28. A Horror Film That Runs on Dream Logic.

How much dream logic is in this movie? Well, it’s based on a book named Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler.

This movie has the world record for longest shoot — 400 days — and has an entire New York City street recreated inside Pinewood Studios, so of course I’m obsessed. I love when movies could have been made on location or in normal places and are all made on a stage. I also kind of love that director, co-writer and producer Stanley Kubrick had created for himself a world where he could honestly get anything that he wanted.

Dr. William Harford and his wife Alice (the at-the-time married super couple of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) live in a world of wealth and sexual availability. At a holiday party thrown by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), an older man tries to take Alice while two models offer a threeway to Bill. He’s stopped when Zieglar asks him to save the life of Mandy (Julienne Davis) as she overdoses. The next evening, Alice confesses thinking of leaving him when she fell for a navy officer on vacation this disturbs him but he’s high and also on call and heads off on a house call to pronounce a patient dead and another attempted seduction, this time by that man’s daughter Marion, then picks up a call girl named Domino (Vinessa Shaw) and learns of a costumed orgy in which his friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) will play piano blindfolded while an occult-themed sex ritual will be held.

I mean, somehow this descends from Tom Cruise wanting to get laid to him narrowly avoiding HIV and death at the hands of an underground cult that rules the world, all while his wife is asleep. And then,  when they go holiday shopping with their daughter, she tells him that they have to do something as soon as possible: Fuck.

It’s weird that the novel is all about anti-Jewish persecution and Kubrick removed all those references. Keep in mind both his parents were Jewish.

But maybe, as some have claimed, this movie is an in-code atonement for Kubrick’s conspiracy ties. He’d been wanting to make this since 2001. Or maybe he just wanted to make his porn movie, who can say. As it is, some think the movie wasn’t even finished. Like Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam, who said, “I think Eyes Wide Shut was snatched up by the studio when Stanley died and they just grabbed the highest number Avid edit and ran off as if that was the movie. But it was three months before the movie was due to be released. I don’t think there’s a chance that was the movie he had in mind, or the music track and a lot of other things. It’s a great shame because you know it’s out there, but it doesn’t feel to me as it’s really his film.”

Then again, who knows?

Kubrick was, of course, an absolute maniac about every moment of this movie.

Here’s an example. For just one minute of the dream within a dream where Alice makes love to the navy man (model Gary Goba) Kidman had to shoot six days of naked sex scenes — fifty positions! — with a male model. Kubrick banned Cruise from the set.  He also would not allow Kidman to tell him what happened during the shoot. Yet this was one of Kidman’s personal favorite experiences, saying that working with Kubrick was like attending film school.

But let me hit that one harder. In a scene that never made it into the film, Kidman had a merkin over her private parts and Kubrick ordered Goba to go down on her. The model would later say, “He really wanted me to go for it.” I did and he was like, ‘You’ve got to really push in there and really move your head around,’ and I’d see him laughing and she would be like, ‘Oh God, Stanley!’ So I was really grinding away in there, with my mouth on her patch and there was hair in my mouth, too, and I’d be pulling one out.”

I find it hilarious that Kubrick was basically cucking the biggest movie star in the world.

Then he made him walk through a doorway 95 times for one shot.

And pretty much it makes fun of Scientology if you believe that theory.

Ah man, Kubrick. You were one weird dude.

Back to dreams: Kidman said, “It is a great memory for us, and at times it was almost a dreamlike state.”

Eyes Wide Shut opened on the same weekend that John Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister were killed in a plane crash. I can’t even imagine what Q people would think of this movie because like all Kubrick, it’s filled with so much, well, stuff, that you can make it about anything. But hey this has an occult sex party set in the mansion of the Rothschilds, so that has to mean something, right?

Then again, it ends with a very easily explained way of saying that this was all a fantasy:

“I think we should be grateful. Grateful that we’ve managed to survive through all of our adventures, whether they were real, or only a dream. Sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime can ever be the whole truth. And no dream is ever just a dream. The important thing is we’re awake now and hopefully for a long time to come.”

Oh man. I could obsess — and I sure will obsess — over this movie for my entire life.

27. A Horror Film by a Director who made more than three movies but only made one horror film. (Not THE SHINING. You can be more creative than that!)

EDITOR’S NOTE: I honestly couldn’t think of any that I haven’t written about before, so I had to post this, which was first on the site on September 8, 2020.

