribution deal for the movie fell through and for two weeks it was unable to pay its cast and crew. Although New Line has gone on to make much bigger and more profitable movies, Nightmare holds such an important place in the company's history that the studio is often referred to as "The House That Freddy Built". Filming Principal photography took place in June 1984 and wrapped in July. The fictional address of the house that appears in the film is 1428 Elm Street in Los Angeles, California, the actual house is a private home located in Los Angeles on 1428 North Genesee Avenue. During production, over 500 gallons of fake blood were used for the special effects production. For the famous blood geyser sequence, the film makers used the same revolving room set that was used for Tina's death. They put the set so that it was upside down and attached the camera so that it looked like the room was right side up, then they poured gallons of red water into the room, because the normal movie blood would not make the right effect for the geyser. The scene where Nancy is attacked by Krueger in her bathtub was accomplished with a special bottomless tub. The tub was put in a bathroom set that was built over a swimming pool. During the underwater sequence Heather Langenkamp was replaced with stuntwoman Christina Rideout, who is also married to special effects artist Charles Belardinelli. The "melting staircase" as seen in Nancy's dream was created using pancake mix. Friday the 13th's director Sean S. Cunningham was uncredited for his direction of the chase scene. Wes Craven originally planned for the film to have a more evocative ending: Nancy kills Krueger by ceasing to believe in him, then awakes to discover that everything that happened in the movie was an elongated nightmare. However, New Line leader Robert Shaye demanded a twist ending, in which Krueger disappears and the movie all appears to have been a dream, only for the audience to discover that they are watching a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, where Fred reappears as a car that "kidnaps" Nancy, followed by Fred reaching through a window on the front door to pull Nancy's mother inside. Both a happy ending and a twist ending were filmed, but the final film used the twist ending. As a result, Craven (who never wanted the film to be an ongoing franchise), dropped out of working on the first sequel, Freddy's Revenge (1985). Production wrapped in July, and was rushed through editing at breakneck speed to get it ready for its November release. Themes Loss of innocence Freddy exclusively attacks teenagers and his actions have been interpreted as symbolic of the often traumatic experiences of adolescence. Nancy, like the archetypal teenager, experiences social anxiety and her relationships with her parents become very strained. Sexuality is present in Freudian images and is almost exclusively displayed in a threatening and mysterious context (i.e. Tina's death visually evokes a rape, Freddy's glove between Nancy's legs in the bath). The original script actually called for Krueger to be a child molester, rather than a child killer, before being murdered. American suburbs The movie has been described as a reaction to the growing trend of families moving to suburbs and the perceived innocence of American suburbs. Parents in the film's fictional suburb of Springwood, Ohio kill Krueger and hide his existence in an attempt to make a safe environment for their children, but they still cannot protect their kids. Release A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered in the United States on a limited theatrical release on November 9, 1984, opening in 165 cinemas across the country. The film performed moderately well commercially with little advertising — relying mostly on commercial advertisements and word-of-mouth. Grossing USD$1,271,000 during its opening weekend, the film was considered an instant commercial success. The film eventually earned a total of $25 million at the American box office. Additionally, A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in Europe, China, Canada and Australia. Gross * United States of America - $25,504,513 * Germany - $815,448[28] * Worldwide - $26,319,961 * Adjusted for Inflation - $51,783,386 Critical reception Since its initial release, critics have praised the film's ability to rupture "the boundaries between the imaginary and real," toying with audience perceptions. Some film historians interpreted this overriding theme as a social subtext, "the struggles of adolescents in American society". Variety said the film was "A highly imaginative horror film that provides the requisite shocks to keep fans of the genre happy". The film has a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1984. It ranked at #17 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004), a four-hour program that selected cinema's scariest moments. In 2003, Freddy Krueger was named the 40th greatest movie villain on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains. In 2008, Empire ranked A Nightmare on Elm Street 162nd on their list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. It also was selected by The New York Times as one of The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. Home media The film was first introduced to the home video market by Media Home Entertainment in early 1985 and eventually in laserdisc format. It has since been released on DVD, first in 1999 in the United States as part of the Nightmare on Elm Street Collection box set (along with the other six sequels), and once again in restored "Infinifilm" special edition in 2006, containing various special features with contributions from Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon and the director of photography. The Blu-ray Disc was released on April 13, 2010 by Warner Home Video and features few extras. A DVD box set containing all of the films was released on April 13 also. 2006 Special Edition DVD Re-release This DVD Re-release consisted of 2 DVDs, one with the movie picture and sound restored (DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 & original mono audio track) and another DVD with special features. Along with the restored version of the movie, DVD 1 also had 2 commentaries, other nightmares (if not all) from the film's sequels (2-7 & Freddy Vs. Jason). It also included additional, extended or alternate scenes of the movie. These unused clips/scenes weren't included/added in the film but could be viewed separetely from the DVD's Menus. Along with some of the scenes/clips there's an unused clip in the scene in which Marge (Nancy's mother) takes Nancy in their house's basement and shows her Freddy's glove and tells her what she and the habitants of the town did to Freddy after he got released from the police custody, the unused clip shows Nancy telling her that once Nancy had another sibling (doesn't say if it was a brother or sister), even Glen (Nancy's boyfriend), Tina (Nancy's friend) and Rod (Tina's boyfriend) had a brother or sister once, but Freddy killed them before the parents killed him. In an alternate ending scene, Freddy is in the driver seat with Nancy in the car (instead of her friends). A trivia (Making of) clip on Disc 1 there's one of the crew of the movie describing how they shot the part where Nancy's mother descends into her bed after she dies, describes that 2 shots where shot, 1 with the bed with blue lights then a bed with a hatch opening and a body dropping, and says that the final effect was achieved by combining the 2 shots together, and this technique was discovered sometime in 1910. Awards and nominations * Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films - Best Horror Film (1985)(Nomination) * Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films - Best Performance by a Young Actor - Jsu Garcia (Nomination) * Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films - Best DVD Classic Film Release (2007) (Nomination) * Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival - Critic Award 1985 - Wes Craven (won) * Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival - Special Mention for Acting 1985 - Heather Langenkamp (Won)

They need to start the season earlier. There's no reason to have Game 1 only four days before Halloween.

Why don't the Brewers hire Robin Yount? He's already been the bench coach there twice.

Can't we just say that boobies in general, rock?

QUOTE (IChaseBlackWood @ Oct 26, 2010 -> 10:41 PM) zuupp guys?!?! Ah ha! You are around!

Hopefully that one's better. I'm going for a Halloween theme.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Oct 26, 2010 -> 04:42 PM) What's your avatar supposed to be? My signature with Sandra Bullock and an owl? No great significance, I just thought that it was a funny comparison. Ah the avatar... It's the ORLY owl as The Crow.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 26, 2010 -> 03:38 PM) Nice. I look forward to mocking you for putting "Harry and the Hendersons" #1 on your horror list. HEY! That was a solid film!

Sure. No problem.

There are some solid films in this list. You all have good taste.

12. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) (7 of 20 lists - 99 points - highest rank #7 SouthsideDon48, GoSox05) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 American independent horror film directed by Tobe Hooper and written by Hooper and Kim Henkel. The film stars Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, Teri McMinn, William Vail, Edwin Neal, and Paul A. Partain. While it is presented as a true story involving the ambush and murder of a group of friends on a road trip in rural Texas by a family of cannibals, the film is entirely fictional. It is the first of six pictures in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise, which features Leatherface (Hansen), a character modeled after Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. Hooper produced the film for less than $300,000 with a cast of relatively unknown actors, drawn mainly from the central Texas region where it was shot. Principal photography took place between July 15 and August 14, 1973. Due to its extremely violent content, Hooper struggled to find a distributor for the film; Bryanston Distributing Company eventually picked it up. Hooper had limited the amount of onscreen gore in hopes of securing a PG rating, but the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rated it R. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre debuted on October 1, 1974. The film initially drew a mixed reception from critics and it was banned in many countries; nevertheless, it became a strong commercial success, grossing $30.9 million at the U.S. box office. Despite the early lack of critical consensus, it has gained a reputation as one of the most influential horror films in cinema history. It originated several elements common in the slasher film genre, including the use of power tools as murder weapons and the characterization of the killer as a large, hulking, faceless figure. Plot Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), travel with three friends—Jerry (Allen Danziger), Kirk (William Vail), and Pam (Teri McMinn)—to a cemetery where the grave of the Hardestys' grandfather is located. Their aim is to investigate reports of vandalism and corpse defilement. Afterward, they decide to visit an old Hardesty family homestead. On the way there they pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal). He behaves bizarrely, and slashes himself and Franklin with a straight razor before the group forces him out of the van. They stop at a gas station to refuel, but the proprietor (Jim Siedow) tells them that the pumps are empty. They continue to the homestead, intending to return to the gas station once the fuel has been delivered. When they arrive at the homestead, Franklin tells Kirk and Pam about a local swimming hole, and the couple head off to find it. Instead, they stumble upon a nearby house; Kirk calls out, asking for gas, while Pam waits on the front steps. Kirk receives no answer but when he discovers the door is unlocked, he enters the house. Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) appears and kills him. Pam enters soon after and finds the house is filled with furniture made from human bones. She attempts to flee, but Leatherface catches her and impales her on a meathook. At sunset, Jerry, Sally's boyfriend, heads out to look for Pam and Kirk. He finds the couple's blanket outside the nearby house. He investigates and finds Pam inside a freezer; she is still alive. Before he can react, Leatherface murders him and stuffs him in the freezer with Pam. With darkness falling, Sally and Franklin set out to find their friends. As they near the neighboring house and call out, Leatherface lunges from the darkness and kills Franklin with a chainsaw. Sally escapes to the house and finds the desiccated remains of an elderly couple in an upstairs room. She escapes from Leatherface by jumping through a second floor window and flees to the gas station. Leatherface disappears into the night. The proprietor calms her with offers of help, but then ties her up and forces her into his truck. He drives to the house, arriving at the same time as the hitchhiker, who turns out to be Leatherface's younger brother. When the pair bring Sally inside, the hitchhiker recognizes and taunts her. The men torment the bound and gagged Sally, while Leatherface, now dressed as a woman, serves dinner. Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring an old man from upstairs to join the meal. During the night, they decide Sally should be killed by "Grandpa" (John Dugan), who once worked at a slaughterhouse. "Grandpa" tries to hit Sally with a hammer, but he is too weak. In the confusion, Sally breaks free, leaps through a window, and escapes to the road. Leatherface and the hitchhiker give chase, but the hitchhiker is run down and killed by a passing semi-trailer truck. Armed with his chainsaw, Leatherface attacks the truck when the driver stops to help. The driver hits him in the face with a large wrench. Sally escapes in the bed of a passing pickup truck as Leatherface waves the chainsaw above his head in frustration. Themes and analysis The underlying themes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre have been the subject of extensive critical discussion. Film critics and scholars have interpreted it as a paradigmatic exploitation film, in which the female protagonists are subjected to brutal, eroticized, sadistic violence. As with many horror films, it focuses on the "final girl" trope: the heroine and inevitable lone survivor who somehow escapes the horror that befalls the other characters. Sally Hardesty is wounded and tortured, yet manages to survive with the help of a male truck driver. Critics argue that even in exploitation films in which the ratio of male and female deaths is roughly equal, the "lingering" images will be of the violence committed against the female characters. The specific case of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre provides support for this argument: Three men are killed in quick fashion, but one woman is brutally slaughtered—hung on a meathook—and the surviving woman endures physical and mental torture. In one study, a group of men were shown five films depicting various levels of violence against women. The study found that those who watched The Texas Chain Saw Massacre experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety at first. However, upon subsequent viewing, they found the violence against women less offensive and more enjoyable. Another study conducted at the University of Missouri involved 30 male and 30 female university students. Its aim was to investigate gender-specific perceptions of slasher films. One male participant described the screaming in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, especially that of the protagonist Sally Hardesty, as the "most freaky thing" in the film. The infamous meathook scene has been described as one of the most brutal on-screen female deaths. The scene was described as typical violence against women in the media because it portrays the woman as weak and helpless. Hooper parodies a typical sitcom family when he reveals the Sawyer family during the dinner table scene. He includes characters such as the cook (who is shown to be the main bread-winner); the killer Leatherface, who is depicted as a typical housewife; and the hitchhiker, who acts as the rebellious teenage son. Other scholars have described the film, and the slasher genre as a whole, as being "sexually violent". Hooper's apocalyptic landscape is ... a deserted wasteland of dissolution where once vibrant myth [of frontier] is dessciated. The ideas and iconography of Cooper, Bret Harte and Francis Parkman are now transmorgrified into yards of dying cattle, abandoned gasoline stations, defiled graveyards, crumbling mansions, and a rambshackle farmhouse of psychotic killers. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [is] ... recognizable as a statement about the end-of-time of American experience. — Christopher Sharrett Various critics have seen the film as a representation of the response of the American people to the distinctive struggles faced by American society in the 1960s and the early to mid-1970s, which subsided a short time after the release of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Some critics argue that American reactions to the Watergate scandal, as well as the "de-legitimation of authority in the wake of Vietnam",[16] are reflected in the art of the era, particularly the American horror film. There is an "idea of apocalypse" in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; the film touches upon a particular time in America when social and political unrest was present at a high level. In his analysis of the film, Robin Wood states that Leatherface and his family are victims of oppression through industrial capitalism, their jobs as slaughter workers having been rendered obsolete by technological advances. Wood discusses the film's artistic qualities, stating that the picture "brings to focus a spirit of negativity ... that seems to lie not far below the surface of the modern collective consciousness". Naomi Merritt explores the film's representation of "cannibalistic capitalism" in relation to Georges Bataille's theory of taboo and transgression. She elaborates on Robin Wood's analysis, stating that the Sawyer family's values "reflect, or correspond to, established and interdependent American institutions ... but but their embodiment of these social units is perverted and transgressive." It is heavily argued by some film historians and critics that the horror film, particularly since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), and George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), poses questions about the "fundamental validity of the American civilizing process". In identifying the film as an apocalyptic allegory, Christopher Sharrett states the film "shows the violent disruption of the security and stability of rural and urban life". Production Development I definitely studied Gein, ... but I also noticed a murder case in Houston at the time, a serial murderer you probably remember named Elmer Wayne Henley. He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man. I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne ... said, 'I did these crimes, and I'm gonna stand up and take it like a man". Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters. — Kim Henkel The concept for the film arose in the early 1970s, while Hooper worked as a college professor at the University of Texas at Austin and as a documentary cameraman. He had already developed the idea of a film centering on the theme of isolation, as well as the woods and darkness, and pursued these themes further as he worked on the project. He credited the graphic coverage of violence by San Antonio news outlets as one inspiration for the film. After further development, Hooper gave the film the working titles Headcheese and Leatherface. He based the plot loosely on the murders committed by 1950s Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, who also served as the inspiration for a number of other horror films. With regards to the film's main influences, Hooper has cited the impact of changes in the cultural and political landscape. His intentional misinformation that the "film you are about to see is true" was a response to being "lied to by the government about things that were going on all over the world", including Watergate, the gasoline crisis, and "the massacres and atrocities in the Vietnam War". The "lack of sentimentality and the brutality of things" that Hooper noticed while watching the local news—whose coverage was graphic, "showing brains spilled all over the road"—led to his belief that "man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face, so I put a literal mask on the monster in my film". The idea of featuring a chainsaw in the film came to Hooper while in the hardware section of a busy store, as he contemplated a way to get out quickly through the crowd. Hooper and Kim Henkel—the original writers of the screenplay—formed a corporation, Vortex, with Henkel as president and Hooper as vice president. They asked Bill Parsley, a friend of Hooper, to provide funding for the film; Parsley formed a company named MAB, Inc. and invested $60,000 in the production. In return, MAB owned 50% of the film and its profits. Production manager Ron Bozman told most of the cast and crew that he would have to defer parts of their salaries until after the movie was sold to a distributor. Vortex made the idea more attractive by awarding most of them a share of Vortex's potential profits, with shares ranging from 0.25 to 6%, similar to mortgage points. Due to a miscommunication, the cast and crew were not informed that Vortex owned only 50% of the film, which meant their points were worth half of the assumed value. Casting There were few or no previous acting credits among many of the cast members, who were Texans with previous roles in commercials, television, and stage shows, as well as actors whom Hooper knew personally. Involvement in the film propelled many cast members into the motion-picture industry. The lead role of Sally was given to Marilyn Burns. Burns had appeared previously on stage, and served on the film commission board at the University of Texas at Austin while a student there. Teri McMinn was a student who worked with various local theater companies, including the Dallas Theater Center. Henkel called McMinn to come in for a reading after he spotted her picture in the Austin American-Statesman. On her last call-back, he requested that she wear short shorts, which proved to be the most comfortable of all the cast members' costumes. Icelandic-American actor Gunnar Hansen gained the role of Leatherface. In preparation for his role, he came to envision Leatherface as being mentally retarded and having never learned to speak properly. Hansen visited a school for the mentally challenged and watched how the students moved and spoke in order to get a feel for his character. When commenting on the production of the film, Hansen recalled, "It was 95, 100 degrees every day during filming. They wouldn't wash my costume because they were worried that the laundry might lose it, or that it would change color. They didn't have enough money for a second costume. So I wore that [mask] 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month." Filming Filming took place in Austin, Round Rock, and Bastrop, Texas, from July 15 through August 14, 1973. As a result of the small budget, the crew filmed seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, while having to deal with high humidity. The cast and crew found the filming conditions tough, with a high temperature of 97°F (36°C) on July 26. The house used for the film was not cooled, and there was little ventilation. The film was shot mainly using an Eclair NPR 16 mm camera with fine-grain low-speed film that required four times more light than modern cameras. The largest proportion of the filming took place in a remote farmhouse filled with furniture constructed from animal bones with a latex material as upholstery to give the appearance of human skin. The crew covered the walls of the house with splats of real animal blood which had been obtained from a local meat house. Art director Robert Burns drove around the countryside and collected the remains of cattle and other animals in various stages of decomposition, which he used to litter the floors of the house. The film's special effects were simple and limited by the budget. The blood depicted was sometimes real, as was the case during the filming of the scene in which Leatherface feeds "Grandpa". The crew had difficulties in getting the stage blood to come out of its tube, so instead, Burns' index finger was cut with a razor. Burns' costume was so drenched with stage blood that it was virtually solid on the last day of shooting. The scene after Pam is hung on the meathook, when Leatherface first uses his chainsaw, caused some worry to actor William Vail (Kirk). Kirk was about to have his head cut off, and actor Hansen (Leatherface) told Vail not to move or he would literally be killed. Hansen then brought down the running chainsaw within 3 inches (8 cm) of Vail's face. Post-production The crew exceeded the original $60,000 budget for the film during the editing process. Sources differ on the total budget for the film, offering figures of between $93,000 and $300,000. A film production group, Pie in the Sky (P.I.T.S.) donated $23,532 in exchange for 19% of Vortex's half of the profits. This left Henkel and Hooper as co-owners of 45% of the profits, and the remaining 36% was divided among 20 cast and crew members. Warren Skaaren made a deal as an equal partner with Hooper and Henkel, along with a 15% share of Vortex. Skaaren received a deferred salary of $5,000 and 3% of the gross profits (MAB and Vortex combined). David Foster, producer of the 1982 horror film The Thing, arranged for a private screening for some of Bryanston Pictures' West Coast executives, and received 1.5% of Vortex's profits and a deferred fee of $500. On August 28, 1974, Louis Peraino of Bryanston Distribution Company offered Bozman and Skaaren a contract of $225,000 and 35% of the profits from the worldwide distribution of the film. Years later, Bozman stated, "We made a deal with the devil, and I guess that, in a way, we got what we deserved." They signed the contract with Bryanston. After the investors recouped their money (including interest), and Skaaren's salary and monitoring fee were paid, as well as the lawyers and accountants fees, there was only $8,100 left to be divided among the 20 members of the cast and crew. Eventually, the producers sued Bryanston for failing to pay them their full percentage of the box office profits. A court judgement fined Bryanston the sum of $500,000 to be paid to the filmmakers; by then the company had declared bankruptcy. Bryanston Pictures folded in 1976, when Louis Peraino was convicted on obscenity charges for his role in the production of the film Deep Throat (1972). New Line Cinema acquired the distribution rights to the film from Bryanston and gave the producers a bigger percentage of the gross profits than Bryanston had initially paid them. Release Upon the completion of post-production, the filmmakers found it difficult to secure a distributor that was willing to market the film, due to its graphic content; however, on August 28, 1974, the Bryanston Distributing Company agreed to distribute it. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre premiered on October 1, 1974, in Austin, Texas, almost a year after the completion of filming. The film screened nationally in the United States as a Saturday afternoon matinée, and found success with a broader audience after it was falsely marketed as being a "true story". During the film's release in San Francisco, moviegoers walked out of theatres in disgust. In February 1976, theatres in Ottawa, Canada, were asked by the local authority to withdraw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre due to concerns about increasing levels of violence being associated by the public with the film. After 1976, the film was reissued to first-run theaters every year for eight years, with full-page ads being taken out to promote it. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre grossed more than $30 million in the United States, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time. It was overtaken in 1978 by John Carpenter's Halloween, which grossed $47 million at the box office upon release. "The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particularly Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young...." -The opening scrawl falsely introduces the film as being based on true events, which contributed to the film's success. Hooper reportedly hoped that the MPAA would give the complete, uncut release print a PG rating due to the minimal amount of gore presented in the film. The film was released by the MPAA uncensored with an R rating. It was banned in many countries including Australia, Brazil, Finland, West Germany, Chile, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. After the initial release, including a one-year theatrical run in London, the film was banned in Britain largely on the authority of British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) Secretary James Ferman. The film saw a limited cinema release because of the actions of various city councils, including Camden London Borough Council, which granted a license to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which was later classified 18 (should not be seen or purchased by a person under 18 years old) by the BBFC. Censors attempted to edit the film for the purposes of a wider release in 1977 but were unsuccessful. At the time of the film's banning, the word "chainsaw" became outlawed in film titles, forcing studios to retitle their movies. One such film, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) was retitled Hollywood Hookers, with an image of a chainsaw replacing the word. The BBFC passed the film in 1999 with no cuts. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was broadcast a year later on Channel 4. Australia's Censorship Board first viewed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in June 1975, and refused to classify the 83-minute print. The distributor appealed to the Review Board, which upheld the decision in August 1975. The distributor prepared a reconstructed 77-minute version, only to see it banned again in December 1975. In 1976, the Australian authorities also banned the edited version of the film. When the film was re-presented to the censors five years later, it was banned again. Greater Union Organisation (GUO) Film Distributors were refused registration for a 2283.4 ft (83m 27s) print in July 1981. The reason given for the ban was frequent and gratuitous violence of high intensity. An 83-minute print submitted by Filmways Australia was approved for an R rating in January 1984. Adaptations Shortly after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre established itself as a success on home video in 1982, Wizard Video released a mass-market video game adaptation for the Atari 2600. In the game, the player assumes the role of the film's primary antagonist, Leatherface, and attempts to murder trespassers while avoiding obstacles such as fences and cow skulls. As one of the first horror-themed video games, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre caused controversy when it was first released, due to its violent nature, and sold poorly because many game stores refused to stock it. Wizard Video's other commercial release, Halloween, based on John Carpenter's 1978 film, had a slightly better reception. Several comic books entitled Leatherface, based on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, were made in 1991 by Northstar Comics. They licensed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre rights to Avatar Press for use in new comic book stories, the first of which was published in 2005. In 2006, Avatar Press lost the license to the DC Comics imprint Wildstorm, which has published new stories based on the franchise. In June 2007, Wildstorm changed a number of horror comics, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, from monthly issues to specials and miniseries. With the exception of Topps Comics' Jason vs. Leatherface series, Leatherface was the only character of the original film to appear in the comics. However, the 1991 "Leatherface" miniseries was loosely based on the third Texas Chainsaw Massacre film. Writer Mort Castle stated: "The series was very loosely based on Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. I worked from the original script by David Schow and the heavily edited theatrical release of director Jeff Burr, but had more or less free rein to write the story the way it should have been told. The first issue sold 30,000 copies." Kirk Jarvinen drew the first issue, and Guy Burwell finished the rest of the series. The comics, not having the same restrictions from the MPAA, had much more gore than the finished film. The ending and the fates of several characters were also altered. An adaptation of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was planned by Northstar Comics, but never came to fruition. Sequels The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was followed by three sequels. A reimagining, entitled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was produced by Michael Bay and released in 2003; it was in turn followed by another sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. The original sequel was considerably more graphic and violent than the original film, and was banned in Australia for 20 years before being released on DVD in a revised special edition in October 2006. The sequel was less well-received by the critics, as they felt it had moved away from the terror of the original for the sake of dark humor. Gunnar Hansen was asked to reprise his role as Leatherface in the second film, but declined. The film spawned two more sequels; Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) was the next, with a budget of $2 million. Hooper did not return to direct the film due to scheduling conflicts with another film, Spontaneous Combustion, and it was instead directed by Jeff Burr. When reviewing the film, Chris Parcellin of Film Threat said, "It's really just another generic slasher flick with nothing beyond the Leatherface connection to recommend it to discerning fans." The third sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, was released in 1995, starring Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. The film was a semi-remake of the original, although it was originally intended to be a complete remake of the first film. It received largely negative critical reviews; Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide's Movie Guide said that it was "tired and dated". The reimagining entitled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released by Platinum Dunes in 2003. The film starred Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour, Andrew Bryniarski as Leatherface, and R. Lee Ermey as Sheriff Hoyt. The film received largely more positive critic reviews than the sequels, though it only managed to achieve a 36% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 55 positive reviews out of 152. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, called it "a contemptible film: vile, ugly and brutal." A prequel to the remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, was released in 2006. The film was directed by Jonathan Liebesman, and produced by Michael Bay and Mike Fleiss. It had a starring cast of Matt Bomer, Jordana Brewster, and Taylor Handley, with Ermey and Bryniarski reprising their roles as Sheriff Hoyt and Leatherface, respectively. The film was panned by most critics, with a 13% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Mark Palermo, columnist for The Coast, said, "The focus in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning isn't on the confrontation of demons, moral reckoning, or terror. It's an unimaginative exercise in suffering." Reception Critical response The film initially received a mixed reaction upon release, largely due to its violence and gory special effects. Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times criticised the film, calling it despicable, and described Henkel and Hooper as being more concerned with the realistic atmosphere of the film than with a "plastic script". Roger Ebert criticised the film for being as violent and as brutal as the title suggests, yet praised it for the acting and its effectiveness. In his 1976 article "Fashions in Pornography" for Harper's Magazine, writer Stephen Koch felt the sadistic violence in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was extreme, yet unimaginative. Patrick Taggart of the Austin American-Statesman praised the film as the most important horror film since George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Variety found the picture to be well-made, in spite of the gory, violent scenes. "Horror and exploitation films almost always turn a profit if they're brought in at the right price. So they provide a good starting place for ambitious would-be filmmakers who can't get more conventional projects off the ground. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" belongs in a select company (with Night of the Living Dead and Last House on the Left) of films that are really a lot better than the genre requires." Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times However, after the film's initial release, critics began to praise the film for its artistic qualities and effectiveness. TV Guide thought it was an "intelligent" film in its "bloodless depiction of violence", while Anton Bitel felt the fact that the film was banned in the United Kingdom was a tribute to its artistic qualities, and pointed out how the quiet sense of foreboding at the beginning of the film grows until the viewer experiences "a punishing assault on the senses". Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader found the picture to be intense rather than well crafted, but he noted Hooper's talent. Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle called the film "a backwoods masterpiece of fear and loathing, Texas style". Mike Emery of The Austin Chronicle said the film was "horrifying" and claimed what made it so effective was that the story never appeared to be too far from reality. Rebecca Ascher-Walsh believed the film laid the foundations for future shock franchises such as Halloween, The Evil Dead and The Blair Witch Project. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has subsequently been described as one of the scariest movies ever made. Noted reviewer Rex Reed described it as the most terrifying film he had ever seen. Empire described the film as the most purely horrifying horror film ever made and called it "never less than totally committed to scaring you witless". Fellow horror director Wes Craven reminisced about his first viewing of the film, stating he wondered "what kind of Mansonite crazoid" could have created such a film. Horror novelist Stephen King considers it "cataclysmic terror", and stated, "I would happily testify to its redeeming social merit in any court in the country." The film has been declared one of the few horror movies to invoke "the authentic quality of nightmare". Isabel Cristina Pinedo stated, "The horror genre must keep terror and comedy in tension if it is to successfully tread the thin line that separates it from terrorism and parody... this delicate balance is struck in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which the decaying corpse of Grandpa not only incorporates horrific and humorous effects, but actually uses one to exacerbate the other." Scott Von Doviak of Hick Flicks noticed the effective use of daylight shots, including the sight of a corpse splayed over a tombstone in the opening sequence. The book Contemporary North American Film Directors described the film as being more elaborate and less bloodthirsty than the title might imply. The film currently has a 90% overall approval rating from critics on film aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 7.7 out of 10. This is based on 40 reviews collected between the years 2000 and 2009. Home media Since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's premiere, the film has appeared on various home video formats, including VHS, laserdisc, CED, DVD, UMD, and Blu-ray Disc. It was first released on videotape and CED format in the 1980s by Wizard Video and Vestron Video. The film was again banned in the United Kingdom in 1984, during the moral panic surrounding "video nasties". After the retirement of its secretary, Ferman, in 1999, the BBFC passed the film uncut on cinema and video, with the 18 certificate, almost 25 years after the original release. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was originally released on DVD format in October 1998 for the United States, and, due to the controversy surrounding the film, in May 2000 for the United Kingdom. A revised DVD edition of the film was released in 2007 in Australia, after initially being released on DVD in 2001. Dark Sky Films released a region 1 two-disc edition entitled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Ultimate Edition, which features several interviews, restored audio and picture quality, and other extras such as deleted scenes. Reviews for the release were largely positive, with critics praising the sound and picture quality of the restoration. A region free three-disc DVD edition, entitled The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Seriously Ultimate Edition, was released on November 3, 2008. Dark Sky Films released a Blu-ray Disc version of the film on September 30, 2008. The Blu-ray Disc was released by Second Sight Films in the United Kingdom on November 16, 2009. Cultural impact The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, considered one of the greatest and most controversial horror films of all time, has significantly influenced the horror genre. Ben Cobb of British public service Channel 4 admired the film's style and atmosphere, and said the film is, without doubt, one of the most influential horror films of all time. In 1999, Richard Zoglin of Time commented that the film had set a new standard for the slasher genre. The Times listed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as one of the 50 most controversial films of all time. Tony Magistrale believes the film paved the way for horror to be used as a vehicle for social commentary. Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times described the film as being "cheap, grubby and out of control", which "both defines and entirely supersedes the very notion of the exploitation picture". In the book Horror Films, one critic's opinion of the film was that it was "the most affecting gore thriller of all and, in a broader view, among the most effective horror films ever made", and that "the driving force of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is something far more horrible than aberrant sexuality: total insanity." Leatherface has gained a reputation as one of the most disturbing and notorious characters in the horror genre, having established the use of conventional tools as murder weapons and creating a large silent killer devoid of any personality. Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com said, "In our collective consciousness, Leatherface and his chainsaw have become as iconic as Freddy and his razors or Jason and his hockey mask." Don Sumner called the film a classic that not only introduced a new villain to the horror pantheon, but influenced an entire generation of film makers. Ridley Scott credited the film as an inspiration for his 1979 film Alien. French director Alexandre Aja credited The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, among other films, as influencing his early career. John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) incorporated the film's use of minimal blood and gore, and focused instead on the suspense. Horror filmmaker and heavy metal singer Rob Zombie sees the film as a major influence on his art, most notably in his film House of 1000 Corpses, released in 2003. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was selected for the 1975 Cannes Film Festival Directors' Fortnight, though the viewing was delayed due to a bomb scare. In 1976, it won the Grand Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in France. In 1990, the film was inducted into the Horror Hall of Fame, with director Hooper accepting the award. It was named "Outstanding Film of the Year" at the 19th annual London Film Festival. William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, inducted Hooper into the 2003 Texas Film Hall of Fame. New York City's Museum of Modern Art added the film to its permanent collection, validating its claim as legitimate, unconventional art. Entertainment Weekly ranked the film No. 6 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films". In a Total Film poll conducted in 2005, the film was selected as the greatest horror film of all time. The film was among TIME magazine's top 25 horror films of all time. In 2008, the film ranked No. 199 on Empire magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. The film was selected as the greatest horror film in a 2010 Total Film poll, whose judging panel included veteran horror directors such as John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero, among others. The Guardian ranked The Texas Chain Saw Massacre No. 14 on their list of the top 25 horror films of all time. Notes While the original theatrical release poster and many references to the film render its title as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the official spelling is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, per the film's opening credits. This is also the title under which the film is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

