New Yorker Film Festival: The 5 Scariest Movies Ever?
Ben Greenman of the New Yorker presents his list of the five scariest movies of all time. They are:
1. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Tobe Hooper (1974)
2. “The Silence of the Lambs,” Jonathan Demme (1991)
3. “The Body Snatcher,” Robert Wise (1945)
4. “Night of the Hunter,” Charles Laughton (1955)
5. “Mulholland Drive,” David Lynch (2001)
Mulholland Drive is a great movie, but as far as I recall Robert Blake was in Lost Highway, not Mulholland Drive.David Lynch is the master of the eerie, which has also been called the uncanny, and his strongest films successfully deliver shock-horror at the conclusion of scenes that are either comically mundane or traditionally suspenseful. Many filmgoers remember “Mulholland Drive” mainly for Robert Blake’s creepy performance or for the lesbian subplot with Laura Elena Harring and Naomi Watts, but the film’s signal moment comes in the Winkie’s scene, which uses a highly traditional location (a diner) and traditional suspense tricks (P.O.V. shots, menacing background music) as prelude to one horrible moment. One respondent to the in-office survey put it this way:
I have seen the movie many times, and every time my chest tightens up and it occurs to me that I might actually die.
He’s not alone. Retrocrush.com selected this scene as the scariest moment in the history of film.
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Mulholland Falls is absolutely dreadfully scary and dread-inducing.
But seriously, no Exorcist?
Mulholland Falls was Nick Nolte and the Hat Squad vs. the atomic bomb, right?
oops - I meant Drive
haw
I think Rosemary's Baby might belong on the list. Tres creepy.
I'm not sure that Night of the Hunter would make it into my top five, great though it is. Mitchum's 'Singing Terminator' ("doesn't he ever sleep") is terrifying in his fervor and relentlessness, but the film has too many laugh out loud moments for me to ever be really scared.
That was Robert Forster.
I'm not much of a horror genre fan, but Ju-On was both pretty and deeply creepy.
The Shining always gets me. Most notably when the little girls appear, and when Jack goes into room 237...
I think the scariest movie ever made is The Day After (no, not The Day After Tomorrow--I'm talking about the 1982 made-for-TV movie that aired on NBC).
Dullholland Drive. . . .
Jimmy Barrett! Jimmy Barrett! "You're Garbage!"
I change my vote to agree with Jesse at #9. The Day After
My Top Dozen Favorite Horror Films
King Kong (1933 Merrian Cooper & Ernest Schoedsack)
The Haunting (1963 Robert Wise)
The Innocents (1961 Jack Clayton)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935 James Whale)
The Exorcist (1973 William Friedkin)
Shutter (2004 Banjong Pisanthanakun)
Rosemary's Baby (1968 Roman Polanski)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 Tobe Hooper)
Freaks (1932 Tod Browning)
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003 Ji-Woon Kim)
Night of the Living Dead (1968 George Romero)
Phantom of the Opera (1925 Rupert Julian)
This list is awful! No mention of Alien or The Exorcist, Shining or Ju-On? No Psycho, Rosemary's Baby or even Blair Witch as the dark horse here?
My vote has always been for John Carpenter's The Thing.
Disney scares me.
Night of the Hunter is an amazing film, and it's on Hulu as of a couple weeks ago. I haven't seen the others in the top 5.
The Wizard of Oz.
Alien, even after seeing it more than a hundred times gets me with its suspense and pop out of the dark scary moments (the face hugger dropping off the celing & when Ash buys it, I get chills just writing about it) but beyond that apocalyptic zombie films are the shit for me, even when they aren't really zombies (ie 28 days/weeks later). Im not saying the ones listed aren't good, but they haven't scared me like say a good zombie film.
Dulholland Drive! LOLOL!!!
And I totally agree about Rosemary's Baby. It's one of my fave movies ever Special bonus is that last year Mia Farrow said that BB is her favorite blog!
Mulholland Drive is one of the most well-made movies I've ever seen. I've watched it many times. But scary? I don't think so.
Though just the thought of Robert Blake in Lost Highway does give me chills. Yikes.
