Watch Horror Movies Online

You can probably still recall the days of VHS tapes. Back in the 1980s, this was the most common way to view new movies that came out. Some people can even remember the brief time period of Beta. Once the 1990s were in full effect, more and more people were making the jump to DVDs. Suddenly the sound and picture quality were much better than ever before. DVDs were a wonderful nuance that took the home entertainment experience to new heights. Of course now there is Blue Ray, which is an upgrade once again. Picture and sound are truly amazing with these pricey little discs. However, let's not forget the fact that you can watch horror movies, comedies, action films and even westerns online.

Once businesses like Netflix took off, people were suddenly receiving movies in the mail to watch in their homes. No more waiting in line at video stores to get that new release you're after on Friday night. All of the sudden, it is acquired with ease just by adding it to an online queue. To make movie viewing even more handy and convenient, Netflix made it so customers can watch horror movies and any other genre of film online. Now that's about as convenient as you can get. Simply hit a few keys and suddenly you're viewing the film of your choice. How will this feature ever be topped?

Even if you are not a Netflix customer, you can still watch horror movies, action films, romantic comedies and classic movies online. Just check out a little site called youtube.com. This well-known media website enables anyone with online access to view all kinds of short clips and music videos. However, it has now been expanded to where people can watch horror movies, and many other full-length feature films online. The great thing is that it does not even cost you a penny. Once again, if you have high-speed internet, then you can view an array of movies for free.

You might want to think twice about heading to the local video rental store next time. Especially when the costs are around four dollars for a single new release rental. Why waste you money on these rentals when you can probably watch the same movies for free on the web? The first thing you need to do is log onto websites like Netflix and youtube.com in order to see what they have to offer. Punch in a title that you are looking for and see if you can simply view the movie right now on your PC or Mac. When you consider the sizes of computer monitors nowadays and the sound quality, it's just like watching horror, comedy, adventure, and drama films on your television. Before you knock it be sure to give it a try and see what you could be missing.

2005 Movies: Remembering the Year in Movies

2005 was not a particularly strong year for film making in general around the world, and even less so for Hollywood, but there were some shining moments on the big screen.

“The Best of Youth” by Marco Tullio Giordana was made in Italy and aired there as a television miniseries. You can now get the DVD on Amazon or Netflix and get ready to hunker down because each disc is over three hours long, but it is well worth the time to get to know one of the best 2005 movies made. It tells the story of two brothers who take different paths in life and the women they love, all with the background of sixties radicalism and rioting.

“King Kong” by Peter Jackson is a flawed, overly long effort that is still one of the most incredible movies ever shot and all due to the characterization of the ape by the actor who portrayed him (yes there is an actor, but no monkey suit). This remake of the 1933 black and white classic is fantastic after the first boring hour. This 2005 movie stars Jack Black and Naomi Watts.

“Batman Begins” was great and stars Christian Bale. This movie is dark but fiercely realistic. The Batman here is no superhero, just a man on a mission. Very suspenseful and that made this one of the 2005 movies that you can’t forget. This was also the prequel if you will of 2008’s “The Dark Knight”.

“Sin City” with Mickey Rourke is one of the most visually stunning 2005 movies with its larger than life film noir look and comic book stylizations.

“A History of Violence” directed by David Cronenberg and starring Vigo Mortensen was bloody and vicious, but also suspenseful and full of surprise twists.

“Wallace and Gromit – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” was best of the 2005 movies to feature animation, and claymation at that. Although suitable for children, the humor is perfect for adults as well. Very funny.

“Kung Fu Hustle” directed and starring the funny and twisted Kwok Kuen Chan still ranks as one of the funniest and weirdest 2005 movies and is well worth renting. This is the same director who brought us the very funny “Shaolin Soccer”.

“War of the Worlds” starring Tom Cruise was notable for great special effects but goes on too long. The end sequence is just plain boring. The first hour though is fantastic and will keep you on the edge of your seat.

These are just some of the best 2005 movies and you will certainly have your favorite. Get the popcorn ready, time for movie night!

The Best Thriller Movies and Creative Vision

American cinema has really changed in the last ten years as more and more studios and directors use elaborate and stylized techniques as well as digital effects in their films. The best thriller movies however still have to have some old-fashioned elements in order to be successful including great writing, acting, directing, and editing.

Great writing seems to be something that we take for granted when we go to the see thriller movies but it is also the hardest thing to get right and one of the rarest things in Hollywood movies. Since most Hollywood studio films are written by committee these movies often seem overblown, formulaic and just plain silly. The very best written movies are always written by one person with a unique vision that has hopefully not been tampered with by too many hacks along the way. Under the current Hollywood system a writer has little chance of fulfilling his grand vision. Instead he or she is subjected to script meetings with talentless and arrogant studio executives who proceed to systematically kill any dream the writer happens to have of creating a piece of art.

Art is not essential in the minds of studio executives. Putting people into seats for opening weekend is what matters most. Unfortunately the ultimate result of this type of backward thinking is that you draw for the first week of release based upon hype and advertising then lose audiences with bad word of mouth. Thriller movies can’t be made by number crunching but by directors and writers with vision and creative genius.

