Dear Reader, are you experiencing “Best of”-list fatigue of one sort or another?  If so, then Firefox News proudly presents either the antidote or the coup de grace, depending on how you look at it.  Here is our gathering of the most eye-opening (and stomach-churning) movie lists on the Web for those who can’t get enough of the best and the darkest.

Anyone of a certain mental age probably realizes the real purpose of top ten lists and the like is to start arguments or, perhaps, to resolve them.  Or, put less cynically, such lists can often serve the benign goal of encouraging “discourse.”  Of course there are bragging rights and commercial benefits for those whose work appears in such lists, but what’s really in it for the rest of us—fans, critics, everyday moviegoers?

I appreciate such lists most when they steer me to a specific title I’ve overlooked or, better yet, when they actually teach me something about the artist, genre, or time period in question.  A solid movie list, for me, also reveals a broad general knowledge of the field rather than falling back on obvious canon- or box office-driven choices.  A list that has integrity and value should also probably avoid stealth agendas—“indie is good, Hollywood bad”—or implicit, if unintentional, biases (“Uh, foreign horror—you mean people in other countries make horror movies?”).

Most of the time, though, let’s face it, as readers and writers we’re dealing with the same group of films recycled again and again with only minor variations.  In horror this looks like, “How can 30 Days of Night be included but not Hatchet?” while someone else makes the exact opposite gripe in a different letters column or blog comment.  It’s as if everybody who’s left out of voting for actual industry or festival awards (i.e., 99.9% of moviegoers) holds their own private ceremony in the screening room of the mind’s eye and then unveils the lucky, albeit imaginary, “winners.”  It’s our way of identifying the movies we take to heart, corralling them together, and then daring anyone to attack.  Hyperbole is part and parcel of this siege mentality—that’s why as a culture we frequently equate, or conflate, the concepts of “best” and “favorite.”

So at this point I must confess that the title of this piece is blatantly misleading.  There is no way that what follows represents the “best” of anything—I simply haven’t trolled the Web for every list, or even every “important” list, out there.  But of what I’ve seen, here are the most fun, edifying, outrageous, and informed of the lot.

Time Magazine’s Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time

Surprised?  You shouldn’t be.  Richard Corliss’s list a few years back of the best films of the century (on which he collaborated with Richard Schickel) also had a lot of valuable, borderline iconoclastic, choices.

Thanks For:  Creating variety by using a one-film-per-director guideline; not being afraid of including the weird and obscure (Men Behind the Sun, 1988); making sure the list includes a healthy dose of non-English language pics (Audition, 1999; Black Sunday, 1960).

Questionable:  Red Dragon (2002)?  In his explanation, Corliss seems more to be voting for Hannibal Lecter as a character than the film itself.  And while the flick has some impressive acting and features one of Danny Elfman’s most dazzling scores—the top 25 of all time?  Actually the one serious weakness of the list occurs where agenda starts to creep in; the inclusions of Bambi (1942) and Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) seem intended more to make points about cinematic fear in general than to inform readers about the genre and strike me as too clever by half.

24 Hours of Horror with Eli Roth

The Onion’s A.V. Club really pulled off something special with this feature/interview.  Here the director of Cabin Fever (2002) programs a blue-sky marathon of his favorites.Thanks For:  Going highbrow and lowbrow; providing historical context and background; embedding YouTube clips at point-of-use; and making the connections to Roth’s own movies—although I think there’s a missed opportunity since the brilliant Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) has a slow, lighthearted opening about travelers in a foreign land that strongly recalls the first act of Hostel (2005).

Questionable:  Maybe a tad too heavy on the splatter front?  But honestly, what was I expecting…

Kindertrauma’s Best of 2007

If you’re unfamiliar with this powerfully single-minded site, here’s a good reason to check it out.  With its “Traumafessions,” where adults acknowledge the pop culture items that twisted their psyches into knots as kids (recent example:  a Halloween episode of Happy Days!), Kindertrauma presents a full array of both guilty pleasures and intriguing insights.  (Check this space next month for an interview with these inspired and perceptive genre junkies.)

Thanks For:  Being so inclusive—we have both foreign (Them) and direct-to-video (Whispers) releases here; doing the unexpected, such as putting the TV series Kid Nation on the list (yes, if Time had done this, I would have thought it pretentious).

Questionable:  Shouldn’t a good “kid” movie also be a good movie?  Or is it enough to have serious intentions and a commitment to a kid-centric vision?  Joshua, a movie made by whip-smart and talented folks, nonetheless has some of the silliest third-act plot shifts I’ve seen in an otherwise effective thriller.  Still, this is quibbling on my part.  Joshua, as a character (and therefore as a movie?), probably must be noted if we’re sticking solely to the kid-themed arena; if nothing else, the film will be a touchstone for future “bad seed”-type efforts.

Dead Harvey’s 2007 Box Office Gross Leaders in Horror

My first reaction was, “Wow, thanks for doing all this.”  And by “this” I mean going through all the movie grosses (i.e., hundreds), extracting the horror titles, and presenting them in order.  Of course it’s kind of depressing that the tepid 1408 was the second biggest horror hit (#32 overall) and the innovative, exciting Grindhouse was the fifteenth (#89 overall), but we all kind of knew that to be the case anyway, right?

Thanks For:  Providing such a handy reference tool; including a thoughtful introduction that analyzes the implications for the genre caused by the fact that its hits are trending toward PG-13 ratings.

Questionable:  Why is the blockbuster I Am Legend not listed?  I know the overt vampiric content of the previous film versions of the novel is missing this time ‘round, but come on.  Aren’t the Resident Evil movies similarly post-apocalyptic and doesn’t 28 Weeks Later have the same science-gone-wrong premise at heart?  How are they horror and not Legend?  (To be fair, an editorial note draws attention to its omission as well.