Two vampire movies came out in 1987.* One became a celebrated big-budget film that launched the careers of the Coreys and Kiefer Sutherland, with songs that people still sing, shirtless saxophonists and quotable dialogue about why there’s no need for a TV when you have TV Guide. The other movie was in and out of theaters in the time it took to read the last sentence and has stuck in my mind forever since.

Kathryn Bigelow had never directed a movie before. She was given five days to succeed or be replaced. She wanted to make a Western, but they weren’t popular. So she combined the vampire genre — the word is never mentioned — and hired three of the actors from her future husband James Cameron’s recently completed Aliens, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein.

Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) falls for the mysterious Mae (Jenny Wright, who is another beyond cult horror film that few discuss, I, Madman) but then learns her family — Severen (Paxton), Jesse Hooker (Henriksen), Diamondback (Goldstein) and Homer (Joshua John Miller) — are a roving band of RV driving maniacs given to acts of merciless terror.

The only problem that I’ve ever had with this film is that I have always seen the normal people in the world as the real monsters, despite the hints that Jesse and Severen set the Great Chicago Fire. The blood transfusions that save the beautiful people seem way too easy of a way out of the hell that the gang promises.

Biglow would go on to make the equally well-made Blue Steel. Most of the cast went on to fame, at least in the circles of people who read our site. And if you look close enough, there’s a picture of a torn-apart Severen on my fridge.

If you’d like to learn more about the films scored by the band who gave this movie its unique soundtrack, check out our article Exploring: 10 Tangerine Dream Soundtracks.

*We know that A Return to Salem’s Lot and My Best Friend Is a Vampire also came out in 1987. For the sake of poetic license, we hope you understand why we juxtaposed these two films. Ironically, both movies have a son of The Exorcist star Jason Miller in their casts, with Joshua John Miller is in Near Dark and his half-brother Jason Patric in The Lost Boys.

BONUS: You can hear Becca and Sam discuss this movie on our podcast.

26. A Horror Film Released By Gold Ninja Video.

First off, rush out and buy this from Gold Ninja or watch it on Tubi. This movie feels like it emerged from another time and place and everyone who claims to be making movies that feel like they came from the past are liars because this movie gets every moment right while also staring into the future like it’s a blinding sun.

Shot on 8mm and looking like a grainy blast from out of nowhere, Ramin Fahrenheit wrote, directed and stars in this movie. She’s a young woman just out of the mental ward who goes from simple robbery to murder in the same way that I would try to decide what I want for dinner. She’s driven to kill by something that she can’t control, keeping herself hidden but always finding herself in the glaring spotlight and unleashing her vengeance.

Lo-fi as fuck in the best of ways, pushed forward by a score by Norman Orenstein, this honestly amazes me that it came from years and not decades or realities away, a movie that feels like Jess Franco coming through the fabric of time and space to become Canadian and devastate your senses all over again, yet with a more feminine understanding of just how cruel the world is but never forgetting to have scummy gore and a screwy narrative like Driller Killer without the New York art scene.

Every grindhouse inspired movie goes for broke with wacky action, goofy trailers and throwing some video effects to make it all look like it’s on dirty film. This is on dirty film with the beauty that can only come when audio and picture are made in two worlds, lending this a disjointed quality that activates the movie drug endorphins in my fragile mind, bringing me into that most magical planes of mental existence, that place where movies are perfect for their imperfection.

25. A Horror Film That Prominently Features A Gorilla Costume.

Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Burr, Lee Marvin and Warren Stevens. What a cast! Throw in George Barrows as Goliath, the titular gorilla and man, we have a movie. Wait — it’s in 3D? How much do you want to give us, Panoramic Productions?

The carnival has come to town and its big selling point is watching the giant gorilla Goliath get cock teased by Laverne, a trapeze artist (Bancroft). Yet the owner, Cyrus Miller (Burr) thinks the act is growing old. So carnival barker Joey (Cameron Mitchell) puts on a gorilla costume and they change it up, with a new ending where the beast really does get the girl. This upsets Goliath’s trainer Kovacs (Peter Whitney) and Joey’s fiancee Audrey (Charlotte Austin), who doesn’t want him near another woman.

