Movies that aren’t considered horror...but should be.

Day of the Locust and They Shoot Horses are movies I watched with my fingers over my eyes at certain points. Total horror for me.

It's kinda obvious, but I would claim the tv miniseries of Helter Skelter from the 70s in this, along with the true crime miniseries Fatal Vision. 6 hrs of total creepiness without the luxury of saying it is just a story.

And with that motif, I will also add the Robert Durst documentary The Jinx.

Also the Eastwood film The Beguiled, the Bogart film The Two Mrs Carrols, and the serpentine opiate surreality of The Shanghai Gesture.

 

Oh yes "The Beguiled!", definitely "The Beguiled"...(also starring Geraldine Page)...love that movie! I'll have to check out the others you've mentioned...I'll have to pick up "They Shoot Horses..." next time Kino has it on sale...

Lol, that "Helter Skelter" miniseries is another kindertrauma for me...I remember checking the book out of my local library after catching that one to further scare myself...sounds like I'd dig "Fatal Vision"

 

Another vote for MOTHER LODE with Heston and Basinger. I had so many friends back then say how much they'd think I'd love it. I just ignored them until I saw it on Showtime. I loved it. It could be a horror film today, I think.

 

On the reverse end I thought the Child's Play remake was a really good dystopian scifi movie.

 

A movie of the last few years that I found terrifying and gave me anxiety like no other was Hotel Mumbai. What is so stressful about it is the realization that everyone around you is just as dangerous as the gunmen, and they will not hesitate to do things to get you killed for their own well-being. The lead mother character in particular is especially reprehensible, getting people killed right and left for her own selfish pursuits. It's a movie that is so harrowing, I let out a deep exhale when it was over. It left my nerves more shredded than any horror movie of the past several years.

 

Sounds like Hotel Mumbai is one I need to check out.

 

Coppola's The Conversation

CABARET.
Include the last revival of the show in there too. Saw it at a 5000 seat theater in late 2016, and it bludgeoned the audience into stunned silence. During intermission people just went into the corridors to catch their breaths like they had just been running. The conclusion with the camps getting closer out of the distance as the train sounds became thunderous in the theater as most of the characters were marching to their dooms... people walked out cus they couldn't handle it. The louche Boschian grotesquerie of the songs, the shattering glass of Krystallnacht onstage, and the prescience of the new politics created a once in a lifetime horror experience.

 

It's a Wonderful Life is a great episode of The Twilight Zone with a lengthy prelude.

 

Totally. And that damn demon kid who ends the movie with, "Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings," creeps me the fuck out every time.

 

I just watched the 1974 Frank Perry film Man on a Swing starring Cliff Robertson and Joel Grey. In a few days I should be alright. One of the creepiest effing films I have ever seen, loosely based on an actual story reported in the book "The Girl on the Volkswagon Floor". A must see film easily comparable to Silence of the Lambs.