Martin Scorcese is one present day artist that does not compromise when it comes to originality and creativity. He is one of the lucky few that get to make movies without interference from the powers that be. One of the great movie thrillers was Scorcese’s remake of Cape Fear starring Robert DeNiro.

Scorcese’s latest movie is the suspense thriller Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio and pairing him with Robert DeNiro once again.

Good movie thrillers are like wine and get better with age. Rear Window was one of many Hitchcock masterpieces that viewers can watch over and over again and still enjoy. The Birds and Psycho are more examples of the British director’s genius.

Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Best Picture winner The Silence of the Lambs still remains to this day one of the best of the best movie thrillers ever made. In 1971 Clint Eastwood made his directing debut with the incredibly scary Play Misty for Me. One year later director John Boorman made his Academy Award winning masterwork Deliverance starring Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. One of my all-time favorite movie thrillers is John Schleshinger’s 1976 spy film Marathon Man starring a young Dustin Hoffman.

The United States does not have any particular stranglehold on movie thrillers as was demonstrated in the great 1990 film La Femme Nikita by French director Luc Besson. Stephen Spielberg started his career with one of the simplest and best movie thrillers Duel about a deranged trucker.

One thing all great movie thrillers have in common is the element of surprise and the ability to make audiences squirm and sit on the edge of their seat.

Best Horror Movies 2006

2006 was a banner year and the best horror movies 2006 list that I present here will be somewhat controversial, but these lists always are. The reason no one can agree on these lists is that while some people consider all slasher movies to be horror, some only think that supernatural elements make up the horror genre. We can’t be that picky so we will review them all in the following compendium lest we offend any sensitivities out there.

“Feast” directed by John Gulager was actually released in 2005 but did not hit the movie theaters until 2006. Featuring the typical zombies run amok plot, it goes off track quickly and remains pretty unsettling. Very gory and scary and definitely a must see.

Six girls get trapped in an underground cave labyrinth while spelunking and are chased by albino earth-dwelling creatures in this very frightening film directed by Neil Marshall. The best thing about this film is that they build the story and characters very carefully so that we as an audience get very involved with each person. We care about what happens to them and as a result the scary parts are even scarier.

“Hostel” is also in my best horror movies 2006 list even though it does not have a supernatural element to it because it is intensely frightening at times and always disturbing. A group of backpackers going through Europe get lured into a hostel that has gorgeous girls running around in skimpy outfits. They get kidnapped and placed as victims into a “torture club” for rich sickos. Definitely not for the kiddies.

Another of the best horror movies 2006 is “Turistas” which a lot of people hated but I liked, mainly because I have spent a lot of time in the jungles of Central America and can relate to the subject matter. Tourists being robbed and set upon by the locals always makes for great suspense cinema. Not really traditional “horror” but scary enough as a suspense film. What constitutes “horror” anyway? Does anyone really get horrified anymore? The most these films will do to typical jaded audiences is a shock now and then that makes them jump out of their seat.

The last movie that was truly horrifying was “The Exorcist” which stayed with you long after you left the theater. That feeling of dread which made you scared to sleep alone at night does not come along very often. Another movie which scared me like that was “The Blair Witch Project” but I know a lot of people hated it and even got sick watching the moving camera shots. “Paranormal Activity” was like Blair Witch, with lots of hand held camera parts though not quite as many as in Blair Witch or Cloverfield.

Get the popcorn and gummy bears. Time to get scared!

What Are the Scariest Horror Movies I Have Ever Seen?

When Halloween rolls around each year, me and my friends and family always watch scary movies and hand out candy to trick or treaters—pretty traditional stuff, and always a lot of fun.

This past year, however, one of my friends posed a question to everyone present, asking us what were the scariest horror movies we had ever seen. I had to think about this one for a while, because I have seen so many scary movies, but eventually we all had our answers and took turns discussing our picks.

I got things started with “The Shining.” I first saw this movie when I was a teenager, and now, 20 years later, it still scares me. From the opening music, which is from Hector Berlioz' “Symphonie Fantastique,” to the halls of the hotel filling with blood, to the bathroom scene with the corpse, it is without question one of the scariest horror movies of all time.

My wife chose next, and for her the scariest horror movie of all time was “The Exorcist.” We are both Catholic, and I think it might take on an especially frightening tone with us, but I had to agree with her that it was definitely one of the scariest movies I had ever seen.

My brother chose next, and he said for him, “The Amityville Horror” was among the scariest horror movies he had ever seen because he first saw it when he was a boy. He said that he had nightmares about it for weeks after he first saw it, and said that it was actually difficult for him to watch it now because of all of the memories it conjured up.

My sister, who is a bit younger than the rest of us, said of all the horror movies she had ever seen, “Final Destination” was the scariest for her. She said the concept of it fascinated her, and said the feeling of utter hopelessness and despair definitely added to its scariness.

One of our friends mentioned the movie “The Ring,” and another couple talked about “It” as being the scariest horror movie he had ever seen. He said a lot of the scariness for him, like my brother, was that he saw it when he was a child, and used to have to ask his dad to check his closet before he went to sleep to make sure there were no scary clowns in there.

