Distributed by Universal Pictures and directed by young and upcoming wunderkind named Steven Speilberg, the oceanic horror-thriller was based off Peter Benchley’s best selling novel of the same title grossed $7.9 million dollars and spent 14 weeks at the top of the box office, making it the very first “summer blockbuster” of Hollywood films. A critical and commercial success, the movie changed the landscape of all art and film and would go on to be the first film to earn $100 million dollars.
Jaws is a masterclass in fear, even John Williams’ brilliant score alone was enough to send shivers up spines and keep people outta the water. It isn’t just about facing the horror of giant man-eating vengeful shark though, it’s a psychological look at the breakdown of smalltown life. It’s the fear of a simple man overwhelmed with the job of trying to protect his community. A weary wife and mother afraid of losing her family. The fear of a elected official losing the faith of his community. The fear of a community losing their economy, their livelihoods, and their lives to something they cannot control. The fear of a young insecure college grad being ridiculed for his intellect and his ideas. And, the fear and trauma of an old fisherman who survived a horror greater than war.
It was years before I truly understood how great the story of Jaws was. I was very young when I first saw it in a drive-in theater in San Diego, CA. It’s my first movie memory, peeking inbetwen the car seats up at giant screen, yards away, as young swimmer was violently yanked under the water. This was back in the day when parents didn’t really shield kids from sex and violence in movies and TV. I watched a lot of old 70s horror movies this way. In fact, this is where my love for horror movies began. Being the first movie I ever saw, Jaws has a very special place in my heart. I try to watch it every year, usually around Fourth of July, when the story is set. I must have seen this film a hundred times at least and it never gets old.
Some may argue Jaws didn’t do any favors for sharks. Yes, it created mass hysteria and worldwide fear of sharks, For all the fear it generated, I think Jaws also sparked interest in sharks. Something that led to the increased study of sharks and all sea life behavior, maybe even put marine biology on the map. This all helped create conservation of sharks and ocean life. It’s been a long hard fought battle to save this planet by learning not to be afraid of what lurks in the ocean. Love it or hate it, Jaws is an unforgettable masterpiece worth celebrating.
Happy Walpurgisnacht! It’s Witch’s Night, the night where witches go out broom riding to celebrate the arrival of spring. Well, okay, there’s actually a lot more to it, but that’s the gist of it.
There are lots of Hollywood movies featuring witches, but for the efforts of today’s list, I concentrated on the scary witches. Not all witches are bad, but all bad witches are scary.
Unfortunately, not every scary witch is in a good movie either, and making a list of scariest witch films was my biggest goal.
A list of the scariest witches is going to require a lot more research and will be more controversial! So, for now, watch these ten films and we’ll debate later.
Scariest Witch Films List
Hereditary (2018) VVitch (2015) Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) Suspira (1977) The Blair Witch Project (1999) Gretel & Hansel (2020) Drag Me to Hell (2009) Black Sunday (1960) The Wretched (2019)
There’s no order to this list. All horror is subjective, but I guarantee each of these films has a couple of scenes that will scare the skin off your bones.
Horror films have captivated audiences since before Universal’s wild heyday of Horror during the 1930s. Each era has had great scary films and some so good, they spawned sequels and created franchises. Jaws, a 1975 horror adventure from a new young director Steven Spielberg gave birth to the summer blockbuster! In fact, thanks to horror, some amazing technical achievements have been discoverd, like new camera and lighting tricks and, make-up, and special fx. Horror films are truly the backbone of Hollywood.
Art by Hao Shun Da
I personally have been a horror film fan for over 40 years and I pride myself on having seen a majority of scary films and always look forward to those I’ve havent found yet. But there’s just one thing I haven’t been able to figure out, and that’s which era had the best horror. Was it Universal’s monster era or the SciFi greatness of the 50s, or how about the great slasher films of the 80s? It’s so hard to choose! Help me out!
Lately, I’ve been rewatching a lot old classic horror movies and the Universal monster movies are still my faves. Fans of the 1930s viewed the supernatural fantasy as an escape from the daily misery, living through the depression. The films may seem tame or not as scary or sophisticated as the films of today, but for some movie goers, the stories were based on popular cultural myths and legends, while others had never heard of these creatures at all. Swamp creatures and the reanimated dead were the super scary, particularly to those who were extremely religious.
