I thought it would be fun to react to a list I made on my old blog from 15ish years ago. These were movies I’d recommend to people who want a good scare, who maybe haven’t seen every horror movie in the world but who get in the mood for them in October? That kind of thing. And I thought I would update my opinions on these movies, sort of talking to my old self. I talked so long this became two videos, so this is the first part. If you want to listen click below, if not scroll down for the transcript.

Y’all remember blogs from like 15 years ago? Everybody had a blog, and we’d go to everybody else’s blog and have a pretty good conversation. And then it all moved to doing these videos, except I think WordPress is having a bit of a revival.

But I don’t have the same blog. I had, like, in 2010, I have a new one on WordPress that I started in like 2016, and I still find some people to talk to, but I was looking at my old blog from like 2010, and there would be like 10 different comment threads going on some of those posts sometimes.

So I’m saying, I really would like to talk to some of you again. If you could leave me a comment, I would enjoy a good conversation.

And so, going back to those days, anyway, I was going through this old blog. I used to call it In It for the Kills, which meant I was being ironic because I don’t watch horror movies to see people get killed. And I was asking the question, is that why we watch them?

And I decided that that name didn’t serve me anymore. And so, for a long time, I’ve been going as Seven Doors of Cinema.

So I was looking through my top posts on In It for the Kills, and I had a post about 20 actually good horror movies that I would recommend, because even then I was getting sort of complaints about things digging up things that are too obscure. And I don’t intend to do that. It’s just that, how many times can somebody do a post on The First Night on Elm Street?

But I’m about to do it anyway.

So let me go through this list of what movies I thought were the greatest horror movies that I would recommend for people in October, when people want to watch a horror movie. And they’re not a ghoul like me, and they don’t watch them all the time. What would you watch?

And some of these may be risky, and that’s what you can come and tell me, because I have been known to recommend the wrong movie to people who aren’t into horror and get laughed at for it.

So onto the list, and I’ll see if I still agree with what I said when I was in my 30s.

Planet Terror

Cherry and Dakota fight off the rapists. Everyone wants to see ladies kick in some a**, and nobody ever thought they’d see a melting pair of testicles attached to a man who isn’t really all that concerned.

You’re hoping the women don’t get raped and murdered. And you know that Cherry won’t be murdered, because at that point in the film, we haven’t seen the wooden leg replaced with a gun that they sold us in the trailer. But you don’t know, and it builds some momentary tension.

Yeah, this is a fake B-movie, but in my opinion, it’s the best fake B-movie.

I don’t know. That may have been before I found Rock & Roll Zombies. Isn’t that the name of the one they made a zombie movie to go into a movie about a drive-in?

I don’t know, I’m kidding.

When I think back on Planet Terror, and it is a movie that I’ve watched on repeat, the thing that sticks with me now is the whole idea of reaching up. If you don’t know what to do, reach up.

And I talked about that recently on my second channel, when I reviewed the old TV movie The Screaming Woman.

So that’s what sticks to me now, is the idea of reaching up.

Number 19: The Hitcher

Dramatic irony strikes as the audience know the killer is Rutger Hauer, but it actually looks like the cops are going to blame C. Thomas Howell.

That infuriated me as an 11-year-old watching this movie, when the cop has Howell’s character at gunpoint and says, “You spit on my wrist. Wipe it off,” in an effort to trick him into grabbing the gun so he can shoot him.

Now, my mom’s gonna listen to this and say that I told everyone that I was watching this movie when I was 11, and where was she when I was watching this movie? I’m sure I asked permission, and I taped it off of TV because I had seen The Outsiders, and I was like, “Ooh. Ponyboy made a scary movie.”

So yeah, I’d say that scene sticks with me. And there was a finger in an order of French fries, and Rutger Hauer playing with a teddy bear as he’s riding in a car with a family that he’s going to kill.

The whole movie is dramatic irony, which I liked when I was young, ’cause that’s the first irony you learn in school. But the older I get, the more it kind of p***** me off because I have enough tension in real life.