There are many scary movies, and opinions about the scariest horror movies are going to vary, but there do seem to be a few that stand out from the rest. Movies from the “Friday the 13th” series or “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” for instance, were scary when we were children, but none of us counted them among the scariest movies we had ever seen. Those are reserved for the ones that you see and never forget as long as you live.

List of Horror Movies that Don’t Suck

Horror movies have always been the favorite genre of many movie aficionados around the world. Unfortunately horror movies don’t get the respect from film critics that other genres get. It is extremely difficult to make a really good and scary horror movie. The list of horror movies that are actually any good is not very long. Slasher movies tried to replace horror movies about twenty years ago but those are not real horror movies. On any list of horror movies that don’t suck you will find some truly frightening films. Here is my list of horror movies that are worth watching.

“Rosemary’s Baby” may be a bit dated now and may not give you the kind of chills it did when it first came out, but it is still one of the really great atmospheric movies ever made and still can creep you out. “Psycho” may have been the first slasher movie but it is a true horror picture and has all the gothic trademarks of great horror films plus a dangerous and cheesy contemporary setting that everyone who has ever stayed at a roadside motel can attest to.

“The Exorcist” of course is still at the pinnacle on anyone’s list of horror movies that don’t suck. If you have never seen it, then you need to drop anything and everything that you are doing and go buy it right now. Put it on your big flat screen tonight and watch it with someone else that has never seen it. It is still the most unsettling and deeply frightening film ever made by a longshot and will keep you awake for many nights to come. This movie is definitely not for young children and not for the faint of heart. It is extremely brutal and very disturbing.

“The Blair Witch Project” was perhaps the greatest grossing film of all time in any genre because it cost so little to make and yet made hundreds of millions of dollars. Using handheld shaky cameras the film is a mock documentary about a group of students filming a documentary on the famous “Blair Witch” in the Maryland forest. The three students get lost deep in the forest and encounter some truly terrifying things out there. Without spoiling it you need to stick with this one until the very end.

2009’s Blair Witch Project was a little indie film called “Paranormal Activity” and is about a suburban couple that find their San Diego house haunted by an evil demon (are there any other kinds?) and they again use handheld cameras and night vision cameras to film the ghostly situations. This is a movie that begins slowly but builds to a shocking final act. This picture joins our list of horror movies that don’t suck because it will truly terrify you.

20 of the Top 100 Horror Movies of All Time

Listing the Top 20 was tough enough, but to attempt to compile a complete listing of the top 100 horror movies can be, well, frightening. There’s the problem of genre splitting, which is what happens when you can’t decide if “The Hills Have Eyes” is a horror movie (it is) or a Slasher flick (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”). Then there’s the added complication of objectivity, which of course, goes down the drain from the get-go. So here are 20 of the top 100 horror movies of all time, and you should be grateful for these screen gems.

1. The Exorcist. No film has ever come close to the incredible raw power to absolutely freeze your skin that this movie had. I still get nightmares to this day and definitely number one in my Top 100 Horror Movies of All Time list.

2. Jaws. Though sometimes mistaken for a suspense or thriller movie, this is definitely a creature feature horror movie and one of the most traumatizing films ever made. Everyone out of the water!

3. Carrie. Brian de Palma’s masterpiece based on the Stephen King best seller.

4. The Evil Dead. Coen brothers first production. One by one, these college kids end up crawling on the walls. Creepy.

5. The Blair Witch Project. I could get a lot of flak for this one, but I for one will still not walk around the woods at night. No way.

6. Cloverfield. Giant space monster destroys New York, decapitating the Statue of Liberty along the way.

7. Nosferatu. Silent classic in ghoulish black and white.

8. Night of the Living Dead. Of course I mean the 1968 B & W version. Super scary! Our virgin film foray into the land of zombie mobs.

9. Carnival of Souls. Makes absolutely no sense at all, but you will not soon forget this haunting black and white horror noir classic.

10. Pan’s Labyrinth. Del Toro’s signature masterpiece remains solidly in the Top 100 Horror movies ever made.

11. Rosemary’s Baby. I remember when this movie first came out and it was the type of movie that changed the way you looked at life and the supernatural.

12. It’s Alive. Undead zombie baby in a dark subway tunnel. What could be better?

13. From Beyond. Easily the cheesiest and best B movie ever made.

14. Alien. This sci-fi horror fest tested the limits of audience paranoia.

15. The Blob. I like the last one best, but they’re all good.

16. Young Frankenstein. Not really a horror movie, but too good to keep off the list.

17. Paranormal Activity. Fantastically scary. First it bores you to death, then shocks you awake. Like getting hit with lightning while dead asleep.

18. The Ring. That creepy girl with the long hair should have stayed down the well.

19. The Hills Have Eyes. Definitely not members of the Hair Club for Men.

20. The Birds. Hitchcock at his crazy, scary, feathery best.

So there you have it. 20 of the top 100 horror movies of all time. Popcorn, anyone?