the horror! the oscars!

So I settled in last night and watched The Independent Film Channel which was showing Brian De Palma's "Carrie" (1976), a favorite that I haven't seen in years. OK, decades.

What a gorgeous horror film - so gorgeous that it made me think. Just about every year around this time, movie types bemoan the fact that comedies are predictably shut out of the Big Oscar Giveaway.

This is true. But the real bastard child of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the horror film.

I mean, if Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (one of the greatest horror films ever) failed to pass muster back in 1960, exactly what scare tactic would?

The movie year 2010 produced many wonderful films that have been shunted by the Academy's uninformed voters - Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer," Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," Ben Affleck's "The Town" and Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island", among them. But there was also one worthy horror entry - Matt Reeves' exquisite "Let Me In."

Comedy? Who cares?

Fact is, there were precious few screen comedies of any real worth in 2010 ("Sex and the City 2" anyone? "Love and Other Drugs"? "How Do You Know"? Heavens!), but there was at least one great horror movie.