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
I'd suggest "Don't Look Now", and... few people know it, but Ingmar Bergman actually made an excellent horror film, "Hour of the Wolf" (1968), it's certainly worth seeing and it predates some David Lynch imagery / atmospheres.
I know so many women who won't watch "Blue Velvet" after a first viewing...
I have to say for "Mullholland Drive" I was more freaked out at **SPOLIER ALERT** ending with the smoke filled discovery in the bedroom....just freaked me out.
Wow. I didn't recognize the embedded clip from the thumbnail, but as soon as I clicked play and saw the Winkie's diner sign, it signalled an immediate flight or fight response in my prehistoric brain. I clicked the pause button. Call me a horror movie light-weight, but there is no way I'm heading behind that diner again.
I don't think any film has ever surpassed the creepy terror of the ABC Wednesday Night movie I stayed up to watch in 1973 - "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark," with Kim Darby.
She and her husband move into this old Victorian house. She discovers a closed off room, and despite warnings from the old caretaker (William Demerest - beloved as the cantankerous old Uncle Charlie on "My Three Sons") to leave it closed off, opens it and discovers a bricked-up fireplace. Of course she opens that as well, and that's when the weirdness begins. She begins to start seeing glimpses of these horrid little creatures here and there, peeking out from behind things. They can't stand light, which evidently hurts them, and they flee when lights are flashed or turned on.
And they whisper threats in a superfreaky interwoven chorus of voices.
Youtube's got numerous clips from it.
I see on IMDB that it's under development for a remake in 2011.
damn. it's 11:30 pm and i'm sitting alone in my TV room and i just watched that scene and now i'm too freaked out to even get up and go upstairs. the freaky man is going to get me.
thank goodness my doggie is with me. she's got powers.
My personal list:
American Psycho
Red Dragon
The Silence of the Lambs
Ichi the Killer
Blue Velvet
American Psycho gets top billing just because of how creepy the whole thing is. The violence is excessive and graphic, as is the sex, but that's not what makes it freaky. It's just how disconnected and inhuman the main character is. Red Dragon edges out The Silence of the Lambs because of how disturbing and striking the depictions of the crime scenes are. Ichi the Killer has so much cringe-horror in it that it's kind of hard to watch in one sitting. Blue Velvet has an incredibly terrifying Dennis Hopper, which alone is quite a thing to see.
The Day After absolutely terrified me as a teenager. I've only seen it the once...and I doubt I'll ever be able to watch it again.
When I first saw it ages ago, the scene in Salem's Lot with the dead kids floating at the window scared the bejesus out of me. I couldn't sleep without the curtains/blinds completely closed for YEARS.
I was studying Design at the Kansas City Art Institute when The Day After came out. The school showed it in the auditorium at Epperson Hall, and I remember being very disturbed by it.
Not the least because it mentioned my home county in Missouri (as being "shut down" after the nukes went off). And the scenes of the missiles taking off were really scary, since I'd grown up among the many Minuteman Missile silos, with one being located near the back of our farm, and had always been horrified/fascinated by the thought of what they'd look like all lifting off.
I also knew some people that were extras in the film, playing survivors in post-nuke Kansas City, including one that gave a memorable performance as a crazed survivor attacking a line of people waiting at a water pump. Heh.
Movie that scared me the most when I was, like, maybe 4: The Day the Earth Stood Still. So much, that I still still remember cowering behind the couch when they broadcast it on TV.
Movie that's scared me the most since is The Shining.
(Curiously, the movie that still makes me laugh the most is another Kubrick flick, Dr Strangelove. And, come to think of it, that's actually a pretty scary film too, but in a different way--'cause, it was essentially true. But that's why they call it black humor.)
Whilst plenty of movies have scared me while watching. Making me jump, etc.
The only movie that has honestly left me feeling scared (to the point where I've had difficulty/not wanted to go to sleep afterwards) is Silence of the Lambs. I'm not saying there aren't any others out there. Simply I have not seen them.
Anthony Hopkins really did get that role in that film 100% right and 100% fucking creepy. In the others, not so much. He certainly can't be blamed for Hannibal though, that film was a piece of junk.