13. Poltergeist (1982) (7 of 20 lists - 91 points - highest rank #5 Rex Kickass) Poltergeist is an American horror film, directed by Tobe Hooper, produced by Steven Spielberg, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on June 4, 1982. It is the first and most successful of the Poltergeist film trilogy, and was nominated for three Academy Awards. The franchise is often said to be cursed, because several people associated with it, including stars Dominique Dunne and Heather O'Rourke, died prematurely. "The Poltergeist Curse" has been the focus of an E! True Hollywood Story. The film was ranked as #80 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments and the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 20th scariest film ever made. The film also appeared on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Thrills, a list of America's most heart-pounding movies. Plot Steve and Diane Freeling, and their children Dana, Robbie, and Carol Anne, are living a quiet life in a California suburb, when a group of seemingly benign ghosts begin communicating with five-year-old Carol Anne through the static on the family's television sets. A number of other bizarre occurrences follow, including an earthquake that only the Freelings feel, glasses and utensils that spontaneously break or bend, and the ominous announcement by Carol Anne that the ghosts are there with them. Diane begins to realize the presence of beings in her home, which fascinates her. But when she brings these things to Steven's attention, he is disturbed and worried. One night, during a rainstorm, a gnarled tree comes to life and grabs Robbie through his bedroom window. However, this is merely a distraction used by the ghosts to get Carol Anne's parents to leave her unattended. While Diane and Steven rescue Robbie, Carol Anne is sucked through a portal in her closet. The horrified Freelings realize she has been taken after they begin to hear her communicating through a television set. A group of parapsychologists from UC Irvine, Dr. Lesh, Ryan and Marty, come to the Freeling house to investigate. They determine that the Freelings are experiencing a poltergeist, rather than a true haunting. Dr. Lesh explains that the spirits have not moved on to "the light" after death, but are stuck between dimensions. They have taken Carol Anne, Lesh says, because as an innocent 5-year-old, her "life force" is as bright to them as the light, and they believe she is their salvation. During the investigation, Steven, a real estate agent for the subdivision development he lives in, is approached by his boss, Lewis Teague, about a promotion. The new project will involve selling lots on a newly acquired hilltop parcel of land that currently houses a cemetery. When Steven balks at the idea of relocating the graveyard, his boss shrugs it off, explaining that the company had done it before, in the very neighborhood where Steven now lives. After a series of frightening paranormal episodes, Robbie and Dana are sent away for their safety. The parapsychologists leave with the data they collected, but Dr. Lesh and Ryan soon return with a spiritual medium, Tangina Barrons, who informs Diane that Carol Anne is alive and in the house. She also explains that, in addition to the peaceful lost souls inhabiting the house, there is a single malevolent spirit she calls the "Beast," that is using Carol Anne to keep the spirits away from the light. The assembled group discovers that while the entrance to the other dimension is through the children's bedroom closet, the exit is through the living room ceiling. They send Diane to rescue Carol Anne, tying her to a rope that they've managed to thread through both portals. As Tangina coaxes the agonized spirits away from Carol Anne, Diane retrieves her daughter and they emerge through the living room ceiling, falling to the floor. Tangina announces that the spirits are gone. However, while the spirits have moved on, the Beast has not. On the family's final night in the house, the Beast attacks Diane and the children. Diane runs to her neighbors for help, and in the process, slips and falls into the unfinished swimming pool, from which coffins and rotting corpses erupt. Her neighbors, terrified by the ghostly energy blazing from the house, refuse to help. Diane pulls out Robbie and Carol Anne from the house, and Dana returns from a date to find coffins and dead bodies exploding from the ground throughout the neighborhood. As Steven returns home to this mayhem, he realizes that when Teague relocated the cemetery under the subdivision, he merely moved the headstones in order to save money. Teague appears soon after, joining the Freelings' neighbors in their horror at the Freeling house's explosive possession. An enraged Steven confronts him with the fact that by leaving the bodies in unmarked graves and building houses on top of them, Teague had desecrated their burial grounds. As the Freelings drive away in terror, the house itself implodes into another dimension, to the astonishment of onlookers. The family checks into a Holiday Inn for the night. Taking no chances, Steven puts the room's television outside. Cast * Craig T. Nelson as Steve Freeling * JoBeth Williams as Diane Freeling * Beatrice Straight as Dr. Lesh * Dominique Dunne as Dana Freeling * Oliver Robins as Robbie Freeling * Heather O'Rourke as Carol Anne Freeling * Michael McManus as Ben Tuthill * Virginia Kiser as Mrs. Tuthill * Martin Casella as Marty * Richard Lawson as Ryan * Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina Barrons * Lou Perryman as Pugsley * Clair E. Leucart as Bulldozer Driver * James Karen as Frank Teague * Dirk Blocker as Jeff Shaw * William Hope as Dana's Boyfriend In Car (cameo) (uncredited) Production Creative credit A clause in his contract with Universal Studios prevented Spielberg from directing any other film while preparing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Time and Newsweek tagged the summer of 1982 "The Spielberg Summer" because E.T. and Poltergeist were released a week apart in June. As such a marketable name, some began to question Spielberg's role during production. Suggestions that Spielberg had greater directorial influence than the credits suggest were aided by comments made by the writer/producer: "Tobe isn't... a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn't immediately forthcoming, I'd jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that become the process of collaboration." The Directors Guild of America "opened an investigation into the question of whether or not Hooper's official credit was being denigrated by statements Spielberg has made, apparently claiming authorship." Co-producer Frank Marshall told the Los Angeles Times that "the creative force of the movie was Steven. Tobe was the director and was on the set every day. But Steven did the design for every storyboard and he was on the set every day except for three days when he was in Hawaii with Lucas." However, Hooper claimed that he "did fully half of the storyboards." The Hollywood Reporter printed an open letter from Spielberg to Hooper in the week of the film's release. Regrettably, some of the press has misunderstood the rather unique, creative relationship which you and I shared throughout the making of Poltergeist. I enjoyed your openness in allowing me... a wide berth for creative involvement, just as I know you were happy with the freedom you had to direct Poltergeist so wonderfully. Through the screenplay you accepted a vision of this very intense movie from the start, and as the director, you delivered the goods. You performed responsibly and professionally throughout, and I wish you great success on your next project. Several members of the Poltergeist cast and crew have over the years consistently alleged that Spielberg was the 'de facto director' of the picture, while other actors have claimed Hooper directed the film. In a 2007 interview with Ain't It Cool News, Rubinstein discussed her recollections of the shooting process. She said that "Steven directed all six days" that she was on set: "Tobe set up the shots and Steven made the adjustments." She also alleged that Hooper "allowed some unacceptable chemical agents into his work," and at her interview felt that time "Tobe was only partially there." In a interview with Deadpit radio, Lou Perryman stated "Tobe directed me and everything I saw while I was there, he directed". Oliver Robbins (who played Robbie) said that Tobe Hooper was the director. Craig T. Nelson also confirmed Hooper as the director, strongly influenced by Spielberg. Special effects In 2002, on an episode of VH1's I Love the '80s, JoBeth Williams revealed that the production used real human skeletons when filming the swimming pool scene. Many of the people on the set were alarmed by this and led others to believe the "curse" on the film series was because of this use. Craig Reardon, a special effects artist who worked on the film, commented at the time that it was cheaper to purchase real skeletons than plastic ones as the plastic ones involved labor in making them. Williams was not afraid of the prop skeletons, but she was nervous working in water around so many electrically-powered lights. Producer Spielberg comforted her by being in the water during her scenes, claiming that if a light fell into the pool, they would both be killed. Poltergeist was awarded the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Home video release In 1997, MGM released Poltergeist on DVD in a snap case, and the only special feature was a trailer. In 1998, Poltergeist was re-released on DVD with the same cover and disc as the 1997 release, but in a keep case and with an eight page booklet. In 1999, it was released on DVD again by Warner Home Video in a snap case with the same disc, but a different cover. Warner Home Video tentatively scheduled releases for the 25th anniversary edition of the film on standard DVD, HD DVD and Blu-Ray[9] in Spain and the US on 9 October 2007. The re-release claimed to have digitally remastered picture and sound, and a two-part documentary: "They Are Here: The Real World of Poltergeists", which makes extensive use of clips from the film. The remastered DVD of the film was released as scheduled but both high-definition releases were eventually canceled. Warner rescheduled the high definition version of the film and eventually released it only on the Blu-Ray disc format on October 14, 2008. The Blu-ray disc release still had the "25th Anniversary Edition" banner even though this particular release was a full year behind the actual anniversary of the film. The Blu-ray disc release was packaged in collectible, non-standard Blu-Ray disc packaging Warner Home Video calls "digibook" which is supposed to resemble a coffee table book and contains pictures from the film on its pages. A six disc prototype, from the abandoned 20th Anniversary Special Edition, surfaced on eBay a few years ago and still crops up from time to time. Special features included The First Real Ghost Story and The Making of Poltergeist featurettes, screenplay, several photo galleries and Fangoria interviews, and the documentaries E! True Hollywood Story, Hollywood Ghost Stories and Terror in The Aisles. The 6th disc was a copy of the original motion picture soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. Reception Poltergeist was a box office success worldwide. The film grossed $76,606,280 in the United States, making it the highest-grossing horror film of 1982 and 8th overall for the year. Poltergeist was well received by critics and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1982. Douglas Brode compares the "family values" in Poltergeist to the Bush/Quayle 1992 reelection campaign. Andrew Sarris, in The Village Voice, wrote that when Carol Anne is lost the parents and the two older children "come together in blood-kin empathy to form a larger-than-life family that will reach down to the gates of hell to save its loved ones." In the L.A. Herald Examiner, Peter Rainer wrote: Buried within the plot of Poltergeist is a basic, splendid fairy tale scheme: the story of a little girl who puts her parents through the most outrageous tribulation to prove their love for her. Underlying most fairy tales is a common theme: the comforts of family. Virtually all fairy tales begin with a disrupting of the family order, and their conclusion is usually a return to order. Nearly 30 years after its release, the film is regarded by many critics as a classic of the horror genre and maintains an 86% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Poltergeist was selected by The New York Times as one of The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. The film also received recognition from the American Film Institute. The film ranked number 84 on AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills list, and the tag line "They're here" was named the 69th greatest movie quote on AFI's 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes. Reissues and sequels The film was reissued on October 29, 1982 to take advantage of the Halloween weekend. It was shown in theaters for one night only on October 4, 2007 to promote the new restored and remastered 25th anniversary DVD, released five days later. This event also included the documentary "They Are Here: The Real World of Poltergeists," which was created for the new DVD. The film spawned two sequels, Poltergeist II: The Other Side and Poltergeist III. The first retained the family but introduced a new motive for the Beast's behavior, tying him to an evil cult leader named Henry Kane, who led his religious sect to their doom in the 1820s. As the Beast, Kane went to extraordinary lengths to keep his "flock" under his control, even in death. The original motive of the cemetery's souls disturbed by the housing development was thereby altered; the cemetery was now explained to be built above a cave where Kane and his flock met their ends. Carol Anne is the sole original family member featured in Poltergeist III, which finds her living in an elaborate Chicago skyscraper owned and inhabited by her aunt and uncle. Kane follows her there and uses the building's ubiquitous decorative mirrors as a portal to the Earthly plane. In 2008, MGM announced that Vadim Perelman would helm a remake, to be written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White. As of 2010, this project is on hold due to the bankruptcy of MGM and its failure to find a new buyer. The Poltergeist curse The "Poltergeist curse" is the rumor of a supposed curse attached to the Poltergeist motion picture series and its stars. The rumor is superstition largely derived from the fact that four cast members died in the six years between the release of the first film and the release of the third, with one dying during production of the second film, and a fifth dying years later in 2010. Two of them died at young ages, 12 and 22. It is not clear that these particular films are atypical in the number or nature of the deaths of their actors. Out of the four supposed victims, one was murdered by an ex boyfriend and at least two others died as a result of serious health problems which predated their becoming attached to the film series. No one else connected to the film is known to have died prematurely. The actors who are supposed victims of the curse include: * Dominique Dunne, who played the oldest sibling Dana in the first movie, died on November 4, 1982 at age 22 after being strangled by her jealous boyfriend. The boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison, but was paroled after serving three and a half years. * Julian Beck, 60-year-old actor who played Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side, died on September 14, 1985 of stomach cancer diagnosed before he had accepted the role. * Will Sampson, 53 years old, who played Taylor the Medicine Man in Poltergeist II, died as a result of post-operative kidney failure and pre-operative malnutrition problems on June 3, 1987. * Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne in all three Poltergeist movies, died on February 1, 1988 at the age of 12 after what doctors initially described as an acute form of influenza but later changed to septic shock after bacterial toxins invaded her bloodstream. At the time, she had suffered acute bowel obstruction, initially diagnosed as Crohn's disease, which may have been the cause of death. The Poltergeist series is considered by some to be the most famous of a handful of movies and television series said to have been cursed. Cultural impact Poltergeist has been referenced in several films, television shows and music videos. In "Petergeist", the tree is based on the one that captures Robbie. * An episode of Family Guy called "Petergeist" parodied the events in Poltergeist. Peter builds a multiplex in his backyard and discovers an Indian burial ground. When he takes an Indian chief’s skull, a poltergeist invades the Griffins’ home. The episode also used some of the same musical cues heard in the film, and recreates several of its scenes, including baby Stewie saying, "They're here", the chairs stacked on the kitchen table, the portal in the closet, a hallucinating Peter ripping his face off to reveal that of Hank Hill from King of the Hill, the house imploding, and Stewie being able to communicate through the TV. However, the clown is replaced with Ronald McDonald, and after Lois leaves the television outside, Peter pushes the television back and leaves Meg outside. * In the American Dad! episode "The American Dad After School Special", Francine discovers a pool filled with food, just like Diane's discovery of the pool hole filled with coffins and dead bodies. Hayley yells, "What's happening?!", just like Dana did in Poltergeist. * At the end of the first Simpsons Treehouse of Horror installment, "Bad Dream House", the house in which the Simpsons move turns out to be haunted. After repeated failed attempts to scare them away, it implodes in a way similar to that of the house at the end of Poltergeist, rather than spend life with the Simpson family. In Treehouse of Horror VI's Homer³, Homer enters the third dimension and communicates with his family in a reverberating voice similar to that of Carol Anne's when she speaks through the television. In an attempt to rescue Homer, Bart enters the dimension with a rope tied around him, similar to the manner Carol Anne is retrieved by Diane. * South Park has referenced the film several times. In "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", Cartman makes Dr. Nelson say "Carol Anne - don't go into the light" during the fight with him. In the episode "Spookyfish", a pet store built over unmoved bodies in a former cemetery causes a vortex behind a closed door akin to the rift in Carol Anne's bedroom closet. In the episode "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", Chef's mother exorcises Kenny's soul out of Cartman then states, "This child is clean," a parody of Tangina's line, "This house is clean" in the film. The episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes", the boys are told to break a mirror to bring down the Wall-Mart store, just as Tangina told Carol Anne to do to get away from Kane in Poltergeist III. Once Stan and Kyle break the mirror, the store implodes and disappears into another dimension just as the Freeling house does at the end of Poltergeist. A doctor resembling Tangina Barrons appears when Ike is possessed by Michael Jackson in the episode "Dead Celebrities". * In The X-Files episode "Shadows", Mulder and Scully were discussing what had taken over their car and caused them to crash. Mulder believes that a young woman they had just visited had caused the crash via psychokinetic powers. When Scully questions Mulder's beliefs, Mulder also says it could be a poltergeist. Scully then mocks him by saying, "They're here!" Mulder replies, "Yes, they just might be." * In the Wonderfalls episode "Lying Pig", Jaye's brother declares "This trailer is clean, kind of" after helping her remove all of the talking objects à la Zelda Rubinstein. In the Chilly Beach episode "Polargeist", a direct spoof of the first film, Dale discovers ghosts in his house and is abducted into the spirit world through his beer fridge. * In the music video for the Spice Girls song "Too Much" Emma Bunton recreates a scene from the movie. * In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Jim Carrey having just diagnosed that Roger Podactor was murdered instead of having committed suicide remarks: "I have exorcised the demons!" He also later adds "This house is clean." Both are quotes from Poltergeist. * In the April 19, 2007 episode of Supernatural, Dean explains to his brother the curse of the set of Poltergeist. Also in a first season episode called Home, Dean makes a reference to Missouri Mosley cleaning out their old house of a poltergeist by commenting on her doing her "whole Zelda Rubinstein thing," a reference to the actress who portrayed Tangina Barrons in all three Poltergeist films. In the fifth season episode "Dark Side of the Moon", Castiel tells Sam and Dean "Don't go into the light" and Dean then refers to Castiel as Carol Anne." * In an episode of Roseanne, Roseanne's sister Jackie cleans the house thoroughly to get it ready for the homecoming of Darlene's baby. After cleaning, she says, "This house is clean" in a voice that imitates Tangina's when she says the line in the movie. * Scary Movie 2 parodies the clown scene by having Ray (Shawn Wayans) sexually assault him under the bed. It also parodies the scene with the tree that grabs Robbie, but replaces the tree with a giant cannabis plant. * Comedian and actor Eddie Murphy references the film in his stand-up HBO special, Delirious. * "Virtualodeon", an episode of The Garfield Show, includes references to Poltergeist, including the presence of an alien-hunting female character who says the famous line from the film, and the emergence of alien creatures out of Jon's television. * Fashion designer Marc Jacobs has a tattoo of the film's poster on his upper back.

