I'll grant you that these clearly were not "stage" actors, but it's not like they were distracting, either. Also, I think Marilyn Burns (the final girl) did a fine job of conveying terror at the end of the movie. But hey, to each their own.
I don't watch gross-out or trash and slash horror any more, but saw most of the classic ones back in the day except for Salo. I also agree that disturbing isn't necessarily graphic imagery but pyschologically upsetting, so my short list would include: the aforementioned Irreversible (even though part of it was extremely violent); Melancholia (I found Anti-Christ disturbing but it did border on the torture/porn thing). There was also an independent film, Red/White/Blue may be the title, filmed in Austin, about a young woman who sleeps with the wrong guy and all hell breaks loose- That movie about the young girl who tries to leave the cult in upstate NY mentioned earlier was also very edgy. I still find the opening sequence to the original b&w Night of the Living Dead to be spell-binding, no matter how many times I've seen it.
Definitely. You might think the acting's fine, but I thought it WAS a distraction. If I can't get into the horror because the performances are so bad, that's a distraction to me. From my review: "So many of the performers overplay their roles horribly that they rob their characters of any real presence or power. Neal’s hitchhiker creates the most egregious example of this. Perhaps the actor thought his twitchiness and broadness would make the character scary, but instead it just turns him into a bizarrely over the top and comedic presence. Burns’ Sally probably comes across best of the bunch, but that’s mostly just because she can scream really well. She also looks really good in her tank top. The role requires little else from her, and she delivers a sense of genuine terror experienced by her character."
Not that I want to get off topic in my own thread, but since someone mentioned bad acting in horror movies, the original Night of the Living Dead had some real winners. I do not find this movie disturbing, btw.
I've seen many of the movies already mentioned in this thread, but one movie i found more disturbing than all of them was a British flick from a few years ago called ''Eden Lake'', made even more disturbing not only because of how real and current it all seemed, but also because of how incredibly well made the film is and the solid acting of it's young cast of unknowns, incredibly tense and violent, recommended for those with a strong stomach and nerves of steel.
Like you, I had also seen it in high school and I it left an impression. How could it not?. Decades later, I bought the Criterion DVD not even realising it was the same one. The same director made a film called Hiroshima mon Amour. This one's a drama but it includes real footage of Hiroshima that's just as memorable (and also out by Criterion).
The only flat-out BAD performance I thought was the wheelchair guy. Otherwise, I thought they were OK for a super-low-budget horror movie circa 1974, and I could certainly make allowances for the weirdness of The Family. Perhaps this weekend I'll watch it again to confirm my impressions, it's been some time since I last saw it. I had a hard time getting into the remake because it was just so generic - pretty young models get picked off by omniscient psychos. Whoopee. It might as well have been Wolf Creek or Rest Stop.
Sorry, but I have to disagree on every single level. Nothing in the 2003 remake, formally or thematically, comes close to the ferocious originality and perfect insanity of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Writing, direction, photography, casting, acting, score - the original is a monumental achievement, and is (rightly) recognised as such. Indeed, it defines a genre outright. No offence intended, but I'm curious to know how the remake constitutes 'a better made film' as such?
The set design of the original alone elevates it above the remake (and I'm someone who didn't mind the remake).
I was born in 1982 and I rate TCM as one of the 3 greatest horror films ever made. To this day it's the only horror film that made me lose sleep
It's weird - none of the movies mentioned really bothered me that much, at least not to the extent of throwing up, leaving the room/theatre, etc. What I find really disturbing though is practically every show on the Bravo Channel.
I don't feel that Paul Partain gave a 'bad' performance in TTCSM (1974) - indeed, quite the opposite. The character of Franklin is suffocatingly overbearing and annoying, and Partain delivers that entirely convincingly. Indeed, I find the whole cast to be effective in their respective roles, in that (broadly) naturalistic manner seen in 70s American cinema. I mean, if one considers the 'horror' films which preceded TTCSM, the acting style most typical of the genre fell somewhere between ineptitude and high camp. Given the nature of TTCSM, it's amazing that the performances are as actually controlled as they are. With such riotously insane characters as Leatherface, The Cook and The Hitchhiker, it's a tribute to the actors that what might have typically been played out as a bunch of ridiculously contrived boogeymen instead feels fully realised and deeply disturbing.
I actually think that the later prequel to the remake (TCM: The Beginning from 2006) is a monumentally better film than the 2003 movie. Whereas the remake felt trapped between frustrated homage and the studied hectoring of Gen-Y, the prequel is much more confident - with a stronger narrative line and some genuinely engaging set pieces that really deliver (although both are completely disposable...)
I can't believe no-one has mentioned Eraserhead! Yup, I don't know how anyone could find The Exorcist anything but hilarious. It's too absurd to be scary!
You know the true life story of that actor that was featured in Eraserhead, right? The dude with the big hair that's usually on the poster/artwork?
Add John Waters' Pink Flamingos, and I think you have a good triple theater for the Hell Multiplex Theater. Awful story -- good actor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nance David Lynch funded a documentary based on the actor called You Don't Know Jack, telling about his interesting life and tragic death (and the suicide death of his wife, Kelly Van Dyke, daughter of actor Jerry Van Dyke).
On the topic of which is the better Chainsaw--original or remake--I'd say they blow just about equally.
None of the movies mentioned really disturb me. It's when you get into the "August Underground" territory that I just get disgusted. Pointless cheaply shot torture movies possibly being marketed as instructional videos appealing to budding young psychopaths.
Vid- thanks for picking that one up from me. Yes, I was focusing on the wife's death. The wiki doesn't do justice to the drama of it, I think I read about it in an old Rolling Stone magazine piece or somesuch. He was apparently trying to talk her down from the ledge while on location, and the conversation had a tenor of 'don't hang up on me or I'll kill myself.' Lightening strikes and kills the phone line. He panics, races home- some distance- but they find her dead by her own hand. Sometimes, truth is stranger than art. And sad.
In my opinion, Rosemary's Baby is a disturbing movie, but I'm sure that I'm a lightweight when it comes to this sort of stuff. Personally, I have no desire to watch any movie that is categorized as "torture-porn" and I don't really understand how anybody could derive any enjoyment out of seeing stuff like that. Back in the 80s when I worked for Turtle's Records, we used to get tons of calls asking if we had Faces of Death available to rent, and it used to disgust me that anyone would want to watch that. I understand morbid curiosity and all of that, but I really have no desire to see things that will stay with me and cause me mental distress.
The insidious and cancerous nature of the Italian Mafia is truly brought home to bear in Gomorrah. It makes the Godfather trilogy but a ***** family soap opera , by comparision