I tried to figure out which monster I thought was scariest but I’m on the fence. Help me determine which monster is the scariest.
Title: Little Shop of Horrors Director: Roger Corman Screenwriter(s): Charles B. Griffith Starring: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Dick Miller, and Jack Nicholson Distributed by: The Filmgroup Year: 1960 Run Time: 1 hr 10 minutes
Bumbling florist assistant Seymour and his pretty colleague Audrey work in rundown floral shop on skid row, run by the cranky Mr. Gravis Musgnick. After getting fired for messing up order for crazy local dentist, Seymour claims to be growing a unique surprise plant for the owner. A flower-eating customer Burson Fouch tells Mushnick a special plant can help his businesses grow, so Mushnick gives Seymour one week to drum up business.
Named Audrey Jr., affectionately named after his co-worker, Audrey Jr. is a scrawny little bud cultivated from unknown seeds that were given to Seymour by a Japanese florist. Seymour has trouble feeding Audrey Jr., that is until he pricks his finger and he realizes the plant feeds on blood. So, he begins a feeding the plant a steady diet of his own blood.
With business blooming, Audrey Jr. grows bigger each day and even learns to talk, demanding more and more blood, leading poor Seymour to realize he’s got a big problem on his hands. One day during a walk, he accidentally knocks out a drunk, who then falls on the tracks and gets killed by a train. Guilt-ridden Seymour feeds the man’s body parts to Audrey Jr., who grows ten times bigger.
Of course, with a man-eating talking plant, the body count rises and eventually, the film’s narrator Sgt. Joe Fink and local homicide come calling.
One of Roger Corman’s earliest films was never meant to be a comedy. Corman originally wanted to write a detective story. Screenwriter Charles B. Griffith wanted to write a horror-comedy. At some point, during development, Corman learned that the sets they used for Bucket of Blood were about to be torn down. Never one to miss an opportunity to save money, Corman and Griffith hammered out their script, which was heavily influenced by the original science fiction short story ‘The Reluctant Orchid’ by Arthur C. Clarke and set out to film the movie in three days.
Corman never thought Little Shop of Horrors would make any money beyond its first theatrical run, much less become a cult hit, so he mistakenly let the movie fall into public domain by failing to secure the copyrights.
It can now be found on several streaming services, including Amazon Prime.
Recently, I posted my choices as the scariest horror scenes in movies. What you all may know was just how hard making that list was. There were a slew of great horror films to come out of the 70s generation and choosing which had the scariest scene was kinda agonizing. I kept questioning which movies I thought were the best, which had the best story and characters, which seemed most popular with movie goers, and which was my personal favorite.
So, in the spirt of the election year, help me determine which is the best.
Title: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Director: Charles T. Barton (animated sections by Walter Lantz) Screenwriter(s): Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, John Grant Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange, Lenore Aubert Distributed by: Universal Pictures Year: 1948 Run Time: 1 hr 23minutes
Abbott and Costello play bumbling freight porters Wilbur Grey and Chick Young, who are supposed deliver the remains of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster to a new House of Horrors. Dracula escapes with the monster, where they meet a mad scientist who plans to swap out brains of the monster with Wilbur, with the help of Dr. Sandra Mornay, under Dracula’s trance of course. Larry Talbot aka the Wolfman arrives from London to thwart the plan, but then the full moon rises and all the fun begins.
By 1948, war was over, America wanted to laugh again, and the slapstick antics of these two charmers were the answer. The Universal monsters craze was dying down but film stars Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. were down for one last ride.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a perfect blend of monster movie and the zany hijnks typical of Abbott and Costello, who were at the height of their fame. Reprising their famous roles, Bela Lugosi stars as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman lend a certain credence to the scary thrills, along with newcomer Glenn Strange, stepping in as the Monster for Boris Karloff.
You can catch this madcap horror comedy on Amazon Prime this month.
As we say goodbye to Spooky September to usher in the haunted Halloween season, I thought I’d share my picks for some of the scariest scenes in some classic horror movies.
Horror is perhaps the most subjective genre of all films, because what’s scary for one person, may not be scary to another. Yet, there seems to be some type of collective conscience of fear that most of us tap into when we see a scary moment on film.
