Annal:1997 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film

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Results of the Saturn Award in the year 1997. For a ranked list of films, try an honor roll:

Scream

Wes Craven

With the smash hit Scream, novice screenwriter Kevin Williamson and veteran horror director Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street) revived the moldering corpse of the teen horror picture, both creatively and commercially, by playfully acknowledging the exhausted clichés and then turning them inside out. Scream is a postmodern slasher movie, a horror film that cleverly deconstructs horror films, then reassembles the dead tissue, and (like Frankenstein’s monster) creates new life. When a serial killer starts hacking up their fellow teens, the…

The Craft

Andrew Fleming

If Buffy the Vampire Slayer represents the lighter side of high school as a macabre experience, here’s a movie that asks the burning question, “What happens when angst-ridden teenagers develop supernatural powers?” More to the point, how do four outcast teenaged witches handle their ability to cast wicked spells on the taunting classmates who’ve nicknamed them “The Bitches of Eastwick”? The answer, of course, is “don’t get mad, get even.” That’s about all there is to this terminally silly movie, which makes up for its ludicrous plot by letting its young…

Curdled

Reb Braddock

Definitely not for everyone, this film by Reb Braddock (executive produced by Quentin Tarantino) has become a cult favorite—but only for the cult that enjoys its humor dark, twisted, and deeply bloodstained. Angela Jones is a young woman in Miami who is so obsessed with the crimes of a local serial killer (William Baldwin) that she takes a job working for a company that cleans up murder scenes, just to get closer to him. She digs the work, learning the tricks of a trade that is focused on removing unsightly bloodstains that come in multi-pint-size pools. Braddock…

Cemetery Man: (Dellamorte Dellamore)

Michele Soavi

The apex of director Michele Soavi's early gothic horror career, Dellamorte Dellamore is one of the finest examples of turn of the millennium Italian gothic fantasy. Overflowing with atmosphere, dark humor and bitter romance, this motion picture utilizes the unmistakable legacy of Italian horror forefathers Mario Bava and Dario Argento as a springboard to some of the most memorable and original imagery and storytelling in recent years. Everett's resigned nature and non-blinking acceptance of the horrific events surrounding both Dellamorte and his faithful assistant Gnaghi (standing-in for a clone of legendary comic Groucho Marx in Dylan Dog) lend a surreal touch to the proceedings, and as the plot winds unpredictably towards it's humorously morose existential climax we are treated to commentary on everything from Italian politics to questions of identity and issues of love and obsession. Manuel De Sica's score, a curious hybrid of classic Ennio Morricone and throbbing Goblin excess, offers the perfect auditory accompaniment to the proceedings as our dry-witted protagonist ponders "the…

The Relic

Peter Hyams

The Relic is the story of a monster that runs amok in a Chicago museum on the very day the institution is holding a glitzy reception. Naturally, the museum bosses want to go ahead with their public relations even as the creature is decapitating victims. Penelope Ann Miller plays a scientist on the run from the critter (which is at times computer generated and reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park), and Tom Sizemore is a cop looking for his cold-blooded (in every sense) killer. Peter Hyams (Timecop) directs, and as always he excels at…

The Frighteners

Peter Jackson

One movie lover’s nightmare is another’s raucous joyride, and this special effects-laden horror comedy is bound to split both camps right down the middle. (Or, as Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide puts it, “definitely not for all tastes but a wild time for those who get into it.”) Michael J. Fox plays a psychic investigator who can actually see ghosts, and lives with a trio of undead spirits who scare people to promote Fox’s ghost-busting business. In a town infamous for serial killings, a new series of deaths prompts Fox to induce his own out-of-body…

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