Are you looking for a really scary movie that will rivet you to your seat and make your hair stand on end?  Check out these spooky selections from Edward X. Young.  These reviews were originally published for the Pumpkin Festival website for The Keene Sentinel.  It is now offered as an ongoing feature of exyoung.com and will be updated regularly.  Please check back often for the latest horror picks and feel free to add your comments and suggestions.  Please keep in mind that some of his favorite fright films are not for the squeamish or the faint of heart.  Check out the MPAA rating before renting to find out whether the film is appropriate for you or your family members.  Enjoy!.  

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2003 Horror-Scopes by Edward X. Young 
for SentinelSource

Legendary director, Roman Polanski, who first achieved international fame in 1968 with the release of ROSEMARY’S BABY that gave birth to the genre of the "Satanic Cult Horror Film," returns to his cinematic roots with THE NINTH GATE.  Polanski's fourth feature to explore organized occult conspiracies follows the trail of an unscrupulous rare book dealer (Johnny Depp), hired by a mysterious collector (Frank Langella), to locate the last remaining copy of a Mediaeval text. This pursuit opens the doorway to a world of ubiquitous Devil worshippers, who murderously seek the same tome to use as a catalyst to launch the Apocalypse.  Viewers should prepare themselves for a totally unexpected ending that will leave some outraged, but will be found funny by fans familiar with the director's twisted sense of humor. Polanski’s wife, the hauntingly beautiful Emmanuelle Seigner nearly steals the show as an enigmatic, but quite literal, "Hell's Angel" in a Faustian tale that is frightening, sexy and fun.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) by Edward X. Young, EXYoung.com

“Who will survive and what will be left of them?” screamed the ad campaign for the movie that turned the humble power tool into a weapon of mass destruction and ruined the reputation of the Lone Star State.  When director Tobe Hooper’s bloodbath ripped up movie screens in 1974, New York Daily News film critic Rex Reed called it “even more frightening than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.”  Using sledgehammers, meat hooks, and chainsaws, a clan of cannibalistic cowboy cretins led by Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) kills and dismembers every lost city slicker foolhardy enough to mosey on by asking for directions.  Three sequels and a current big budget remake cannot hold a candle to the low-budget high-splatter original, as the cheap grainy film quality and amateur acting give THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE the verisimilitude of a snuff movie.  Once you’ve seen this cautionary tale, you’ll never pick up a hitchhiker or eat head cheese again!

AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000) by Ed Young, exyoung.com

The ultra-violent novel by author Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero) was so violently protested by feminist groups that most retailers, although supportive of the author's First Amendment rights, were cowed into avoiding prominent display of the book in most stores.  When trade papers announced that Leonardo DiCaprio, anxious to shed his heartthrob stereotype from Titanic, had signed to play the lead character in the film, the same women’s organizations targeted the actor, who bailed out of the project to be replaced by Christian Bale.  Critical defenders hailed the story of a yuppie serial killer, who vents his homicidal rage against women and the poor, comparing it to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, inasmuch as it presents a monster for its time.  Like the Frankenstein monster, AMERICAN PSYCHO has refused to stay dead. Rent it now to see why it holds the distinction of being one of the most provocative thrillers to hit the screens in recent years.

CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) by Ed X. Young, EXYoung.com (Ellen R. Young's pick)

Some great horror films hit you head-on with shock effects that make you jump out of your seat.  But the really great ones sneak up behind you, crawl under your skin, and slip into your subconscious to assault you in your dreams.  It’s the stuff that nightmares are made of! The sole survivor of a car accident that claims the lives of all her friends finds herself trapped between the realms of the living and the dead.  Pursued by spectral figures that rise from murky depths, the young church organist flees to an abandoned lakefront pavilion only to discover that no matter how far she runs she cannot hide.  At the carnival in progress, she has already been chosen Belle of the Ball. Viewers should avoid the 1998 color remake of CARNIVAL OF SOULS!  The original 1962 black and white version is the movie that will make you wake up screaming.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)  Ed X. Young's Favorite Horror Movie

News Bulletin: A NASA space probe returns from Venus, infects the Earth with an extraterrestrial virus, and causes corpses to rise again as homicidal ghouls driven by a hunger for living flesh! “They won’t stay dead!”  Brutally minimalist, this masterpiece of the macabre pulls no punches and violates every social taboo.  Dead brother, Johnny, eats his sister alive!  Zombie child devours her parents! Racial tensions flare!  Accept no substitutes! The1990 color remake and the 1998 reedited version, pale in comparison to the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the Greatest Horror Movie of All Time. This 1968 cult classic, shot on a shoestring budget on grainy black and white film stock that looks so much like old newsreel footage that to avert real public panic, during its first late night TV broadcast in 1972, concerned New York City TV station managers repeatedly flashed the warning: “This is only a dramatization!”

