The Top 10 Most Pretentious Horror Films of All Time
I think it’s a fair assertion to say that most readers of this website are huge, huge fans of horror movies. We are the kinds of people who will go well out of our way to uncover some unusual, unheard of slasher classic, and share its glory or its mediocrity with the world. It’s this drive that drags us to hard-to-get-to advance screenings of, say, “Hatchet II,” or “Devil” just so we can posit where such a film stands in the horror film canon.
Very occasionally, though, our path to bloodlust will be barricaded by some arty snot who feels that they can make a film about death, blood, fear and mayhem, and somehow wedge a good amount of original artistry into it. For those of us raised on slasher films, I have to point out that banality and unoriginality is a large part of the genre’s charm, and we don’t necessarily need the ambition involved. For some of these films, the originality can be bracing and grand. For others, it can be a chewy, over-photographed miasma of half-thought-out, blood-soaked navel-gazing. Either way, the Pretentious Horror Film may be considered a sub-genre unto itself, and deserves a moment of hazy reflection.
In that spirit, I have compiled this list of the ten most pretentious horror films. An important note: My use of the word “pretentious” is not necessarily a negative use. I will indicate whether or not each film is merely pretentious, or if it is a good film as well.
10) Death Bed: The Bed that Eats (1977)
Directed by: George Barry
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s just pretentious.
A flimsy premise if ever there was one, George Barry’s lost bizarro classic is about a bed that, well, eats. Evidently, hundreds of years ago, a demon deflowered a young woman on this bed. When she rebuffed him, the demon cried tears of blood onto the bed, and bingo, you have a bed that wants to eat people. The eating is represented by a truly strange special effect: an acidic yellow foam oozes up out of the mattress, and we see people (and wine and apples and chicken) sink into this yellowed nether-region where they are dissolved. We hear the bed chewing on them. The bed then deposits its waste back on the bed (empty bottles, stripped chicken bones), the people none the wiser.
It’s not a very threatening monster, a bed that eats, so the director has to go through all kinds of weird machinations to get people to lay down on this bed. For instance, the bed can control the house it’s in by locking doors, and directing potential victims’ progress. It can grab people with its extended bedsheets.
Here’s where the pretense comes in: Watching the bed from the afterlife is an early victim, credited only as “The Artist” (body of Dave Marsh, voice of Patrick Spence-Thomas), who waxes rhapsodic about the Baudelaire-eqsue nature of the bed, and his place in its schemes. He broods like Byron, trapped in a wall-hanging etching on the opposite wall. He muses on each of the victims as they are eaten. And, inexplicably, he manages to gain possession of each of the victims’ indigestible elements: he owns rings, jewelry, pins, cigarettes, etc. I wonder if he also gets pacemakers or tracheotomy rings.
A film with poetic musing on its own machinations is bad enough, but a film with poetic musings on a Death Bed is eye-rollingly weird.
9) The Hunger (1983)
Directed by: Tony Scott
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s certainly pretentious, but it’s not all bad.
Most people of a certain age know this film only for its appearance by a somnambulist rock star David Bowie, and, more importantly, for its notorious sex scene between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. What most people don’t seem to remember is just how needlessly arty “the Hunger” really is. Every single scene of the film is slowed to a maddening pace, and every single shot is filtered through three layers of soft focus, and strange spotlighting that looks like the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” music video on steroids.
The story involves a vampire named Miriam (Deneuve) who lives off of a single victim for many years. When she tires of her boytoys, she discards them, and they begin to age rapidly. Her current boytoy is John (Bowie), who has just passed his expiration date, and to curtail his aging process, contacts a doctor named Sarah (Sarandon) to help him. Sarah sees John, but is more taken in by Miriam, and Miriam begins working on Sarah to make her the next in her line of vampire playthings.
In 1983 the homoerotic subtexts were, I’m sure, slightly more daring than they are today (despite the lesbian vampire being an old film trope going back to the late 1960s), but, watched today, the sex scene is just another run-of-the-mill lesbian sex scene. Well, o.k. As run-of-the-mill as a sex scene between Sarandon and Deneuve can be. Which is, I admit, way, way sexy. It’s just too bad that director Scott had to go out of his way to make everything ultra-saturated, misty and dull.
8) Stay (2005)
Directed by: Marc Forster
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s just pretentious.
