Nightmare Fodder: Foreign Movie Edition
With Halloween on the horizon, you’re likely to see something akin to a Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the horror DVD section at your local library. No, not the great Tobe Hooper movie, but a stripped bare shelf where anything even remotely scary will already have been checked out. Instead of just hoping that some horror flicks will have just been returned, there's a better way. When your Elm Streets only have pleasant dreams and the only Saws you can find are in your toolbox, it's time to go check out the Foreign section.
There are a ton of great, classic, and intensely frightening movies available in the foreign section of your local branch’s DVD collection. Now, the downside to the foreign section is that it catches all the foreign language films into one area, so you’ll find yourself looking at Danish rom-coms and Indian spy thrillers if you just browse. So here are a few titles to be on the lookout for when you wander into the FOR:
Before Guillermo Del Toro brought us Pacific Rim or Hellboy, he made an intensely spooky film about a seemingly haunted orphanage during the Spanish Civil War called The Devil’s Backbone. It’s Del Toro’s most personal film, and also one of his best.
Let the Right One In was remade in the US, but you want to see the original. If all you know of Sweden is Abba and IKEA, you definitely need to check out this bloody tale of a bullied 12-year-old boy who befriends a seemingly young girl who lives next door… who happens to be an ancient vampire.
Onibaba is a tale of jealousy and murder, sex and death. The oldest film amongst this lot, it is also the most masterfully crafted one. A mother and a daughter make their living by murdering hapless samurai who come to their home and then selling their possessions, their lives changing radically when a man comes to stay with them.
Rare Exports is the strangest of the films we’re highlighting a Finnish film about an excavation that accidentally unearths a terrible, murderous creature: a Santa Claus.
There are tons of other great foreign horror movies, more than we can possibly profile. For a few other titles, check out The Host, House, Dead Snow, Night Watch, or even Juan of the Dead. Just because it’s not in the horror section doesn’t mean it’s not scary!