Halloween thread: What were the scariest movies?

posted at 8:10 pm on October 31, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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While I’m sitting here handing out candy to all the little (and not so little) trick-or-treaters, one reader suggested an open thread on the scariest movies.  I’m not a big fan of the horror genre, but I have my favorites, and I imagine you do as well.  Here are the top frights I’ve gotten from Hollywood, aside from the industry’s politics:

• Poltergeist – Probably the most frightened I ever got from a movie, but that’s partly from how I saw it.  I woke up in the middle of the night having fallen asleep in front of the TV, and this movie had just begun.  I thought I’d drift back to sleep, but the creepy coincidence of the circumstances matching the movie had me wide-eyed and jumpy every time I heard snow on the tube for weeks.
• Alien – My girlfriend in high school dug her fingernails into my arm as she screamed every time something happened.  Great use of suspense with actually a minimal amount of gore on screen.  Aliens was almost as good, but completely different in pacing and structure.
• Silence of the Lambs – Not really horror, more crime/suspense, but the final sequence was as unnerving as anything I’d seen.
• Silent Hill – Normally I wouldn’t have even watched this, but I like Radha Mitchell, Kim Coates, and Alice Krige.  It turned out to be a stylish and gripping movie, excellent for its kind, and inventive.  The religious overtones were more or less out of Hollywood Cliché Central, though.
• Psycho – Well, you know … it’s Psycho.
• Army of Darkness – No, it didn’t scare me at all, but it was hilariously creepy and original, and it had Bruce Campbell.  Gimme some sugar, baby.

Update: Some worthy mentions from the comments:

• The Exorcist – When I finally saw it, it had already become a cultural joke, so it lost some of its power for me — but still first class.
• Jaws – Yeah, this should have been on my original list.  The great Roy Scheider, the great Robert Shaw, and the great-but-politically-nuts Richard Dreyfuss.
• Se7en – No one’s mentioned this yet, but it should be on the list.  May not be quite in the horror genre, but it’s close enough.

What are your favorites?  What were the worst?

Addendum: If you are in charge of handing out the candy, too, what were the best outfits you saw?  So far:

• Toddler sisters in matching butterfly outfits
• A “grandma” in a hair net and cardigan

Update II: Dirty Harry has more.

Update III: I packed up the Halloween candy and called it a night.  Nothing terribly original in terms of costumes outside of the grandma, but we did get one Zombie Cheerleader (homemade costume, too).  When I turned on the TV, it was tuned to Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror.  Pass!

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