That is a great list, and could easily be my own. The Warriors is an amazing film, possibly one of the greatest NY urban jungle movies, it ranks right up there with The Taking of Pelham 123. Scanners is also a masterpiece, and it was the first movie that I can recall that actually visualized the internet via telephone. A wild scene.

This discussion has actually prompted me to marry my obsession with film with approaches to imagining it differently when “learning about it.” I am in the process of following your prompt here, and using the argumentative edit, commentary and mashup to re-imagine ways to commune and create with these cultural artifacts of our imaginative past. What is amazing about all the films you list, is how much they not only evoke a time and place for me personally, but an entire film world that is beautifully compelling in its texture and depth. Dawn of the Dead and the Warriors maybe the two best examples of this, though Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Thing certainly offer the horror of closed, isolated spaces that ultimately become hermetically sealed worlds of fear.

Great list, I would be proud to call it my own,. Seems like our tastes in good bad cinema are extremely close, and I now have to add Scum to my list of movies. Thanks for that.

I think the thing about bleakness is that it is, as you say, something of a cop-out. That’s because hope, happiness, niceness even is very difficult to portray in anything but a sentimental fashion. You get more art kudos for being miserable. ‘Happiness writes white’ as the saying goes. You see this is music too. Now I am of a melancholic bent, so my favourite bands are people like the Smiths and Radiohead, who seem genuinely dark (although in Morrissey’s case with genuine humour too). But I can’t stand pseudo-miserable e.g. Coldplay because it seems contrived. I wonder if this is similar to your aversion to NCFOM?

Back to film. I’m not sure I have a top ten of your sub-genre of 1980s B-movies, but here are some of the films that were influential to me in that era, and vaguely fit into that category (so, ignoring other influential films such as Taxi Driver). These could broadly be labelled ‘films I used to bunk off school to watch’:

Dawn of the Dead
The Evil Dead (1 or 2, probably 2 on balance)
The Warriors (bit big budget but the first film I saw on video)
Scanners (I loved Cronenburg sci-fi)
The Thing
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (bit earlier I know, but it was the first time I understood what the camera angle could do)
Robocop (okay, definitely big budget, but probably marked the culmination of these type of films)
Scum (not horror, but had b-movie feel to it)

That quote by Nabakov says it perfectly, and that is why I returned to Dawn of the Dead. For that is definitely in the formative top 10 —it will actually be the first post thanks to this post and thread— and I agree with you entirely: Dawn of the Dead it is first and foremost a great zombie movie. It affected me deeply as an adolescent when I saw it for the first time,and even after innmuerable viewings I find myself covering my eyes at certain scnes, and experiencing the original dread I had in the late 70s, early 80s. Not until after numerous additional viewings and the cult community around it does the critique of consumerism link it with other worlds, namely the mall culture that was beginning to boom at the time. And the attack on consumerism you discuss is such a beautifully woven in thema that it always elevates this film for me to the next level, like its predecessor Night of the Living Dead.

As far as hope, I’m glad you called me on this, because I think I am starting to sound like I need a good happy ending to make the film remotely valuable, which isn;t true. In fact, I love good apocalyptic end-of-the-world film as much as the next guy, what irks me though is the way in which the push towards complete nihilism and hopelessness, is rarely backed up with anything resembling a compelling series of events that might frame its complexity for the view, and this goes for NCFOM as well.

I don’t necessarily judge a film on how hopeless it is or isn’t, but rather th way in which the narrative frames this condition as an interesting, complex, and entertaining way. I think the Dawn of the Dead ending is interesting in this regard because while Romero seems to toy with the end of everything, it ultimately ends on a seemingly hopeless scene that at least leaves possibilities to the imagination, this is rarely the case with more recently. The hopelessness seems =more a narrative and political cop out more than anything else.

How fun is it to talk horror films with you, very cool!