15. (tie) Evil Dead II (1987) (7 of 20 lists - 87 points - highest rank #2 sti3) Evil Dead II (also known as Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn) is a 1987 American cult comedy horror film and the second installment of the Evil Dead film trilogy. It was directed by Sam Raimi, written by Raimi and Scott Spiegel, produced by Rob Tapert and starring Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams. Ash discovers the Necronomicon and encounters spirits which possess his girlfriend and his hand in the process. By getting help from a professor and his daughter, Ash is able to draw in the evil force, but inadvertently get sent back to Medieval England. Raimi and Spiegel wrote the script during production of Crimewave. Filming took place in North Carolina and the film was released in the United States on March 13, 1987. The film was a box office success, and achieved $10.9 million at the box office. It also received critical acclaim. Observers praised Raimi for the direction and Campbell for his role in the film. Evil Dead II was eventually followed Army of Darkness, was released in 1993. Plot Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda take a romantic vacation to a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods (which is all just basically a recap of the first film to catch viewers up with the plot). While in the cabin, Ash plays a tape of an archeology professor (the cabin's previous inhabitant), reciting passages from the Necronomicon (or "Book of the Dead"), which he has discovered during an archaeological dig. The recorded incantation unleashes an evil force which kills and later possesses the body of Linda. Ash is then forced to sacrifice his girlfriend for his own safety. After he buries and dismembers his girlfriend, a spirit is seen on the hunt for Ash. It is here that the film picks up where its predecessor left off. Ash becomes briefly possessed by the demon, but when day breaks the spirit is gone, and Ash is back to normal. Ash finds little chance of safety, however, as the bridge leading to the cabin is destroyed. To make things worse, Ash is forced to sever his right hand, which has become possessed. While Ash is dealing with this force, the professor's daughter, Annie, and her research partner, Ed, return from the dig with more pages of the Necronomicon in tow, only to find the destroyed bridge. They enlist the help of Jake and Bobby Joe to guide them along an alternate trail to the cabin. The four of them find an embattled Ash, who is slowly being driven insane due to his encounter with the evil force. In a memorable scene, Ash hallucinates that inanimate objects are laughing insanely at him. At first, he is mistaken for a murderer by the four people because he shoots at them through the door. Ed is possessed and is soon killed by Ash. Bobby Joe tries to escape, but is attacked by the trees. Ash is possessed once again and throws Jake against a tree, knocking him unconscious. Annie retreats to the cabin and accidentally stabs Jake and drags him to the cellar door where he is killed by Henrietta, Annie's mother who was possessed by the Evil Force and buried by Professor Knowby, who didn't have the heart to dismember his wife and thus let her rest in peace. Ash tries to kill Annie, but returns to normal when he finds Linda's necklace. Ash, with Annie's help, modifies the chainsaw and attaches it to where his right hand had been. They eventually find the pages of the Necronomicon and Annie chants an incantation that sends the evil force back to where it came from. The incantation opens up a whirling temporal portal which not only draws in the evil force, but nearby trees, the Oldsmobile, and Ash himself. Ash's possessed hand stabs Annie with the Kandarian dagger. Ash and his 1973 Oldsmobile land in what appears to be the Crusader-held middle-east in the year 1300 A.D. He is then confronted by a group of knights who initially mistake him for a deadite, but they are quickly distracted when a real one actually shows up. Ash blasts the harpy-like deadite with his shotgun and is hailed as a hero who has come to save the realm, at which point he breaks down and screams into the credits. Cast * Bruce Campbell as Ash J. Williams * Sarah Berry as Annie * Danny Hicks as Jake * Kassie Wesley as Bobby Jo * Ted Raimi as Possessed Henrietta * Denise Bixler as Linda * Richard Domeier as Ed * John Peaks as Professor Knowby * Lou Hancock as Henrietta * William Preston Robertson as Voice Production The concept of a sequel to The Evil Dead was discussed during the location shooting on the first film. Sam Raimi wanted to toss his hero, Ash, through a time portal, back into the Middle Ages. That notion eventually led to the third installment, Army of Darkness. After the release of Evil Dead, Raimi moved on to Crimewave, a cross between a crime film and a comedy produced by Raimi and Joel and Ethan Coen. Irvin Shapiro, a publicist who was primarily responsible for the mainstream release of The Evil Dead, suggested that they next work on an Evil Dead sequel. Raimi scoffed at the idea, expecting Crimewave to be a hit, but Shapiro put out ads announcing the sequel regardless. After Crimewave was released to little audience or critical acclaim, Raimi and Tapert, knowing that another flop would further stall their already lagging careers, took Shapiro up on his offer. Around the same time, they met Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis, the owner of production and distribution company DEG. He had asked Raimi if he would direct a theatrical adaptation of the Stephen King (written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) novel Thinner. Raimi turned down the offer, but De Laurentiis continued to be interested in the young filmmaker. The Thinner adaptation was part of a deal between De Laurentiis and King to produce several adaptations of King's successful horror fiction. At the time, King was directing the first such adaptation, Maximum Overdrive, based on his short story "Trucks". He had dinner with a crew member who had been interviewed about the Evil Dead sequel, and told King that the film was having trouble attracting funding. Upon hearing this, King, who had written a glowing review of the first film that helped it become an audience favorite at Cannes, called De Laurentiis and asked him to fund the film. Though initially skeptical, De Laurentiis agreed after being presented with the extremely high Italian grosses for the first film. Although Raimi and Tapert had desired $4 million for the production, they were allotted only $3.6 million. As such, the planned medieval storyline had to be scrapped. Script Though they had only recently received the funding necessary to produce the film, the script had been written for some time, having been composed largely during the production of Crimewave. Raimi contacted his old friend Scott Spiegel, who had collaborated with Campbell and others on the Super-8 films they had produced during their childhood in Michigan. Most of these films had been comedies, and Spiegel felt that Evil Dead II should be less straight horror than the first. Initially, the opening sequence included all five characters from the original film, but, in an effort to save time and money, all but Ash and Linda were cut from the final draft. Spiegel and Raimi wrote most of the film in their house in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California, where they were living with the aforementioned Coen brothers, as well as actors Frances McDormand, Kathy Bates and Holly Hunter (Hunter was the primary inspiration for the Bobby Jo character). Due both to the distractions of their house guests and the films they were involved with, Crimewave and Josh Becker's Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except, the script took an inordinately long time to finish. Among the many inspirations for the film include The Three Stooges and other slapstick comedy films; Ash's fights with his disembodied hand come from a film made by Spiegel as a teenager, entitled Attack of the Helping Hand, which was itself inspired by television commercials advertising Hamburger Helper. The "laughing room" scene, where all the objects in the room seemingly come to life and begin to cackle maniacally along with Ash, came about after Spiegel jokingly used a gooseneck lamp to visually demonstrate a Popeye-esque laugh. Scott Spiegel's humorous influence can be seen throughout the film, perhaps most prominently in certain visual jokes; for instance, when Ash traps his rogue hand under a pile of books, on top is A Farewell to Arms (adding to the joke, the author is listed as "Stubby Kaye"). Filming With the script completed, and a production company secured, filming could begin. The production commenced in Wadesboro, North Carolina, not far from De Laurentiis' offices in Wilmington. De Laurentiis had wanted them to film in his elaborate Wilmington studio, but the production team felt uneasy being so close to the producer, so they moved to Wadesboro, approximately three hours away. Steven Spielberg had previously filmed The Color Purple in Wadesboro, and the large white farmhouse used as an exterior location in that film became the production office for Evil Dead II. Most of the film was shot in the woods near that farmhouse, or J.R. Faison Junior High School, which is where the interior cabin set was located. The film's production was not nearly as chaotic or strange as the production of the original, largely because of Raimi, Tapert and Campbell's additional film making experience. However, there are nevertheless numerous stories about the strange happenings on the set. For instance, the rat seen in the cellar was nicknamed "Señor Cojones" by the crew ("cojones" is Spanish slang for "testicles"). Even so, there were hardships, mostly involving Ted Raimi's costume. Ted, director Sam's younger brother, had been involved in the first film briefly, acting as a fake Shemp, but in Evil Dead II he gets the larger role of the historian's demon-possessed wife, Henrietta. Raimi was forced to wear a full-body, latex costume, crouch in a small hole in the floor acting as a "cellar", or on one day, both. Raimi became extremely overheated, to the point that his costume was literally filled with liters of sweat; special effects artist Gregory Nicotero describes pouring the fluid into several Dixie cups so as to get it out of the costume. The sweat is also visible on-screen, dripping out of the costume's ear, in the scene where Henrietta spins around over Annie's head. The crew also sneaked various in-jokes into the film itself, such as the clawed glove of Freddy Krueger, the primary antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of slasher films, which hangs in the cabin's basement and toolshed. This was, at least partially, a reference to a scene in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street where the character Nancy Thompson (portrayed by Heather Langenkamp), watches the original Evil Dead on a television set in her room. In turn, that scene was a reference to the torn The Hills Have Eyes poster seen in the original Evil Dead film, which was itself a reference to a torn Jaws poster in The Hills Have Eyes. At the film's wrap party, the crew held a talent contest, where Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell sang The Byrds' "Eight Miles High", with Nicotero on guitar. Reception Evil Dead II received very positive reviews from critics and audience members; it holds a 98% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. On a similar website Metacritic, it holds a score of 69/100 (generally favorable) with a user rating of 9.2/10. Empire magazine praised the film saying "the gaudily gory, virtuoso, hyper-kinetic horror sequel/remake uses every trick in the cinematic book" and confirms that "Bruce Campbell and Raimi are gods" and Caryn James of The New York Times called it "genuine, if bizarre, proof of Sam Raimi's talent and developing skill." Entertainment Weekly ranked the film #19 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films." Sight and Sound ranked it #34 on their 50 Funniest Films of All Time list. In 2008, Empire magazine included Evil Dead II on their list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, ranked #49.