Art by Nathan Thomas Milliner
It’s that one scene that chills us to the bone, or makes us throw the blanket over our head, or creates a tiny wave of spiders that crawl over our skin. Sometimes it’s a jump scare and sometimes it’s 4 minutes of terror that turns our spines into butter.
Rec, 2007 (Spanish version) – End Scene
One of the best found-footage films to come out of the early 2000s, that spawned three sequels, this Spanish-language horror classic thrusts audiences into the dark and forces them to experience the frantic terror of a surviving film crew locked in an apartment building filled with zombies. There was an English remake called Quarantine in 2008, nearly identical to the original, scene for scene, as seen in the video below. The movie uses a shaky handheld camera to build tension and thr jump scares to terrorized movie goers, but perhaps the biggest scare ended up as the last shot of the movie.
Session 9, 2001 – Hello, Simon
A critical failure when first released, Session 9 is horror’s most underrated gem and now has a huge cult following. This slow-burn psychological horror is the story of an asbestos removal crew assigned to clean up the abandoned Danvers State Mental Hospital in less than a week. When one of the crew members Mike finds a box of session tapes belonging to a former patient named Mary, who suffers from dissociative identity disease, the terrifying truth of what happened to her one fateful night plays out as we slowly watch another member of the crew, Gordon, lose his grip on reality. By the end of the movie, we meet what we believe may be one of Mary’s most dangerous personalities, Simon, during session 9, the movie’s most chilling recording.
Taking of Deborah Logan, 2014 – Cave scene
Another found footage supernatural horror gem that plays out like a pseudo-documentary, follows the sad decline of a woman named Deborah Logan, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. At first, we feel sorry for the woman and her family, watching Deborah’s bone-chilling antics through the eyes of a camera lens, but soon we come to understand that a sinister being may actually be behind what’s taking hold of Deborah’s mind. It’s always scary whenever a movie uses real-life illnesses like Alzheimer’s or Cancer as a plot point, but no one was ready for that crazy cave scene.
Paranormal Activity, 2009 – The Bite
Smart marketing and strong word of mouth spun the little unknown film from first-time director Oren Peli into a popular supernatural franchise. The first film initially cost only $15,000 to make and went on to gross $194 million dollars. Part of the successful marketing campaign showed trailers with audience reactions to the movie about a young couple Katie and Micah, who moved into a suburban tract home inhabited by a demonic spirit. Filmed with shaky cam, there were numerous jump scares and long intense shots seen through security camera style footage, which showed the couple’s sleepless nights. The scariest moment was watching Katie get pulled out of her own bed and brutally dragged down the dark hallway on day 20 of their terrifying ordeal.
Conjuring, 2013 – Wanna play Hide and Clap?
Based on the untold files of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. In 1971, the Warrens followed up their case about a possessed doll named Annabelle, by helping the Perron family, who claimed their newly purchased Rhode Island farmhouse was haunted by a malevolent spirit. Lorraine learns that spirit is named Bathesheba, a local witch and Satanist from Puritan times who cursed the land. Back before the days of cable and internet, the Perron parents entertained their five daughters with a variation of Hide and Seek, where the hiders clap their hands to clue in the blindfolded seeker of their location. Apparently, ghosts like to play games too.
Sinister – Lawnmower Scene
Crowned the scariest film ever made by Broadband Choices in 2020, based on the analysis of viewer heart rates, Sinister follows a true crime writer Ellison Oswalt played by Ethan Hawk, as he moves his family to Pennsylvania, chasing inspiration for a new story that will bestow the same accolades and riches he gained for his first book. The new house is actually the sight of a gruesome murder that Oswalt has decided to write about. Oswalt finds a projector in the eerie attic and a box filled with old Super8 tapes spanning decades, all inconspicuously titled home movies, and all depicting a frightening juxtapose of several families enjoying their normal lives, followed by their grisly murders. The scariest is ‘Lawn Work ’86’, where viewers join the silent creepiness of the voyeuristic killer eyeing his next victims, that eventually cumulates into a giant jump scare involving a lawnmower. It’s a scene that’ll make anyone’s heart rate go up.
