I woke up to a text message from BDM that read, “You should do a horror movie piece for Fetchland.”

A horror movie piece? Like a list? But what kind of list? Underrated movies? Good movies? Bad movies? For fans of the genre only? Hell, it’s 5am in the morning so how about a little something for everyone? So here I give you:

Fetchland’s Top 8 Horror Movies That Are Good, Bad, Underrated, Weird , Great, And Game Changing.

It’s 5am kids.

Happy Halloween!
— Paul

The WFT One
Possession (1981) dir Andrzej Żuławski

I found this one a few years ago while on my annual “need to find movies for Halloween I haven’t seen yet” quest.
IMDB describes it as:

A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

Sounds straightforward right?

NO!

I’m going to say these two words to you.

Tunnel.

Scene.

Watch the movie and you’ll understand.

The Crazy Italian One
Manhattan Baby (1982) dir Lucio Fulci

You want to watch a crazy Italian horror movie. There’s no drought of those. How about a crazy Lucio Fulci movie? No challenge there. But Manhattan Baby…Manhattan Baby makes The Beyond seem tame.

The Good Movie One
Session 9 (2001) dir Brad Anderson

Someone asked me just last week for a good horror movie “not just scary but a good movie from the last ten years”.

I couldn’t think of any. I am not a big fan of modern horror. Give me a few more years to play with and I’d say Session 9. Just the location alone makes this worth seeing. I think the whole movie works on so many levels.

The One That Changed It All One
Dawn of the Dead (1978) dir George A. Romero

You wouldn’t have The Walking Dead.

You wouldn’t have the modern obsession with everything zombie.

And it wasn’t Night of the Living Dead that did that.

It was Dawn. It’s the reason horror nerds check out the local Costco and think, this would work. And if you’ve only seen the remake, go watch the original. Kids today.

The Carpenter Movie You Didn’t Expect One
Prince of Darkness (1987) dir John Carpenter

I have argued for hours over what is John Carpenter’s best horror film. I say Halloween.

Others say The Thing… which is great.

Some even say In the Mouth of Madness and if you do I’ll walk out of the room.

But you gotta love Prince of Darkness. Come on, tachyon transmissions from the future and Alice Cooper.

‘Nuff said.

The Action Comedy One
Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980) dir Sammo Hung

I love my kung fu movies. Encounters of the Spooky Kind aka Spooky Encounters gets you the great Sammo Hung at the height of his abilities. This is the one that started the Hopping Vampire craze that was all over the place in the 80s.

The Never Heard Of This One
Next of Kin (1982) dir Tony Williams

I found out about Next of Kin watching the amazing documentary Not Quite Hollywood about Australian exploitation films. This movie is an Ozzie giallo if that makes any sense. Just watch the trailer and tell me you don’t want to see it.

The Slow Build Up One
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) dir John D. Hancock

A lot of times you hear someone defend a boring horror movie by saying it’s not appreciated because it’s not filled with gore and has a slow build up. People say that about 2009’s House Of the Devil but I’m not a fan of that movie. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is the movie I talk about that uses atmosphere and little to no blood to create a disturbing story.