Top Ten: Films that scared Mark Kermode

in the absence of a box-office top ten we've been asking you to send in your ideas for top tens but but also asking you to fill in the blanks so we're not saying no favorite romantic films made in Quebec Quebec we don't on that we we're you can do that but then you fill in the ten okay so the only exception is this week when we came up with the idea for mark to tell us about the films that have scared him that aren't The Exorcist so obvious is very personal he very clearly you're not saying these are the scariest films ever made no no I'm not what I'm saying is these are the films that scared me and you know whether whether rightly or wrongly that they gave me a B so in no particular there are other films that scare me but somebody says say in no particular order because it's a top-10 so it's at Number ten bury Pete now buried really because I am terrified of confined spaces and buried is a film by ridiculous a starring Ryan Reynolds basically and it's a story of a man in a coffin which has been buried and as the title suggests and I when the film started I mean I kind of knew in advance what the story was about and the title gives a lot of it away but when the film started I thought I'm gonna have to leave because I can't I cannot stay with this for 90 minutes and I did and I thought that I thought we run runs acting was really terrific we have a we have a brief clip of the the kind of rising panic that you get from buried here we go yeah we're coming for you now you hear me you know coalition forces picked up the Shiite insurgents out by the Baghdad bet he'd be wearing a miracle yeah it won't all be over soon the only thing I'd say three minutes don't think so yeah the only thing he has is a cell phone which is slowly running out of juice and so that really really gave me the heebies also cuz it's it is it's a single idea that he's executed particularly well not aligned nostril to now I know that nostril too is a classic which everyone seen this is the 1920 tumor nurse on but the reason that I that I chose it for this thing is that there there's an image in it a sequence of the shadowy figure going up the as he ascends the stairs and then grasping at a heart and there is something about the shadow going up the stairs that when I saw it when I was a kid because it was on television or something I don't know how I saw it in fact I hadn't seen the whole film I only saw that scene and it scared the living daylights out of me and I know that it you know it's an old silent film and bla bla bla bla bla but it really really scared me at the time and it's really stuck with me okay number we have some comments we have some emails about your top 10 from other people I've seen these these things Nosferatu Paul Marsh says most people won't have seen Nosferatu but it truly is a horrifying experience if you watch it in the right environment Rollo's Redway says no strategy was the first silent film I ever saw it's was not merely wonderful but also educated me about the extraordinary heights of Twenties filmmaking in a small yet significant way it changed my life very few films have had such an influence on me everybody should see it would it be would you you shouldn't watch it as a child though presumably even though I said I saw a scene from it as a child and it really really scared me and then I saw the whole film later on but I mean I think it is just one of those things that it is you know I encountered it as a kid and it just it just stuck with me it just frightened the living daylights out I mean then when I saw the whole film I just thought it was kind of beautiful and glorious and and you know that just the way it looks is so fantastic and and I still think to this day you can watch it and but that's still that scene of the image of the shadow going up the stairs still creeps me right out if we do number eight can I just say considering you hate in confined spaces yeah why you broadcasting from a very very small cupboard under the stairs because it's the only room in the house that scared all the time no this is fine I could live with this this is okay but I mean no I just it's you know it's very small space is anything smaller than a lift is what is what gets me alright okay okay so the witch now I know that the thing that everyone said about the which was not horror films it was marketed as a horror film and then a lot of people said it's not horror film it's it's actually something which is much more to do with atmosphere I guess it is but it is one of those films which really stuck with me and I saw it a couple of times and both times what I noticed was that it was the day after or the evening after having seen it that certain images from it really really stuck with me the whole thing about the demonic goat black Phillip rearing up on his back legs for some reason absolutely got under my skin and the image of the trees the fact that I think it's shot in 166 and there's something about the way which it looks at trees is something about the atmosphere of it that after watching it images from it kept coming back to me and really really got under my skin so the witch is number six people want to chip in with this dr. Kate gasps the witch is wonderfully sinister and does seventeenth-century dialogue brilliantly I study literature of the era for my PhD so feels semi qualified to say this andrew Donlan loved the witch but i can see it as a coming-of-age story more than a horror yeah Corey although obviously it is a horror story a rebellion against your parents view of what they want your life to be set in the 70s it would have been Bowie or punk instead of witchcraft and someone who seems to want to be called brutal knowledge the witch should have should have a Hall of Fame horror spot akin to the shining The Exorcist Halloween and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre it's the only 10 out of 10 horror film this century Wow Wow well it's great to hear other people sort of embrace it as much as that because I it was I just thought it was fantastic okay on to number seven dissent but this is this is one of the films that I mentioned before and I said you know the thing about getting stuck in in small spaces really really scares me so this is basically people in you know confined spaces under the ground really really freaky really really scary here's a clip [Music] the great thing about the great thing about this is so it's directed by by Neil Marshall and I was convinced that they had shot it in caves of course they hadn't at all due to the brilliant production design by Simon Boles the caves were sets and I think one of the things that impressed me the most about it was I was really really close for a bit watching it and Simon Bowles later told me that apparently what they would do is that they would shoot in the set and then they'd go to the editing console they sort of see what the shots looked like and he said and it was it was computer the claustrophobia of looking at the shots was really some because when you saw what this XY table viously the sets are open because they're set I just think the descent is terrific and just a demonstration of what you can do with a really really low budget took my assess the descent is the first and only film to elicit an audible Yelp or a scream for me in the cinema and sporty says the descent is all the scarier for lulling the viewer into a full sense of security that is a