20. “Braindead” (1992)
We may now know Peter Jackson as the man who’s made a mint off turning J.R.R. Tolkien’s books into blockbuster gold, but it’s easy to forget that his early movies are gloriously deranged, stomach-churning stuff: the kind of balls-out fare for which the term “midnight movie” was invented. “Braindead,” known as “Dead Alive” in North America, is perhaps the grisliest and undoubtedly the funniest of Jackson’s unofficial trio of gross-out horror classics, which also includes the immortal, unholy “Bad Taste” and his demented musical “Meet the Feebles.” The film opens on some faraway island, where monkeys are being raped by rats, thus spawning the horrific monster-hybrid known as the Sumatran Rat-Monkey —there are more transgressive foreshadowings of Jackson’s “King Kong” reboot here— and then the action quickly shifts to modern-day New Zealand to the story of a timid man living with his unbearable, bullying mother, and how one fateful bite from the Sumatran Rat-Monkey can unleash a torrential surge of hellish consequence (not to mention a veritable sea of bodily fluids). Taking its gonzo, black-comic violence from Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” trilogy, “Braindead” is more funny and appalling than scary, but the movie’s feverish, unimaginably gory finish —which has to be seen to be believed— is enough to catapult it into the annals of modern horror legend.
19. “The Day Of The Beast” (1995)
As the 20th century came to a close, end-of-the-millennium anxieties became more and more common in cinema, often materializing in the form of movies about the devil or the Antichrist —see “Stigmata,” “End Of Days,” “The Devil’s Advocate,” et al. But the best of this “Omen”-indebted genre came early with “The Day Of The Beast,” the true masterpiece of bonkers Spanish genre helmer Álex De La Iglesias. This joyously blasphemous genre-hopper sees priest Father Angel (Alex Angulo) discovering that the antichrist’s arrival is imminent, at which point he sets out to commit as many sins as possible in order to meet the devil and find out the location of the arrival of its child, so he can kill it. Enlisting the help —sometimes volunteered, sometimes not— of death-metal fan Jose Maria (Santiago Segura) and TV psychic Professor Cavan (Armando De Razza), it’s a darkly funny, gore-strewn picture that tricks its way into impressive scope and scale on a tiny budget, like a blend of the “Preacher” comic book (which debuted the same year —something was clearly in the water) and Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s “Good Omens” novel. Enormous fun.
18. ”Ravenous” (1999)
The time to rediscover this excellent cannibal western couldn’t be more perfect, in light of last year’s release of the brilliant, somewhat similar ““Bone Tomahawk.” We implore you to remove any thoughts of the skewed critical response the year of release and revisit Antonia Bird‘s “Ravenous,” a deliciously diabolical stew of pitch black humor, cannibalism and American consumption during the pre-Civil War era. Captain Boyd (Guy Pearce) survives an ambush by hiding under the pile of his dead comrades, his lieutenant’s blood streaming directly into his mouth. He manages to capture a whole garrison by himself, and for his faux-valor is awarded a medal and a posting to remote Fort Spenser. Together with a band of misfits (standouts include Jeffrey Jones‘ jolly ol’ Hart and Stephen Spinella‘s Bourbon-doused Knox), he hears a nasty survival story from mysterious drifter Colqhoun (an unforgettable Robert Carlyle), and the plot fervently unravels from there. Before any images appear in “Ravenous,” an Anonymous quote winks at the black comedy in the story with a succinct “Eat me.” But as the story goes deeper, the comedic tones become just another ingredient for the mad cocktail, spiced with two ferocious central performances, a most succulent score by Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn, and —but of course!— the monstrous theme of flesh-eating gluttony. A deftly compelling and carnivorous tale, “Ravenous” is another win for female horror direction and a bloody tale that’ll give you the shivers even as you cackle along with it.
17. “Perfect Blue” (1997)
Far removed from the poltergeists in live-action J-horrors, “Perfect Blue” is an animated tale of terror that curdles the brain as opposed to blood. It’s Satoshi Kon‘s glorious directorial debut, introducing his trademark themes of identity, a kind of techno-exorcism of contemporary Japanese society, and the maddening blur between reality and illusion which he later expanded on in “Millennium Actress” and “Paprika.” Loosely based on Yoshikazu Takeuchi‘s novel, ‘Blue’ follows the career-path of J-pop singer Mima Kirigoe (Junko Iwao), and her attempt to transition into the acting world, much to the chagrin of her manager Rumi (Rica Matsumoto) and Me-Mania (Masaaki Ōkura), the creepiest stalker ever drawn. Working in tandem with Sadayuki Murai‘s adaptation and Masahiro Ikumi‘s sinister loopy score, Kon evokes a force of paranoia and fear that paralyzes the viewer before any eyes are gouged. The frightening connotations of what is dubbed in one particularly destabilizing scene as “luxurious loneliness” reverberate throughout “Perfect Blue” in ways that fill one with doubt and dread in a starkly cerebral way. There’s rape, there’s violent murder, and there’s mental delirium stemming from the loss of control. But perhaps most frightening of all in “Perfect Blue” is that somewhere within the blurred lines of dreams, TV shows, and the online world, is real life itself.
16. “Candyman” (1992)
On the surface, there’s nothing that should necessarily set Bernard Rose‘s “Candyman” apart from any other urban legend, campfire story horror film, except maybe its provenance as a Clive Barker short story (and maybe not even that, depending on how you feel about the “Hellraiser” franchise). But as a result of some sort of weird alchemy, everything that can seem numbingly familiar in other works somehow clicks into place here in a taut, intelligent and very creepy film that also delivers on the visceral gore front. A lot of that is down to a brilliant turn by Tony Todd as the eponymous ghoul —one of the few horror movie villains to seem genuinely, charismatically and ass-clenchingly otherworldly— and to plotting that feels more coherent than usual, if no less preposterously premised. Virginia Madsen plays Helen, a grad student who summons Candyman and then becomes the victim of his increasingly murderous games as he repays her lack of faith in his existence by framing her for the grisly deaths of seemingly everyone she meets. Ordinarily, this type of narrative runs out of gas before the end, but if anything, “Candyman” gets better as it goes along, culminating in a frightening showdown in Chicago’s notorious Cabrini-Green housing project, and an unusually satisfying yet cyclical ending, set to the strains of a now-classic score from Philip Glass.
