7.1?
I don't get this rating. Anyone truly into horror wouldn't give this any less than an 8.
shareOld movies didn't have the recent overinflated scores. Movies scoring 8 were nothing less than masterpieces. The original Dracula with Bela Lugosi is just a 7.5, for example. And while Carnival of Souls is a classic, and would deserve a better score than a 7.1, I don't think it's an 8.
shareIt's funny because I have the complete opposite perception. Old movies have overinflated scores whilst new ones get harsher criticisms.
As for the original Dracula. It's not a great movie in my opinion. It doesn't hold up and only has a high rating because it's 'iconic' so people feel obligated to like it to prove their cinephile credentials. James Whales efforts (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein) are superior and hold up better. Also Vampyr (1932) is much more interesting, for me personally.
Put it like this. Take a film like Dracula (1931), Nosferatua (1922), The Evil Dead (1981) or Carnival of Souls (1962) and release them today. They would never get their current IMDB ratings. Not a chance. They're benefactors of nostalgia, viewer abstinence (younger viewers won't even watch old movies so they don't rate them, if they did these movies would plummet rating wise) and brownie-points for cultural relevance.
Alternatively if you dropped a film like Evil Dead (2013) on audiences in 1981, they wouldn't know what hit them. It would have a much higher rating than it's 6.5
By the time IMDB was around these films were already decades old and iconic. New films are judged from day one, free from cultural influence, free from nostalgia and since they're not 'classics' that people feel obligated to like, people will readily shit on them. They're much more heavily scrutinized. People treat 'classics' with kiddie gloves. You rarely see someone go all in and absolutely tear apart a 'classic'.
The older movies are good because they don't have all the gloss of newer movies. I don't find many of today's horror movies as good, due to the fact that they are so slick and perfect. People today want perfection and are use to movies that do all the work for you. Movies in the past let people be more imaginative and fill in the blanks. I like older movies more even with all the imperfections...to me it makes it more real.
sharePut it like this. Take a film like Dracula (1931), Nosferatua (1922), The Evil Dead (1981) or Carnival of Souls (1962) and release them today. They would never get their current IMDB ratings.
Those movies have been copied to death. Dracula set the foundations of a whole genre, which is gothic horror. One extreme example: if Hitchcock's Psycho was released today, it would get the lowest score: everybody would say it was just a copy of Gus Van Sant's Psycho.
Alternatively if you dropped a film like Evil Dead (2013) on audiences in 1981, they wouldn't know what hit them.
If you dropped a film like Evil Dead (2013) in 1981, with 80s production, it would be a good horror movie but not the best one around, not even close. Between 1980 and 1982, you had The Shinning, Alien, The Thing, Poltergeist, An American Werewolf in London, The Changeling, John Carpenter's The Fog, The Howling and Friday 13th.
Fast Forward to 2013, Evil Dead is the best horror movie around.
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