Coming up with a list of Top 25 Horror Films is a good way to weed out the manly sort from the pants pissers. You can spot 'em every time a jump scare happens, or a devil-possessed girl crab walks upstairs, or an alien missiles out of some poor bastard's chest.
A lot of big, fat scaredy cat tears were shed as we revisited the best of the best scary movies, just in time for All Hallow's Eve. Using overall movie quality, impact on the genre, legacy potential, fright/creepy factor and Editor's Choice, we assembled a list of movies that guarantee your date will want to stay the night, unless of course she grows tired of telling you to "stop crying 'Mommy'" or is too busy making fun of you for sleeping with a blankey to keep Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers away.
With each member of the Top 25, we cut right to the good part and call out a scary scene you need to watch with the lights on. Some of the movies here are more traditional horror fare, others are just damn twisted and creepy in a "permanently scarred for life" sorta way (e.g. The Silence of the Lambs). But all of them will scare the living s!@# out of you. So enjoy, and fire off your suggestions and hate-fueled opinions in the comments.
Scene to watch with the lights on: Alice has survived a hellish night that saw all her friends butchered around her. She managed to take down the killer herself and sought refuge in a small boat. The cops arrive. She is relieved. And then the deformed boy, Jason, leaps out of the water behind her. And we all scream like hell.
"Ki ki ki, ma ma ma!" There were a ton of movies that attempted to emulate the success of Halloween, but only one of the imitators, Friday the 13th, would prove to be a juggernaut in its own right – a huge hit that spawned one of the most successful and long-running franchises in film history.
Sure, we might scoff at some of the cheesier elements of the film, like Crazy Ralph (and some amazing 1980s fashion), but Friday the 13th worked where it counted. Aided by the invaluable makeup effects of Tom Savini, it brought us more vivid (and dare we say, creative) murder scenes than we'd seen before in this type film, and has plenty of "Did you see that?" memorable moments, such as the arrow pierced through the back of poor Kevin Bacon's neck.
Pamela Voorhees is the killer in this film, and her son, Jason, is little more than a memory, only appearing in the "Was it a dream or not?" final scare. But the ground had been laid for a legend that would be built upon in sequels, eventually evolving into the story of a hockey-masked, seemingly immortal juggernaut that audiences still can't seem to get enough of 30 years later.
Scene to watch with the lights on: Scream's opening scene was incredibly strong and scary, instantly grabbing the audience by the throat. Watching a high school girl (Drew Barrymore) get a series of increasingly ominous phone calls, we (and she) begin to realize just how vulnerable she is. And that's when the guy with the ghost-faced mask shows up.
Both director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson have plenty of successes in their career, but Scream remains a big highlight for both men. Williamson's script managed to deftly be so many things – it was a sly meta/self-parody about the horror genre that didn't cross the line into goofiness, while also playing as a successful whodunit and, most importantly, an effective horror film in and of itself.
Finally, a group of horror movie characters made it clear that yes, they'd seen all the same movies we had, and were aware of the rules and clichés that come with the genre. But no one was more knowledgeable than the killer (or is that killers?), who toyed with his victims by asking them horror movie trivia that plenty of us in the audience could have fun playing along with.
But when the killer actually showed himself, it was terrifying, with several extremely well-executed suspense scenes by Craven, which proved again just how good he was with this sort of material. A movie that set out to simultaneously make the audience laugh, cheer and yes, scream, Scream deserves a lot of credit for pulling off all these elements so well.
Scene to watch with the lights on: Renfield's midnight ride is full of dramatic tension as he meets the world's creepiest carriage driver and passes unearthly lights burning in the fog. By the time Renfield finally arrives at the castle and is introduced to its master, he and the viewer are much the worse for wear.
All of today's mega-popular vampire franchises, from Blade to Twilight, owe a debt of gratitude to Count Dracula. And as much as Bram Stoker's original novel helped popularize the vampire story, it was Universal's 1931 adaptation that cemented the image of Dracula in the minds of most moviegoers.