'79 Amityville? Or am I just vanilla when it comes to horror? No, that was truly scary.
"Tetsuo: the Iron" Man is really creepy
For me the original Halloween just creeps me out all the time.
And I know they are not genre "horror" films, but The PIanist and Sometimes in April really hit me hard whenever I've seen them.
Stephen King's "It". It was a tv miniseries, but it had Tim Curry as a demonic clown--that should legitimize its inclusion.
(shudder)
And "Eraserhead". Saw that in the seventh grade. Full, cooked chickens still creep me out, and I have refused to watch it again in the decades that have followed.
Creepy as that MD scene is, I'd hardly say it's scariest scene ever... it's almost light relief
*spoiler*
when the guy appears at the end, it's pretty much exactly what you're expecting to happen (well, maybe not his appearance...)
Maybe an obvious choice but the climatic scene in the original Ring is so much more chilling. No sudden shocks just an unbearably tense build that just goes on and on... I can't tell you the chills I'm feeling just thinking about her hands popping over the top of the well in all their grainy b&w glory...
Yeah, well too bad this guy lost all credibility because he can't even get his movies straight. "Robert Blake's creepy performance" was from Lost Highway, NOT Mulholland Dr.
And his list is bogus. Wow, the New Yorker's seen better days...
Invasion of the Body Snatchers affected me deeply when i watched it as a kid. I wouldn't go out in the rain for weeks after seeing it. Haven't seen it again since, so maybe it's not scary at all. I was young.
"Freaks" always creeped me out as a kid. "Blue Velvet", "Rosemary's Baby", "IT" the mini-series with the clown all good choices. I think going political with "the day after tomorrow" is a bit of a stretch.
When though did The New Yorker become an ideal source for a list of great horror flicks? I gotta say it wouldn't be the first magazine I would look in! LOL!
BTW I meant the 1978 remake, with Donald Sutherland.
I'm gonna look in Food & Wine to see if they have a list of the greatest action films. I'll have to get back to ya with that though. HA ha!
Here is my list:
The Corporation
Bowling for Columbine
Triumph des Willens
Sarah Palin: Head of Skate
No "The Shining"?
No "Psycho" ?
No "Funny Games" ?
No "Sarah Palin: Head of State" ?
Clearly, this can't be a real horror show top 10 list !
THE SHINING
THE INNOCENTS
SESSION 9
THE EYE (GIN GWAI)
TROUBLE EVERYDAY
I can't say I've seen everything, but from what I have seen I say this list is bogus. No Hitchcock, nothing non-American, really...The New Yorker's great but their film guys bug me sometimes.
I grew up in the '60s & '70s in a very small, very rural midwest farm town, where the local theater generally only showed 2 - 3 year old Disney films two nights a week, and the two TV stations we got were even worse. So, when "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave" came to town when I was about 12, it was quite an event. I have never been so terrified in my entire life.
"The Last Wave" by Peter Weir is pretty creepy.
Put me down also for "The Shining".
I don't get all the love for Hopkins' 'Lecter'. He was so OTT and annoying that he never would've blended into society.
Now Brian Cox was brilliant in the role. His 'Lecter' was someone I'd actually like to have conversations with.
The Changeling has kind of a lousy beginning, but it always scares the hell out of me when the main character is trying to sleep and the banging noise starts up.
And of course there's the stair scene ... if you've seen it, you know the one.
Burnt Offerings (1976) starring Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Burgess Meredith, and the matchless Bette Davis as "Aunt Elizabeth" in a particularly lurid performance. Yeah. This one popped by eyeballs out. The horribly nice-nasty grinning face of The Chauffeur (played by the incomparable, tall, rail-thin Anthony James with his crater pock-marked face) who drives the Oliver Reed character's father's coffin to the funeral in the dreamscapes still haunts me today.
Yeah. Click that underlined text. Do it. Do it!
Session 9 is at the top of my list. I've never seen anything as effectively creepy and off-putting.
I think that it is sad that the New Yorker editorial staff allows this to pass for film criticism (are you sure it isn't a parody piece?).
That said, the list seems pretty good, to my tastes.
