Scariest Movie Moments?

This past Friday, Bravo, the increasingly gay channel, debuted the two part special 30 Even Scarier Movie Moments, a follow up to The 100 Scariest Movie Moments special they aired a couple of years ago. That initial special, while occasionally wonky in its rankings, they did call Jaws the scariest movie of all time, for example, was spectacular. I don’t usually go in for these 100 Greatest lists. They usually seem arbitrary and entirely populist and tend to be more about their cute VH1 style talking head celebrities than about the supposed subject of the list. The 100 Scariest Movie Moments, however, was a different animal entirely. While there were a few talking head celebrities involved, including the always sexy Jennifer Tilly, Dave Navaro, and brilliant directors Peter Jackson, John Carpenter, and John Landis, these celebrities were actually pretty articulate on the subject. Further, a number of critics and academics, mostly of the obscure variety, were invited to participate as well, giving the entire special a rather unusual feeling of import. What really made that special great, though, was the actual content of the list. True, there were a number of popular, well worn horror movies, everything from Friday the 13th to Child’s Play, but where the list really shined was in exposing the viewer, myself included, to a number of obscure titles and filmmakers I likely never would have found otherwise. In the couple of years since I first saw that special, I have made it a point to track down many of the movies featured there and many of those have become some of my favorite movies of all time, movies like Suspiria, Black Sunday and the work of Mario Bava in general, whom I’d never heard of before this special, Don’t Look Now, Dawn of the Dead, Hellraiser, and The Wicker Man. There are even several films, like Phantasm, Peeping Tom, and Blood and Black Lace, which I haven’t had the chance to see yet, but desperately want to. The rest of the list meanwhile, is practically a who’s who of classic horror: Creepshow, Cat People, The Birds, Night of the Hunter, Dracula, Evil Dead, Re-Animator, Marathon Man, An American Werewolf in London, Nosferatu, The Thing, The Others, Wait Until Dark, The Exorcist, and Rosemary’s Baby.

So, I was really eager to turn on 30 Even Scarier Movie Moments. Sure, it would only be one-third as long, but chances were it would still alert me to some fantastic and obscure horror films, while taking me on a walk down memory lane with some more well worn classics. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. Oh, there were a couple of great films I already knew about, Videodrome and The Stepford Wives among them, but, by and large, this was a countdown of only the recent, uninspired crop of modern Hollywood horror movies, like Hostel, Saw, Saw II, and Red Eye as well as a pair of remakes of films that appeared on the original list, the new Dawn of the Dead and Cape Fear. There weren’t any movies I hadn’t heard of and not one I wanted to watch. Further, the clear intelligence and passion for the genre apparent in the original special was all gone, replaced by vacuous talking heads in the form of marginal stars of the featured films as well as some truly irritating screenwriters and directors, particularly the insufferable Eli Roth, director of Hostel and Cabin Fever and pretty boy who practically scream poser. Oh well, there’s still time this weekend to go rent Phantasm.