FilmChik

Delivering real fright ... Mia Farrow in the 1968 film version of Rosemary's Baby. Photograph: Cine Text / Allstar

I am a huge scaredy-cat (can't ever watch the nasty bits in horror films; spend a lot of them screaming) but for some reason I love being terrified, probably ever since a childhood reading of The Witches led to it having to be hidden at the top of the cupboard so it couldn't get me. It wasn't the Grand High Witch who scared me, it was the witch who stands at the bottom of the tree trying to tempt the boy narrator down: "'Come out of that tree, little boy,' she said, 'and I shall give you the most exciting present you've ever had...'"

Horror is still one of my guilty pleasures today (in fact most of my reading is guilty pleasures, so perhaps I should just admit that and move on), so I eagerly snapped up a copy of Sarah Langan's Audrey's Door after seeing that it had won the Bram Stoker award for best novel a week-and-a-half ago. I'd read Langan's debut, The Keeper, back in 2006 and been thoroughly frightened by Susan Marley ("she lives in their dreams; they die in hers") and by Langan's portrait of the decaying, depressing town of Bedford.

I wasn't quite as impressed with Audrey's Door, the story of architect Audrey Lucas. Audrey has split up with her boyfriend, Saraub, and has moved into The Breviary, an Upper West Side mansion block built in the style of Chaotic Naturalism – an all but extinct crank architecture/religion which drives its inhabitants (currently a horde of plastic-surgeried, very creepy ancients) mad. The apartment she's taken was formerly inhabited by a woman who murdered her four children, and Audrey quickly starts to dream – of the children's deaths, of a man with slicked-back black hair who urges her to "build a door". When she wakes up, she finds that she's been building a door in her sleep.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Sam Raimi's debut feature -- an expansion of a short he'd made called Within the Woods -- benefited enormously from his kinetic camera style, truly freaky demons and a champion in Stephen King, who called it "the most ferociously original horror film" of the year. Made for just $375,000, the movie went on to gross nearly $30m in various releases and re-releases. Look for it to add to that figure when it's re-released to American cinemas early next year. Of course, Sam Raimi would go on to make far bigger bank with his Spider-Man franchise.

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The Blair Witch Project (1999)

This grainy video movie of "found footage" chronicling a loser trio's trip into the woods to find the Blair Witch was made for a pittance. Like Paranormal Activity, it benefited from some production tweaks and a robust ad budget. So while the initial Blair Witch cost about $25,000, there was up to $750,000 worth of sound work and reshoots. Then came a $15m ad campaign that posited the film as "real" and which took advantage of the emerging "Internet". Still, it all worked and the movie grossed $140.5m in the US and another $104m worldwide.

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Open Water (2004)

The most obvious imitator of Blair Witch was this effort, which traded the forest for the trackless ocean. Loosely based on the real-life case of the Lonergans, an American tourist couple whose dive boat left them behind on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, this flick primarily consisted of two people in the open ocean growing increasingly freaked out as sharks come circling. Shot on video it cost just $130,000, but gobbled up $30.5m.

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Saw (2004)

Shamefully, when Aussies James Wan and Leigh Whannel were pitching their horror about two strangers chained in a room by a maniac, no local producers were interested. So the boys took it to the US, got it made for $1.2m, and saw it gross $52m. Saw then made three times that on DVD, inspired five sequels, and is a franchise that's to date generated over a billion dollars worldwide. Saw VII is scheduled for released next Halloween -- and in 3-D.

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Colin (2009)

While Paranormal Activity is making the big bucks, if you ever see this lo-fi British zombie flick then you've probably helped cover a significant percentage of the budget. See, Colin was made for $70 -- yep, you heard right -- by writer-director Marc Price, who utilised friends and strangers as actors, did special effects on the fly, and filmed a "battle scene" on the streets of London without permission. His point of difference? The film shows life -- or death -- from the zombie's point of view. This twist on the formula was enough to get the film to Cannes, into UK cinemas and a wide DVD release. All for $70.

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6-10: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/paranormal_activity/news/1858238/2/10_horrifically_profitable_films

By Andreas Trolf
Wired.com guest blogger

I can remember watching the first episode of The Simpsons. I was 12 years old and awkward, with the ill-defined aspiration of “being funny.” In the 20 years since, as the show has defined and refined itself and undergone various changes — some for the better, many derided by fans — I have remained awkward.

The blame for this steadfast awkwardness can be (at least partially) attributed to watching The Simpsons with an evangelical enthusiasm. This year is a good one, however, to be a fan. In addition to a new unauthorized book detailing the none-too-pretty history of the show, Marge will be celebrating the fact that no one appears to age in Springfield by posing for Playboy.

Watching the show’s 20th Halloween special, “Treehouse of Horror XX,” which airs Sunday night on Fox, it’s immediately obvious how far The Simpsons has come since the days of ubiquitous bootleg T-shirts (Black Bart and Rasta Bart being the most popular) and being derided by the first President George Bush.

While immediately and hugely popular, The Simpsons needed some time to find its legs. And although all of Springfield’s denizens are richly and fully imagined, the show initially focused on the wrong Simpson.

Bart is a brilliant character, but for all his monkeyshines he’s not compelling enough to be the main draw of the show. Things didn’t really start moving until the writers realized that Homer was most deserving of our attention and adoration.

This year’s Halloween special takes aim at Dial M for Murder, 28 Days Later and apparently Sweeney Todd. The three segments are enjoyable enough, and of them the second — the zombie-themed “Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind” — is the funniest. But overall the episode is unremarkable. After watching it twice, I’m hard-pressed to recall a quotable one-liner, and although Homer does perform a hilarious musical number detailing his homosexual exploits, even that falls well short of the memorable songs of episodes past.

Rest of article: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/10/simpsons-treehouse-of-horror-xx/