It's a horror to now you: Tom Steeber!
1. What is the first film that ever scared you?
There were a number of films I saw early on that gave me the heebie-jeebies or had short lived scares but the one that stands out is the classic Kubrick film, The Shining. I saw it when I was thirteen and it scared me so badly that I actually started to cry. Naturally now I consider it the masterpiece that so many others do.
2. What is the last film that scared you?
This would be the made for TV movie, Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. Even knowing it was fake, it never the less scared me like no other movie had before or since.
3. Name three Horror movies that you believe are underrated.
1. J.T. Petty's Soft For Digging. It's a pot boiler that many consider boring. I find it fascinating and extremely eerie. And the fact that he was able to make it on a $6000 budget and get it accepted in Sundance is an inspiration to me as a fellow filmmaker.
2. Hukkle, from Hungarian director, Gyorgi Palfi. Not many people I've talked to have seen this. It appears as a series of unrelated events that evntually lead up to a disturbing conclusion.
3. Home Movie. This is probably my favorite of the "evil children" sub genre. What starts out as a normal home movie of an upstate New York family, becomes total nightmare fuel as we see just how demented the kids in the family are.
4. Name three horror movies that you enjoy against your better judgment.
1. 8MM. Nicholas Cage. End of story.
2. The Devil's Gift. Stupid, stupid, stupid movie about a killer toy cymbal monkey. I like it simply because I collect the ugly bastards.
3. They. The one about the aliens made in the 1970's. Completely terrible movie in which you never see any aliens even though there is this huge invasion.
5. Send us to five places on the Internet!
1. The Hustle. Home of The Hustle. A friend's comedy podcast.
2. UFO Phil. The personal webpage of alien abductee and songwriter, UFO Phil. I was in his movie.
3. Cinema Head Cheese. A horror movie review site.
4.Paleofuture. Pokes fun at the predictions of the future written in the past.
5. Listverse. A new top ten list every day.
I loved Home Movie. The ending is seriously one of the most chilling that I've seen.
Holy moly! I totally forgot about Alien Abduction: Incident at Lake County! I watched that when I was 16 full well knowing that it was fake and ended up scared also. My mom and I watched it and I remember how stupid she thought it was. For me it was terrifying, especially the hokey ending. I remember I slept with a pair of scissors under my pillow just in case the aliens came for me. Silly, I know. We lived up in the woods in a rural community and after seeing Fire in the Sky, aliens were my new boogeymen. I remember debating the realness of this tv movie with a few classmates while we walked home from school and I was all "it's sooooo fake you guys!" little did they know I was super terrified. This was right in the middle of the alien craze, the Roswell alien autopsy film had just been released. Even though the thought of aliens terrified me, I'd still watch these things and end up having horrifying nightmares of abductions. Go figure.
I somehow missed Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. Can't wait to watch it. Thanks TS!
I remember vividly the first time I saw The Shining, on TV with my friend Brendan in the playroom in the house I grew up in. I remember being scared, but I also remember being detached enough from it to note how different it was from any other scary movie I'd seen in terms of the artistry…It was the first time I saw the art in horror. Which is similar to the reaction I had when I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at around the same time…That's Kubrick for you, I guess.
[All of which I should have written in my own It's A Horror To Know You email, instead of throwing off an "also I liked The Shining" nugget. Consider this comment an easter egg.]
And now I have to seek out Alien Abduction, too…
One of the previous entries mentioned Ghosthouse as well. I would have included that as an early scare but it I saw it after The Shining. The clown doll and the music from that film gave me nightmares for years to come. When I watched it recently I discovered just how silly it was. But Alien Abduction still freaks me out and I'm not even sure I believe in alien abductions. And without giving away spoilers, there is one particular scene where I was expecting something to happen and I worked myself up into this fear of it happening. Then nothing happened. Ha ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReFEKliswmo
I found out THEY is in the public domain. Here is a link to the full movie. It's also known as Invasion From Inner Earth.
I wasn't familiar with Home Movie, but it's now in my DVD queue. Thanks for the heads-up!
Soft for Digging was pretty interesting. Virtually no dialogue and so very slow. Still – it had really strange vibe and the orphanage location was incredibly creepy. I was a little let down by the ending – I think that "less is more" would have served better – but for $6,000 you can't really complain.