standard claustrophobic horror when halfway through it pulled back the curtain I uncontrollably birdsong dat the TV and it becomes something else okay so number six is which is that the Myka Takashi film and I've said tell the story before the first time I saw her audition I saw at the Edinburgh Film Festival with Trevor Johnson he's a friend of mine and we went to see it was an early morning screening and all we knew about it was that it was Japanese and the film starts out looking like a weird rom-com about a guy who can't get a girlfriend who decides to do auditions um you know like I think there are auditions for television program but in fact what he's doing he's auditioning to find a girlfriend and it starts off like this and then it suddenly goes absolutely crazy go nuts we were trying to choose the best clip from audition it's very brief but if you've seen audition here's the moment [Music] it is impossible it's impossible to explain unless you've seen it why is that that is so terrifying when that film came out Alexandre Walker who was then the film critic of the Evening Standard was so appalled by it that he suggested that the Metropolitan Police should investigate the circumstances of its creation that's how much it freaked him out just one email on this from Ben Smith I think this has everything I watched audition on a blind recommendation from a former colleague my then partner came home to find all the lights in the flat on and me watching Toy Story brilliant okay on to number five in a regular appearance and when I reviewed it I said the reason it's it's that kind of you know the Monsters Inc thing we it's we scare because we care I just remember in me sending us that fantastic email that she was out and about walking we're in the wilds and she and she was listening to the podcast and she heard us going and it just yeah exactly that that is a film that really that really got under my skin and because you care about the characters that's why that's why it's scary okay let's write on number four so Ani Baba I remember William freaking is the director of The Exorcist saying famously when he was asked by an interview and when the exes first came out what scared him and he said there is a film Japanese film by kaneto shindo called Oni Baba and he said this film will scare the birds song out of you so I immediately went to try and seek it out I finally saw it at the scholar and it's at various different titles devil woman the demon the hole its inspiration is for machine but is parable about a woman who dons a terrifying face mask that then weds itself to her face but the most remarkable thing about the film is that it's shot amid this kind of giant suzuki grass of this remote swamp planned and it's the look of the giant grasses and the sound of the wind blowing through the grass that is the most remarkable thing so here for the clip is the sound of the wind in the grass [Music] well I've got this from electric Adam who says ani barber is the greatest read based horror ever the windy wind sounds maker made me more panicked than the sand from the woman of the dunes there we go and also this is late night BBC two sometime in the late seventies early eighties channel surfing stumbled upon an ababa transfixed and terrified in equal measure remains in my top ten of all movies across all genres to this day number three number three is the haunting the original haunting not the remake the the 1963 directed by Robert Wise I I love the haunting of Hill House the Shirley Jackson novel and it's very hard to imagine it being brought successfully to the screen but what what the wise version does is it's that classic this is how you do a chiller it's all Turley with under state it's all to do with what suggested it's all to do with what you don't see and it's all to do with kind of psychological tension and I just think it's a masterpiece my mood doing secrets of cinema went back and watched it again and there is not a foot out of place in that film these are all the movies that have scared mark there aren't The Exorcist number two Texas Chainsaw Massacre because it is pure terror when it first came out it was famously banned by the BBFC you could only see it work I saw it with the GLC X at the the Phoenix in East Finchley at a late night screening I may have said this before but I you know I was I took my then-girlfriend and about 20 minutes into it she said this is horrible I'm leaving and I said okay fine and she said are you not coming with me I said no I want to see the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and that kind of set things laid a pattern but it is true you know John Carpenter said that that film rides the edge of horror he said after he saw it he went to see it he was all the way through it rode the very edge of horror and he said and I went home and I slept like a baby because it pacified my soul and I think that's the most brilliant description of how it works Balthasar Hobson on his email the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was astonishing when I watched my dad's VHS as a kid the simple sudden finality of the violence leather faces workman like demeanor no camp just butchery this is not a film to be shown to kids I would suggest number one a number one the scariest film I have ever seen at least the moment in it that scared me the most is Jorge slices spore loose the vanishing the original version is vanishing not the terrible remake which slices then made and you know destroyed his original and not least because where we began with we've buried I don't want to be spoiling the plot of the vanishing but the vanishing leads to an end scene that had me in a state of absolute abject abject panic and the the second most terrifying thing about it is it was a 12 certificate which meant to the people yeah the vanishing had a 12 certificate and the BBFC was this whole thing about this with the BBFC said the thing is there's nothing in it that we can cut they technically there's nothing in it that's good it had a 12 certificate and it scared the life out of me and i remember interviewing george slyzer about it and asking him about the film and even hearing him talk about it really freaked me out at the end the end of the vanishing is one of the skit and probably the scariest thing outside of the Exorcist that I have I'm gonna I'm gonna read an email here and from Scott Pride and if it's oversteps the mark then you say so can understand fully why spoilers cook would be every claustrophobic worst nightmare a devastating ending is made worse by the sense of inevitability and the degree to which the hero and audience has walked freely into the situation quietly devastating too much mark or okay no that's absolutely fine and when I interviewed sir he said to me the thing is that what happens in the end is explained to you at the beginning because the novel it's based on is called the golden egg and at the beginning of the novel Saskia describes the golden egg and as he holds the match at the very end of the film the shape of the match is the golden egg that she had dreamed of it just makes it scarier

Channel: kermodeandmayo

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Rating: 4.9065647 out of 5

Keywords: Kermode and Mayo, Film Review, Radio 5 Live, BBC Radio, Mark Kermode, Simon Mayo, Top Ten, Horror, Movies, Scary

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Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020