“I think that’s a pretty cool one”: the obscure horror movie Kevin Bacon needs you to see
There are so many great horror movies out there that have gone under the radar, what with the genre’s historical othering.
Yet, a scary movie can tell us so much about society, much more than what first meets the eye, and it’s a shame that the genre has often been taken less seriously, rarely being considered for mainstream awards at all.
I mean, only a very small handful of horror performances have won Oscars, the most recent being Amy Madigan for Weapons, while just one horror movie has won ‘Best Picture’, which is The Silence of the Lambs. While it seems like good quality horror movies are making quite the resurgence lately, with the success of The Substance marking a pretty big moment for body horror in particular, what about the horror movies that have never received their flowers?
In that, Kevin Bacon has a recommendation for you, who made one of his first major screen appearances in the classic slasher Friday the 13th, playing one of a group of camp counsellors who face the wrath of a masked killer one summer. Bacon could’ve become a horror icon straight away off the back of the film, but instead, he put on his dancing shoes for Footloose.
It wasn’t long before he returned to the genre, though, appearing in both Tremors and Flatliners in 1990, and he has appeared in horror movies every so often in the years since, although he also has a penchant for legal dramas, crime thrillers, and comedies; still, horror is what helped to bring Bacon into the limelight, so he always has a soft spot for it, and there’s a specific scary movie he really recommends, although it predominantly found success in its native Japan.
The 2017 satire-infused take on the zombie film One Cut of the Dead made history in Japan for raking in ¥3.12billion against its small ¥3million budget, which follows a crew who must make their own zombie movie in one take, and Bacon loves it. He told Dread Central, “One of my favourites is pretty obscure, but if anyone has ever seen it, it’s probably you; it’s called One Cut of the Dead. The thing about One Cut of the Dead is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it, and it works on a few different levels.”
Explaining that you have to go in without expectation, he said, “The friend of mine that turned me on to it said, ‘OK, whatever you do, you’re going to think I’ve recommended the worst movie ever for you…but I don’t want to spoil it. Just hang in there!’”
He did hang in there, and what he found was an incredibly underrated horror comedy that he can’t believe didn’t get more attention outside of Japan.
“I’m so glad that I did. I would say it’s a little more funny than it is scary maybe, but it’s also this really kind of a loving look at the genre and low-budget filmmaking, things that I can really relate to. So I think that’s a pretty cool one,” he concluded, mighty pleased.
