Let's spend some time talking about some Joel Schumacher horror movies on his birthday. Joel Schumacher began his career in film as a costume designer and moved on to become a screenwriter. His first film as a director was a TV movie, Virginia Hill, who was Bugsy Siegel's girlfriend. His first feature film was The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and then he made the pop culture smash film St. Elmo's Fire, which cemented his reputation as a director. Schumacher didn't make a lot of horror films, but he was a horror film director. His films had great casts and a beauty to them that stood out from other horror films at the time. Because of the belief that horror films weren't marketable, many horror films of this time period were called thrillers as a disguise. Don't let that minor distinction fool you. Read more about how we found The Lost Boys... on 4K for the first time!
The Lost Boys (1987)
Image Credit: Warner Home Video
The Lost Boys was Joel Schumacher's first horror film and was a raging success. The fabulous clothes, the music, the atmosphere of the vampire's liar, and the raw violence of the vampire's attacks all worked together under Schumacher's eye. It makes everyone who watches wish they could stay young and live forever with David and the other boys. But the film has equally cool human characters and a surprising arc that makes the film more than just your ordinary vamp film. It brought vampires into the modern day and made them sexy and fun.
Flatliners (1990)
Image Credit: IMDB
Flatliners is the story of a group of young and beautiful medical students who decide to try and find out if anything exists beyond death. It stars a roster of some of the biggest stars of the '90s: Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, and Oliver Platt. Nelson Wright (Sutherland) convinces them to participate in an experiment where they induce death and wait for a certain amount of time to see if the person remembers anything that happened while they were dead. Instead of seeing an afterlife, the students are tormented by regrets they have in life, which become more and more terrifying and real.
8mm (1999)
Image Credit: IMDB
While 8mm is called a thriller, there is evidence that it is, in fact, a horror film. First, it's about a detective trying to find out if a snuff film is real. Secondly, it's written by Andrew Kevin Walker, who also wrote Seven, which is also erroneously called a thriller. During this time period, horror films were looked down upon, even though many of the most successful films in the 70s were horror films. In the 80s, there were a lot of family-friendly blockbusters, so people forgot how popular horror was, and studios used the name thriller to hide the fact that a film was actually a horror film. Schumacher's incredible eye for casting is evident in this film as it has been in his other films. He cast Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, Peter Stormare, James Gandolfini, and Norman Reedus in this intense film. Read more about 11 Frightening Films That Aren’t Considered Part of the Genre where I talk about films that aren't technically considered horror but really are.
The Number 23 (2007)
Image Credit: IMDB
The Number 23 stars Jim Carrey, who Schumacher had previously directed in Batman Forever. Carrey plays the dual role of Walter Sparrow and Detective Fingerling. Sparrow is a man who becomes obsessed with the number 23 enigma or believes in an unnatural significance of the number 23. The fear and paranoia in the film are constant, and while this film is considered a thriller, I think it is a horror movie. Carrey stated that he loved the role because it allowed him to explore the darker parts of his personality. Before Schumacher became the director of this film, he was engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to remake a Swedish horror film called Sleepwalker.
Blood Creek (2009)
Image Credit: IMDB
Blood Creek is a Schumacher film from this period that is acknowledged as a horror film, although the word thriller is attached to the description. No matter; the film is about a Nazi occultist trapped by a family through blood sacrifice and looks and acts an awful lot like a vampire. Schumacher's casting touch is part of this film since it stars Dominic Purcell, Henry Cavill, Michael Fassbender, Emma Booth, and Shea Whigham. The film's writer, David Kajganich, later was co-showrunner of the AMC television series The Terror and Luca Guadagnino's Bones and All. This is one of Schumacher's films that has flown under the radar among horror fans.
