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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2012 - 09:04 pm:   

Here's a nice list for us all to disagree with. Most of the main contenders are accounted for, but there are some strange inclusions there. The remake of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR? Apparently the remake of THE RING...? Strange...

http://io9.com/5881641/the-scariest-ghost-movies-of-all-time
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.70.184
Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2012 - 11:58 pm:   

Yes, but about ebooks . . . :-)
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.60.216
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 12:02 am:   

I'll freely admit I like the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake. I've not seen the AMITYVILLE remake. HIGH SPIRITS, however, is terrible, and not in the good way
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Paul_finch (Paul_finch)
Username: Paul_finch

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 92.5.35.232
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 10:57 am:   

Personally, I'm fed up the back teeth with seeing POLTERGEIST appear in people's top tens. What is so scary about it? It's almost played for laughs - it's like a bloody Disney film. And the sugary elements are enough to make your teeth ache.

As for AMITYVILLE - while the orginal was a bit of a clunker overall (terrible ending, Rod Steiger overacting, several story threads that simply led nowhere, etc), it had way more frightening moments in it than the remake, which was just another dollop of canned Hollywood and didn't benefit at all from its tacked-on and unconvincing back-story.

I agree with the OP on this. To see the AH remake appear in anyone's horror top ten is quite startling.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 10:59 am:   

Ghostbusters?!

I'm glad they included The Others, The Haunting and The Innocents. I'd add Dead of Night, the Ealing portmanteau film from 1945, to that list.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.177.115.204
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 11:24 am:   

I'm with Paul on POLTERGEIST - I saw it on its release in the West End, and didn't think that much of it (although I thought some of the effects were rather good for the time) - a few years back I saw it on offer on DVD so I bought it thinking that perhaps I'd simply not been in the right mood when I'd originally seen it.
But no. Load of tosh. It's most definitely more Speilberg than Hooper, that's for sure.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.177.115.204
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 11:28 am:   

Yes, but about ebooks

Ooh you little minx, GF!
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.16.133
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 11:30 am:   

La Goccia d'Acqua for me!
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Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 195.59.153.201
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 05:40 pm:   

Ghostbusters, of course. An overlooked masterpiece of creeping dread and understated terror. Slimer and The Stay Puft Marshmellow Man rank alongside Max Schreck’s Graf Orlok, Brad Dourif’s Gemini Killer and Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell, as two of cinema’s most terrifying creations.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 05:49 pm:   

I've loved Poltergeist ever since I first saw it on my portable B&W TV in my bedroom aged 14. The guy pulling his face off in the mirror is still one of the great horror moments for me (strangely it's more effective in B&W than it is in colour).

When you look for scary HOLLYWOOD ghost stories, there really aren't that many to choose from really. Poltergeist is easily one of the scariest things ever to come from Hollywood. Sure is miles behind The Haunting, or the shining, but it's miles ahead of instantly forgettable tosh like Insidious or What Lies beneath.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 06:17 pm:   

This was my Top 10 the last time this question came up and it still hasn't changed:

1. 'The Shining' (1980) by Stanley Kubrick
2. 'The Innocents' (1961) by Jack Clayton
3. 'The Haunting' (1963) by Robert Wise
4. ‘Rebecca’ (1940) by Alfred Hitchcock
5. 'The Changeling' (1980) by Peter Medak
6. 'Dark Water' (2002) by Hideo Nakata
7. ‘The Uninvited’ (1944) by Lewis Allen
8. 'Ju-On : The Grudge' (2003) by Takashi Shimizu
9. ‘Poltergeist’ (1982) by Tobe Hooper
10. ‘Haunted’ (1995) by Lewis Gilbert

Although 'Insidious' is knocking on the door.

And the Novels:

1. 'The Haunting Of Hill House' (1959) by Shirley Jackson
2. 'The Turn Of The Screw' (1898) by Henry James
3. 'The Beckoning Fair One' (1911) by Oliver Onions
4. ‘The House Of The Seven Gables’ (1851) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. 'The Shining' (1977) by Stephen King
6. ‘Hell House’ (1971) by Richard Matheson
7. ‘The Haunted House’ (1859) by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Procter, George Sala & Hesba Setton
8. ‘Burnt Offerings’ (1973) by Robert Marasco
9. ‘The House On Nazareth Hill’ (1996) by Ramsey Campbell
10. 'The Amityville Horror' (1977) by Jay Anson {I consider it a novel, and a damn scary one}
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 06:28 pm:   

Stevie - make your list scary Hollywood Ghost stories only - how much does it change? Can you even find 10 that deserve to be in a top 10?

Oh and Rebecca isn't a ghost story (and the novel is rubbish BTW - whinging bint marries into money, spends all her time complaining about it and how she doesn't like him or his domestic staff until she finds out he's a murderer at which point she decides she really wants to be with him. There's only one effective scene in the entire book IMHO.)
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 06:47 pm:   

'Rebecca' is one of Hitchcock's great masterpieces and one of his creepiest films that I consider very much a haunted house movie... without a ghost, that we can see.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 07:03 pm:   

The scariest film I've ever seen remains The Exorcist. Terrified me when I first saw it aged 12 (far too young) and terrifies me now. I'm still unable to sit down and watch it alone.

The Blair Witch Project - along with the documentary about the Blair Witch - is probably second on my list.

I'm with Weber regarding Poltergeist...the first film I ever saw on our first VHS video player, and I found it terrifying. Still love it today - but no longer find it that scary. There's something about the way it subverts the usual Spielbergian landscape that's worrying. Everyone says that it's more Spielberg than Hooper, and I'd agree with that, but Hooper gets less credit than he deserves for the way he twists that familiar homespun-American mileau into something genuinely unsettling.
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 07:57 pm:   

Yes, but about ebooks . . .

You are a bad man, Mr Fry.

I tried to watch the remake of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR one and switched it off after twenty minutes or so. I don't recall exactly what was wrong with it, but given that I was on a plane at the time and therefore a captive audience, it must have been pretty bad.

I've still got a lot of fondness of POLTERGEIST. It's a total fairground ride, but it has some very effective moments. In many ways INSIDIOUS is the modern equivalent.

I think the last film that really had me heart-pumpingly, primally scared was JU-ON. Largely plotless, but it had a neat purity - it was literally nothing but a fright machine.
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David_lees (David_lees)
Username: David_lees

Registered: 12-2011
Posted From: 92.22.33.83
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 08:16 pm:   

Speaking of poltergeists and ghost films, this has potential. "Based on a true story", with a working class 70's setting and it looks like it could be effectively creepy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLXXAT1pMQs
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Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer)
Username: Matthew_fryer

Registered: 08-2009
Posted From: 90.200.140.60
Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2012 - 12:26 am:   

I remember Poltergeist being fun, and quite disturbed at the time by the bathroom mirror scene. I haven't watched it for years, for fear that I'll hate it now.
Ghostbusters is a far better film than it has any right to be, but scary?

Stevie, I'm glad to see Dark Water get a mention. Tremendous atmosphere of supernatural dread that gets quite uncomfortably intense at times.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.59.249
Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2012 - 01:19 pm:   

Even the first glimpse of the grey block of flats in Dark Water evokes feelings of dread. It doesn't look quite normal. And the simple device of the little red bag appearing in the oddest places was a good find, too. The most remarkable thing, perhaps, is that the ghostly little girl was not out to destroy people - she merely needed a new mommy.

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