But yeah, The Hitcher.

All those scenes are great, but I probably would think first about the teddy bear, him riding in the car with the family.

Number 18: A Nightmare on Elm Street

This was among the first few horror movies I ever watched, so I’m imprinted. And what I thought in 2010 was the standout scene from the film was when Nancy falls asleep in school, and Tina appears scratching at her body bag from inside.

I wanna stick my arm against a hot pipe.

And then when Tina’s lying on the floor, an invisible force picks up her legs to drag her away, and her arm flops lifelessly on the floor as she leaves behind a trail of blood in the school hallway. Kill me now.

That is pretty scary, because thinking about seeing someone in a body bag instead of, you know, if you have to see someone dead, you usually see them laid out at the funeral in their nice clothes and made up. So that would be a horrible thing to see, especially if it was a ghost in a dream.

But I’ll tell you what I noticed upon my most recent viewing of A Nightmare on Elm Street. There’s a similar part of the film there in English class, and they are reading Julius Caesar, and they’re talking about the sheeted, dead gibber and squeak.

But when Nancy falls asleep, the same guy that was having to stand in the front of the class and read, he’s whispering, and he’s reading from Hamlet instead. And he says, “Were it not that I have bad dreams,” in a whisper.

And so I’d say that would be something I’d point out now if I did an article on A Nightmare on Elm Street or part of a listicle.

Number 17: Suspiria

In this case, Suspiria, when Jessica Harper dances while trying not to collapse, we don’t know what direction the film is going to take. We don’t know if she has been bewitched or poisoned.

And when she falls on the floor, she might be dead.

There is something about a person being attacked while they’re surrounded by people who can only watch but can’t help that gets to me, and it bothered me much more than seeing one person face off against the killer when it’s just the two of them in the scene.

I guess I don’t know if that’s the scene I’d point out if I was telling someone about Suspiria today.

I think if I was telling someone that’s never seen Suspiria about Suspiria, there’s something I really like in horror movies. And it’s when they go in the middle of the film, and there’s something supernatural going on, no one can explain it, no one will admit it, and they go and talk to some guy who’s like, “Oh yeah, yeah, witches.”

And in this movie, it was Udo Kier. And I think—and he had on like this green suit with a pink shirt. I remember that it was very stylish, and I think he led Jessica Harper to another guy.

But there’s a guy like that in every movie.

I mentioned months ago how the best part of The Mothman Prophecies was when Alan Bates shows up as that guy. And I just like that trope. Joan Bennett was the guy in This House Possessed, TV movie.

Number 16: Audition

This is gonna sound like major b*******, but I swear it’s true.

The scene I like best in this movie is when we see a vision of the main character’s dead wife look at him and then step to the side behind a tree and disappear. It conveys a sense of foreboding that is very effective if you consider that perhaps the dead know things that we don’t.

If I was gonna tell somebody about Audition now, besides that, I can’t really enjoy the premise anymore.

The further we go in time, the fact that he set up that audition, tricking people into thinking they were auditioning for a part when really he was auditioning a date, it just gets creepier. And we’re supposed to feel bad that this woman goes after him.

But more than that, I’ve always read that movie as the part where she does all those things doesn’t really happen. That it’s after they sleep together that he starts imagining that that’s what she’s like.

And I’m—I’m not sure. I don’t think most people read it that way. And tell me in the comments if you do, if you think that a lot of that movie, Audition, is all in the guy’s head, because that’s what I’ve always thought.

But the director says it isn’t, so I guess we have to go with him unless we go with the death of the author.

Number 15: Cemetery Man

In a movie filled with zombies and murder, it’s perhaps surprising that I would remember a car wreck, but the bus versus the mopeds actually shocked me the first time I saw Cemetery Man.

Of course, with almost my next breath, I was laughing my a** off since the scene was followed very soon by a funeral where you hear a choir singing a song with the lyrics, “Shouldn’t have gone on the Boy Scout picnic.”

