[JerryvonKramer]

My wife and I are both big fans of really high-quality horror films. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Exorcist, The Mist from a few years ago, the original Night of the Living Dead, Suspiria, The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, Black Christmas, The Vanishing, Audition, The Grudge, The Wicker Man, Kill List, Psycho even ... [NB. we both have an ongoing dislike of, for my money, the most overrated film of all time: Don't Look Now, which is why it's not listed, and we find Cronenberg hit and miss, but assume we've seen them all -- I like Shivers and The Fly, don't like Videodrome]

Here's our problem though: we just have no time for or patience with schlock. None at all. For horror to be effective in my view, your basics of film fundamentals have to be in place: the acting, direction and so on. We both also have limited patience for over-the-top gore. We want to be scared, not see blood squirting everywhere.

So, while Night of the Living Dead is great, I've got no real time for the awful acting witnessed in Dawn of the Dead. While Texas Chainsaw is just FANTASTIC, both of Tobe Hooper's next horrors -- Eaten Alive and The Funhouse are really awful. We had to turn Eaten Alive off after 40 minutes, and while we endured the full running time of The Funhouse, it was a totally scare-free and tedious experience.

Bad or amateurish acting is proving to be a real barrier against us enjoying any number of horror films with big reptuations: Last House on the Left, for example (70s) is borderline unwatchable for us because the performances are so bad.

We both love a great horror film, but have found the genre so hit and miss. The search has been far and wide. I've been extremely disappointed with highly rated older films like Night of the Hunter or Carnival of Souls, which both seem extremely overrated if you ask me. The old 30s Universal pictures or the Hamer films of the 50s and 60s are a bit creeky to be really scary these days. We don't really get on with the "video nasties" of the 70s mostly because of the aforementioned poor acting and then as the 80s wear on you either get increasingly formulaic Hollywood slashers (Halloween, Friday 13th, etc. etc., although you do sometimes come across the occasional semi-obscure gem like The Stepfather) or increasingly OTT blood and gore zombie films that veer towards being more comical than scary (basically all the big name 80s zombie films from The Evil Dead onwards). Then the horror films of the last 15 years or so, the so-called "torture porn" stuff, again often suffers from ropey acting and a sort shininess I can't put my finger on. Found [rec], Paranormal Activity, and The Descent pretty effective, but, for example, hated Session 9, and HATED Cabin in the Woods a couple of weeks ago.

This is starting to become very very frustrating. The list of horror films we've watched and not enjoyed is pretty extensive now. The film we keep citing and coming back to is Texas Chainsaw. It's just got that perfect blend of superb direction, great performances and grittiness that you need for a properly disturbing and above all scary horror film. Is it really just a one off?

I'm looking for some genuinely good horror recommendations here. So many horror fans seem to delight in schlock, in B-movie "so-bad-it's-goodness", I'm not interested in that. I'm looking for something that can genuinely compare with Texas Chainsaw. We're starting to feel like we've exhausted the genre and there's just no good ones left. Any help here would be much appreciated. Please note though, I'm looking for proper horror here, not arthouse films that may have disturbing elements (e.g. Lynch, Begotten, Jan Svankmajer, Jodorowsky, Salo, or the likes of Cannibal Holocaust etc.), but films that could only really be classed as "horror".

Also, if you find yourself with a similar problem, please mention it.