In honor of this ghoulish holiday, I've worked up a list of all time scariest horror films. The list was compiled after taking a poll around the office. Modern day "gore-porn" was excluded b/c I think its trash that's not worthy of the horror genre category. From the bottom of the list to the film most guaranteed to give you nightmares, here we go:
Honorable mention goes to: Slither, Candyman, and Silent Hill
#13: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Of course we're talking about the original here. The lead actor (who's name I can't recall) is awesome at the crazy eyes look.
#12: Rosemary's Baby
Apparently the movie copies the book almost verbatim, which I'm told is a good thing.
#11: Poltergeist
I haven't seen the movie since I was a child, but I remember it freaking me the hell out. The scene where the Mom was showing Coach how Carolanne skid across the kitchen floor through invisible forces was something I could totally see my Mom doing. I guess what was scariest about the film was that the family was basically normal and didn't do anything to call up the evil spirits. They just moved into the wrong damned house. I was also way freaked out about the scene in the second film when Coach was drinking a squirming worm from a tequila bottle while his son was upstairs being taken over by the braces on his teeth in the bathroom. That'll freak a youngin out!
#10: Hellraiser
The effects in this film were absolutely outstanding given the release date. They did a fantastic job of making the evil Uncle skinless, and the evil Step Mom was really wretched on a lot of levels. Pinhead wasn't necessarily that scary, but the visual combination that Clive Barker threw at the audience was enough to freak people out effectively.
#9: Halloween
Jamie-lee Curtis running away from her crazy murdering brother whilst high off her ass -- the making of pure horror genre genius. It includes typical nympho teenagers that get slaughtered (a slasher flick must) and they left the end of the film way open for the second one. I personally liked the second film better, probably because it had that hot guy from The Last Starfighter and I liked the quick evolution of Jamie-lee's character.
#8: Nightmare on Elm Street
Absolutely brilliant and I had nightmares after viewing. Wes Craven showed us things on screen that had never been done before. This was before the green screen and computer special effects. I still remember the first murder scene when an invisible Freddy Cruger has his claw through the freshly sexed teenage girl and carries her up the wall and across the ceiling leaving a trail of blood while her boyfriend watches. The best murder scene might have to be when Johnny Depp falls asleep and the claw comes up from his water bed and pulls him down into Freddy's dream world. The main character is watching from her window as the water bed spews a volcanic eruption of blood all over her boyfriend's bedroom. There's so much blood it starts to seep through the floor and drips down the ceiling on the first floor where JD's mom is. F'd up, dude.
#7: The Omen
Okay, the anti-christ arriving is scary. The little boy acting like the anti-christ is terrifying. Poor Gregory Peck having to try to murder his son/the anti-christ is way heavy. And all the crazy stuff in between is cause for you to sleep with the light on.
#6: Night of the Living Dead
Of course I mean the original, people! Because the film was shot in black and white, it allowed the effects crew to pull off some really scary scenes. After the young couple blows up the car and gas pump, the zombies stroll over to pick at the bbq'd remains. They start slobbering and gnawing apart flesh off of bones- which actually happened to be chicken and turkey legs. There isn't a lot of music in the film, but that adds to the tension the director successfully achieved. Tension is also caused by the unhinging of Barbara, who meets a nice end. The end was particularly successful in conveying desperation and was brilliantly done, leaving you an "OMG, I can't believe that just happened!" ending.
#5: Evil Dead
From early twenty-somethings with practically no budget comes one of the best cult-classics of all time. Some of the stuff is hoakie, but the effects were fantastic and the scare tactics worked. Bruce Campbell is awesome, and doesn't lose his hand until the second one- which is comedic at best. The actress that played his sister has one of the best scenes when she's attacked and violated by the woods. Another awesome scene comes at the very end when he finally kills the last possessed friend. The blood and effects are awesome.
#4: The Thing
(John Carpenter's version) When the film was originally done in '81 (released in '82), Carpenter went to great length's to hide any detail of the film's monsters and other special effects. A lack of Internet made Carpenter successful in his task and when the audience saw his ideas on the big screen it scared the pants off of them. The alien's ability to mimic the men stuck out at the camp in the middle of Antarctica left everyone guessing who the bad guy was next. I have three favorite scenes: 1) When Kurt Russell goes to visit the Norwegian camp to see what happened to the folk. He opens a door that someone had tried to chop down with an axe (which you see happening later on to the men back at his camp) and discovers the frozen body of a man who slit his wrists and throat. The blood was a fixed fountain from the man's wrists to the floor. 2) When one of the doc's is trying to shock one of the guy's back to life and the man's chest rips open and the doc's arms fall in and get chomped off. 3) When Kurt is testing the blood samples from all the tied up men left at that point and the creature comes shooting out of the petri dish. The dude whose sample reacted starts changing while he's tied up to the other guys. More scary stuff ensues. I was disappointed in the ending initially b/c it is definitely left to interpretation. But it has grown on me over the years.
#3: The Decent
This film only came out a few years back, with a bunch of no-name foreign actresses. The brilliance of the film comes from the no-name actresses that can actually act. We're much more likely to relate to the women if we don't recognize them as Charlize Theron. It isn't even until 45 minutes into the flick that we actually see the cannibalistic underground creatures, but it doesn't matter. The way they filmed the women spelunking was genuinely enough to freak you out. In the DVD extras, you learn that the first time the characters see the creature, is actually the first time the actresses really see the creatures. The special effects and gore were remarkable and tension carried to the very end. I wasn't crazy about the ending in the theater, but the alternative ending shown on the DVD was excellent.
#2: Alien
The second scariest thing to come out of the '70's. Ridley Scott was brilliant in his use of wide open shots to scare the viewer instead of the later-used narrow space-craft passage ways. With the wide open shots, Scott implies that there is no where to run and hide with the Alien coming after you. The tag line for the film was genius: In space there's no on to hear you scream. The Alien it self was terrifying b/c Hollywood hadn't delivered anything like it before. Acid for blood, reproductive cycle that includes bursting from the chest of its host, and it was uber stealthy. It was one of the first films to show a kick ass female heroine as well.
#1: The Exorcist
Quite frankly, I have no idea how they got away with using a child actor in a film like that. It had to be because it was the '70's. The first time I saw it was with my Mom at home (her idea to rent it) and I was 14. I made it to the scene where Regan stabs her lady parts with a cross and then shoves her mom's face in it and I had reached my limit. I didn't complete viewing of the film until two years later with a large group of friends at a Halloween get together. At that point, with the lights on of course, the movie seemed ridiculous at best. I give full props to the director and writer for coming up with something so disturbing that every person who's seen it remembers the first time they saw it. I do wish they had included the famously cut spiderwalk scene. You can youtube search for it- it rocks.
After pulling the list together, I forgot to include both The Shining and 28 Days Later. I have a hatred for Stephen King that I blame on my freshman English class TA (we won't open that can of worms). Jack Nicholson was terrifying in the movie as well as the two little girls that haunted JN's son. This film also uses wide shots in large, open areas to convey the isolation and desperation of the characters. 28 Days Later was a fantastic low budget film and the first to introduce fast moving zombies. The director was able to pull this off b/c the zombies were people who had been infected with a fast spreading virus, instead of dead bodies that needed brains to live. I liked how the main character goes through a transformation (slowly seems to lose his marbles) in order to continue surviving what's happened.