I’ve seen this film, and I still couldn’t tell you what the hell goes on in it. It’s one of those obnoxiously oblique affairs that posits that the entire film’s proceedings perhaps take place in a dream, or are maybe a flashback, or maybe it’s just the thoughts of a dying man, or perhaps it’s just the fantasies of a suicidal mind… by the time the end rolls around, and the final revelation (such as it is) is given, you’re either unsurprised, or you don’t care. Either way, it’s not going to reveal everything, and leave you confused as hell.
So Ewan McGregor plays a shrink named Sam, who is treating the depression of a college student named Henry (Ryan Gosling). Henry has implied that he’s going to commit suicide on the one-year anniversary of his parents’ death, which is only a few weeks nigh. Sam begins following Henry around as a preventative measure (antidepressants are never discussed), and finding weird darkened corridors, and mysterious, sinister people following him. What? Sam also begins having a romance (or sorts) with the half-asleep Lila (Naomi Watts), who may have some insight into Henry’s plans.
There’s an implication that Henry can resurrect the dead, as evidenced in a scene with the blind Dr. Patterson (Bob Hoskins), who may or may not be Henry’s dead father. As the film progresses, reality itself begins to unravel, and the hallucinations only begin to increase. The film’s ending offers no solid explanations, but there is a maddening double-back that’ll have you gritting your teeth.
Films where reality falls apart can be great (“Jacob’s Ladder,” “In the Mouth of Madness,” “Videodrome”), but they are also the easiest films to get wrong. “Stay” is, I feel, one of the films to get it the most wrong.
7) Santa Sangre (1989)
Directed by: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s good.
I love the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky. I love his dirty, surreal, mad carnival universe, and I love his bizarre obsession with spirituality. His “The Holy Mountain” is one of my favorite movies, showing a long string of colorful, imaginative vignettes that explore the nature of religion, but are mostly just visually striking.
In 1989, Jodorowsky made the excellent horror film for grown-ups, “Santa Sangre,” a film that Roger Ebert included on his Great Movies list. This NC-17 rated mindfuck features a young boy growing up in the circus, who witnesses his fat, horrid, knife-throwing father having an affair with the tattooed lady. His mother (Blanca Guerra) is absent, as she has started a bizarre cult around an armless saint, whose blood she keeps in a sloshing impluvium under a big top. When the mother finds out about father’s affair, father cuts off her arms, and then is killed himself.
Fast forward to the present, and the boy (now played by Jodorowsky’s son Axel) has escaped from a mental asylum to start an oddball stage act with his armless mother, where he mimes her hands. There are mimes, retarded people, bleeding elephants, transvestite wrestlers, and a mute contortionist. The is a horrific merry-go-round broken down that appeals to both the senses and to the intellect. It’s bracing, weird, and delightfully off-putting.
Some audiences may have trouble penetrating the images to get to the emotional meat of “Santa Sangre,” which earns it a spot on this list. Either way I encourage you to find it.
6) Carnival of Souls (1962)
Directed by: Herk Harvey
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s just pretentious
Most people know this film by name, but have not necessarily seen it. It’s one of those films you see for sale on video everywhere, thanks to an unfortunate copyright mix-up, and its subsequent lapsing into the public domain. While it’s a moody film with good organ music and some good atmosphere, “Carnival of Souls” is one of those maddeningly vague films, like “Stay,” whose horror stems entirely from a vague twist ending that you can either predict, or just be disinterested by.
Candace Hilligoss plays the weak and waifish Mary Henry, who plays organ at the local church, and who has no friends. She’s one of those shy, bookish types who, when they appear in horror films, are destined to have either a horrid end, or the secret to defeating the monster. In “Carnival of Souls” it’s the former. Mary accidentally drives off of a bridge, and emerges from the water, seemingly unscathed. Soon thereafter, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to an abandoned carnival populated by… are they ghouls? Maniacs? Anyway, she is chased by screaming mobs of weirdos whenever she goes there.
Why doesn’t she just stop going there? Well, she finds that The Answer To All This can be found there. The answer to what? Well, to something, I’m sure. You get no points for guessing early on that Mary is dead, and what she’s experiencing is a preview of the afterlife.
Surreal carnival imagery only sometimes works (see “Santa Sangre,” or “8 ½”), and when it’s done badly, it’s done really badly. Throw in the incessant organ grinding, and you’ve gone a yawn-inducing public domain classic.