15. (tie) The Descent (2005) (6 of 20 lists - 87 points - highest rank #1 Buehrle>Wood) The Descent is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall. The film follows six women who become trapped in an unmapped cave system in the Appalachian Mountains of North America, where they are hunted by carnivorous humanoid creatures who have evolved and adapted to life underground. Filming took place in the United Kingdom; exterior scenes were filmed at Ashridge Park, in Buckinghamshire, and interior scenes were filmed in sets built at Pinewood Studios near London. The cave featured in the film was built at Pinewood because filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave. The Descent commercially opened in the United Kingdom on 8 July 2005 in the United States on 4 August 2006 and the film was premiered in Sundance Film Festival 2006. Plot Juno (Natalie Mendoza), Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and Beth (Alex Reid) are whitewater rafting in Scotland. Sarah's husband Paul (Oliver Milburn) and their daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) wave and cheer from the bank. On the drive back to their hotel, Paul is distracted, causing a head-on collision. Paul and Jessica are killed instantly, but Sarah survives. One year later, Juno, Sarah, Beth, Sam (MyAnna Buring) and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) are reunited at a rustic cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, USA. Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), Juno's new friend, is introduced. As they reminisce over an old photo of Juno, Sarah, and Beth, Sarah says "Love each day", explaining that it was a saying of her late husband's. The next morning the group goes caving. When the group breaks for lunch in a huge gallery, Juno tearfully apologizes to Sarah for not being around for her after the accident, but Sarah is distant. As the group moves through the next passage it collapses behind them, with Sarah barely making it through. After a heated discussion, Juno admits she has led them into an unknown cave system, instead of the fully explored cave system they had originally planned for. The only people who were told about their expedition think they are at the other cave system, making rescue impossible. They are trapped with no way out. Privately, Juno tells Sarah that she led them into the unknown cave hoping to restore their relationship, but Sarah rebuffs her. The group discovers both a cave painting and climbing equipment from a previous visitor, suggesting a second exit exists. Juno keeps the latter secret, allowing for the group to remain hopeful. Holly falls down a hole and breaks her leg. Sam sets Holly's fracture with a splint and they carry her along. As the others help Holly, Sarah wanders off and observes a pale, humanoid creature drinking at a pool. It scampers off into the darkness when Sarah gasps. The others think Sarah imagined it, but Sarah insists that she saw someone. Soon after, they are attacked by one of the creatures, referred to as "crawlers". The group scatter, and the crawler rips Holly's throat. Sarah trips and falls and passes out. Seeing Holly is still alive, Juno tries to defend her from the crawlers, but in the confusion, she whirls around, only to stab Beth through the neck with her pickaxe. Beth grabs Juno's pendant as she drops to the ground, but Juno stumbles away in shock as Beth reaches out to her. Juno eventually locates Sam and Rebecca and rescues them from a crawler. Juno tells them she may have found a way out, but will not leave without Sarah. The others reluctantly agree to help her search. Meanwhile, Sarah awakens and encounters the mortally wounded Beth, who tells Sarah that Juno wounded her and left her. Sarah does not believe her until Beth gives her Juno's pendant, the one inscribed with "Love each day". Beth reveals that Sarah's husband was having an affair with Juno. Beth, in extreme pain, asks Sarah to euthanize her, and Sarah reluctantly complies. Sarah soon encounters and kills a young crawler, a female crawler, and a male crawler in quick succession. Elsewhere, Juno, Sam and Rebecca are pursued by a large group of crawlers. Crawlers kill Sam and Rebecca, and Juno leaps into a chasm to escape. Juno climbs out of the chasm and is helped onto a ledge by Sarah, who asks her if she saw Beth die. Juno nods. The two cautiously explore the caves until they encounter a group of crawlers and defeat them. Sarah then faces Juno, and reveals that she has Juno's pendant, revealing that she knows that she wounded Beth. Sarah cripples Juno with a pickaxe. Juno pulls the pickaxe from her leg and turns to face a large group of crawlers while Sarah leaves her behind. She hears Juno's screams, which abruptly fall silent. Sarah falls down a hole and is knocked unconscious. She awakens, scrambles up a huge pile of bones towards daylight, squeezes through a narrow opening onto the surface, runs to her vehicle and speeds off. She pulls over to vomit and sees Juno sitting next to her, her face streaked with blood. Sarah screams and awakens to find herself still in the cavern. She "sees" her long-dead, smiling daughter close by and a birthday cake between them. The field of view widens to reveal that Sarah is hallucinating and she is actually staring at a torch. As the camera pans away, it becomes evident that Sarah is farther underground than what is possible for escape and the calls of the crawlers grow louder, but Sarah is oblivious. Production When Neil Marshall's 2002 film Dog Soldiers was a moderate success, the director received numerous requests to direct other horror films. The director was initially wary of being typecast as a horror film director, though he eventually agreed to make The Descent, emphasizing, "They are very different films." Marshall decided to cast only women in the main roles, going against the original plan for a gender diverse cast. Casting Filmmakers originally planned for the cast to be both male and female, but Neil Marshall's business partner realized that horror films almost never have all-female casts. Defying convention, Marshall cast all women into the role, and to avoid making them clichéd, he solicited basic advice from his female friends. He explained the difference, "The women discuss how they feel about the situation, which the soldiers in Dog Soldiers would never have done." He also gave the characters different accents to enable the audience to tell the difference between the women and to establish a more "cosmopolitan feel" than the British marketing of Dog Soldiers. The cast included Shauna Macdonald as Sarah, Natalie Mendoza as Juno, Alex Reid as Beth, Saskia Mulder as Rebecca, MyAnna Buring as Sam, Nora-Jane Noone as Holly, Oliver Milburn as Paul, and Molly Kayll as Jessica. Craig Conway portrayed one of the film's crawlers, Scar. Filming While The Descent was set in North America, the film was shot entirely in the United Kingdom. Exterior scenes were filmed in Scotland, and interior scenes were filmed in sets built at Pinewood Studios near London. The cave was built at Pinewood because filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave. Set pieces were reused with care, and filmmakers sought to limit lighting to the sources that the characters bring with them into the cave, such as the helmet lights. Marshall cited the films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Thing, and Deliverance as influences in establishing tension in The Descent. The director elaborated, "We really wanted to ramp up the tension slowly, unlike all the American horror films you see now. They take it up to 11 in the first few minutes and then simply can't keep it up. We wanted to show all these terrible things in the cave: dark, drowning, claustrophobia. Then, when it couldn't get any worse, make it worse." Simon Bowles designed the maze of caves for The Descent. Reviews credited Bowles: "cave sets by production designer Simon Bowles look just like the real thing" and "Bowles’ beautifully designed cave sets conjure a world of subterranean darkness." Production of The Descent was in competition with an American film of a similar premise, The Cave. The Descent was originally scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom by November 2005 or February 2006, but The Cave began filming six months before its competitor. Filmmakers of The Descent decided to release the film before The Cave, so they fast-tracked production to be completed by the end of February 2005. Editing The Descent was released in North America with approximately a minute cut from the end. In the American cut, Sarah escapes from the cave and sees Juno, but the film does not cut back to the cave. In the 4 August 2006 issue of Entertainment Weekly, it was stated that the ending was trimmed because American viewers did not like its "uber-hopeless finale". Lionsgate marketing chief Tim Palen said, "It's a visceral ride, and by the time you get to the ending you're drained. [Director Neil] Marshall had a number of endings in mind when he shot the film, so he was open [to making a switch]." Marshall compared the change to the ending of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, saying, "Just because she gets away, does that make it a happy ending?" The North American Unrated DVD includes the original ending. Recently, the film has been airing on Canada's The Movie Network, which has the original ending. In contrast the American Syfy Channel as recently as August 27, 2010 broadcast the recut version of Sarah escaping, with Juno's spectre appearing beside her in the SUV. Creature design In the film, the women encounter underground creatures referred to as crawlers by the production crew. Marshall described the crawlers as cavemen who have stayed underground. The director explained, "They've evolved in this environment over thousands of years. They've adapted perfectly to thrive in the cave. They've lost their eyesight, they have acute hearing and smell and function perfectly in the pitch black. They're expert climbers, so they can go up any rock face and that is their world." Filmmakers kept the crawler design hidden from the actresses until they were revealed in the scenes in which the characters encountered the creatures, to allow for natural tension. Conception Director Neil Marshall first chose to have a dark cave as the setting for his horror film The Descent then decided to add the element of the crawlers, describing them as "something that could get the women, something human, but not quite". The crawlers were depicted as cavemen who never left the caves and evolved in the dark. The director included mothers and children in the colony of creatures, defining his vision, "It is a colony and I thought that was far more believable than making them the classic monsters. If they had been all male, it would have made no sense, so I wanted to create a more realistic context for them. I wanted to have this very feral, very primal species living underground, but I wanted to make them human. I didn't want to make them aliens because humans are the scariest things." The crawlers were designed by Paul Hyett, a makeup and prosthetics creator. Production designer Simon Bowles said that the crawler design had started out as "wide-eyed and more creature-like", but the design shifted toward a more human appearance. Crawlers originally had pure white skin, but the look was adjusted to seem grubbier. The skin was originally phosphorescent in appearance, but the effect was too bright and reflective in the darkened set, so the adjustment was made for them to blend in shadows. The director barred the film's all-female cast from seeing the actors in full crawler make-up until their first appearance on screen. Actress Natalie Mendoza said of the effect, "When the moment came, I nearly wet my pants! I was running around afterwards, laughing in this hysterical way and trying to hide the fact that I was pretty freaked out. Even after that scene, we never really felt comfortable with them." The crawlers reappear in The Descent Part 2, a sequel by Jon Harris with the first film's director Neil Marshall as executive producer. For the sequel, Hyett improved the camouflaging ability of the crawlers' skin tones to deliver better scares. According to Hyett, "Jon wanted them more viciously feral, inbred, scarred and deformed, with rows of sharklike teeth for ripping flesh." A charnel house was designed for the crawlers as well as a set that the crew called the "Crawler Crapper". Description Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald described the crawlers as "blind, snarling cave-dwellers, looking much like Gollum's bigger kin". Douglas Tseng of The Straits Times also noted that the crawlers looked similar to Gollum, being a cross between the creature and the vampiric Reapers from Blade II. David Germain of the Associated Press noted of the crawlers, "[They] have evolved to suit their environment—eyes blind because of the darkness in which they dwell, skin slimy and gray, ears batlike to channel their super-hearing." The crawlers are sexually dimorphic, with males being completely bald, whilst females sport thick dark hair on their heads. They are nocturnal hunters which surface from their caves to hunt for prey and bring the spoils of their hunts to their caverns. Marketing The skull of women motif used in some advertising material is based on Philippe Halsman's In Voluptas Mors photograph. The film's marketing campaign in the United Kingdom was disrupted by the London bombings in July 2005. Advertisements on London's public transport system (including the bus that had exploded) had included posters that carried the quote, "Outright terror... bold and brilliant," and depicted a terrified woman screaming in a tunnel. The film's theatrical distributor in the UK, Pathé, recalled the posters from their placement in the London Underground and reworked the campaign to exclude the word "terror" from advertised reviews of The Descent. Pathé also distributed the new versions to TV and radio stations. The distributor's marketing chief, Anna Butler, said of the new approach, "We changed tack to concentrate on the women involved all standing together and fighting back. That seemed to chime with the prevailing mood of defiance that set in the weekend after the bombs." An example of the poster can be seen here. Neil Marshall stated in a review "Shauna was pretty upset about it; it was on newspapers all across the county" and cites the attacks as harming the film's box office, as "people were still trapped underground in reality, so no one really wanted to go see a film about people trapped underground..." Many commentators, including writers for Variety and The Times, remarked on the rather unfortunate coincidence. Due to these events there was some initial concern that the film's release might have been delayed out of sensitivity for the tragedy but Pathé ultimately chose to release the film on schedule with a slightly retooled advertising campaign; However, the US promotional campaign managed by Lionsgate Films was significantly different from the original European version. Reception “ ...When it was released in July [2005], this claustrophobic story of six women who stumble across something nasty on a caving trip got arguably the best reviews of any Brit pic this year. ” —Variety columnist Adam Dawtrey The Descent premiered at the Scottish horror film festival Dead by Dawn on 6 July 2005. The film commercially opened on 329 screens in the UK and received limited releases in other European countries, eventually earning more than £6 million in box office receipts. The London bombings in the same month was reported to have affected the box office performance of The Descent. Based on 164 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, The Descent received an 84% overall approval rating; 7 critics in Rotten Tomatoes' "Cream of the Crop", which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio program, receiving a 73% approval rating. By comparison, Metacritic calculated an average score of 71 out of 100 from the 30 reviews it collected. On its debut weekend in the US, The Descent opened with a three-day gross of $8.8 million, and finished with $26,005,908. Total worldwide box office receipts are $57,051,053. Roger Ebert's editor, Jim Emerson, reviewed the film for Ebert's column whilst Ebert was on leave due to surgery, giving it four out of four stars. He wrote, "This is the fresh, exciting summer movie I've been wanting for months. Or for years, it seems." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times described The Descent as "one of the better horror entertainments of the last few years", calling it "indisputably and pleasurably nerve-jangling". Dargis applauded the claustrophobic atmosphere of the film, though she perceived sexual overtones in the all-female cast with their labored breathing and sweaty clothing. Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald thought that the film devolved into a guessing game of who would survive, though he praised Marshall's "nightmare imagery" for generating scares that work better than other horror films. Rodriguez also noted the attempt to add dimension to the female characters but felt that the actresses were unable to perform. Top-ten lists, 2006: * 7th - Sight & Sound * 10th — Nathan Lee, Village Voice * 10th — Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post * 1st - Bravo's 13 Even Scarier Movie Moments Bloody Disgusting ranked the film third in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "One of the scariest films of this or any decade... Ultimately, The Descent is the purest kind of horror film – ruthless, unforgiving, showing no mercy." Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer thought a weakness of The Descent was the failure of the writer to explain the evolution of the creature, though he said, "Their clicking and howling, used for echolocation and communication, makes them more alien; this otherness gives humans permission to mutilate them without seeming too disgusting to be sympathetic." Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune thought that the crawlers should have been left out of the film, believing, "Watching those gray, slithering beings chasing and biting the women makes it hard to maintain any suspension of disbelief."