Dracula is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the novel, with many of the main characters being condensed down and combined. The film opens with the poor Mr. Renfield's arrival in Transylvania. After falling victim to Dracula's influence, the pair head to London so Dracula can feast on the city's inhabitants. Only the courageous Dr. Seward, his ally Professor Van Helsing, and their friends can prevent Dracula from slaughtering innocents and making the fair Mina his newest bride.
Dracula isn't the scariest film by modern standards (though the alternate Spanish cut is superior in that regard). What it does have is plenty of atmosphere and a very memorable lead villain. This adaptation diverged from the source by making Dracula a handsome, charismatic figure. Bela Lugosi captured the imaginations of millions with his performance as Dracula.
For better or worse, it was a role that would follow him for the rest of his life. It's a role that remains the definitive portrayal of this classic villain for many.
Scene to watch with the lights on: The last 10 minutes of the movie, where we see what the house has planned.
Jackson's chilling novel The Haunting of Hill House has been adapted twice to the big screen. Avoid the 1999 Jan de Bont failure, and instead watch – with the lights on – director Robert Wise's 1963 original.
The movie provided early audiences with a legitimized look at dealing with the paranormal, as Dr. John Markway leads three others – all touched by the supernatural at some point – to an old mansion with a sinister past. Of the group, a lonely woman named Eleanor is the one most sensitive to the evil spirits moving throughout the house, spirits we never really see but rather sense through ambient sound cues, brooding music and stark shadows.
The Haunting has appeared on many a "Top Scary Movie" list, which says a lot for a horror film that doesn't have a drop of blood in it. If you like a movie that relies on mood and character to deliver scares, as opposed to Jigsaw traps and entrails, then put The Haunting at the top of your Netflix queue.
The movie that gave birth to the whole "horror movie as faux-documentary," that inspired such films as Paranormal Activity, is quite an effective scare fest in retrospect.
Some of its then-inspired choices in the realm of "is it or isn't real" seem dated and obvious now, given the fact that the Internet seemingly sets out to reveal spoilers that surround projects like this. (Also, we know it's all fiction at this point.) But Blair Witch came out in 1999, when the Internet was in its infancy and could be used as a tool to successfully convince audiences that maybe the story of a three-person documentary crew going Snipe hunting for what turns out to be pure evil is in fact real.
Blame the gift/curse of the shaky cam on this movie, but give it credit for delivering scares in such a way that changed the way we like to be scared... that changed the way Hollywood goes about making the things that scare us.
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Scene to watch with the lights on: Don't even bother turning the lights off, since the film gets right to it with a double murder early on that sees one young lady staring out a window into the dark, only to suddenly realize that a pair of eyes are staring back. This leads to stabbings, a hanging and, finally, impalement by stained glass for her and her friend.
Of course we're including a giallo film on this list, though the question did come up as to which of the Italian horror masters was most deserving to represent this distinctive genre. In the end, we had to give it to Dario Argento and his Suspiria – a supernatural shocker that is an experience in style as well as terror.
The film is about an American ballerina who travels to Germany to attend a dance academy, but instead gets a tutu full of trouble when she comes to realize that the place is home to a coven of witches who are brewing up all kinds of deadly mischief.
The picture might seem over the top in some ways, but Argento proves masterful at creating an environment – a world – that is uniquely its own thing. The gruesome, convoluted killings, the garish color design, the freaked-out sound (including a haunting score by Goblin)… this is the stuff that nightmares are made of.
Scene to watch with the lights on: This may be a controversial pick (and a spoilery one), but we'd have to go with the closing moments of the film, as Oskar and Eli head off for a new life together… as friends and/or love interests. Or as master and slave? You decide, but it is creepy either way.
Can you believe that there's a movie on our list that got its title from a Morrissey song? This most unusual of love stories is a Swedish film which hit it big internationally with its tale of a 12-year-old boy and his centuries-old vampire… who looks like a 12-year-old girl (but most certainly isn't).
