My Top Ten…I Mean, 13 Favorite Horror Movies

You're sooooo good lookin

I first have to post a disclaimer: After numerous debates with fellow Bums Logic blogger Jr. Worthy and Ms. FJB, I want to make it very clear that what I define as a “horror” movie is not always in line with what others do. For instance, is Jaws a horror movie? Is Silence of the Lambs? Some say they are “thrillers” and that true horror movies need to contain an element of the supernatural like The Exorcist does. I will argue that mother fuckin Michael Myers has some supernatural powers, okay?

#13 – Hellraiser
Bondage-clad evildoers, skinless-men, some sort of evil box that unleashes demons, and one of the most iconic bad guys in modern horror movie history: Hellraiser. Not the most popular film on the list, but one that made me never want to have my skin ripped off via hooks and chains. Not that I needed a movie to make me realize that.

#12 – The Exorcist
Most critics and fans think this is amongst–if not the–best horror movie ever made. While it’s extremely hard for me to argue against that point, this is, after all, a list of my favorite horror movies. I do love The Exorcist (not loving it is like not loving pizza). Who doesn’t want to watch a child’s head spin 360 degrees while puking on a priest as she tries to seduce him? I won’t even insert a joke here.

#11 – The Blair Witch Project
Let’s get one thing straight: if you are camping out in the woods in the middle of nowhere and you suddenly hear little children playing outside your tent…in the dark of the night…run! That is, unless you want to find yourself staring at images of bloody hand prints on a wall while some witch clobbers your friends and steals your camera.

#10 – Alien
The first time I watched Alien was the first time I almost puked during a movie. When that freakin little fucker came tearing out of John Hurt’s stomach and started galloping around the room like Mick Jagger on acid I had to turn the movie off. Nightmares for months…still have them today! Which also led to me having to constantly ask my mom if there was ever a chance that a baby alien could pop out of my stomach, because every time I got a stomach ache I convinced myself that was the case.

#9 – Hostel
After I watched this movie I had two thoughts: 1. I am never going to eastern Europe and 2. Please tell me these kind of places don’t actually exist.

RubeFlix: The Best Show On TV Right Now

I'm a very bad man

All too often, when discussing various versions of the “blank blank is the best blank blank blank ever” (fill in movie, music, tv show, book, actor, etc.), people either tend to jump to an already established popular choice (The Godfather is the best movie ever, The Sopranos is the best television show ever; Marlon Brando is the best actor ever, Shakespeare is the best writer, Hendrix is the best guitar player, New York pizza is the best evuh) or try to uniquely identify their tastes by declaring some other off-beat preference, such as, “The Killers are the best band ever.”

There has been a lot of (or perhaps not enough?) talk lately about AMC’s drama Breaking Bad, which is starting it’s highly anticipated fourth season in July 2011. Forget about Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Rescue Me, The Killing, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, or any other major network program, the realization is, no show is better written, acted, or more intriguing than Breaking Bad is at this very moment.

I am here to tell you that Breaking Bad is the best show on TV right now.

RubeFlix: “The West Wing”

Long before The Social Network, but not long after A Few Good Men and The American President, Aaron Sorkin combined the latter two movies and created the Emmy Award-winning television drama The West Wing on NBC. The show ran for seven seasons (1999-2006) and covered a plethora of political and personal topics that were both timely and overtly dramatic.

Luckily, for those of you that didn’t watch the show when it originally aired, we now have NetFlix and various other avenues by which we can view an older television series. Now, watching an entire season of any show only requires a rainy weekend and, oh, say about, 10-20 hours of free time to kill. Lucky for me (I think) I was hooked on the original running of the series before it even aired. I remember there being plenty of hype for it before the pilot episode even hit NBC.

One of the most interesting things about going back and re-watching movies or television shows (or music) is discovering if you still feel the same way about it after subsequent viewings as you did upon the initial one. Shows like The Wire or Deadwood undoubtedly grow more and more engaging with multiple viewings, once you are able to absorb more of the dialogue, character development, and plot lines. When The West Wing originally aired, there was no such thing as pausing or recording live tv, no Tivo or NetFlix. If you missed an episode, well, you were screwed (unless someone you knew taped it on their VCR). A relative once asked me what the point is in re-watching a movie you have already seen? My response was, “do you only listen to an album once?”