Horror movies that aren't scary

ShareThis

It's really not that hard to film a scary movie. Just make up a story about a crazy guy with an ax, shoot most of the scenes at night and hire Karen Black in a supporting role. You're bound to provide at least two or three good scares.Against all odds, at least once every few years, someone manages to make a big-budget horror movie that isn't the least bit frightening. Below are some titles to avoid on Halloween, assuming that you're not looking to nod off in your recliner from sheer boredom.We set the production cutoff date at 1980, only because horror films of the 1950s, '60s and '70s were so bad that the list would fill the entire paper (and most of the worst ones can't be found on video anyway). Only feature films were considered, not straight-to-video movies."Halloween III: Season of the Witch" (1982): The only "Halloween" movie that didn't have Michael Myers, this film has bad guys who are factory owners who sell scary masks with chips from Stonehenge. The chips are magic and will cause everyone's head to dissolve and turn into spiders when they watch a commercial on Halloween. Seriously."Jaws 3-D" (1983): There was a law in the 1980s that required all horror-film franchises in their third entry to be 1) filmed in 3-D; and 2) completely unwatchable. "Jaws 3-D" may be the worst of these pictures, although "Friday the 13th Part 3" and "Amityville 3-D" aren't far behind. Even Lorraine Gary stayed away from this one."The Stuff" (1985): Innocent citizens of a small town are attacked by a yogurtlike dessert -- perhaps the most ridiculous villain in the history of horror films. The special effects were bad, and the mayhem that ensued was tame, even when "The Stuff" basically turned into a zombie film. Casting Garrett Morris in a key role didn't exactly make this movie more frightening."Maximum Overdrive" (1986): The only directorial effort by horror master Stephen King, this tale of trucks (and other machines) trying to destroy humankind is over-the-top ridiculous. A man gets attacked by a soda machine, and the text function of an ATM repeatedly calls another guy a bad word before electrocuting him. "WALL-E" was scarier than this."The Lawnmower Man" (1992): Stephen King was so angry about the departures that this movie took from his short story that he sued to get his name off the project. This tale of a mentally disabled greenskeeper, computer technology, telekinetic powers and virtual-reality sex has no room for anything frightening."The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996): Yes, the movie is bizarre. Yes, it's kind of creepy. But there isn't a single horrifying scene in the third movie based on the H.G. Wells book, which stars a strangely disconnected Val Kilmer and a so-deranged-he-can't-be-acting Marlon Brando. Not scary, but still pretty fascinating."The Others" (2001): This was supposed to be a ghost story, but nobody told Nicole Kidman, who seemed to think she was still acting in "Eyes Wide Shut." This movie was actually pretty decent, but it was more of a drama than a horror film. By the final 20 minutes, you'll be praying for an ax murderer -- or even a homicidal truck -- to show up."The Village" (2004): M. Night Shyamalan's story of an Amishlike clan being terrorized by an unseen evil gets progressively worse -- especially when the "monsters" finally do show up. The ending is basically a big "screw you" from Shyamalan to his fans. It was a fraud to even advertise this as a horror film.(E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub(at)sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)