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Maxim’s Best Horror Movie Deaths

Replace “Best” with “Nastiest” and you’ll have a sense of what to expect.  That is, don’t look for emotional resonance or filmic artistry (although many of the effects here are outstanding and show enormous ingenuity).  Not for the faint of heart, natch, this slideshow collection of ten video clips is nonetheless impressive.  While I’m never the one to fetishize death and gore for their sake, there is a certain critical distance that’s fostered by getting hit over the head with an onslaught like this.

Thanks For:  Creating a list that doesn’t map to any other obvious canons, but is instead interestingly all-over-the-place; bringing me back to scenes that both rocked me as a kid (Dawn of the Dead, 1979) and that as an adult surprisingly struck a chord in otherwise unexceptional films (e.g., the liquid nitrogen death in Jason X, 2001).

Questionable:  Could it have hurt to go classy once or twice?  That is, we get neither the shower scene from Psycho (1960) nor the operatic creepiness of Barbara being reuniting with her brother at the end of Night of the Living Dead (1968).  Yes, everyone knows these movies, but I still feel there’s something to be gained by juxtaposing them with scenes that shock in different, more visceral ways.  And to dismiss such classic scenes as being clichés at this point doesn’t really cut it—so is the head-exploding sequence from Scanners (1980), and that’s here.

Entertainment Weekly’s “Guillermo del Toro Sees Ghosts”

After an initial, plug-oriented clip from The Orphanage, we get clips from the Mexican director’s six favorite “ghost films” and his voice-over explaining why each is so special to him.

Thanks For:  Emphasizing quiet horror; choosing such representative clips; including Japanese films as well as my personal favorite in this subgenre (The Innocents, 1961); making connections between the films; being so candid (Del Toro says that The Orphanage includes an “homage, rip-off, whatever you want to call it, to The Haunting”).

Questionable:  In a video whose running time is only 3:39 we could have done without the full minute from The Orphanage and increased the duration of the other clips.

Scott Weinberg’s Lists on Cinematical

If you’re into horror and you don’t read Scott Weinberg, then stop reading this right now and correct that problem (note to my editors:  you know I’m kidding, right?).  The first list is a conventional and all-inclusive top ten list of 2007.  That is, it’s not a genre list, but it might as well be (we get Sweeney Todd, Zodiac, and, in the #1 slot, The Orphanage).  The second list is more of a year-in-review.  This extremely fun recap breaks down all of 2007 on a month-by-month basis, but that’s not all:  Weinberg factors in DVD releases along with theatrical runs.  (For example, he reminds me that the appearance of The Call of the Cthulhu (2005) on disc was a kind of high point of the year for someone like me.)

Thanks For:  Seeing everything; producing very readable prose and maintaining a down-to-earth tone; keeping the one-liners in the recap pithy and amusing; showing that not only do genre films constitute the best of what the past year has offered, but also much of the worst—there’s nothing more lame than the genre fan who champions everything.

Questionable:    While Weinberg’s quantifiable “point-by-point” analysis of each month is awesome, there’s plenty to nitpick about what makes a particular month shine.  For example, 1408 was a “plus,” the same as The Host and Bug and Behind the Mask?  (Then again, maybe I should shut up, since 1408 has appeared on a number of such lists.)  Also, Weinberg tends to praise what I find to be overrated movies; examples include Sunshine (2007) and The Monster Squad (1987).  However, I can’t really fault him for this—I part company with many genre fans when it comes to titles like these, and so to them I’m probably guilty of underrating such films.

William Friedkin’s 13 Must-See Horror Movies

EW does it again.  This stills-driven slideshow has been picked up by publicists here and there, and rightfully so; it’s informed, comprehensive, and implicitly acknowledges Friedkin’s “newly-found” credibility courtesy of Bug.  And if you’ve made it this far in this list of lists, you’ll start to notice that certain films are appearing repeatedly such as Onibaba (1964), Suspiria (1977), and Diabolique (1955).

Thanks For:  Making this list so eclectic and interesting, including The Lodger (1944) and The Spiral Staircase (1946) as well as Chabrol’s La Boucher (1970) and a title from last year, Them.  (Seven of the fourteen films are non-U.S.)

Questionable:  Do we really need plot synopses for films like Rosemary’s Baby (1968)?  Then again, Firefox readers probably already know how synopsis-averse I am by now.

And now for a couple of change-ups that don’t resemble the above items too closely…

Daily Film Dose's Long Takes

Not horror per se, but simply a cool list of the great “sequence shots” in film history.  Yes, plenty of genre films do appear here—Oldboy (2003), Touch of Evil (1958), Hardboiled (1992), Children of Men (2006)—but it’s the analysis and the embedded YouTube clips that make this so special.  No, I don’t have any “pros and cons” for this list of ultra-virtuoso work.  It’s too much a celebration of what, for me, makes the movies so special as a medium.  And please note the sheer number and range of films that Alan Bacchus has seen, appreciated, and presented for us here.  Frankly, I’m envious.  And the comments from visitors are highly instructive, too.  You may even be tempted to leave one of your own.

IMDB’s Top Horror Movies of All Time

This chart undoubtedly deserves a look-see every once in a while, just to stay on top of what’s new, what’s in motion.  At first glance its top 20 looks a lot like Friedkin’s list as well as AFI’s list of top “thrills” from a few years back.  But there’s one important exception—the number of silent masterworks listed here, which are absent from much of the above lists.  And not only do these include expected high-rankers such as Nosferatu (1922), but I was pleasantly surprised to see Murnau’s later masterpiece, Faust (1926), right up there at #7.  This is indeed a list to savor and explore, and probably represents the right note to end on.

Enjoy!