American Werewolf in London is one of the dumbest horror movies that I've ever seen.

Four more posted!

16. The Sixth Sense (1999) (4 of 20 lists - 84 points - highest rank #1 Cali, pittshoganerkoff) The Sixth Sense is a 1999 American psychological horror film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film tells the story of Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a troubled, isolated boy who is able to see and talk to the dead, and an equally troubled child psychologist (Bruce Willis) who tries to help him. The film established Shyamalan as a writer and director, and introduced the cinema public to his signatures, most notably his affinity for twist endings. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Plot Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a prominent child psychologist, returns home one night with his wife, Anna Crowe (Olivia Williams), from an event in which he was honored for his work. He tells her that everything in the world is second to his job including her. The two discover they are not alone; a young man (Donnie Wahlberg) appears brandishing a gun. He says that he doesn't want to be afraid anymore and accuses Crowe of failing him. Crowe recognizes him as Vincent Grey, a former patient whom he treated as a child for hallucinations. Grey shoots Crowe in the lower abdomen, and seconds later turns the gun on himself. The next fall, Crowe begins working with another boy, nine year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), who has a condition similar to Vincent's. Crowe becomes dedicated to this patient, though he is haunted by doubts over his ability to help him after his failure with Vincent. Meanwhile, his relationship with his wife begins to fall apart due to his focus on work. Once Crowe earns his trust, Cole eventually confides in him that he "sees dead people that walk around like regular people." Though Crowe at first thinks Cole is delusional, he eventually comes to believe that Cole is telling the truth and that Vincent may have had the same ability. He suggests to Cole that he try to find a purpose for his gift by communicating with the ghosts, perhaps to aid them in their unfinished business on Earth. Cole at first does not want to, because the ghosts terrify him, but he soon decides to try it. One is an overworked wife abused by her husband who slit her wrists; another that tries to hurt Cole is only heard as a voice who starts calmly pleading to Cole to let him out of the dark cupboard because he's suffocating, then yells at Cole that he didn't steal "the Master's horse" and threatens to attack Cole if he doesn't obey. The third ghost appears very briefly; a boy a bit older than Cole asks him to come into the room, to find the boy's father's gun. The boy turns around to show that he has a large gunshot exit wound on the back of his head. Cole finally talks to one of the ghosts, a very sick girl who appears in his bedroom. He finds out where the girl, Kyra Collins (Mischa Barton), lived and goes to her house during her funeral reception. Kyra died after a prolonged illness and funeral guests note that Kyra's younger sister is starting to get sick, too. Kyra's ghost appears and gives Cole a box, which is opened to reveal a videotape. When Cole gives it to Kyra's father, the videotape shows Kyra's babysitter putting floor cleaner fluid in Kyra's food while she cared for Kyra during her illness. The continual illness may point to a slow poisoning in a case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Cole confesses his secret to his mother, Lynn (Toni Collette). Although his mother at first does not believe him, Cole soon tells Lynn that her own mother once went to see her perform in a dance recital one night when she was a child, and that Lynn was not aware of this because her mother stayed in the back of the audience where she could not be seen. He also tells her the answer to a question she asked when alone at her mother's grave. Lynn tearfully accepts this as the truth. Cole also counsels Crowe on his marriage, suggesting he try talking to his wife while she is asleep. Crowe returns to his home, where he finds his wife asleep on the couch with the couple's wedding video on in the background, not for the first time. As she sleeps, Anna's hand releases Malcolm's wedding ring (which he suddenly discovers he has not been wearing), revealing the twist ending of the film: Crowe himself was actually killed by Vincent and was unknowingly dead the entire time he was working with Cole. Due to Cole's efforts, Crowe's unfinished business—rectifying his failure to understand Vincent—is finally complete. Recalling Cole's advice, Crowe speaks to his sleeping wife and fulfills the second reason he returned, saying she was "never second," and that he loves her. Releasing her to move on with her own life, he is free to leave behind the world of the living. Cast * Bruce Willis as Dr. Malcolm Crowe * Haley Joel Osment as Cole Sear * Toni Collette as Lynn Sear * Olivia Williams as Anna Crowe * Donnie Wahlberg as Vincent Grey * Glenn Fitzgerald as Sean * Mischa Barton as Kyra Collins * Trevor Morgan as Tommy Tammisimo * M. Night Shyamalan as Dr. Hill Production According to the book DisneyWar, Disney's David Vogel read Shyamalan's speculative script and instantly loved it. Without obtaining approval from his boss, Vogel bought the rights to the script, despite the high price of US$2 million and the stipulation that Shyamalan could direct the film. Disney later stripped Vogel of the title of President of Walt Disney Pictures, and Vogel left the company. Disney, apparently in a show of little confidence in the film, sold the distribution rights to Spyglass Entertainment, and kept only a 12.5% distribution fee for itself. In the commentary from the film Superbad, Michael Cera said that he made his first film audition for the role of Cole Sear. Donnie Wahlberg lost 43 pounds to achieve his character's emaciated look. The color red is intentionally absent from most of the film, but is used prominently in a few isolated shots for "anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world" and "to connote really explosively emotional moments and situations". Examples include the door of the church where Cole seeks sanctuary; the color of the balloon, carpet, and Cole's sweater at the birthday party; the tent in which he first encounters Kyra; the numbers on Crowe's tape player; the doorknob on the locked closet door Malcolm can't open; Kyra's mother's dress at the wake; and the shawl wrapped around the sleeping Anna when Malcolm realizes he is a ghost. All of the clothes Malcolm wears during the film are items he wore or touched the evening before his death, which included his overcoat, his blue sweater and the different layers of his suit. Though the filmmakers were careful about clues of Malcolm's true state, the camera zooms slowly towards his face when Cole says "I see dead people." In a special feature the filmmakers mention they initially feared this shot would be a giveaway, but decided to leave it in. Reception The film received very positive reviews from critics, with an 85% 'Certified Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and 64 rating on Metacritic. The film had a production budget of approximately $40 million (plus $25 million for prints and advertising). It grossed $26.6 million in its opening weekend and spent five weeks as the #1 film at the U.S. box office. It earned $293,506,292 in the United States and a worldwide gross of $672,806,292, ranking it 35th on the list of box-office money earners in the U.S. as of April 2010. In the United Kingdom, it was given at first a limited release at 9 screens, and entered at #8 before climbing up to #1 the following week with 430 theatres playing the film. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (M. Night Shyamalan), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Haley Joel Osment), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Toni Collette), and Best Editing (Andrew Mondshein). By vote of the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The Sixth Sense was awarded the Nebula Award for Best Script in 1999. The film was #71 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, for the scene where Cole encounters a female ghost in his tent. It was also recently named the 89th Best Film of all time by the American Film Institute in 2007. The line "I see dead people" from the film became a popular catchphrase after its release, reaching #44 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes. The Sixth Sense also captured 60th place on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills, honoring America's most "heart pounding movies". It also appears on AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition), a list of America's 100 greatest films of all time. Accolades * Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Haley Joel Osment, nominee)[11] * Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Toni Collette, nominee) * Academy Awards for Best Director (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * Academy Awards for Best Editing (Andrew Mondshein, nominee) * Academy Awards for Best Picture (Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Barry Mendel, nominee) * Academy Awards for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards for Top Box Office Films (James Newton Howard, winner) * Saturn Award for Best Horror Film (winner) * Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor/Actress (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Saturn Award for Best Actor (Bruce Willis, nominee) * Saturn Award for Best Writer (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * Awards of the Japanese Academy for Best Foreign Film (winner) * BAFTA Awards for Best Editing (Andrew Mondshein, nominee) * BAFTA Awards for Best Film (Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Barry Mendel, nominee) * BAFTA Awards for Best Screenplay - Original (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * BAFTA Awards for David Lean Award for Direction (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for Favorite Actor - Newcomer (Internet Only) (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for Favorite Actor - Suspense (Bruce Willis, winner) * Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for Favorite Supporting Actress - Suspense (Toni Collette, winner) * Amanda Awards for Best Foreign Feature Film (Årets utenlandske kinofilm) (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * American Cinema Editors for Best Edited Feature Film - Dramatic (Andrew Mondshein, nominee) * Australian Film Institute for Best Foreign Film Award (Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Barry Mendel, nominee) * American Society of Cinematographers for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases (Tak Fujimoto, nominee) * Bram Stoker Awards for Screenplay (M. Night Shyamalan, winner) * Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards for Best Child Performance (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards for Best Picture (nominee) * Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Screenplay (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment, nominee) * Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Most Promising Actor (Haley Joel Osment, nominee) * Teen Choice Awards for Film - Choice Breakout Performance (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Teen Choice Awards for Film - Choice Drama (winner) * Teen Choice Awards for Film - Choice Sleazebag (Trevor Morgan, nominee) * Writers Guild of America for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Haley Joel Osment, nominee) * Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for Best Script (M. Night Shyamalan, winner) * People's Choice Awards for Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture (winner) * People's Choice Awards for Favorite Motion Picture (winner) * Young Artist Awards for Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * YoungStar Awards for Best Young Actor/Performance in a Motion Picture Drama (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Satellite Awards for Best Film Editing (Andrew Mondshein, winner) * Satellite Awards for Best Screenplay, Original (M. Night Shyamalan, winner) * Satellite Awards for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, Drama (Toni Collette, nominee) * Satellite Awards for Best Sound (Allan Byer, Michael Kirchberger , nominee) * Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best Debut (Haley Joel Osment, nominee) * Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best Screenplay, Original (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * MTV Movie Awards for Breakthrough Male Performance (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * MTV Movie Awards for Best Male Performance (Bruce Willis, nominee) * MTV Movie Awards for Best Movie (nominee) * MTV Movie Awards for Best On-Screen Duo (Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis, nominee) * Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * International Horror Guild for Best Movie (nominee) * Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation (nominee) * Golden Screen for (winner) * Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards for Most Promising Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards for Youth in Film (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards for Best Screenplay, Original (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * Empire Awards for Best Director (M. Night Shyamalan, winner) * Florida Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Haley Joel Osment, nominee) * Golden Globes for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture (M. Night Shyamalan, nominee) * Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment, winner) * Cinema Audio Society for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature Film (Reilly Steele, Michael Kirchberger, Allan Byer, nominee) * Cannes Film Festival for DVD Design Award (winner)