I disagree with Mullholland Dr. inclusion, though. While the above scene is brilliant, the film as a whole is hardly scary (except for the "my voice is just a recording!" scene).
I would have gone with the safer pick of Eraserhead.
Also, anybody who says that Brian Cox is a better Hannibal Lector seems to just be looking for a little indie cred. Hymn with masses on this one, bud! Btw, your argument seems based on a realistic or pragmatic appraisal of the film world and not a aesthetic or dramatic one, which seems ultra inappropriate for the grotesque and stylized content those two films.
(I don't care how "realistic" Micheal Mann tries to make his films seem, they are at their core pure Hollywood fantasy. So in my estimation, "Collateral" is a good movie, but also only functions at the intellectual level of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" video.)
Also, while it would not make my top 5 now, the scariest single film-watching experience I have ever had was my first viewing of John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness." It was my first exposure to a (albeit, bastardized) version of the Cthulu mythos, and it creeped my out for days and days.
The scariest movie I've seen in a long time is "The 6th Sense" I don't even watch the gore fest movies, Saw, Hostel, etc. and I don't feel those to be true Horror movies. To me it has to have some sort of monster or paranormal content to be a true horror movie - otherwise it's just a suspense or gore fest.
I haven't seen it, but I've heard many times that the 1977 Italian horror film Suspiria is considered one of the scariest movies ever made.
Far as I am concerned, the number one spot goes to "The Exorcist".
You can add the other four any way you like.
Oh, and I'd pick "Nightmare on Elm Street" over "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" if a slasher movie is absolutely needed.
"Trilogy of Terror" starring Karen Black gives me chills to this day. It may be because it was on "The Big Show" at 3 pm and I watched it alone in my house after school (6th grade or so...)
Honorable mention - "Wait Until Dark." Alan Arkin is super creepy!
personal top five:
The Shining
Alien
Suspiria
The Silence of The Lambs
The Exorcist
robert blake was not in mulholland drive. who's doing the fact checking at the the new yorker? then again, if you were a real lynch fan you would have known that. mulholland drive really wasn't scary at all. it was more like a really watered down dreamy tv pilot...which is exactly what it is. blue velvet and lost highway is where lynch gets really scary.
my top five scary films:
john carpenter's the thing
john carpenter's in the mouth of madness
event horizon
alien
jaws
The original version of The Wicker Man with Edward Woodward and badass Christopher Lee would be on my list. The last 5 or 10 minutes of that film are terrifying.
More recently, Australian movie Wolf Creek is pretty feckin' scary.
Your picks aren't scary
My picks are scary
The Shining
The Orphanage
The Unlocked Window (from the Alfred Hitchcock Hour)
Alice Sweet Alice
Look Who's Talking Now (aka L.W.T. 3)
I used to think it depended on when and where you saw a horror film as to the the impact it would have on you. I can remember watching a short film by Jonathon Miller based on an M R James story called 'Whistle and I'll Come to You' which scared the crap out of me as a kid. Bought it again recently and guess what - scared the crap out of me, again for no real reason I can fathom. Be warned doesn't work for everyone. Also anyone seen the Korean film R Point? based I think on an uncredited Lucius Shepard vietnam war story, Delta Sly Honey. Watching those grunts gradually rise out of the vegetation and sink into them again...
Alien - The only movie I almost walked out on because I was so creeped out. That despite the fact my brain was telling me "hey, this is just a classic B movie plot, it's going to pick them off one by one."
I never found The Exorcist scary. I guess I find it easier to believe in bugs than the devil.
i just watched alice sweet alice for the first time the other day. totally creepy but a little to slow in the middle. and the orphanage i thought could've been way more scary.
john carpenter's the thing though total classic. def in the top 10. the original black christmas is great. other honorable mentions...play misty for me..last house on the left..
@64
Alice Sweet Alice is definitly slow in the middle. That's sorta what makes it work though. It lulls you into a false sense of security.
But never mind that. I just read the user comments on IMDB for Alfred Hitchcock's The Unlocked Window and apparently it's the scariest thing ever. I saw it when I was 8-years-old and I have just about stopped having nightmares, so maybe I'll revisit it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394099/usercomments
"Carnival Of Souls"
That.Is.All.