I guess that tire going over the head—wasn’t there a tire going over a head or a neck in that? Excuse me, that was pretty gnarly.

The end of the movie, they drive to the end of the world. That tends to stay with me.

Because as much as I spend time picking apart movies, I have to admit that I don’t really understand Cemetery Man. And then somebody’s always going to come at you and say, “But it was a graphic novel,” and so it comes from that.

But my point stands that the book and the movie are separate.

And the movie should make sense. It should stand without the book, because like I was talking about Shakespeare a few minutes ago, you can’t go and compare all the books—all the movies that have ever been made out of Shakespeare—and see what’s slacking.

So, you know, we have to look at the movie as totally separate. And Cemetery Man is separate from the book, and it doesn’t make any sense, and that’s what I think about it.

And, you know, more to the point, I probably wouldn’t recommend that movie to somebody that only watches horror movies during October. I’d probably recommend Demons if I was going to recommend an Italian zombie or infected-people movie.

Number 14: Black Christmas

The sorority girls are all standing around listening to the killer on the phone. Everyone is frightened, and to be honest, the sounds he is making are creepy and somehow reminiscent of the sounds on the recording in The Exorcist.

But Margot Kidder is drunk, smoking, rolling her eyes, and she grabs the phone from Olivia Hussey and tells the caller what to do with himself.

And he coldly says, “I’m going to kill you.”

And that is pretty scary. Just the way that he turns from sounding like a psycho to sounding so cold.

So I’m gonna go with that one. That’s a memorable scene from that movie.

And I just did an episode on Black Christmas, so I’m not gonna belabor that one.

Number 13: The Ring

The first time I saw the scene on the ferry where the horse broke out of its trailer, I actually cried.

I was scared because the horse started to go nuts, and anyone who loves animals would hate to see the horse jump over the side, and then the blood flowing into the water after the horse gets sucked under the boat.

And I said the horse actor did a great job of acting terrified.

Hmm. If I was describing this movie to someone now, I saw The Ring before I saw Ringu. And now that I watch Ringu more often, the scene where they go to that island and talk to the relatives of Sadako stands out more in my mind.

So I’d have to say, because it’s such an important turning point in the film, it just proves that all of this is happening for sure. And they do it in a different dialect of Japanese than what the people speak in the city, and very creepy.

And so I’d have to go with, if I was talking about the remake, the part where—isn’t it Brian Cox, who played Samara’s dad? And they go and visit him, and he tells about the things that she was able to do, and then he ultimately can’t handle it.

And I think it was him.

And of course, you know, everybody likes to see that actor. I hope it was him.

Number 12: Noroi

The first time our filmmaker within the film tries to talk to the woman who lives in the house where you can hear the voices of babies crying, and the movie then backs off only to build to the end.

The angry woman screaming and seeming rightly so evil reminds us during all the rest of the mystery-solving that something unspeakable must be lurking with the final clues.

I think if I was talking about Noroi now—and I have done that in the last year—I would talk about the quiet woman that they’re interviewing when they go to the village that Junko is from.

And they interview this woman, and then in the middle of the conversation she’s talking normally about Junko, how she used to know her, and then she goes completely blank, and she gets up and she walks out of the room, and she doesn’t come back.

Whatever it is has just taken her over.

And then it’s foreshadowed when—what is the director’s name? I’m wanting to say Kurosawa. It’s not that. The director of the film within the film—and it’s not Kagutaba, either. Anyway, the guy who’s making the movie within Noroi, his wife goes blank like that and walks out of the room, and something worse happens, and it was foreshadowing earlier in the movie.

Number 11: Jacob’s Ladder

And too afraid to watch this movie. Most of the time, still, Jacob’s lying in the hospital bed. He can’t get up because of his back. He cries and says he wants to go home.

And then you hear this cold voice from the side of the bed say, “Dream on.”

And that’s—I think this is a theme that we can go with. That sounds in movies really get to me.

And so, you know, I still kind of get creeped out in the night. What if I heard that voice by the side of my bed?