5) Antichrist (2009)
Directed by: Lars von Trier
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s good.
“Nature is Satan’s church.”
Still depressed after the death of their four-year-old son, a woman, credited only as “She,” (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has been taken to her country cabin by her ingratiating and patronizing shrink husband He (Willem Dafoe) in order to rehabilitate. He keeps poking and prodding into her personal fears and feelings, hoping to reach a catharsis, or perhaps just to torment her, or perhaps just because he doesn’t know any better. She begins to go slowly mad, and starts seeing death and Satan everywhere around them, sometimes just in her mind, and sometimes with odd hallucinations. It’s not long before he, too, is hallucinating; he sees a dying fox feasting on its own entrails. It turns to him and speaks. “Chaos reigns.”
Understanding von Trier’s staggeringly disturbing psychological horror film hinges on how well you can jibe with clinical depression. The fear of therapists, the equating of death and sex, the hatred of your own body. This film can be alienating or moving, but it he way, it’s going to shake you and disturb you, and even depress you. And, by the time the sexual violence erupts (and the film does indeed have a lot of sexual torture and a lot of blood), you’ll be clutching your gut.
There are a lot of slow-motion, black and white scenes set to opera music, and one of the first shots of the film is an extreme closeup of two people’s genitals in the act of coitus. Lars von Trier, while having made an effective film, has also undeniably, made one that can be accused of being needlessly arty, a bit indecipherable, and even, perhaps, disturbing for the sake of it. Only sit through it if you have a strong stomach and an open mind. Even then, it may not be enough.
4) Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
Directed by: Paul Morrisey
Is it Good or Just Pretentious: It’s good, in a campy sort of way.
From the Andy Warhol stable, and featuring a wonderfully bizarre performance from powerhouse cult actor Udo Kier, “Flesh for Frankenstein” is one of the funniest, goriest, weirdest, most unknowable horror films to come from the 1970s. To call the film “strange” doesn’t really scratch the surface of just how batshit crazy and gloriously campy the film is.
“Flesh for Frankenstein” features a twisted baron Frankenstein (Kier) who wishes to make a master race of resurrected monsters by mating a female zombie to a male zombie. He has his fmelae zombie already, and spends some of his free house having sex with her corpse while he fetishistically feels up her exposed internal organs with his free hand. He and his sidekick Otto (Arno Juerging) take to the streets to find the perfect male counterpart, constantly arguing over who has the best features. I giggle whenever Kier criticizes a man’s “nasum.”
The baroness Frankenstein (Monique van Vooren) has been carrying on with a handsome stableboy, played by the godly handsome and rock-stupid Joe Daallesandro. If you don’t believe in a supreme being, look at Dallesandro’s ass and get back to me. Their clunky tête-à-têtes are hilariously protracted.
Oh, and did I mention that this film was originally released in 3-D? Yeah, it features a climactic scene in which a character is speared through the back, and their liver ends up floating right in front of your eyes, perched on the end of the spear. What a great moment in cinema history.
3) Nadja (1994)
Directed by: Michael Almereyda
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s just pretentious. Well, it’s kinda fun.
“I’m receiving a psychic FAX!”
Produced by David Lynch, this experimental vampire film resembles an ambitious student project that somehow managed to rope in a professional, big-name cast and get a nationwide theatrical release. It’s a confusing and occasionally gross affair that I am actually kind of fond of, despite its opaqueness and sleepy-eyed acting by the lead actress Elina Löwensohn, in the title role. I assume the title refers to the seminal surrealist work by André Breton, but, having read Nadja, and having seen the film, I can’t really discern any direct connection. It’s more like a surrealist riff on the old Dracula story.
Nadja is a broody vampire (the worst kind) living in New York with her dysfunctional vampire family, her high-end New York wardrobe, and her bizarre Eurotrash accent. Nadja is also kind of pansexual, and requires “familiars” just like Miriam in “The Hunger.” She has set her sights on a local author (Galaxy Craze, her real name), who is not gay, but will be by the time Nadja is through with her. There’s a romantic/weird sex scene in which Nadja feeds Galaxy her own menstrual blood. Galaxy’s husband Jim (Martin Donovan) is only concerned.
Eventually, though, the film just becomes the usual Dracula story, as when Prof. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) shows up to claim that he’s going to kill Nadja and her clan. It’s implied that Van Helsing may also be Dracula! Holy shit! There’s a Renfield character! And is that Jared Harris! And that’s David Lynch himself as a mortuary’s receptionist!