17. The Birds (1963) (4 of 20 lists - 80 points - highest rank #1 Rex Kickass) The Birds is a 1963 suspense horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 novella The Birds by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few days. The screenplay was written by Evan Hunter. Synopsis Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is a young wealthy socialite who meets a lawyer, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), in a San Francisco pet shop. Mitch pretends to mistake her for a salesperson, which infuriates Melanie and leads her to inquire as to the reason for his behavior. He mentions a previous encounter that he had with her. Intrigued by Mitch, Melanie finds the address of his home in Bodega Bay, California. She drives there and visits his house by sneaking across the small harbor in a motor boat, leaving a note. As she is heading back across the bay, a seagull swoops down and inflicts a cut on her head. Over the next few days, the avian attacks continue, as Melanie's relationship with Mitch, his clinging mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), his young sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright), and Cathy's teacher (who is also Mitch's ex lover) Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) develops. The second strange bird incident occurs when Melanie stays for the night at Hayworth's house and a gull kills itself upon hitting the front door. The next attack occurs at Cathy's party. Avian violence escalates when Lydia discovers a friend dead in his bedroom. After another attack by crows at the school, an argument erupts at the local bar. One resident believes the attacks are a sign of the apocalypse, but an out-of-town woman yells at them for scaring her children. An old woman (Ethel Griffies), an amateur ornithologist, insists that calling birds' behavior attacks is an exaggeration, and no bird species flocks and attacks. Despite her words, a motorist is attacked while filling his car with gasoline; he is knocked unconscious, and the gasoline continues to pump out onto the street. An explosion and fire result, and more deaths occur when there's another attack. While hiding inside the bar, the scared mother believes Melanie is the cause of these attacks. After this attack subsides, Melanie and Mitch find Annie dead on her front porch and Cathy crying at the window. Melanie and Mitch's family take refuge in Mitch's house, boarding up the windows. The house is attacked by the birds and they almost manage to break through the doors. In the evening, when everyone else is asleep, Melanie hears noises from the upper floor and finds that the birds have broken through the roof. They attack her, sealing her in the room until Mitch comes to her rescue. Lydia and Mitch tend to Melanie, but determine she must get to a hospital. A sea of landed birds ripples menacingly around them as they leave the house but do not attack, aside from a few pecks. The radio reports several smaller bird attacks in nearby communities. Mitch drives the car slowly towards the road before picking up speed. The film concludes with the car driving away, down the coast road and out of sight, as thousands of birds watch. Cast * Tippi Hedren - Melanie Daniels * Rod Taylor - Mitch Brenner * Jessica Tandy - Lydia Brenner * Veronica Cartwright - Cathy Brenner * Suzanne Pleshette - Annie Hayworth Soundtrack The Birds lacks a conventional incidental score but rather uses sound effects and sparse source music in counterpoint to calculated silences. Oskar Sala and Remi Gassmann are credited with "electronic sound production and composition," and Hitchcock's previous musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann has a credit as "sound consultant." Some of the bird sounds were created by Sala and Gassmann on the Mixtur-Trautonium. Source music includes Claude Debussy's Deux arabesques, which Tippi Hedren's character plays on piano, and "Risseldy Rosseldy", an Americanized version of the Scottish folk song "Wee Cooper O'Fife", which is sung by the schoolchildren. Premiere and awards The film debuted at a prestigious invitational showing at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival with Hitchcock and Hedren in attendance. In March 1963, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City also had an invitation-only screening of The Birds as part of a 50-film retrospective of Hitchcock's film work. The MOMA series had a booklet with a monograph on Hitchcock written by Peter Bogdanovich. The Birds was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Special Effects. The effect of the flapping of the birds' wings was done in the Disney Studios by animator Ub Iwerks who used the Disney's sodium vapor process ("yellow screen"). The SV process films the subject against a screen lit with narrow-spectrum sodium vapor lights. Unlike most compositing processes, SVP actually shoots two separate elements of the footage simultaneously using a beam-splitter. One reel is regular film stock and the other a film stock with emulsion sensitive only to the sodium vapor wavelength. This results in very precise matte shots compared to blue screen special effects, necessary due to "fringing" of the image from the birds' rapid wing flapping. However, the 1963 Special Effects award went to Cleopatra. Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress in 1964, sharing it with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer. She also received the Photoplay Award as Most Promising Newcomer. The film ranked number one of the top ten foreign films selected by the Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards. The Association also awarded Alfred Hitchcock the Best Director Award for the film. Factual basis On 18 August 1961, residents in the town of Capitola, California, awoke to find sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops, and their streets covered with dead birds. News reports suggested domoic acid poisoning (amnesic shellfish poisoning) as the cause. According to a local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy in 1961 to use as "research material for his latest thriller". Sequel and remake A sequel, The Birds II: Land's End, was released in 1994 starring a different cast of characters. The movie was a direct-to-television film and was met with very negative reviews. The film's director, Rick Rosenthal, took his name off of it, opting instead to use the infamous Hollywood pseudonym Alan Smithee. It featured co-star Tippi Hedren in a different role from the one in the original film. In 2007, Variety reported that Naomi Watts would star in Universal's remake of the film. The remake would also star George Clooney and would be directed by Casino Royale director Martin Campbell. The production would be a joint venture by Platinum Dunes and Mandalay Pictures. Later in 2007, original star Tippi Hedren publicly stated her opposition to the remake, saying "Why would you do that? Why? I mean, can’t we find new stories, new things to do?". Development has been stalled since the original announcement in 2007. On June 16, 2009, Brad Fuller of Dimension Films stated that no further developments had taken place, commenting "We keep trying, but I don't know." Martin Campbell was eventually replaced as director by Platinum Dunes host Dennis Iliades in December 2009. James Nguyen, the director of the B movie Birdemic: Shock and Terror, said his film was a tribute to Hitchcock's The Birds.

18. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) (5 of 20 lists - 79 points - highest rank #6 BigEdWalsh) The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American thriller film, which blends elements of the crime and horror genres. It was directed by Jonathan Demme and stars Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, and Ted Levine. It is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Harris, his second to feature Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. In the film, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, seeks the advice of Hannibal Lecter, an imprisoned cannibal, for help in apprehending a serial killer known only as "Buffalo Bill". When The Silence of the Lambs was released on February 14, 1991, it received much critical acclaim. The film won the top five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Plot Clarice Starling is pulled from her training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, by Jack Crawford of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit. He tasks her with interviewing Hannibal Lecter, a former psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer, believing Lecter's insight might be useful in the pursuit of a serial killer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill" who skins his female victims' corpses. Starling travels to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where she is led by Dr. Frederick Chilton to Lecter's solitary quarters. Although initially pleasant and courteous, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at "dissecting" him and rebuffs her. As she is leaving, one of the prisoners obscenely flicks semen at her. Lecter, who considers discourtesy "unspeakably ugly", calls Clarice back and tells her to seek out an old patient of his. Clarice is led to a storage lot where she discovers a man's severed head. She returns to Lecter, who tells her that the man is linked to Buffalo Bill. Though Lecter denies killing this man, he offers to profile Buffalo Bill if he can be transferred away from Chilton, whom he dislikes. In light of Buffalo Bill's recent abduction of a U.S. Senator's daughter, Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Lecter a fake deal promising a prison transfer if he provides information that helps find Buffalo Bill and rescue the abductee. Instead, Lecter begins a game of quid pro quo with Starling, offering comprehensive clues and insights about Buffalo Bill in exchange for events from Starling's childhood, something she was advised not to do. Chilton secretly records the conversation and reveals Starling's deal as a sham before offering to transfer Lecter in exchange for a deal of Chilton's own making. Lecter agrees and is flown to Memphis where he reveals personal information on Buffalo Bill to federal agents. As the manhunt begins, Starling visits Lecter at his special cell in a Tennessee courthouse and confronts him with her decryption of the name he provided ("Louis Friend", which is an anagram of "iron sulfide"). Lecter refuses Starling's pleas for the truth, as she believes everything he stated was false, and forces her to recount her traumatic childhood. She tells him how she was orphaned, relocated to a relative's farm, discovered a lamb slaughterhouse and failed in an attempt to rescue one of the lambs. Lecter gives her the case files on Buffalo Bill, after their conversation is interrupted by Chilton and the police who escort her from the building. Later that evening, Lecter manages to escape from his cell, killing his two guards in the process, and disappears. Starling analyzes Lecter's annotations to the case files and realizes that Buffalo Bill's first victim knew him personally before he killed her. Starling travels to the victim's hometown and discovers that Buffalo Bill was a tailor, with dresses and templates identical to the patches of skin removed from each of his victims. She telephones Crawford to inform him that Buffalo Bill is trying to fashion a "woman suit" of real skin, but Crawford is already en route to make an arrest, having cross-referenced Lecter's notes with a hospital's archives and finding a man named Jame Gumb who once applied for a sex-change operation. Starling continues interviewing friends of Buffalo Bill's first victim while Crawford leads an FBI tactical team to Gumb's address in Illinois. Starling is led to the house of "Jack Gordon", who she realizes is actually Jame Gumb. She pursues him into his multi-room basement where she discovers the recently-abducted Senator's daughter alive, but traumatized and trapped in a dry well. After turning off the basement lights, Gumb stalks Starling in the dark with night vision goggles but gives his position away when he cocks his revolver, and is shot to death by Starling. Some time later at the FBI Academy graduation party, Starling receives a phone call from Lecter, who is at an airport in Bimini. He assures her that he does not plan to pursue her and asks her to show him the same courtesy, which she says she cannot do. Lecter then hangs up the phone, saying he's "having an old friend for dinner", and begins following a newly-arrived Chilton, who is fleeing since Lecter is at large. Cast * Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling * Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter * Scott Glenn as Jack Crawford * Ted Levine as Jame Gumb, "Buffalo Bill" * Anthony Heald as Frederick Chilton * Brooke Smith as Catherine Martin * Kasi Lemmons as Ardelia Mapp * Frankie Faison as Barney Matthews * Diane Baker as Sen. Ruth Martin * Charles Napier as Lt. Boyle * Danny Darst as Sgt. Tate * Alex Coleman as Sgt. Jim Pembry * Dan Butler as Roden * Paul Lazar as Pilcher * Ron Vawter as Paul Krendler * Roger Corman as FBI Director Hayden Burke * Chris Isaak as SWAT Commander * Harry Northup as Mr Bimmel * Masha Skorobogatov as Young Clarice Starling Pre-production Casting Michelle Pfeiffer was initially offered the role of Clarice Starling, but turned it down. She has said about her rejection of the part, "that was a difficult decision, but I got nervous about the subject matter." According to Jonathan Demme, there were 300 applicants for the role of Clarice Starling. Production The Silence of the Lambs was distributed by Orion Pictures; MGM (who bought Orion in 1997) currently holds the rights. Response Critical Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster gained overwhelming acclaim with their portrayals of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, even though Hopkins' screen time in the entire film is just over 16 minutes. Their respective portrayals won both of them Academy Awards in 1992. The Silence of the Lambs was a sleeper hit that only gradually gained widespread success. The film ultimately received widespread critical acclaim; Rotten Tomatoes records that The Silence of the Lambs received a 96% positive response from critics. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster also received praise for their performances. Roger Ebert specifically mentioned the "terrifying qualities" of Hannibal Lecter, and has since recognized the film as a "horror masterpiece," alongside such classics as Nosferatu, Psycho, and Halloween. However, the film is also notable for being one of two multi-Oscar winners disapproved of by Ebert's colleague, Gene Siskel, the other being Unforgiven. Box office Domestic Box Office Opening Weekend $13,766,814 % of Total Gross 10.5% Close Date 10 October 1991 Total U.S. Gross $130,742,922 Worldwide Box Office Total Worldwide Gross $272,742,922 Awards and honors Academy Awards record 1. Best Actress, Jodie Foster 2. Best Actor, Anthony Hopkins 3. Best Director, Jonathan Demme 4. Best Picture, Edward Saxon, Kenneth Utt, Ronald M. Bozman 5. Best Adapted Screenplay, Ted Tally Golden Globe Awards record 1. Best Actress, Jodie Foster BAFTA Awards record 1. Best Actor, Anthony Hopkins 2. Best Actress, Jodie Foster Jonathan Demme won an Academy Award for Best Director. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins both won Oscars for their roles as Clarice Starling and Dr. Hannibal Lecter, respectively. The film won additional Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. Other awards include "Best Picture" from CHI Awards, the "best film" from PEO Awards, and Best Film from National Board of Review, all in 1991. Jonathan Demme was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best director. The film was nominated for "best film" at the BAFTA Awards (British Academy of Film and Television Arts). In 1992, Ted Tally received an Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. In 1991, the film was awarded Best Horror Film of the Year during the 2nd Horror Hall of Fame Telecast. Vincent Price presented the award to the film's Executive Producer Gary Goetzman. In 1998, the film was listed as one of the 100 greatest movies in the past 100 years by the American Film Institute. In 2006 at the Key Art Awards, the original poster for The Silence of the Lambs was named best film poster "of the past 35 years". The Silence of the Lambs placed seventh on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for Lecter's infamous escape scene. The American Film Institute named Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Hopkins) the number one film villain of all time and Clarice Starling (as portrayed by Foster) the sixth greatest film hero of all time. American Film Institute recognition * AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - #65 * AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills - #5 * AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains: o Clarice Starling - Hero #6 o Dr. Hannibal Lecter - Villain #1 * 2005, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes - #21 o "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." * AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #74 Accusations of homophobia and sexism Upon its release, The Silence of the Lambs was criticized by members of the gay community for being what they perceived as another in a long line of negative on-screen portrayals of LGBT characters in the absence of any positive portrayals, but the director Jonathan Demme's next project was the AIDS-related drama Philadelphia which featured a homosexual as the protagonist. In a 1992 interview with Playboy magazine, notable feminist and women's rights advocate Betty Friedan stated, "I thought it was absolutely outrageous that The Silence of the Lambs won four Oscars. [...] I'm not saying that the movie shouldn't have been shown. I'm not denying the movie was an artistic triumph, but it was about the evisceration, the skinning alive of women. That is what I find offensive. Not the Playboy centerfold."