Of course, murders ensue, a hall of mirrors and a rollercoaster make for amazing set pieces and the ending is a genuine surprise. When this aired on TV in the 80s, the giveaway glasses smelled like bananas, which is what I want all movies to have the whiff of.

24. A Horror Film About an Invisible Killer.

Director and writer Rif Coogan is really Adam Rifkin and this movie is goofy in a great way. Dornwinkle (Noel Peters) is a scientist that specializes in molecular reconstruction. As a kid, his mother was told that he has the potential for madness but if she raises him correctly, it’ll be OK. Instead, she raises him to have a major issue about women because sex is wrong. Of course, that goes horribly and he kills four people moments into the movie when his fellow scientists make fun of his latest experiment. He escapes and hides out as a substitute high school physics teacher with the name of Dr. Kevin Smith.

Between the students harassing him and the principal trying to seduce him, Dornwinkle explodes in a rage, drowning people in fish tanks, throwing a radio into the shower to kill another and even using a sandwich as a murder weapon. A janitor ends up getting his invisibility secret and the two have a unseen person battle for the ages. Also: as you can imagine, nearly non-stop nudity.

The Invisible Maniac also had a major role for Shannon Wilsey, better known as the adult star Savannah. She was debating going mainstream, but she was upset at the film’s premiere, unsure whether the audience was laughing with or at her. She decided to go full time into pornography after that. She was also in Sorority House Massacre II the same year as this, along with co-star Melissa Moore.

23. A Horror Movie Based On an Indie Comic Book (EC Comics Adaptions Don’t Count).

Directed by Christopher Coppola and written by Robert Cooper, Richard L. Albert and Nicholas Johnson, this movie was based on Mike Allred’s Grafik Muzik. It stars William Forsythe as Dean Crept and Tate Donovan as Mike Mattress, two dead FBI agents who have no idea of morality that are working on buying their way into heaven.

Along the way, they investigate Greydon (Barry Newman) and Gloria Lake (Vanessa Angel), a married couple who both hire them to investigate one another, deal with an investigation by police officers Lt. Langdon (Gary Busey) and Detective Dalton (Zach Galligan) and steal a crystal from Satan (Robert Goulet). They may have also killed a police informant who may have killed our detectives named Buster (Bobcat Goldthwait), who is resurrected by a mad scientist (David Huddleston) and oh yeah, there’s also a superhero named Cheetah Man (Gregory Sporleder), Paul Rodriguez is a demonic gossip and Kari Wuhrer plays their secretary.

It looks really strange, like a 60s TV adventure series made in 2000 which is exactly what it is. I had no idea this movie even existed and yet here it is, packing so many actors into one weird little movie.

22. A Horror Film that Michele Soavi Appears In.

I’m trying to do all new movies for this challenge which makes this hard because I’ve already had so many Michele Soavi movies that he acted in on the site, like Alien 2: On Earth, City of the Living Dead, Absurd, The New York Ripper, Tenebre, Caligula…The Untold Story, A Blade In the Dark, Endgame, Atlantis Interceptors, Blastfighter, Phenomena, Demons, Stage Fright, The Church, The Mask of Satan, The Sect, The Black Cat and Cemetery Man.

Franco Nero is private eye Larry “Cobra” Stanziani, who even gets his own song that says, “I don’t give a damn, I am the Cobra.” He returns to Italy hired to discover who killed a narcotics agent and reconnect with his young son who — spoiler warning — gets murdered and then we get to see lots of people get killed by Cobra.

Enzo G. Castellari wanted to make this as a tribute to Chandler. That’s not why it has a fistfight in a disco, but I’m good with it. Also this movie was selected specifically because — in addition to Soavi — it has Sybil Danning in it.

I can watch Franco Nero lose his mind and murder criminals all day. I am a very simple film watcher.

21. A Horror Film That’s Shot on Mini-DV (But is not a found footage film).

I don’t know if this is horror to be exact but it’s Takeshi Miike, so anything goes. Part of the Love Cinema series, which contains six straight-to-video releases by independent filmmakers that played an exclusive engagement at the Shimokitazawa cinema in Tokyo, this was made on digital video to keep the budget low but also capture the look of the video camera used in the movie itself.

The other films were Ryuichi Hiroki’s Tokyo Trash Baby, Mitushiro Mihara’s Amen, Somen and Rugger Men!, Isao Yukisada’s Enclosed Pain, Tetsuo Shinohara’s Stake Out and Akihiko Shiota’s Gips.