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) by Ed Young, EXYoung.com

In this Generation X zombie spoof, disaffected punk rockers gate-crash a cemetery for a midnight mosh party. Spike-haired siren, Trash (Linnea Quigley), entertains the boys in the band with a strip tease on a mausoleum rooftop. Declaring her desire to die by dismemberment at the hands of filthy old men, she has no idea how soon her fondest dreams will be fulfilled.  The newly resurrected and hungry dead are already clawing at the lids of their coffins.  When postmortem Trash returns as a hip-swinging horror, she’s the sexiest zombie to ever stalk the Earth.  Agile ghouls run rampant screaming for “More live brains!”  It’s the only fix that can take away the pain of being dead.  And you just can’t stop them!  Even if you chop them up, the zombie pieces come crawling after you.  You’ll die laughing when the Pentagon comes to the rescue for an over-the-top apocalyptic ending.

THE EXORCIST (1973) by Edward Young, EXYoung.com

It delivers a wallop, because it effectively exploits deeply rooted religious fears.  Particularly disturbing to Catholics, this ecumenical thriller still has something to share the beejeezus out of practitioners of every faith.  The first horror film to be nominated for an Oscar® for Best Picture of the Year, it is a true classic of the genre.  Young actress Linda Blair rose to overnight fame (and life-long type casting) in the role of a preteen girl, who playfully dabbles with the occult and subsequently becomes possessed by the Devil.  Before you can spin your head around backwards, the sweet young thing is levitating over her bed, spewing projectile green vomit, doing terrible things with crucifixes, and hurling priests out her bedroom window.  If you knew that author of THE EXORCIST, William Peter Blatty, insists that his story is based on a true case, you wouldn’t be laughing anymore.  It’s time to throw out that Ouija Board!

DRACULA (1931) by Edward X. Young, EXYoung.com

When actor Bela Lugosi emerges from the dark shadows and cobwebs at the top of the winding staircase, peers menacingly into the camera lens and announces in his deep, rich Hungarian accent, “I am Dracula,” he delivers his line like a gospel proclamation.  Lugosi dominates the film and so perfectly embodies the role of the blood-sucking vampire count that he sets the standard and establishes a cultural icon that no other actor (with the possible exception of Christopher Lee) could usurp.  Seven decades later, the stagy theatrics of the supporting cast members in the original DRACULA look painfully dated; but Lugosi’s transcendental performance remains as vibrantly undead as ever.  When you see DRACULA, the first great talkie monster movie, there is no mystery why Lugosi became an overnight sensation as the Transylvanian count and the original king of Universal Studio’s famous horror series.  Although the actor died in 1956 and was buried swathed in his Dracula cape, Lugosi’s creation is immortal.  Dracula lives!

HANNIBAL (2001) by Ed X Young, EXYoung.com

Anthony Hopkins again takes the lead in this sequel to the Oscar®-winning horror classic, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.  But the real star of this most sanguine installment in the ongoing cinematic saga of Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter is the diabolically brilliant Italian special effects coordinator, Daniel Acon, who takes high-tech gore effects to what might be considered a new high or low, depending on your threshold for nausea.  The centerpiece of this banquet of bloodletting comes when Acon goes over the top and you see the meddling federal agent (Ray Liotta) lose the top of his head.  You’ll be picking your brains wondering how technical wizard Acon made it look like Hopkins was really picking the still-conscious Liotta’s brains!  You better not eat a full meal beforehand, because when you behold the full smorgasbord of Acon’s sickening specialties, you’ll need at least two barf bags!  The favorite fright film of animal rights activists, HANNIBAL is guaranteed to turn a percentage of its audience into die-hard vegetarians.  Bon appétit!