19. An American Werewolf in London (1981) (6 of 20 lists - 78 points - highest rank #2 FlaSoxxJim) An American Werewolf in London is a 1981 British-American horror comedy film, written and directed by John Landis. It stars David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, and Jenny Agutter. The film starts with two young American men, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) on a backpacking holiday in England. Following an awkwardly tense visit to a village pub, the two men venture deep into the moors at night. They are attacked by a werewolf, which results in Jack's death and David being taken to a London hospital. Through apparitions of his dead friend and disturbing dream sequences, David becomes informed that he is a werewolf and will transform at the next full moon. Shooting took place mostly in London but also in Surrey and Wales. It was released in the United States on August 21, 1981 and grossed $30.56 million at the box office. Critics generated mostly favourable reviews for the film. The movie won the 1981 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and an Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup. The film was one of three high-profile wolf-themed horror films released in 1981, alongside The Howling and Wolfen. Over the years, the film has accumulated a cult following and has been referred to as a cult classic. Empire magazine also named An American Werewolf in London as the 107th greatest movie of all time in September 2008. The film was followed by a 1997 sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, which featured a completely different cast and none of the original crew. Plot Two American college students, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), are backpacking across the Yorkshire moors. As darkness falls, and they decide to stop for the night at a pub called "The Slaughtered Lamb". Jack notices a five-pointed star on the wall. When he asks about it, the pub becomes very quiet. The pub-goers start acting very strangely. The pair decide to leave, but not before the others offer them pieces of advice such as "Beware the moon, lads" and "Keep to the road." Whilst conversing with each other and wondering what they meant, they wander off the road, onto the moors. Back at the pub, the owner gets very distressed and suggests that they go after the pair. As she says this, a sinister howling is heard. The rest of the pub-goers, having barricaded the door, decline. Back out on the moors, Jack and David have also heard the howls, and they seem to be steadily getting closer. They start back to the Slaughtered Lamb when they realize they are disorientated and lost on the moors. A full moon comes out from behind the clouds, and they remember the advice they were given earlier. The noises get steadily closer until they are stopped by a supernaturally large animal. The animal attacks both of them, and kills Jack. The animal is then shot and killed by the pub-goers, who have now emerged. David survives the mauling and is taken to a hospital in London. When he wakes up three weeks later, he does not remember what happened and is told of his friend's death. David is questioned by an arrogant inspector, and more understanding sergeant and learns that he and Jack were supposedly attacked by an escaped lunatic. David insists that they were actually attacked by a large wolf. But the inspector had already been told there were witnesses and an autopsy report of the maniac, so they deduce that David is suffering from shock. David has several nightmares at night (one of him running through the woods, decapitating and eating a deer, another of him in a hospital bed with a monstrous fanged face, and finally him at home where his family is attacked by Nazis with monstrous faces). Things get stranger when Jack, now a reanimated corpse, comes to visit David, who explains that they had been attacked by a werewolf, and stating that David himself is, in fact, now a werewolf. Jack urges David to kill himself before the next full moon, not only because Jack is cursed to exist in a state of living death for as long as the bloodline of the werewolf that attacked them survives, but also to prevent David from inflicting the same fate on his eventual victims. Trying to see if David is indeed telling the truth, his doctor takes a trip to the Slaughtered Lamb. However when asked about the incident, the pub-goers deny any knowledge of David, Jack or the wolf. But one distraught pub-goer speaks to the doctor outside the pub and says that David should not have been taken away, and that he and everyone else will be in danger when he changes. After more investigation, the doctor finds out that the police report was "misplaced", and that David's wounds were cleaned and dressed before he was even looked at. The doctor is convinced that the whole town was lying, and that David was indeed attacked by an animal, though he's not completely convinced it was a werewolf. Upon his release from the hospital, David moves in with Alex Price (Jenny Agutter), the pretty young nurse who grew infatuated with him in the hospital. He stays in Alex's London apartment, where they later make love for the first time. Jack suddenly appears to David again and tells him that he will turn into a werewolf the next day. Jack advises David to take his own life; otherwise he is doomed to kill innocent people who will then become the living dead. When the full moon rises, as Jack had warned, he begins to feel excruciating pain before stripping nude and turning into a werewolf. In his werewolf form, David walks on all fours, is covered in shaggy gray fur, is larger than a regular wolf, and has a savage face with horrifying fanged jaws. He prowls the streets and the London Underground and slaughters six innocent Londoners. When he wakes in the morning, he is naked on the floor of the wolf cage at London Zoo with no memory of his nocturnal lupine adventures, but unharmed by the resident wolves. David eventually realizes that Jack was right about everything and that he is responsible for the murders of the night before. David encounters Jack (in an advanced stage of decay) in a cinema in Picadilly Circus, this time accompanied by David's victims from the previous night. They all insist that he must commit suicide before turning into a werewolf again. Whilst talking with them, night falls and, consequently, David turns into a werewolf again and goes on another killing spree. Following a horrific melee, he is cornered in an alley by the police when Alex arrives to calm him down by telling him that she loves him. Though he is apparently temporarily softened, he is shot and killed when he lunges forward, returning to human form in front of a grieving Alex as he dies. Cast * David Naughton as David Kessler * Griffin Dunne as Jack Goodman * Jenny Agutter as Nurse Alex Price * John Woodvine as Dr. J.S. Hirsch * Lila Kaye as Barmaid * Frank Oz as Mr. Collins / Miss Piggy * John Landis as Man being smashed in window * David Schofield as Dart Player The producers wanted Dan Aykroyd in the role of David and John Belushi as Jack, but John Landis refused. The credits congratulate Prince Charles and Diana Spencer for their wedding and contain the disclaimer "Any resemblance to any persons living, dead or undead is coincidental." A similar slogan appears during the ending credits of Michael Jackson's Thriller, a horror-based short film directed by Landis. At the end of the credits is a promo card for Universal Studios urging viewers to "Ask for Babs." This is a reference to Landis' 1978 film National Lampoon's Animal House where the credits list the future occupations of the students, including Babs, who became a tour guide at Universal Studios. This same card appears in Landis' other films. Until the release of Animal House on VHS, asking for Babs at Universal Studios actually got people in for free. History John Landis came up with the story while he worked in Yugoslavia as a production assistant on the film Kelly's Heroes (1970). He and a Yugoslavian member of the crew were driving in the back of a car on location when they came across a group of gypsies. The gypsies appeared to be performing rituals on a man being buried so that he would not "rise from the grave." This made Landis realize that he could never be able to confront the undead and gave him the idea for a film in which a man of his own age would go through such a thing. John Landis wrote the first draft of An American Werewolf in London in 1969 and shelved it for over a decade. Two years later, Landis wrote, directed and starred in his debut film, Schlock, which developed a cult following. Landis developed box-office status in Hollywood through the successful comedy films The Kentucky Fried Movie, National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers before securing $10 million financing for his werewolf film. Financiers believed that Landis' script was too frightening to be a comedy and too funny to be a horror film. Michael Jackson cited this film as his reason for working with Landis on his subsequent music videos, including Thriller and Black or White. Makeup effects According to Entertainment Weekly, the real star of this film is the Oscar-winning transformation effects by Rick Baker, which changed the face of horror makeup in the 1980s. The various prosthetics and fake, robotic body parts used during the film's painful, extended werewolf transformation scenes and on Griffin Dunne when his character returns as a bloody, mangled ghost impressed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences so much that they decided to create a new awards category at the Oscars specifically for the film — Outstanding Achievement in Makeup. Since the 1981 Academy Awards, this has been a regular category each year. During the body casting sessions, the crew danced around David Naughton singing, "I'm a werewolf, you're a werewolf ... wouldn't you like to be a werewolf, too?" in reference to his days as a pitchman for Dr Pepper. Cameos and bit parts In the Piccadilly Circus sequence, the man hit by a car and thrown through a store window is Landis himself. As in most of the director's movies, Frank Oz makes an appearance: first as Mr. Collins from the American embassy in the hospital scene, and later as Miss Piggy in a dream sequence, when David's younger siblings watch a scene from The Muppet Show that was never shown in the United States. Actors in bit parts who were already—or would become—more well-known include the two chess players David and Jack meet in the pub, played by the familiar character actor Brian Glover and then-rising comedian and actor Rik Mayall. One of the policemen helping to chase and kill the werewolf is John Altman, who would later achieve fame as "Nasty" Nick Cotton in EastEnders. Alan Ford—later to appear in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch—plays a taxi driver. The policeman in the cinema is played by John Salthouse and the policeman in Piccadilly Circus is played by Peter Ellis. Both Salthouse and Ellis appeared in police drama The Bill. David Schofield, known as Mercer from The Pirates of the Caribbean film series, plays the dart player at the Slaughtered Lamb and assists Dr. Hirsch in his investigation of David's attack. Locations The opening shots of the moors are near Hay Bluff, a mountain that straddles the Welsh border in Brecon Beacons National Park. The scenes were shot on the Welsh side of Hay Bluff, about four miles to the south of the town of Hay-on-Wye in the county of Powys. The scene where David and Jack get dropped off by the sheep farmer is by the stone circle, the same location where, later in the film, Dr. Hirsch stops and looks at the sign for East Proctor. The same road provides the scenery for the next two shots, where David and Jack talk about Debbie Klein. East Proctor is a small hamlet ten miles to the west of Hay Bluff called Crickadarn. It is featured from the shot where David and Jack walk down a hill towards East Proctor. The exterior of the "Slaughtered Lamb" was a private house in Crickadarn dressed to look like a pub and the Angel of Death statue in the village was a prop created by the movie makers. The church next door is also still frequented, however the upper levels have now fallen into disrepair. The interior of the "Slaughtered Lamb" was filmed in a pub called The Black Swan, Ockham, Surrey near Effingham. The bar was used but a false wall was built to make the pub look smaller. The Black Swan was re-furbished and extended to became a gastro pub in 2006 making it unrecognisable from the interior used for the film. In fact, until the late 70's , the interior of the Black Swan was far smaller...being the original rooms ( including an "off licence" area of the original design. It was knocked through into a long bar in an earlier act of "improvement" that ruined its charming character. Nurse Alex's flat is located on Coleherne Road, just off Redcliffe Square (SW10), Kensington near to Earl's Court. In 1966, mere yards from the site of Alex's flat, Guinness heir Tara Browne died after crashing his Lotus Elan on the junction of Redcliffe Square and Redcliffe Gardens. The accident is puportedly the subject of the part one of A Day In The Life by The Beatles. The attack at the tube station was set in — and filmed at — Tottenham Court Road tube station although the chase through the tunnels of the station were actually filmed at Charing Cross tube station. The final sequence in the alleyway was filmed at Clink Street, London. The location is now almost unrecognisable, the area having been redeveloped since. The scenes where David wakes up naked in the zoo were shot at London Zoo, Regent's Park. Soundtrack The film's ironically upbeat soundtrack consists of songs which refer in some way to the moon. Bobby Vinton's slow and soothing version of "Blue Moon" plays during the opening credits, Van Morrison's "Moondance" as David and Alex make love for the first time, Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" as David is nearing the moment of changing to the werewolf, a soft, bittersweet ballad version of "Blue Moon" by Sam Cooke during the agonizing wolf transformation and The Marcels' doo-wop version of "Blue Moon" over the end credits.[5] Landis failed to get permission to use Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" and Bob Dylan's "Moonshiner", both artists feeling the film to be inappropriate.[citation needed] It was stated on the DVD commentary by David Naughton and Griffin Dunne that they were not sure why Landis could not get the rights to Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" - a song that they felt would have been more appropriate for the film. Reception The budget of An American Werewolf in London was reportedly $10 million. The worldwide box office came to $30,565,292, making it a box office success. The film was also met with critical acclaim, earning an 88% Fresh rating on rottentomatoes.com. Kim Newman of Empire magazine praised the film, saying "Carnivorous lunar activities rarely come any more entertaining than this". Tom Huddlestone from Time Out also gave the film a positive review, saying the film was "Not just gory but actually frightening, not just funny but clever". Roger Ebert's review was less favourable. He stated that "An American Werewolf in London seems curiously unfinished, as if director John Landis spent all his energy on spectacular set pieces and then didn't want to bother with things like transitions, character development, or an ending." Radio adaptation A radio adaptation of the film was broadcast on BBC Radio 1 in 1997, written and directed by Dirk Maggs and with Jenny Agutter, Brian Glover, and John Woodvine reprising the roles of Alex Price, the chess player (now named George Hackett, and with a more significant role as East Proctor's special constable) and Dr. Hirsch. The roles of David and Jack were played by Eric Meyers and William Dufris. Maggs' script added a backstory that some people in East Proctor are settlers from Eastern Europe and brought lycanthropy with them. The werewolf who bites David is revealed to be related to Hackett, and has escaped from an asylum where he is held under the name "Larry Talbot", the name of the title character in The Wolf Man. Remake In June 2009, it was announced that Dimension Films was working with producers Sean and Bryan Furst on a remake of the film.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Oct 25, 2010 -> 02:38 AM) Anyone fish Western Michigan at all? I'm going to try to get out there before everything freezes for some late catfish. Looking at some areas on the Grand and St. Joseph rivers. http://www.dnr.state.mi.us/MASTERANGLER/Ma...BKey=06S17W1802 I'd guess between Berrien Springs and St. Joseph.

Martz would look better with a better O-Line, as would Cutler. Mike Tice is not a good coach of anything, however.