A few I'd like to throw in for consideration:
Alien
The Shining
Jacob's Ladder
Prince of Darkness
Angel Heart
That's such a self conscious, BS, movie critic list. ANY Top five scariest HAS to include the Exorcist. (Night of the Hunter?! Puh-leeze.)
That's a puzzling list. Mine would have to include:
The Shining
The Innocents
Alien
Psycho
Silence of the Lambs
#61, the orphanage scared me shitless. but that Mulholland Drive scene with the crazy guy popping out from the wall, i remember being shown that clip during a lecture on film, and sitting in my apartment with all these walls with sharp corners was absolute torture. Room 237 had a similar effect on me.
Several people have mentioned "The Thing," I read that book as a child (it was in our school library, titled "Who Goes There?") Later I saw the old black and white version, then years later John Carpenter's version. I have to admit Carpenter's version was more suspenseful, but the book was so well written - the movies paled in comparison. Then again, it seems the book is almost always better than the movie.
Scariest movie moment, Fred Gwynn in Pet Semetary. "The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis..." Just the way he delivers that line.
There was a TV movie called The Devil's Triangle with Kim Novak. It freaked me out as a kid, and when I downloaded it again recently, I found it just as creepy. Probably why I liked Dead Calm and Ghost Ship so much.
Lost Highway is on Hulu right now.
Suspiria is a pretty freaky movie, dunno if its in the scariest.
I'd probably say that the scariest, most disturbing movie i've ever seen is Salo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salò_(film) )
Gotta agree with #20, Lost Highway should have been on there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG7znh49a44
Being only seven years old at the time, I was not allowed to see "The Exorcist" when it was released originally, but the TV commercials alone gave me nightmares for months. I prayed a rosary every night for a long time, and literally could not sleep unless I knew someone else in my family was awake. I didn't actually see the film until just about six years ago. The devil finally got me so it doesn't really scare me anymore.
Here is my list
The Exorcist
The Shining
Star Wars Holiday Special
1 Night in China
I would definitely say "The Thing". Unfortunately, I never read the book (I will now, thanks #71!), but that movie scared the crap out of me. I even saw it for the first time 20 years after it came out, and it still made me scared to turn off the lights that night.
I do like #57's mention of "Wait Until Dark", that movie is wonderfully claustrophobic.
Obligatory mention of "Event Horizon" (1997)
Conceptually, at the very least, it's very very scary.
This list must include Takeshi Miike's Audition.
It reels you in so slowly, almost gently, and then...oh god...what's in the sack? What's in the sack?!
Brazil.
Scared me so much I've only seen it once.
Excorist is scary. Excorist III is terrifying. Don't bother with any of the rest of them.
I always felt like, if you like Session 9, you'd like Nightwatch (1997) at lot better.
Alien is amazing.
Night of the Living Dead is great if you can really put yourself there with the characters. Truly great. Avoid any of the altered versions, though. Find the original.
House of 1000 Corpses makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
If you like big doses of camp and gore with your scary, I've got to recommend Witchboard (1986) and The Blob (1988) and Candyman (1992).
Excorist is scary. Excorist III is terrifying. Don't bother with any of the rest of them.
I always felt like, if you like Session 9, you'd like Nightwatch (1997) at lot better.
Alien is amazing.
Night of the Living Dead is great if you can really put yourself there with the characters. Truly great. Avoid any of the altered versions, though. Find the original.
House of 1000 Corpses makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
If you like big doses of camp and gore with your scary, I've got to recommend Witchboard (1986) and The Blob (1988) and Candyman (1992).
Yeah, it's dated now, and yeah the bad guy is a big rubber fish, but the first time I saw Jaws was the last time I ever felt safe in the ocean.
@#83 Slicklines
Jaws ruined the ocean.
Return of the Living Dead ruined basements (yes, I realize now that I'm older that this is pretty much a comedy)
Candyman and House collectively ruined mirrors.
Nightmare on Elmstreet ruined beds for a good six months that I slept curled up to avoid being in the middle where I could be sucked into a hole and liquified.