Like Terence Stamp in Pasolini’s Teorema, Visitor Q comes into the lives of the Yamazaki family and changes their lives. Of course, he also beats the father Kiyoshi (Kenichi Endō) over the head with a rock, teaches the mother (Shungicu Uchida) the magic of lactation and throwing knives at her abusive son, explores the incestuous relationship that the daughter Miki (Fujiko) has with her father and teaches the son (Jun Mutō) to be less violent while still encouraging his parents to murder and hack up his bullies from school.

Somehow, through chaos, necrophilia, vinegar filled bathtubs, heroin and murder, the family comes back together. Visitor Q has filmed it all, yet created something magical through his rock bashing psychological torture, I guess. The family unit thrives. Somehow, in the midst of all the blood, feces and breast milk, a traditional heart beats. Who knew Miike had it in him? Then again, he does reinvent himself with nearly every movie.

20. A Horror Film That Features Testicular Trauma.

La novia ensangrentada is based on Carmilla, that tale of forbidden Sapphic vampire love. Released as a double feature in the U.S. with I Dismember Mama, it even had a special trailer that had an audience member losing their marbles.

Susan (Maribel Martín) is so newlywed that she shows up on her honeymoon still wearing her gown. She’s being followed by Mircala Karstein (Alexandra Bastedo) and has waking terrors, imagining a man has come into her room to assault her. When she visits her the house where her husband (Simón Andreu) was raised, she finds paintings of all the men, but no women save Karstein, who murdered her husband on their wedding night after he forced her to commit unspeakable acts.

As her dreams are taken over by Karstein, her husband finds a woman buried on the beach. She’s still alive — well, she’s undead — and she’s Karstein in human form, seducing Susan in dreams of deadly daggers and in waking caresses. By the end, he must destroy them while they sleep intertwined in a coffin and then fulfill the wish of her thrall to shoot her in the head.

Sure, it’s a lot like The Vampire Lovers and Daughters of Darkness, but those movies don’t have their protagonist’s sexual awakening come complete with remembering that her husband uses her for sex whenever he wants it without pleasure for her, so she blows another man’s balls clean off with a shotgun.

“The good ones are those who are content to dream what the wicked actually practice.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

19. A Musical Horror Film (That’s Not Rocky Horror, Little Shop of Horrors or Nightmare Before Christmas).

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Mermaids make their way up from the abyss to the seabed. Then they use it for leverage and swim to the surface. I give you: The Lure.”

In Poland, this movie was called Córki dancingu (Daughters of Dancing) and it’s a musical reworking of The Little Mermaid but filtered through director Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s experiences growing up in her mother’s nightclub, a place where she experienced her “first shot of vodka, first cigarette, first sexual disappointment and first important feeling for a boy.” She said that she used mermaids to hide the personal parts of the story and create a way to hide all of the emotions that came from her real life.  Yet she took those mermaids and made them, in part, monstrous. Writer Robert Bolesto was inspired to also tell the story of two of his friends that were part of the 80s nightclub scene.

Golden (Michalina Olszańska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) rise from the water and watch a band called Figs n’ Dates playing music. They follow them back to a nightclub where they become dancers with the band, finally becoming The Lure, the main attraction while the band plays behind them.

All the while, Silver falls in love with the bassist Mietek — who sees her as an animal and not a woman — while her sister only views humans as food.

They’re not the only undersea creatures that are in Poland’s music industry. Triton (Marcin Kowalczyk) is a singer for a metal band and knows how the world works between the magic world and the mundane world. If Silver gives her heart to Mietek and he marries someone else, she will become sea foam. She gives up her tail and her voice for love, yet even her new body — covered with surgical scars and blood — disgusts Mietek, who marries a woman he has only known for a day.

Of course, this must all end in tragedy. Silver must devour Mietek before daybreak, but she can’t bring herself to do so. You can imagine the pain and horror that comes next. The ocean beckons, after all.

We live in a world where people become enraged when someone with a different skin color is a mermaid. All of those people so upset should watch this. Then, mermaids should devour them.

This is a film that I’ll ponder over probably for the rest of my life. It’s not as upsetting as Mermaid In a Manhole — what is? — but it gets close in all the very best of ways. Plus, the songs have a way of getting wrapped around your ear.