Whether or not Oskar and Eli's relationship is an equal partnership, or Oskar is doomed to become the vampire's next Hakan (the old and ill-fated human who takes care of Eli early in the film) isn't clear. But it's an engrossing story from start to finish.
Though chockfull of bloody good horror moments, director Tomas Alfredson's film works so well because it is acutely interested in its two lead characters: Oskar, the boy who is bullied at school and finds a protector in his new, nocturnal neighbor; and Eli, a beautiful little cherub who's actually not even a girl and certainly not a cherub. Weird, right? But so good.
Scene to watch with the lights on: American Werewolf's iconic transformation scene is a showcase for just how grotesque and painful the werewolf curse can be. When David wolfs out, what ensues is a graphic transformation of man into werewolf. This all-too convincing display of special effects and makeup work in 1981 still holds up today.
It rarely hurts to merge horror with a tinge of comedy. An American Werewolf in London is one of the finer examples of that combination. American Werewolf was one of several iconic werewolf movies that hit theaters in 1981. Of the trio, American Werewolf remains the most popular and well-loved.
The film follows two backpackers traveling the English countryside. When only one survives an attack by a vicious wolf, he becomes convinced he's been infected by the werewolf's curse. And it wouldn't be much of a werewolf movie if he turned out to be wrong.
An American Werewolf in London stood out at the time thanks to its amazing makeup and special effects work. Never had the werewolf transformation seemed so convincing. The humor didn't hurt either, particularly with the brilliantly demented nightmare sequences. But American Werewolf was ultimately a tragic horror film, and one certainly deserving of remembrance today.
Scene to watch with the lights on: The opening battle scenes in Dawn of the Dead provide a telling picture of just how far society has crumbled since the zombie outbreak. SWAT teams storm an apartment building in urban Philadelphia, battling confused, angry residents and eventually hungry zombies. A SWAT member even commits suicide after being forced to gun down an attacking zombie.
George Romero practically created the zombie movie genre single-handedly in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. Ten years later he refined the formula with Dawn of the Dead. Far bigger, gorier, and funnier than its predecessor, Dawn of the Dead remains Romero's definitive work.
Whereas Night featured a small cast of survivors holed up in a remote farm house, Dawn opens with a glimpse of a major metropolitan area falling to chaos during the zombie outbreak. It isn't long before four heroes are forced to leave town and barricade themselves inside a shopping mall. But as it turns out, the undead hordes still retain enough of their old selves to feel the need to shop and consume.
The true brilliance of Dawn is how it combined straight-up zombie carnage with a healthy dose of satire and social commentary. At the end of the day, are modern Americans really so different from the shambling undead? They crave warm flesh; we crave iPods. It's a message that was somewhat lost in the enjoyable but inferior 2004 remake.
Scene to watch with the lights on: When Freddy gets a hold of Tina in her dream, we suddenly realize just how big the stakes are, as her sleeping body is suddenly pulled up into the air, and four fatal cuts rip into her. The fact that she's dragged along the ceiling, screaming, before she dies, as her boyfriend looks on in horror, only adds to the shock of the scene.
By 1984 the slasher movie had been done to death (excuse the pun). Just how many masked killers could you see before fatigue set in? But Wes Craven had a brilliant twist on these types of films. First, he created a killer, Freddy Krueger, who instantly stood out from the rest of the pack. His face was burned beyond recognition, but Freddy wore no mask and didn't stay silent.
In fact, he had plenty of cruel taunts for his victims. More importantly, his domain was the dream world, where he could stalk and terrorize without any rules to bind him – if you ran away from him, he could just as easily be waiting for you as you approached. There was nowhere to hide from Freddy because we all have to sleep sometime, right?
Featuring a more down to Earth and relatable group of young characters than most slasher films, A Nightmare on Elm Street made a huge impact upon its release, thanks to its excellent conceit and amazing villain, and Craven's talent in building tension and delivering the goods in his murder scenes. And with Freddy, Craven gave us one of the most popular, durable and recognizable movie characters of all time.