Only two movies ever made my list:
1. "Fire In the Sky: The Travis Walton Story" (1993) gave me the serious creeps for years.
2. "The Changeling" (1980): I don't think I have slept entirely peacefully since I saw this when I was 15.
No 'The Shining'?? Come on: the music alone gives me the heeby jeebies.
The Blair Witch Project seriously creeped me out as well, but I hate camping trips in the first place so I could've been biased.
The Ring was pretty scary too. I had to stop munching my Glosettes a couple of times throughout, which is saying a lot.
That's pretty much it... I find a lot of horror movies disturbing, but that's not my definition of 'scary'.
there was a tv movie called don't go to sleep which scared the hell out of me when i was a kid.
Given that the only movie that has truly given me nightmares was Lili (yes, the Leslie Caron kiddie musical - but omigod those puppets creeped me out), I may not be the best source, but Threads, a British TV movie, makes The Day After look like a Bugs Bunny Cartoon.
But I'd have to put Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls way high up on this list.
I don't think of Night of the Hunter as being so much scary as inspiring - the incredible strength of tiny old Lillian Gish against Mitchum.
The movie that scared me the most when I was young was Poltergeist. Maybe I'm a horror movie lightweight since no one has yet mentioned it. The scene with the toy clown suddenly missing from the rocking chair... ugh... How many hours of sleep have I missed thinking about that? Looking under the bed, while realizing that looking under the bed is exactly what leads to getting strangled!
Technically, I'd classify Ridley Scott's ALIEN as a science fiction movie, not a horror, but it's still the scariest thing I've ever seen. I was 22 years old -- a grown-up! -- when I saw it, and literally could not sleep for two nights after, out of sheer terror. Other people find it to be a fun B-grade monster-on-the-loose picture given the A-movie treatment, but it got me right down to the marrow. Oddly, James Cameron's sequel was, for me at least, just a rockin' good time. And the two subsequent features were pretty much "meh."
Those two freaky little girls in Kubrick's THE SHINING rank number 2 in my book.
And for pure childhood trauma, there's no beating those goddam flying monkeys in THE WIZARD OF OZ.
@82 thanks, ill have to check Nightwatch out!
Definitely The Exorcist and Exorcist III (which scared me more than the first one).
And +1 to whoever said "Jacob's Ladder." Seriously, that movie freaked me out for a few years.
Several people mentioned "The Day After", the made-for-TV nuclear war movie. I found "Testament" to be far more frightening - unlike TDA, it doesn't have explosions, flying missiles, burned-out cities, or big showy horror scenes. It's just quiet little Marin County, where the TVs have stopped working, the commuters aren't coming back from the city, ever, and families are trying to hold themselves together while everybody's quietly dying from fallout radiation poisoning. Still freaks me out 25 years later.
oh god why did i watch that clip? hair is standing up all over my arms. AUGHHHHHHHHHH.
Definitely Jacob's Ladder. The seated bag-headed guy with the twitches on the ride down to the hospital basement still gives me nightmares.
For some reason I feel like mentioning Sunshine. Not the scariest movie ever, but I feel like it depicted being "doomed" amazingly well. Also, the Sun makes a great villain. It just floats there, glowering, radiating this aura that says, "I am going to kill you and not even notice."
Scariest movie ever, in a look over your shoulder for the next few days, question one's own sanity, kinda way :
Primer (2004)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/
It's the only movie that made me slap my face and scream upon watching.
The dialogue leading up to the initial reveal:
ABE:
I know you probably feel like you're
being tricked or made fun of. But you're not.
I promise you, you're not. Okay?"
AARON
"Who was that, Abe?"
My list of scary movies is too convoluted... A lot of movies are just too fun to be labeled scary, like Hellraiser or Evil Dead 2. The movies that scare me the most and bother me for weeks are the ones in which a realistic horror occurs - not a supernatural one. The last one that got to me was Crash. There was a scene where a paranoid Persian man pulls a gun on a locksmith thinking him responsible for his shop being robbed. Just before he pulls the trigger, the locksmith's little girl runs up to her daddy to hug him. The man shoots the little girl. The gun turned out to be loaded with blanks but it was too late for me. Maybe it was because the girl was my daughter's age. But I still shake and tear up just thinking about it. I hated that movie.
