Favorite foreign horror films?

[Eddietom]

I recently watched the original version of The Vanishing (Spoorloos) and loved the heck out of it. Can anyone recommend any other good horror/thriller type movies?

[indianasmith]

If you haven't seen it, PAN'S LABYRINTH is the best foreign film I have seen in years.

[CheezeFlixz]

What about Battle Royale? Or Dead Alive? Or The Eye? Or Requiem for a Vampire? Or Tenebre? Just to name a few.

then there is that whole Mexican Horror genera, but that is a acquired taste.

[Allhallowsday]

DANZA MACABRE (Castle of Blood) (1964) starring BARBARA STEELE
Also liked:
PAURA NELLA CITTA DEI MORTI VIVENTI (City of the Living Dead) (1980)
THE CITY OF THE DEAD (Horror Hotel) (1960)

[banedon]

Is it even possible to go wrong with Paul Naschy? I have yet to see him in a horror/suspense film that I DIDN'T enjoy immensely. Incredible scenery, cheesy special effects, endless T&A, and the most angst-ridden, barrel-chested Spanish weightlifter of an anti-hero ever seen on film.

I mean, sure, they're mostly just rehashes of classic Universal horror flicks, but Naschy's take on the genre never fails to be a unique and thoroughly enjoyable experience.

[Trevor]

Jannie Totsiens [Johnny Farewell] from South Africa.

A very, very strange film, horrific and scary in many parts but also very funny at times. 


Allegedly autobiographical in tone, this was South Africa's first film in the avant-garde genre, one of its' very few horror films and also its' first black comedy. It is now known to be an allegory about the South African situation in the 1970's – showing said situation and the country's inhabitants in the mileu of a home for the insane whose inmates' lives are flipped by the arrival of a catatonic, mute mathematics professor, the "angel of discord", as he is referred to by one of the loonies.

Among this merry little band, we find a jilted bride (Hermien Dommisse) whose wedding portrait depicts her holding the hand of a faceless man, a knife wielding nymphomaniac with Bible thumping parents (Katinka Heyns), an ex Ossewabrandwag soldier with an uncanny resemblance to John Vorster (Don Leonard), a judge who went mad after his daughter's killer was let off scot free (Jacques Loots) and a psychotic woman (Jill Kirkland) who continously writes unsent letters to her dead daughter.

The seemingly mad and mother fixated Jannie Pienaar (supposedly based both on director Jans Rautenbach's treatment by the critics, some of the more sensitive sections of the South African community after the release of Katrina and Rautenbach's experiences as a clinical psychologist) finds himself both restored to life because of two major factors: a love triangle which involves him and two of the inmates and the horrific finale when, on the suicide of one of those inmates, Jannie is condemned to death by hanging.

One would have to go very far back or far forward into the future of the South African film industry's history to find a film as horrific, comic (yes, it is very funny in parts) and perfect as this, with brooding photography (courtesy David Dunn~ Yarker and Koos Roets) an eerie credits puppet show in which the spectre of death intrudes and is frightened away, haunting music by Sam Sklair and oppressive, claustrophobic set and art design. Starring Cobus Rossouw, Jill Kirkland, Hermien Dommisse, Phillip Swanepoel, Katinka Heyns, Don Leonard, Lourens Schultz, Patrick Mynhardt, Betty Botha, Sandra Kotze, George Pearce and Jacques Loots.

[AnubisVonMojo]

I was legitimately spooked by Japan's Uzumaki. Washed out film, twisted visuals, freakish happenings, and a jarring scene with a hospitalized woman and a centipede...

And if centipedes are on your list of crawlies that creep you out, another Japanese horror flick, Centipede Horror, will make the skin crawl right off your face. 

[AndyC]

Ringu, for sure. Much better than the American remake. The sequels were pretty good as well.

[The Burgomaster]

FUNNY GAMES - - the original German version from a few years ago.  Downright disturbing.

I also have an Asian DVD called THE DEMON'S BABY . . . it's very wild and over the top and will definitely leave you asking yourself, "What the heck did I just watch?"  But it's never boring . . .

[Raffine]

Gotta love THE MANSTER aka THE SPLIT (1962).

[RCMerchant]

Mario Bava's KILL,BABY KILL!- the title would suggest a psycho murder movie....but it's really a moody ghost story  set in a desolute Italion village. Scary as hell! Better than BLACK SUNDAY? Mebbe not...but equal to it,in my opinion.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lu3jzMigjbw

[zombie no.one]

And if centipedes are on your list of crawlies that creep you out, another Japanese horror flick, Centipede Horror, will make the skin crawl right off your face. 

lol sounds great.

I wss gonna say Profondo Rosso aka Deep Red, not sure if it counts as horror, or foreign tbh

[the ghoul]

DANZA MACABRE (Castle of Blood) (1964) starring BARBARA STEELE
Also liked:
PAURA NELLA CITTA DEI MORTI VIVENTI (City of the Living Dead) (1980)
THE CITY OF THE DEAD (Horror Hotel) (1960)

  Karma for that one.  My favorite foreign horror films are all of the euro-horror movies with Barbara Steele.

[Rev. Powell]

I recently watched the original version of The Vanishing (Spoorloos) and loved the heck out of it. Can anyone recommend any other good horror/thriller type movies?

If you're still reading this, Eddie, I thought the psychological thriller 13 TZAMETI had a VANISHING sort of vibe to it.  It involves a desperate Eastern European immigrant in France, and the less revealed about the plot, the better---but it takes the same sort of time to set up its plot and has that same sort of queasy, amoral payoff.     

[Classic Camp]

Anything starring Paul Naschy/Jacinto Molina.

Frankenstein's Bloody Terror is probably my favorite, but I also really liked Hunchback of the Morgue, and Return of the Werewolf.