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Scene to watch with the lights on: Sure, your eyes will scream like a little girl when the head of a victim sheers itself from its burning corpse and spider-walks away. But the scariest bit involves the Thing assimilating dogs and revealing a mouth best described as a flower made out of tongue pedals – moments before it slime-claws its way out of sight.
An alien with the ability to take the form of any life that it absorbs infiltrates an Antarctic research base, and soon the 12-man team is up to their eyeballs in slaughter, suspicion and paranoia. John Carpenter's best film has itself planted on either side of the horror and sci-fi movie lines.
The Thing plays fair within both genres, but leans more toward horror, hence why we give it higher ranking here than in our Top 25 Sci-Fi list. Arguably Carpenter's best movie since Halloween, the movie takes it time setting up the rules of the creature living amongst our heroes, while more importantly establishing each character – from Windows to MacReady to MacReady's beard – as people we actually worry about. Such attention to character and pacing is a lost art in the current genre climate; we can only hope that the pending prequel/remake takes this into account.
The practical special effects hold up better than you'd think (save for the stop-motion Blairmonster), and Kurt Russell gives one of his best performances as team leader MacReady. Any self-respecting movie fan should have this in their library.
Scene to watch with the lights on: Brundle-fly inspecting a medicine cabinet-turned-museum of pieces of the man-fly that his new insect body doesn't need anymore. (Give yourself a gold star if you can spot his mason jar'd junk or if you don't wince at the moment before this scene, where Seth peels off his fingernails.)
David Cronenberg's very R-rated, very intense and very excellent remake of The Fly made Jeff Goldblum a star in the role of Seth Brundle, a scientist who invents telepods meant to change the world. Instead, they change him into a man-fly monster when a fly accidentally gets trapped in one of the machines as Seth teleports from one pod to the other.
The script, performances and Howard Shore's tremendous score work together to create a horror opera, one full of dark twists and practical creature effects scares. Once all the gore and vomiting-on-food-to-eat-it settles, we realize we've just watched a tragedy about a scientist who accounted for everything save nature finding a way to remind man not to play God. (Kind of fitting that Goldblum learned this lesson here and again in Jurassic Park, no?)
Scene to watch with the lights on: Man. Just pick anything. How about the guy who tears his own face apart or the malicious clown doll that loves to strangle or the vengeful zombies coming out of the swimming pool. This movie will hit you from every direction and leave you cowering in the corner.
There isn't another film on this list that totally and completely @#$%ed us all up like Poltergeist did. All of a sudden, the quaint cookie-cutter houses of Southern California became haunted death-traps, ravaged by violent Native American ghosts who aren't too pleased about their current state of "unrest."
Director Toby Hooper and producer Steven Spielberg (who was rumored to have a much more "directorial influence" than credited for) created a veritable masterwork that took the ghost story out of ancient castles and haunted mansions and shoved it, without apology, into the happy suburban track home.
Almost every single part of this movie is so full of devastating win – from Carol Ann's warbled white-noise voice to freakin' angry trees that bust through your window to grab you – that one is almost able to forgive the less-than-warranted sequels. This house may now be "clean," but your pants are going to need changing.
Scene to watch with the lights on: It's tempting to list the final encounter between the undead Samara and Noah as the scariest moment in The Ring. After all, nobody likes seeing a ghostly girl crawling out of their television set. But it's an earlier scene in the film that left us most unsettled – watching that frakkin' videotape!
When American horror movies began to stagnate in the 1990's Hollywood began looking at Asian cinema for new ways to scare the pants of viewers. 1998's Ring emerged as one of the best efforts in Japan's growing horror lineup, so it was only natural that DreamWorks chose to remake it as 2002's The Ring.
The concept for The Ring is simple and effective. An unsuspecting viewer watches a tape full of creepy imagery and a creepier girl. One week later, they're found dead from sinister but mysterious causes. And when our lovely heroine becomes the latest viewer, she has only days to save herself and her family from this deadly curse.
