Midnight Marquee (Sep/2008) - Psycho... Most Influential Modern Horror Movie?
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(c) Midnight Marquee (Sep/2008)
Psycho... Most Influential Modern Horror Movie?
There's nothing like a good debate to get the juices flowing. And Gary J. Svehla knows how to spark more debates than all the 2008 presidential candidates put together. Most recently, he compiled a controversial list of the 13 most influential horror movies: Frankenstein (1931), King Kong (1933), The Black Cat (1934), Cat People (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), The Thing (1951), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1956), Horror of Dracula (1958), Black Sunday (1960), Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1973), Halloween (1978) and Ringu (1998)
This list sparked several debates at once. The longest had to do with a particularly glaring (to some) omission. First, contributor Mark Clark crossed swords with Gary, followed by Brian Smith, Arthur Lundquist and Steven Thornton. Bryan Senn was on hand to cheer on the troops; Anthony Ambrogio did his diplomatic best to straddle all fences; and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley, Neil Vokes and Cindy Collins Smith all added their 10 cents' worth. (That's two cents' worth, adjusted for inflation).
Who won? That's for you, the reader, to decide...
Mark: I was completely baffled when Gary left Psycho (1960) off his list of "Groundbreakers: The 13 Most Influential Horror Films" (Midnight Marquee 75 [2006], pp. 5-15). I mean, it's one of the most influential films in the history of movies, period. Then I figured that the only possible explanation was that Gary considered it a "thriller" but not a horror film, although I would have considered Gary far too bright to fall for that old canard. The way I see it, Psycho is not only a horror fi...[ to view the rest of the text, please click on the external link ]
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