Horror movies have, by and large, been mostly characterized by their low budgets, second-rate actors, and shill directors. When compared to other genres, horror films are rarely considered deserving of the title “masterpieces” because they’re about alien abductions, haunted houses, chainsaw wielding maniacs, and vampires. True horror aficionados will tell you that the genre has contributed some of the most thematically stimulating films in cinema history, but even its classics don’t always hold up over time.
By their nature, horror classics are products of their times, and therefore restricted to the special effects available to them, as well as any public panics endemic to the era in which they were produced. Let’s look back at ten classic films of the horror genre that didn’t age well upon rewatching.
JAWS
At the time that Jaws was released, nothing of its magnitude had ever been experienced before. With his summer horror film about a small coastal town being ravaged by a giant Great White shark, Steven Spielberg invented the blockbuster and created a genre classic.
Part of the draw of the film is the fact that it takes its time to reveal the shark, like a predator stalking its prey, saving that moment to the end so that you can savor the suspense. Which would be great, if you didn’t immediately notice the shark is an animatronic, and not very terrifying. The scariest part is the head popping out from under the boat, and that was filmed in Spielberg’s pool.
CARRIE
Originally a Stephen King novel, Carrie remains one of the better adaptations of his work. Starring a young Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, it followed her sheltered character as she got taunted at school and verbally abused by her pious mother at home.
The slow burn nature of this film makes it difficult to watch for anyone expecting the jump scares of the modern era. The supernatural things that begin to happen around Carrie are vaguely creepy, but much of the films terror hinges on the final sequence when Carrie is asked to prom by a sympathetic jock, and the payout now seems underwhelming.
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE
The second installment in the popular Elm Street horror franchise, A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was meant to alter the direction of the original films. It featured young teen Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) who’s moved into the home of one of Freddy Krueger’s victims, where he becomes similarly tortured by the homicidal maniac in his nightly dreams.
The film was a radical departure from the original, and started to develop a more over the top and comedic style that A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors would completely take and run with. Some of the scenes seem so unabashedly exploitative of the young male members of the cast, it’s surprising they were filmed at all.
SCREAM
Classic horror film master Wes Craven crafted a perfect slasher satire with Scream, populating it with some of the biggest scream queens of the ’90s - Drew Barrymore, Courtney Cox, Rose McGowan, etc. The town of Woodsboro is terrorized by a masked maniac who’s watched horror movies and wants to replicate their blood-soaked debauchery.
Scream was already poking fun at itself by the time Scary Movie and other films parodied it, so rewatching it only makes it seem much more like a comedy than a true horror film. The laughs come more easily than they should at the victim’s expense, and there’s nothing remotely suspenseful anymore.
ROSEMARY’S BABY
Much ado was made about Roman Polanski’s first stateside film, and what was hailed as horrific in the mid ’70s is as laborious to get through as the pregnancy it depicts. Mia Farrow plays Rosemary Woodhouse, a young bride who’s moved to New York with her actor husband.
When Rosemary finds out she’s having a baby, her husband begins treating her differently, and she becomes reclusive. Soon she begins to realize her baby isn’t altogether human, and her husband might be part of a Satanic cult. The “Satanic Panic” is largely responsible for the horrors in this film (and anyone raised Catholic) and without the context of the era, it’s two hours of waiting for something to happen.
GREMLINS
Gremlins works as both a holiday film and a horror film, but recent rewatching makes it works moreso as the former, or one long toy commercial. It features a doting inventor father who purchases a curious critter for his son for Christmas, except care isn’t taken with the creature and it soon multiples, causing murder and mayhem all over town.
The Mogwai are certainly adorable creatures, and it’s amusing to watch the evil Gremlins wreak havoc at a local bar, but nothing about it seems frightening anymore except Judge Reinhold’s fashion sense, or some of the racist Asian stereotypes.
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
It’s debatable whether or not The Hills Have Eyes was a good film even when it premiered in 1977, but horror master Wes Craven had a penchant for combining slasher horror with satire, so there were bound to be moments that repulsed, thrilled, and made audiences laugh.
Unfortunately these days, this film of mutated mountain cannibals is a labor of love to watch. The locations and setting are very minimalist, and the budget only serves to make it more jarringly sparse, not gritty. If you want a similar film of city folk being terrorized by homicidal hillbillies, watch its superior, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS
John Carpenter is usually regarded as a maverick in the horror genre, having become a legend for making such cult classics as The Thing, Christine, They Live! and many more. His 1987 film Prince of Darkness however doesn’t age as well as those other titles.
When a priest (horror veteran Donald Pleasence) finds a strange vial of goo in the cellar of a church, he discovers its really the root of all evil. He summons researchers to investigate it, but the slime of Satan infects them, turning them into murderous zombies. The film wanted to show you The Apocalypse with global consequences, but only had the budget for a homeless person killing people with a bicycle.
CHILDREN OF THE CORN
As terrifying as it might be for two adults to find themselves surrounded by nothing but kids, Children of the Corn is an ’80s classic that doesn’t hold up the same way Halloween and Friday the 13th do. It takes a long time to get started, and only gets interesting after the physician and his girlfriend encounter strange child-prophet Isaac Chroner.
Somehow, a film about children wanting to sacrifice parental figures to their deity inspired nine sequels, each less frightening and more coma-inducing than the last. The atmosphere is appropriately unsettling, as it is with most groups of children left unattended, but the pacing never pays off with any great menace.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
Whereas Scream a year earlier was a satirical take on the slasher genre, 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer seems to take itself too seriously, despite arriving a decade too late for the style of film to have resonance. It follows a group of teenagers who run over a fisherman and cover it up by dumping him in a lake, only to have to revisit the scene of the crime when they find out someone saw them do it.
Featuring all sorts of pretty faces from the ’90s, including Sarah Michelle Gellar from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the film remains very paint-by-numbers. It has few actually successful thrills, as we mostly wait for the teens to get picked off one by one with the man with the hook for a hand.