The Ring is one damned creepy movie, and that's why it's so effective. Director Gore Verbinski loads his adaptation with plenty of haunting imagery. The tension seems always just at the boiling point. Even hardcore fans of the original were pleased to see The Ring diverge from the source material in some ways and take full advantage of its larger budget. Hollywood hasn't always found success in mimicking Japan's horror gems, but they certainly hit gold with The Ring.
Scene to watch with the lights on: Laurie Strode is trying to hide from Michael Myers, and crouches down inside a closet. She manages to tie the door shut, but that's not going to stop Michael, who begins smashing the door in, causing light to shine in and for Michael's spooky mask to come into plain view of the understandably terrified Laurie.
Psycho can be seen as the film that birthed the slasher genre and Texas Chainsaw Massacre was an integral step in its progress, making things more visceral. But it was Halloween that truly defined this subgenre in horror, inspiring a million sequels, rip offs, imitations and homages. Take an instantly identifiable holiday, add in a chillingly silent, unstoppable masked killer and a feisty, resourceful heroine and you have Halloween... and of course all the films that came after it.
But John Carpenter brought a sense of tension and suspense few others could match in a slasher film, as we watched Michael Myers stalk Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) from afar, before going on his inevitable killing spree.
Michael himself was an excellent villain, wearing a blank, emotionless mask that perfectly captured the black soul of someone who simply killed and killed, and seemingly couldn't be stopped, no matter what you did to him. It's no wonder Michael became a horror icon and that fans rebelled when he didn't appear in Halloween III. After all, Michael Myers and Halloween – both the film and the actual holiday – are now forever intertwined.
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Scene to watch with the lights on: The scene when the mother discovers her little daughter, Karen, down in the basement, eating her own father for lunch. That's right. Brains might be on the menu, but the way to a man's heart is through his actual heart.
In 1968, director George Romero took the frightening idea of "zombification," which up until that point had been relegated to creepy voodoo tales and extra-dimensional Lovecraft-ian lore, and created the single most terrifying genre of horror – the Zombie Apocalypse. "They're coming to get you Barbara" became the first official "I'll be right back" of horror, as poor Judith O'Dea has to flee a cemetery because the dead have inexplicably come back to life and started walking the Earth in search of human flesh.
Hitchcock discovered, with 1963's The Birds, that the sheer terror of "not knowing" the reasons behind the sweeping global outbreak of evil is the most horrifying part of the entire story. The "Zombocalypse" genre is so enduring that it's still running strong today. Sure, some films have made their zombies run fast and tried to explain the whole dead-alive deal with a virus, and that's all fine. But nothing will ever beat the basics.
With this one film, Romero was able to tap into everything we're afraid of: death, desecration of the flesh, cannibalism, brainwashing, disease and hopelessness. There's also a stinging underlying social message about racism, media and paranoia where viewers got to learn, for the first time, that they could be just as dangerous and cruel as the mindless hordes of undead they were hiding from.
Scene to watch with the lights on: It might not be the moment you immediately think of, but the two-minute-long scene where poor Sally is forced to "dine" with Leatherface's family – where she's tied to a chair made out of human parts and they all just laugh at her screaming – is pretty damn disturbing!
Like your films bleak, bloody and full of brutality? Toby Hooper's gruesome indie 1974 flick took the nefarious inbred mountain folk that we all cringed at in 1972's Deliverance and turned them into an aggressively insane backwoods clan of cannibals. Take a van full of "young adults" on their way to, I dunno, smoke weed and go to a cemetery and let them run out of gas in the wrong part of Texas. Then throw in the skin-suited Leatherface and some meat-hooks and you've got yourself a film that barely found a distributor because of its extreme levels of graphic violence.
Psycho might have been the first "slasher" film per se, but Chainsaw simultaneously elevated and de-elevated the genre with its disturbing levels of sadism. One could also say that the film acted as a pre-cursor to both the "slasher" and "torture porn" genres.
Also, before Leatherface became a squealing cross-dresser in the unfortunate Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, he stood tall as a hideous and raw horror icon.
Scene to watch with the lights on: When Rosemary realizes who her husband really is, and what he and his "friends" have planned for her baby.