This is a film that starts serious, turns way-too-poetic-for-its-own-good, and ends on a campy note. This can be fun, in a weird way. Also, Almereyda shot large portions of “Nadja” on a PixelVision camera, that commercially available toy that lost Fisher Price so much money back in the mid 1980s, and recorded film onto ordinary audio cassettes. That’s a neat idea.
2) Gothic (1986)
Directed by: Ken Russell
Is it Good or Just Pretentious: It’s pretty good.
What list of pretentious horror films would be complete without a film by Ken Russell? In 1986, Russell took his particular brand of surreal, lush, bourgeois erotic hedonism, and applied it to the single most significant night in the history of horror fiction: That wonderful evening in 1810 when Percy Shelley, his girlfriend Mary, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and Fletcher all met in a secluded mansion to write horror stories as part of a wager. The world ended up with Frankenstein, or; The Modern Prometheus, the first science fiction novel, and one of the finest horror stories ever written.
To get to the novel, though, Ken Russell posits, each of the brilliantly broody poets and novelists had to go through a stupefying and hallucinatory series of traumas, that all centered on their greatest fears. Mary (Natasha Richardson) has dreams of Fuseli’s Nightmare on her chest. Shelley (Julian Sands) dreams of vermin. I think Byron (Gabriel Byrne) does as well, but is a bit more controlled. Poor Claire (Miriam Cyr) goes mad when she has a vision of a knight with an enormous codpiece (a motif reused in Russell’s own “The Lair of the White Worm”).
Another film that is mostly hallucination, “Gothic” is almost a trifling way to handle the lives of important literary figures. Why explore their genius and true fears when we can have a goofy phantasmagoria of bloody rape and weird creatures? And where did all these fears string from? Well, there’s some historical evidence to back this up, but evidently Mary had recently miscarried, and all the world’s fears spring from dead infants. Or something.
Ken Russell. Thank you.
1) Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Is it Good or Just Pretentious?: It’s really effed up.
If you want a horror film that is loaded with a dozen weird performances, bogged in hideously overdesigned costumes and sets, paced like a large slow dog that’s hopped up on Red Bull, and budgeted higher than your average Hollywood action blockbuster, you kneed look no further than Coppola’s swirling, bloody garbage disposal “Dracula.” this is a film that everyone has seen, and has a weird cult following. It’s a bad movie, but, like some of Gilliam’s films (I’m looking at you, “Tideland”), has that wonderful trainwreck quality that is ineffably magnetic.
After an introduction, where Dracula (Gary Oldman) stabs a bleeding cross, and imaples hundreds of people, we meet Harker (a yawning Keanu Reeves) who is trapped at castle Dracula by topless vampire women. He bleeds from his nipples and some women are connected at the vagina. Dracula is sometimes an old man (with a butt-shaped pompadour), and sometimes a young man (with a two-foot top-hat), and can walk around in the sunlight. Sometimes he’s a rubbery bat monster, and sometimes he’s a wolf man. Dracula is after Mina (an equally yawny Winona Ryder), and her buddy Lucy (Sadie Frost). This is all from the original Bram Stoker novel, but this film is only using Stoker as a springboard for over-the-top protracted weirdness.
Lucy eats a baby, if I recall. Anthony Hopkins plays Van Helsing, although he has an accent much like Dreyfus from “The Pink Panther” movies. No one merely speaks lines in this film. They either recite bombastically, or merely scream. The cast is rounded out by Cary Elwes, Richard E. Grant, Monica Bellucci, and, get this, Tom Waits as Renfield.
This is one of those bizarre, high profile, pretentious Hollywood failures that everyone hates, but are always fascinating to watch. This is actually a rather good bad movie. Anyone who has seen it can attest for it’s chewy, money-wasting pretentiousness. It tops the list.
Witney Seibold is a polite and dashing writer living in Los Angeles. When he’s not writing, he’s watching movies, reading old books, and nurturing his growing disapproval of young people today. He nonce worked as a professional film critic for a local newspaper, and now maintains his own ‘blog (which can be accessed at http://witneyman.wordpress.com), where you can read the nearly 700 articles he has published to date, some of which are professionally written and genuinely insightful, despite the typos. He likes comments, positive and negative, and encourages you to leave some.