THE OTHERS (2001) by Edward X. Young, EXYoung.com

In this haunted house horror, Nicole Kidman is so hauntingly beautiful, you’ll have to conclude that her then husband, Tom Cruise, had bats in his belfry to have filed for divorce following this production.  Perhaps the pretty boy couldn’t take the threat to his fragile ego, as he watched his wife's talents fully bloom in her role as Grace, a single mother desperately fighting to save her children from “the others” hiding in the shadows of her darkened mansion.  This supernatural thriller harkens back to the cinematic style of Alfred Hitchcock, who placed more faith in the frightening potential of mounting suspense, as opposed to the visceral.  Afterwards, when you hear that thing that goes bump in the night, you will jump out of bed screaming. But when Kidman’s performance in THE OTHERS earned her a Golden Globe® nomination in the same year she garnered yet another Golden Globe® and an Oscar® nod for MOULIN ROUGE, Cruise must have been so spooked that he ran screaming to his attorney's office.  This story will haunt your dreams as much as Nicole’s beauty haunts your fantasies.

RED PLANET (2000) by Ed X. Young, EXYoung.com

Authenticity was the objective in this imaginative and terrifying view of the first manned trip to Mars.  Because there have been so many science fiction movies about interplanetary space travel, the filmmakers concluded that the best way to achieve originality was to instead strive for "science fact."  With that ambitious goal in mind, the director, Anthony Hoffman, committed months of pre-production to technical research at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas. More than 900 visual effects were used and scientific data was meticulously analyzed in order to calculate what things would actually sound like in deep space and on the planet Mars, where the atmosphere that transmits sound waves differs vastly from that of Earth. Experts estimate that an actual manned flight to Mars may lie as far as 50 years in the future.  So if you don't think you can wait, rent RED PLANET; and you'll get a good idea of what horrors to expect.

As boxing ring announcer Michael Buffer would say: "Let's get ready to Rumble!" Bela Lugosi (DRACULA) and Boris Karloff (FRANKENSTEIN) square off for a movie monster grudge match. Two Titans of Terror go toe-to-toe in a "no holds barred" title bout to determine the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of Hollywood Horror. The Crown is at stake; and no one is pulling any punches.  Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) and Dr. Vitus Verdegast (Lugosi) have a bone to pick. After satanic cult leader Poelzig (a character based on real-life devil-worshipper Aliester Crowley) imprisons Verdegast in a dungeon and leaves him for dead, he sacrifices Verdegast's wife in a black mass ritual and turns the daughter into a zombie love slave. (This one drove Hollywood censors crazy!) Once free, Verdegast ventures to Budapest to Poelzig's creepy custom-designed castle, built over the mass graves of ten thousand war dead. Hell-bent on vengeance, Verdegast vows to destroy the cult and skin Poelzig alive -- literally!

Little Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd) takes a shining to some ghostly playmates when the dynamics of his dysfunctional family prove scarier than any specter.  Alcoholic Dad (Jack Nicholson) suppresses a sadistic undercurrent and turns beastly when he hits the bottle.  Simpering enabler Mom (Shelly Duval) sweeps the truth under the rug.  THE SHINING is so shocking, because the sinister subtext strikes many moviegoers so close to the heart.  (It sure reminds me of my childhood!)  Secluded and snowbound in an off-season ski resort with a supernatural secret, the all too "All-American Family" gets cabin fever.  As pressures inexorably approach critical mass, Dad decides it's time to "correct" the situation and starts sharpening the axe.  Based on the best-selling novel by the Master of Modern Horror, Steven King, and meticulously directed by the late, great Stanley Kubrick, this masterpiece of audience manipulation sucks the viewer into a claustrophobic vortex that is heightened in intensity by Wendy Carlos' unforgettably haunting musical score.

In Hollywood's first (and arguably still the most frightening) science fiction film to feature a flying saucer, scientists at a remote Air Force outpost in the Arctic Circle uncover and unwittingly thaw out an apocalyptic alien threat.  In 1951, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD delivered the extra menace mandated by movie fans at the height of the Cold War, when the Famous Monsters of Filmland (Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy, and Wolfman) started looking too warm and fuzzy next to the looming and real threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. In the terrifying titular role, actor James Arness (who went on to play Marshall Matt Dillon on GUNSMOKE) is an extra terrestrial with attitude. Arness’ ET ain’t phoning home.  He’s moving in and taking over.  When audiences witnessed Arness (years before he was slinging guns on his TV western series) abducting Air Force officers to string them upside-down and drain them of their lifeblood, shocked moviegoers dove under their seats to duck and cover.

