Frank Darabont names his five favourite horror movies
While Frank Darabont is perhaps best known for directing The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, he has also contributed greatly to the realms of horror cinema. In addition, Darabont has also adapted another of Stephen King’s works, 2007’s The Mist, proving his worth in cinema of the spookier kind.
Even aside from his work on King’s fiction, Darabont made waves in the horror world with earlier efforts as a screenwriter on A Nightmare of Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob and The Fly II. He also developed and executive-produced the first season of the horror series The Walking Dead, showing that the France-born director is a good selection for watching on Halloween.
Speaking to MTV at the New York Comic Con, Darabont once explained the way he personally likes to spend his Halloween watching his favourite horror films. “My sort of traditional Halloween movie viewing experience starts with Night of the Living Dead and then The Exorcist,” he said. “And then I usually wrap it up with Count Yorga, Vampire.”
Night of the Living Dead is George A. Romero’s classic horror movie that pioneered the use of flesh-eating zombies, focusing on a group of people trapped in a farmhouse being assaulted by reanimated corpses. The Exorcist is, of course, William Friedkin’s equally iconic supernatural horror telling of the demonic possession of a young girl and the battle to exorcise her. Count Yorga, Vampire is the least known of Darabont’s favourites, but he explained why he loves it so.
“It’s a movie that not many people know, but I was 11 years old when it came out, and it scared the living crap out of me,” Darabont said. “It’s this little low-budget muscular little scary vampire movie, and because I saw it when I was 11, it still scares me. Having seen it as an adult, it might not do anything for me, but I remember the effect it had on me. I get that sense memory thing happening, and that’s the wonderful thing about movies and cinema: They can make you regress instantly to the age of 11.”
While Yorga, The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead comprise Darabont’s top choices in the horror genre, he still finds time to watch a few John Carpenter classics, too, noting, “That’s my troika of Halloween movies, generally speaking, but if I branch out from there, I gotta veer into John Carpenter with Halloween definitely. And The Thing, let’s face it, it’s on my all-time greats lists.”
The Thing and Halloween are certainly amongst Carpenter’s best films, with the former seeing Kurt Russell terrorised by a strange shape-mimicking extra-terrestrial on an Antarctic research facility, while Halloween remains one of the best independent horror films, treating fans to the madness of Michael Myers as he chases down babysitter Laurie Strode.
Frank Darabont’s favourite horror movies:
- Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)
- The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
- Count Yorga, Vampire (Bob Kelljan, 1970)
- Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
- The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
