Cornerstone movies thread

[BakuryuuTyranno]

What movie would say changed your filmaking experiences?

For me, Wendigo, of 2001/2002.

It was probably for getting me to enjoy emotionally mature horror. It was technically the first atmospheric, character-driven horror. Although Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street fit that description, at a relatively young age it is pretty easy categorising those with the cheesier. splatter-based slashers, and Jaws with splatter-based creature features.

At the time, I thought Jaws sucked because (brace yourselves!) only a couple of people got eaten onscreen. I was that clueless. So basically, Wendigo introducing me to serious, emotionally mature horror was benefical

[Bushma]

I really enjoyed Saw.  When I talk to people about it all they think of is gore. If you go back and watch it there is very little gore. What I love is that it shows you just enough to make you freak out. Like the whole scene with the leg and the hacksaw. All you see is a little blood and some incredible acting. It seems that Saw started (in my opinion) this torture porn movie phase when there wasn't much in Saw.

[zelmo73]

Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1986) was the movie that completely changed my perspective on horror films, or more importantly, the intentions behind the filmmaker's motives for the movie. The first time I saw it, I was young, maybe a freshman in high school, watching late night '80s cable (THE BEST!!!).

I was horrified when Ash severed his girlfriend into pieces, horrified still more when her severed head started begging him not to kill her even as he put her head in a vise and he chainsawed her demonic form to death as it laughed at him. Then later on in the movie, I couldn't stop laughing when Ash's possessed hand started beating the s**t out of him in the kitchen. I didn't know how to take this movie until it donned on me that the director, Sam Raimi, was intentionally making this horror film funny, and intentionally making it "bad", as opposed to Stanley Kubrick intentionally making The Shining (1980) "good".

This was my first introduction to the glory of bad filmmaking for the sake of further entertainment, a direction that revels in a film being intentionally bad without being crap, thus making it a fitting and better movie experience overall. It takes talent in order to do this correctly; I mean, Stanley Kubrick could not have done Evil Dead 2 (1986) as effectively as Sam Raimi because their filming styles are different. Kubrick probably would have made us believe that Ash was simply crazy and the Deadites, laughing deer head on the wall, laughing furniture, etc. were all simply figments of Ash's imagination and that Ash had slaughtered his friends in the cabin all by himself because he had gone insane all by himself. And while that would have made a very great Stanley Kubrick movie, Sam Raimi was perfectly content with the source of the film's evil being from an outside, demonic source, instead of from the humanity within which was Kubrick's modus operandi.

I have learned over the years that a profound epiphany can come from the oddest and least likely of sources. In my case, it was from Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1986). Whoever would have thought it?

[FatFreddysCat]

I have several "pivotal" films....

When I first saw "Star Crash" on TV in the early 80s I was just a "Star Wars" crazed kid who had to watch anything even remotely sci-fi related. "Star Crash" was my introduction to the world of exploitation/B-Movies.

Also "Rock N Roll High School" because it introduced me to the music of the Ramones, who remain one of my favorite bands to this very day. Besides, how could any red blooded American 12 year old boy NOT love a movie where a rock band helps the kids blow up their school? Talk about wish fulfillment!!