Rarely is a remake as good as the original.  But when director John Carpenter (HALLOWEEN) was hired to re-shoot a color version of the black and white 1951 genre classic, he wisely choose to avoid redux and instead make a reverent reexamination of the theme.  Adhering more closely to the source material of the science fiction novel, "Who Goes There," by John W. Campbell, the new "thing" is a shape-shifting alien apocalyptic threat accidentally unleashed after millenniums under the Antarctic ice. Breaking bloody ground with shockingly original and spectacular special visual effects, Carpenter succeeds in sustaining the suspense by tapping into the paranoid pulse of a new generation with a monster that kills like a contagion, by infesting the victims' bloodstream and insidiously eating them up. The stark backdrop of snow and ice extending as far as the eye can see, provide the perfect contrast for the gore and grizzle, as nothing seems quite so shocking and simultaneously beautiful as the color red splattered upon a field of white.  Really effective horror films tap into repressed dread.  Whereas THE THING of 1951 exploited society's lingering fear that it had no protection from nuclear annihilation, THE THING of 1982 preys upon the terror of contracting an annihilating disease if there isn't adequate protection.

FELICIA’S JOURNEY (1999) Movie review by Edward X. Young, EXYoung.com

Considering there is little on-screen violence and not one single drop of blood, Felicia's Journey may stand as the strangest serial killer movie ever made. Viewers, however, should not be fooled into thinking they will be in for an easy ride, as director, Atom Egoyan, conjures up new levels of terror through the exploration of the workings of the mind of a psychopath. Instead, through a study of lost innocence and redemption, Egoyan reveals the soul of a child that resides within a monster; and he makes us reckon with the potential monster that may reside within us all.  This modern horror story was the sleeper hit of the 1999 New York Film Festival, where it earned a standing ovation from the audience at Lincoln Center.  Often compared to Alfred Hitchcock, Egoyan is an original stylist, who delivers the kind of movie that will keep you lying awake in bed all night after you've seen it.  So who needs gory shock effects?

THE SKULLS (2000) Film review by Edward X. Young, EXYoung.com

For over 170 years, there has existed in America, on one particular Ivy League campus, a fraternity unlike any other. It is so exclusive in its recruitment that it can boast, as members, among many of the social elite, a past Supreme Court justice, many high ranking officials in the CIA, and three U.S. Presidents.  Cabalistic in design and enshrouded in secrecy, it has spawned rumors so numerous that its legend can rival the UFO conjecture surrounding Air Force Area 51. Conspiracy theories abound on the Internet. Wild speculation on the activities of this collegiate brotherhood include accusations of espionage, blackmail, ritualistic sexual depravity, narcotics smuggling, assassinations, Satan worship, grave robbery, necrophilia, human sacrifice, and a plan for global political domination through a New World Order. In the fact-based, but fictionalized thriller, THE SKULLS, the filmmakers firmly grasp these suppositions; and then carry them out to the most outrageous possible conclusions.

HOLLOW MAN (2000) by film critic Edward X. Young, EXYoung.com

Mind-boggling visual effects highlight this science-fiction thriller starring Kevin Bacon as a government scientist driven mad with power after discovering the secret of invisibility. So ambitious was the project, when screenwriter Andrew W. Marlowe (End of Days) first wrote the script, he included special effects that were not yet possible.  But director and scientist Paul Verhoeven, who had experience in the science fiction genre (Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Robocop), had scientific knowledge enabling him to fully exploit the potential of the newly developed special effects technology. The biggest challenge was to cinematically realize the process of making actor Kevin Bacon gradually turn invisible layer by layer, as his skin, muscular system, internal organs, and skeleton vanish. Research conducted by Sony Pictures Imageworks involved observations of actual autopsies in order to make the computer software necessary to generate an accurate and gruesome 3-D moving image of a disappearing man. 

Only Director Roman Polanski could turn life’s most blessed event into such an accursed abomination. Expectant parents, Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse (John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow), sign a lease for a Manhattan apartment with a Central Park view that most New Yorkers would sell their souls for.  Soon all hell breaks loose -- literally. The newlyweds’ delightful expectations spiral into a frightful abyss.  Polanski preyed upon a base-level fear, exploiting the instinctual maternal need to protect new life, when he wove his labyrinthine Oscar®-nominated screenplay based on the Ira Levin’s best-seller.  Ruth Gordon won the Oscar® for Best Supporting Actress for her offbeat performance as Minnie Castavet, the sweet little old lady next door, who just happens to be a witch and enjoys conducting occult rituals and human sacrifices in her kitchen when she’s not watching afternoon soap operas. The sight of Satan-worshipping stark naked senior citizens will make you queasier than morning sickness.