Movies I Love: Three Great Horror Movies

It's been a slow week in terms of movie watching. I have not actually seen anything new. With the exception of a movie I watched with my kids about a dog and boy running from a gang of crooks that was not worth writing about. So I thought I would throw out a list of some of my favorite horror flicks since I dig horror movies and never talk about them on account of them scaring the crap out of my wife. There are many more I would have liked to mention and probably will in time. But as a starter here you go:

The Descent

A crazy claustrophobic nightmare of a movie. The two best things about the movie are that the "monsters" that come into the film are actually kind of plausible and the movie is actually horrifying way before they show up. The sense of dread that sets in moments after the group of female adventurers are trapped by a cave in never lets up. It is the last really great horror film I have seen lately. Movie studios are more into pumping out bad sequel after bad sequel. Actually, this movie got one of those too but I didn't waste my time with it. If you watch it, make sure you see the original directors version of the film with the better ending. It was changed for it's American theatrical run.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The low budget and faux based on a true story premise make this one hell of scary movie. I remember the first time I saw it being blow away and how real it seemed. The events are insane, yes but it looked like a movie that a psychotic person made with a home video and some inmates at an asylum. None of the sequels or remakes came close to the brutal intensity of this one.  The cast is filled with non professionals and it is obvious at points but they do their jobs well. The insane family in this film truly feels insane and in 1970's rural Texas plausible.

Pet Semetary

Out of the movies on this list, this one is the one that actually scared me the most. I remember lying in bed as a child and being scared out of my mind just thinking about Pet Semetary. I knew any minute Zelda was going to come running out of the corner screaming, "I'll twist your back like mine." This is hands down one of the most faithful adaptations of a Stephen King novel. The novel itself is a great read I suggest to anyone. It works on a lot of levels a two hour horror film can't. It is a very scary, movie, but it is a terrifying and moving book. The story is simple, a family moves into a small town and their young son is killed by a truck. Racked with grief the father takes him to an old burial site that is told to have the powers to bring back the dead. The father, family and neighbors soon find out that sometimes dead is better.