'The Tenant'
'The Exorcist'
'Duel'
I second John Carpenter's The Thing, The Innocents, Miike's The Audition, The Changeling.
Despite all the detractors, Blair Witch Project scared the shit outta me FOR DAYS. Fortunately i saw it in limited release before the hype killed it.
I would add The Haunting too...the '63 one, not the Zeta-Jones Owen Wilson crapfest.
Nods to The Others (2001) too...fits well with that Haunting/Innocents, creepy-old-manor genre.
Oh yeah, you can visit the real Winkie's too! It's called Caesar's in Gardena CA. I went there, and did the walk down the steps to the wall behind the dumpsters. It was awesome.
Glad to see I'm not alone with "The Shining", it helps to start with a great book. I first read the novel when I was living in Colorado with a blizzard raging outside, and snowy gusts rattling the windows. It was the only time in my life that I have ever had to physically put a book down because it was freaking me out.
David Carroll, yes on "The Corporation". Very scary, and just so... REAL!
Also, I second "The Ring". Even though I KNEW it was a hoky premise, that grey girl with the stringy hair and green teeth just made my heart go pop. (SPOILER) And the little boy's reaction at the false happy ending...
The nightmare character is actually played by a woman!
My brother and I used to freeze frame this marrow-curdling moment to savor the fear, as we did with that mysterious background entity in Three Men and a Baby. Now THAT'S a scary split second of film.
Please consider DON'T LOOK NOW by Nicolas Roeg.
#93: I found "Testament" to be far more frightening - unlike TDA, it doesn't have explosions, flying missiles, burned-out cities, or big showy horror scenes. It's just quiet little Marin County, where the TVs have stopped working, the commuters aren't coming back from the city, ever, and families are trying to hold themselves together while everybody's quietly dying from fallout radiation poisoning. Still freaks me out 25 years later.
That sounds a lot like a movie called 'When The Wind Blows'(animation). While I don't think it would be classified as horror (more like a sci-fi drama), I was so deeply disturbed by it that I felt slightly ill the rest of the day. Great movie, but I actually hesitate to watch it again.
@103
Don't Look Now was creepy as hell, but I felt like the plot was weak. It held my interest and freaked me out, but when it was done, I thought ...huh? Kind of felt cheated.
I think Blue Velvet was scarier than Mulholland Drive. Particularly Dennis Hopper's character.
#21 (Picnic at Hanging Rock)...I agree. There's no single scene that scares the crap outta you, but for some reason you can't sleep the night you watch it.
Silence of the Lambs? For some reason this just didn't scare me at all. I woulda punched Hannibal the Cannibal straight in the face if he tried to smell my liver like that. And the other dude (the main killer) was only pathetic.
And what, no Excorcist? What's scarier than that?
Oh, and that movie where Denzel Washington can't walk? What was that called again? The killer had two full time jobs (driving a cab and paramedic) and he still had time to do deep library research and put together elaborate murders? I didn't buy it for a minute.
clearly there are no parents commenting...
my scariest movie? Ransom in '96 with Mel Gibson. Sure it wasn't the best performance of his career and the plot was kinda predictable. But it coincided with the start of my "okay... i'm stable enough to have kids now" phase.
oh oh... in the same vein, Forgotten was also pretty scary.
and Alien, of course.
@104 "When the Wind Blows"
I had the book in the early eighties (would've been around fourteen). Scared me for years just because it's so day-to-day and matter of fact, could've been anyones grandparents...
Just remembered 'The Devils Backbone', pretty regular ghost story but so darn creepy (the kids eye through the keyhole... :-o) And a much better film than 'Pans Labyrinth' imho but that's another debate... :)
There's another spanish film I think by the guy who made 'The Others' called Thesis or something; a couple of moments in that are unbelievably tense, I had to fast forward through them, I literally couldn't stand the tension..
David Lynch, we need you. We need more science fiction, and closeups of people chewing and smoking.
We really need some good science fiction.
As someone mentioned earlier, 28 days later.
