Monday, January 21, 2008

The Top 100 Dead Teenager Movies

This website (http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/gurnow/dtm.htm) has a list someone concocted of the 100 Best Dead Teenager Movies of All-Time, done mostly out of spite directed at Roger Ebert who insisted no such list could possibly exist.

Even looking at the Top 10 I have to take some exception (and no I haven't seen every movie, perhaps I should make that a goal here in the first year of doing this blog/site):


1. Scream (1996) dir. Craven
2. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) dir. Craven
3. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) dir. Glosserman
4. Sleepaway Camp (1983) dir. Hiltzik
5. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) dir. Hooper
6. Halloween (1978) dir. Carpenter
7. Ginger Snaps (2000) dir. Fawcett
8. Final Destination (2000) dir. Wong
9. Idle Hands (1999) dir. Flender
10. Battle Royale (2000) dir. Fukasaku

For one thing, "Scream" can't be #1 because it's a deconstruction. In order to be the best of a genre something should, to me, exist solely within the constraints of that genre without sneaking a peek out. That's not to diss "Scream," which I think is an amazing movie, but it's not the best simply because it's standing on top of and looking at the other movies inside the genre. Take that self-awareness away and "Scream" doesn't do anything any other number of movies do along the way.

Which is why "Halloween" is obviously the #1 greatest Dead Teenager Movie of all-time. And I hate that Roger Ebert, who I generally like, tries to cop out and say it isn't a DTM. Why? Basiclly because he thinks it's a really good one (in fact he had it in his Top 10 Movies of the year, the year it was released) and because of that shouldn't be lumped in with some of the turds the genre created later. I don't get that: why can't a movie that is simply the best of its genre be content to be considered the best of its genre, even if the genre itself might be somewhat lower on the social totem pole.

"Halloween" IS the definitive Dead Teenager Movie. In many ways it created the entire genre. Most 80's DTM's are simply remaking "Halloween," reusing its shots, its conceits, it's character types. In nearly every case the end result is nothing but a knock-off but more than any other movie, "Halloween" is the blueprint for most of what followed it. Even a movie like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" didn't generate a mainstream surge of literal copycats the way "Halloween" did. In fact, to this day very few movies look or feel like "Chainsaw." Maybe people were afraid of it, or maybe it didn't perfect a formula the way "Halloween" did.

Beyond scaring the piss out of us, that's what "Halloween" did: it perfected a formular for horror that works, to some degree, without fail. Hell, a good part of "Scream" itself reuses actual scenes from "Halloween" to create tension and tell its story.

And you can't say the one performing the homage is superior to the source material.

Without question, "Halloween" is the greatest Dead Teenager Movie of all-time.

(But, no it isn't my favorite per se.)

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