Mike Muncer

Comments

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Never before or since has the language of cinema been used so effectively to evoke dread, disgust and sheer terror. A stunningly sweaty, relentless nightmare.

Singin' in the Rain

While comedy can often date badly, Singin' in the Rain somehow gets funnier and smarter with age. The greatest movie about movie making.

The Night of the Hunter

With only one director credit to his name, Charles Laughton is unequivocally the greatest filmmaker of all time by default: 100% of the work he directed is beautiful, dreamlike perfection.

The Innocents

The first ever haunted house movie for grown-ups remains unrivalled. From its opening moments of pitch black darkness accompanied by a child singing 'O Willow Waly' to menacing faces appearing at the window, The Innocents established the ghost story as the scariest and most cinematic of all horror sub-genres.

The Shining

Perhaps it's the Stephen King source material, perhaps it's the way actors were treated behind the scenes, perhaps it's the terrifying production design (how is it that even the carpet patterns look menacing?), but even in its most mundane moments, Stanley Kubrick's film feels truly unhinged.

Blue Velvet

Has there ever been a purer and more powerful moment in cinema (or summation of David Lynch's entire filmography) than the dreamy opening of Blue Velvet, in which happy suburbanites smile and wave at each other from behind their white picket fences, as black monstrous bugs violently destroy and devour each other beneath the surface of a perfectly pruned lawn? David Lynch is obsessed with peeking behind the curtains and showing us the nightmare that lurks behind the American dream, and he's never done it better than in Blue Velvet.

Scream

Wes Craven somehow made groundbreaking and decade defining horror three times: In the 1970s with Last House on the Left, in the 1980s with A Nightmare on Elm Street and in the 1990s with Scream.

Get Out

A film so rich, smart and instantly iconic that it already feels as recognisable as Jaws, The Exorcist or The Shining.

Further remarks

I tried not to overthink this...so I wrote the 10 movies that immediately came to mind as my favourites, then I panicked and agonised over said ten choices for the next several days...then clicked submit.