Top 22 Horror Films in 22 Years

Recently, there have been a great many horror lists published on various blogs as a rebuttal to Owen Gleiberman's list in Entertainment Weekly.

I cheated my list back 22 years so as to include In A Glass Cage, one of my favorite horror films of any time.

Good horror comedies such as Shaun of the Dead are missing because they're not real horror to me.

You won't find Blair Witch Project here because it is now and always has been utter shit.

I realize some films here such as Battle Royale may not meet everybody's definition of horror. For mine, the film's premise is horrific ) enough in my book -- kill all your friends and classmates or you die!

Utterly disturbing.

Extremely tense. Claustrophobic. Doesn't put a foot wrong.

The cheat ending still bothers me, and almost bumped it off the list, but everything that comes before it is true horror executed with love and gusto.

A masterpiece from the late Kinji Fukasaku, a god among directors.

Surreal, atmospheric horror.

One of the best Italian horror films ever made (and they've made some doozies). Grisly, surreal, erotic, disturbing, and beautiful.

Despite the lack of perfect versions of this, it is a rich, atmospheric horror film occasionally handicapped by wrong-headed comedy. Still, its necrophilic tone qualifies it for greatness.

I love Arturo Ripstein, and this phenomenal Mexican version of The Honeymoon Killers is sometimes unbearable to watch.

As I am not a fan of Audition (I find it quite boring), my Miike choice is the brilliant and twisted Ichii The Killer.

As the years pass, I like Silence of the Lambs less and Ridley Scott's Hannibal so much more.

Gary Oldman's 'Mason Verger' is a modern horror creation that Lon Chaney would have been proud of.

One of the most subversive horror films ever to be slipped through a studio gate.

Real horror with brutal catharsis.

Easily one of the most bizarre, troubling, and anxiety-inducing horror films. From director Fruit Chan.

I may be alone on this one, but John Dahl's riff on the Duel premise is a taut, unrelenting horror pic with a great, unseen villain ('Rusty Nail').

What can I say that hasn't already been said?

Powerful psychological horror that captures the terror of being a prisoner of your own delusions.

A nightmare captured on celluloid.

This '87 masterpiece of bloodsucking just slips through the 22-year gate.

One of the most bizarre, cruel, and horrific studies of child abuse ever burned to the screen, Midori is a worthy successor to Todd Browning's Freaks.

Based on Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show by Suehiro Maruo.

Supreme tension.

Masterful, understated horror fairytale.

Accomplished tale of alienation where the horror grows like cancer on sunburn.

David Mamet's only attempt at writing a horror picture is stark and frightening and unforgettable. Stuart Gordon's direction is flawless.

The Cinematic Life of Midori

In Hiroshi Harada's Midori (Shojo tsubaki, '92), the title character is an orphan who is rescued by Mr. Arashi, the owner of a traveling freakshow.

Finding herself at the center of the freaks' violent and bizarre sexual fantasies, the twelve year old girl's spirit of hope is crushed and her future looks headed for an abyss.

But when an eccentric dwarf with a kind heart, Mr. Masamitsu ("The Bottled Wonder"), joins the circus...

...he takes Midori under his wing, and a strange love blossoms.

But the freaks are angry that their sexual plaything has been snatched away.


This intensely beautiful and shockingly brutal film is based on Suehiro Maruo's stunning manga, Mr Arashi's Amazing Freak Show, which was published to critical acclaim and much controversy in 1984. It was a monument to surreal illustration and graphic storytelling in the grotesque vein.

The film has had a bizarre and fascinating history.


Director Hiroshi Harada recalls what attracted him to the project, which he created almost single-handedly over a period of five years: "Ever since I saw a coarse and shocking show at a Shintoist festival in my childhood,I was inspired to become a full color, animated show designer. When I came across Suehiro Maruo's original work, I wanted to arrange it in my own way, and that is how this project came about. At first producing this work was extremely difficult, and no Japanese movie or video production company dared to take it on."



Initially in Japan, the film was not screened in traditional theaters.

Explains Hirada: "Midori was screened in a labyrinth-like show tent specially designed and constructed and in a secret underground space adapted for showing alternative works. Moreover, it is a complex three-dimensional work using live performances, movable stages, gun powder, smoke machines, full color kimonos and obis, lifelike dolls, three projectors, and lighting schemes inspired by Kabuki theater and Edo magic lantern pictures...In the last scene, cherry blossom would be cast down on you from the ceiling like snowflakes. This is how Midori was usually presented in Japan."


"After screening the film independently in 1992 in an underground chamber, Midori was then screened from 1994 as an R-15 film in Japanese and overseas theatres (it is now R-18).

"In 1999, when a print of the film was returned from an overseas film festival, it was confiscated by the censors at Narita customs and destroyed, since by this time the film had been banned (from being shown theatrically) in Japan. From thereon, it was only shown off videotape in Japan."

Harada was born in '62, his DVD bio notes, and raised in Japan, "...a society known for its alcohols and geishas. He studied Confucian Ethics and History of Kinseki Calligraphy at the Shinju Academy of Calligraphy. Inspired by the film Gertie The Dinosaur, directed by Windor McKay, he started making animated Super-8 films at the age of 14.


"Influenced by the Independent Producing Movement -- a movement led by the director Satsuo Yamamoto which emerged after the Red Purge that took place in the Japanese industry in the mid-50's -- and the aesthetics of ATG (Art Theatre Guild), led by the director Shuji Terayama in the 60's, he started making commercial anmated films (Doraemon and Mezon-Ikkoku) at the age of 20. He was also an apprentice to Kenzo Koizumi, the key animator of Space Battleship Yamato."

Due to its truly independent production structure, Harada's Midori possesses a powerful, unpolished purity of form and content.


It is a creature of beauty, cruelty, sadness, and brutality.

A work of unbridled imagination.

Harada discusses his style and intentions: "I produced the work in the TV animation, lovable style so that young people, who are never taught the ugliness of the world in school, could see Midori."

As the film is rarely "full motion", it remains close to its manga origins.

It is rougher and grittier than its source, and its nihilism is more potent.

Maruo and Harada both owe a debt to Todd Brownsing's seminal freak film, Freaks, and others from that era such as The Unknown, The Unholy Three, and Dead of Night.

These were all works that opted to enter the bizarre world of the physically marginalized and look out, rather than creep up to the edge and look in (or down, as was often the case).

To me, Midori is everything I love about Art, a work that challenges our sensitivities and reminds us that our moral choices alter destiny.

Enjoy...





















The Midori DVD(Sylicone) is available from Cine Malta.

***

Japanese artists creating brilliant work in the same vein include Hideshi Hino...

Toshio Saeki...

and Junji Ito