I know it had mixed reviews and all, but something about it just clicked (in an unpleasant way) for me:
The rhythm was ever so subtly off form what I expected, so I got painfully long stretches of tenseness when scary stuff didn't happen, broken up by unexpected shocks when I thought I could breathe. I identified enough with the characters to make every unpleasant death (expected or not) bad - the prime example being the one where someone looks up. That was just harsh.
It also neatly exemplifies an certain weird effect I've noticed. Whenever I see a US movie, I immediately think "fiction". It's not that strong, but it gives a veneer of unreality to not just hollywood movies, but also documentaries and the like. I fully blame overexposure to hollywood movies, but it's also the sum of how I never hear the accents and seldom see anything like the settings used in an US movie in real life - it's like the USA is an alternate reality that only partially overlaps with my experienced one.
However, 28 days later wasn't american - it had british actors set in a city and a country I've actually seen first hand. That sidestepped my usual protective "this is fake"-filter, and then the movie kept a sober enough style that it didn't really bring those filters up again.
I was a complete wreck when I left the cinema. While watching it I went through "cover when bad things are about to happen" and came out on the gray fields of "stare slack-jawed and be prepared to process it afterwards". Which I did - it took a few months before I wasn't jumpy in the dark.
And for the record, I was 19 at the time, and I haven't seen it again since. Nor do I plan to.
#92 - yes, "Testament". The only movie I've even seen where the people leaving the theater were either showing quiet shock, or crying.
"Cloverfield" was surprisingly scary.
Polanskis Repulsion made me doubt my sanity of paying for a ticket to go to the movies to get so scared.
David Lynch isn't horror or sci fi. David Lynch writes and directs thrillers. David Lynch is the poor sapp that married Nancy Grace and has made maybe four good movies.maybe. (Mullholland dr. was not one) also the larger the number of the post the more crap the movie is? Anyone that said that the Nightmare on Elm Street was a great horror movie or flicks like Jaccobs Ladder and 1,000 corpses should be mentioned must be kids born in the '80's and unfortunately the '90's . Most kids after comment #70 probably have never read The New Yorker mag. I'm disgusted with my self for even giving a shit...
Nobody mentioned the original "the hills have eyes".
re: 53
"Also, anybody who says that Brian Cox is a better Hannibal Lector seems to just be looking for a little indie cred."
trust me... I'm many years past the need for "indie cred". I felt the same when "silence" was released.
Hopkins' "Lecter" was a strong performance... but it was a strong performance of an insanely annoying person. Nothing charming about the man. It was an annoying character... Great for The Academy but poor for a serial killer.
Brian Cox based his role on the Scots killer Peter Manuel. There was no Manuel, nor Ian Brady, nor Ted Bundy, nor Edmund Kemper.
Manhunter was not as good a movie as Silence.. but Cox was better as a serial killer.
All that said... Manhunter was better than Red Dragon... even with the Miami Vice feel.
NODDY93 You are correct by far but this is a waste of breathe luv.
Red Dragon? Sucked. I would go as far to say that 85% of subscribers to The New Yorker have never seen the "Red Dragon". Unfortunately that same 85% have read Steave Martin's words in The New Yorker. I need an arrow through my head.LOL! Wild and crazy dull.
p.s. Steve Martin hated his father. Yawn.
What about Asian scary movies?
I would rank "The Ring" (Japanese Version) as the scariest movie ever.
the "interview" DUNCAN. scroll up 50 or so comments.
@ BISCUIT4
Anyone that said that the Nightmare on Elm Street was a great horror movie or flicks like Jaccobs Ladder and 1,000 corpses should be mentioned must be kids born in the '80's and unfortunately the '90's.
Most kids after comment #70 probably have never read The New Yorker mag. I'm disgusted with my self for even giving a shit...
Whoa. Condescending enough?
I see that most people posting are simply sharing which movies they found scariest, not which ones are great horror to scholarly cinephile standards. So sorry if 'us kids' are boring you.
I remember the trailer for 1978's Magic having a profound effect on me. I remember "camping" in the living room & watching TV late one evening, then this came on screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7smh7YHKg
Total brown-trouser time.
Rented the movie years later & didn't find it anywhere near as terrifying as the trailer.