Alien, 1979 – Chestburster
In last month’s blog post about Best Deaths in the Alien Movies, I picked the chestburster scene in Alien as best death scene in the whole franchise, but it’s also the scariest. It’s a shocking, gruesome, bloody death scene that not only changed the tone of the film, but the entire genre, securing Alien as the greatest SciFi Horror film ever made. The scene often parodied and duplicated by its own sequels, it’s probably the greatest jump scare of all time too.
Jaws, 1975 – Opening Scene
Considered the first summer blockbuster ever, one of Steven Spielberg’s turned Peter Benchley’s commissioned best-selling novel into a sleek thriller about the seaside town of Amity Island terrorized by a man-eating shark over the July 4th weekend. The movie follows police chief Brody as he, a young marine biologist, and a colorful professional shark hunter track down the beast. Jaws is a study of fear and it all starts with the movie’s opening scene of a girl swimming naked in the ocean. This classic opener sets the tone of the movie and eventually becomes the catalyst of a fear of open water for millions of people worldwide.
The Shining, 1980 – Room 237
I had a hard time picking the scariest scene from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s best-selling horror novel, The Shining. The movie follows a writer Jack Torrance, who moves his wife Wendy and their son Danny to Colorado for the winter to become the caretaker of a magnificent haunted hotel. Between the ghosts and the cabin fever, this not so loving family slowly begins to unravel, espcially for young Danny who has the gift of telepathy, aka the Shine, which brings out the hotel’s former guests who never got a chance to properly checkout. There’s no jump scares, only a constant state of dread and mounting tension, accentuated by the unforgettable score. Nearly every scene is nightmare inducing, but if I have to pick the scariest, it’s gotta be Jack’s visit to the notorious Room 237.
The Exorcist, 1973 – Headturner
Deemed by many as the greatest supernatural horror film of all time, William Friedkin’s adaption of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, a story about an actress Christine MacNeil trying to save her young daughter Regan from demonic possession. Considered disturbing, shocking, and utterly vile by some viewers, the movie had people fainting and vomiting in the theaters. There was no doubt the movie was a cinematic masterpiece, as it won several Oscars, influenced pop culture, spawned sequels, influenced a new subgenre horror about demonic possession, and became the highest-grossing R-rated horror film until It in 2017, grossing a whopping $193 million with its theatrical run, a miracle considering how plagued the production was. The Exorcist went over budget and suffered several delays, including several crew deaths, leading to rumors that the film was actually cursed.
The infamous headturn scene, which has been parodied a thousand times over, is like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard. For all the foul-mouthed obscenities that are so commonplace nowadays, there’s just something morally reprehensible about the dialogue of this scene, the brutal violence shown, and the emotional agony from Christine trying to rescue Regan from a crafty demon. I’m not a particularly religious person, but it’s understandable why some people hate this film. My mother once said movies like this invite real evil into our world. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it were, this is the movie that opened the floodgates.
You can find the Exorcist screaming on Max and AMC will air an edited version at 8:15 PT on Wednesday, October 2nd.
Happy August! We’re getting very close to the Halloween season. July was a shitshow and I’d like very much to leave the month behind. I promise more social media interaction, a recap of my time from Midsummer Scream along with lots of pictures, and an entertaining movie list for August.
This month’s theme is August Aliens. In celebration of Alien: Romulus from legendary Director and Producer Ridley Scott, which is the latest installment set in the Alien universe, one of my favorite franchises of all time. This month, I’ll pay tribute to the Xenomorph lore and also the dark fantastical artwork of beloved Swiss Artist and Designer H.R. Giger, original creator of Xenomorphs. Giger and the design and special affects team won an Academy Award for the sci-fi horror spectacle Alien, 1979.
dark corridors alien lifeform unleashed terror in deep space
Artwork by H.R. Giger. To see more wonders of Giger’s macabre biomechanical world and learn about this legendary artist, please visit H.R. Giger Museum.
Originally, my monthly theme was March Madness, but I didn’t like the story. However, I already put together a list of my fave spooky movies about going insane. Is it all in their heads or is something more sinister afoot? Gotta watch to find out. In keeping with the theme of March Mischief, I’m totally posting a March Madness movie list!🤪😄
Halloween Horror Haiku 
You must be logged in to post a comment.