Halloween Discussion Forums, Costumes, Horror!

I got into a bit of an argument with a buddy the other night, when we discussed WHICH movies were important to watch during the season.

We agreed on everything but.....He said that the 1922 classic Nosferatu was old and obsolete and not worth watching by todays standards.

I couldn't have disagreed more. Max Schreck as the original Count Orlock was creepy even by silent movie standards. F.W. Murnau, who directed the movie showed that you don't need sound to scare an audience. All in all a great Vampire flick imho.

What do y'all think?

It is definitely an interesting film. My sister picked up a dvd of the movie at a flea market for .50 a few years ago. The problem is that it is the version with the music of Type O Negative included. What a way to ruin a film that uses shadows and silence incredibly effectively.

i love classic movies...

but that does not include silent films...

i definitely prefer the original dracula to nosferatu

I'm looking forward to the Sleepy Hollow series, too! Also to the return of Grimm on NBC, sometime in October, I believe.

Nosferatu is a classic and definitely pairs well with Shadow of a Vampire. There are also echoes of it in the Gary Oldman Dracula from the early '90s. I can understand that not everyone enjoys silent movies, but I think they are interesting. They are not always as melodramatic as you imagine, either. Once I saw a screening of a late-20s movie called "It," or The It Girl, something like that. A romantic comedy that made a star of Clara Bow, IIRC. Anyway, I was astonished at how modern and naturalistic the acting appeared. Except for the absence of sound, it could have been made quite recently. Evidently they had lots of different acting styles co-existing during the silent era.

I got interrupted (power went out) before I was able to say everything I meant to say in my previous post. I was going to add that my husband and I have so many DVDs, we have them organized into various folders. One folder is devoted to "Halloween and Horror," so we have quite a collection. Some of those movies I don't really wish to watch more than once, honestly, but there are a few I love to bring out this time of year. Those include (but may not be limited to) Johnny Depp's Sleepy Hollow and From Hell; Mary Reilly with Julia Roberts & John Malkovich; The Last Exorcism, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose; Season of the Witch; Gary Oldman Dracula; The Black Death; the original Halloween. On the humorous side, Trick or Treat, Ghostbusters (both of them, but #1 is better) and Hocus Pocus. Animated, Nightmare before Christmas and The Corpse Bride. Frankenweenie, a recent addition, may also come to fall into our favorites category. Coraline is creepy as all get-out, too.

We have the original Let the Right One In, haven't seen the American version. To us it seemed more romantic than scary.

We are collecting Grimm on DVD and have the 16 episodes (alas! so short-lived) of Moonlight. My husband recently bought me the Kolchak series from the '70s, I guess. I haven't seen much of it yet. We have had the complete run of the X-Files on DVD for years.

I also have a childhood favorite, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, on DVD. I'm not sure if it qualifies as a Halloween movie, but it was scary enough for me when I was a little girl.

NeverMore wrote:
Not only is Nosferatu appropriate for the season, immediately afterwards one must watch Willem Dafoe in 'Shadow of the Vampire'.

I had completely forgotten about Shadow of the Vampire. It was a great flick. Now I have to go get it!

Murfreesboro wrote:I got interrupted (power went out) before I was able to say everything I meant to say in my previous post. I was going to add that my husband and I have so many DVDs, we have them organized into various folders. One folder is devoted to "Halloween and Horror," so we have quite a collection. Some of those movies I don't really wish to watch more than once, honestly, but there are a few I love to bring out this time of year. Those include (but may not be limited to) Johnny Depp's Sleepy Hollow and From Hell; Mary Reilly with Julia Roberts & John Malkovich; The Last Exorcism, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose; Season of the Witch; Gary Oldman Dracula; The Black Death; the original Halloween. On the humorous side, Trick or Treat, Ghostbusters (both of them, but #1 is better) and Hocus Pocus. Animated, Nightmare before Christmas and The Corpse Bride. Frankenweenie, a recent addition, may also come to fall into our favorites category. Coraline is creepy as all get-out, too.

We have the original Let the Right One In, haven't seen the American version. To us it seemed more romantic than scary.

We are collecting Grimm on DVD and have the 16 episodes (alas! so short-lived) of Moonlight. My husband recently bought me the Kolchak series from the '70s, I guess. I haven't seen much of it yet. We have had the complete run of the X-Files on DVD for years.

I also have a childhood favorite, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, on DVD. I'm not sure if it qualifies as a Halloween movie, but it was scary enough for me when I was a little girl.

I like the comedies too. When my parents were still living, that was the only way I could get them to watch Halloween movies. They enjoyed the older black and white ones like, The East Side Kids in "Ghosts on the Loose". Abbott and Costello in "Hold that Ghost", "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", "Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man" and "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy". One of my favorites is "Ernest: Scared Stupid" with the late Jim Varney. He was always fun to watch, not the least because he reminded me of certain people in my family. LOL!

Most of the DVDs or Blu Ray that I own are horror or thriller movies. I also have those Johnny Depp movies and I don't even like him.

Jim Varney was a Nashvillian, or at least he lived here for a long time. Died untimely, I believe. He was a classically trained actor who just hit really big with that Ernest character. It was always funny to see him in interview as himself. He looked nothing like Ernest, really! I mean, although his features were rugged, he groomed himself very differently when he wasn't playing Ernest and looked rather attractive in RL.

I don't have a huge movie line up, nor do I get into all the old classics. I respect them and all, but I don't think I could sit through them. ^^;

But Trick R' Treat is one I have made a must see on a yearly basis. We do run some horror flicks though, but no specifics other than that one.