Get over Mia Farrow's bird haircut and watch this movie. You'll be surprised how much this unsettling creepshow from 1968 gets away with for, you know, being in 1968. Roman Polanski's most "conventional" film outside of Chinatown is one of his best, telling the slow-burn story of a young New York couple who move into an apartment building home to several Satan worshipers who want to use Rosemary's spawn as a means for Mr. Devil McBrimstone to return to our mortal realm.
Farrow is perfect in the role of Rosemary, as she slowly unravels the more she discovers what shady cult dealings are happening all around her. The entire world seems to be conspiring against the most innocent of people here, as the Devil watches from the wings and Rosemary breaks down.
Polanski's "less is more" approach to delivering chills further support the storytelling rule that the more kept off screen, the more the audience has to imagine, the scarier.
Scene to watch with the lights on: The finale, when the Bride is finally created… only to spurn the Monster, which is a very bad thing to do for anyone who values not getting blown up in an exploding mountainside laboratory.
Certainly there were those of us on the IGN staff who argued that this James Whale classic should've been higher on our list… perhaps even number one. But compromise being what it is, Whale and Colin Clive, Karloff and the rest have had to settle for slot seven.
The film is the apex of the Universal cycle of classic monster pictures in terms of quality. Rather than simply regurgitating a cheap variation on the first Frankenstein (which is basically what many of the Universal sequels would go on to do), Whale opted to, ahem, flesh out the story and characters of the original (which he also directed). Karloff, in his second turn as the Monster, granted his most famous creation the gift of speech, and of friendship, and even love. Also, of humor – Bride of Frankenstein is a comedy as much as it is a horror film.
Brimming with wonderful side characters (oh, Doctor Pretorius, how we miss you) and often unsettling imagery (Jesus H. Christ, did they just crucify the Monster?), the film is 75 years old and we're still talking about it – and loving it. To paraphrase Doctor Pretorius, "It is our only weakness…"
Scene to watch with the lights on: "The blood usually gets off on the third floor." May we also suggest the Room 237 scene. Beware of hot chicks in bathtubs that are really Overlook corpses with saggy zombie boobs!
The Shining might just be Stephen King's most popular horror novel. Stanley Kubrick's movie adaptation is almost certainly the most popular Stephen King film. The project was an unusually commercially-focused one for Kubrick, but the same stylistic elements that defined his earlier films were on full display in The Shining. The film remains a haunting and unsettling chronicle of a family man's psychological breakdown.
Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance in this adaptation. Torrance is a struggling writer who accepts a job as winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Mountains. The knowledge that the previous caretaker had gone insane and murdered his family fails to scare Jack away.
But when both Jack and his psychically attuned son begin communing with the many spirits haunting the Overlook, things quickly take a turn for the worse. Deadly hedge mazes, elevators full of blood and the terrifying Room 237 are only some of the horrors that await viewers.
Aside from being a genuinely scary film, The Shining has left its mark on modern pop culture. Who doesn't recognize the image of Nicholson poking his head through a doorway and shouting "Here's Johnny!"? The Shining served as fodder for one of the best "Treehouse of Horror" segments in the history of The Simpsons. The Shining is required viewing for any horror aficionado. Just don't expect to sleep easily the following night.
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Scene to watch with the lights on: Lecter's first encounter with Clarice, his crazy and her virtue separated only by safety glass.
Using a serial killer – a cannibal with a doctorate, actually – to help catch another serial killer is as bare bones as you can get with this Best Picture Oscar winner. But the movie is much more than that. It's the scariest movie ever made built around psychology and deduction used as both crime-solving tools and murder weapons. Yes, blame this movie all you want for your friend's bad Hannibal Lecter impersonation that never seems to get better, but it gave us one of the screen's all-time iconic villains and Anthony Hopkins the role of his career.
Jodie Foster is also exceptional in the role of FBI Agent Clarice Starling, on the trail of Buffalo "It Puts The Lotion In The Basket" Bill. Director Jonathan Demme is effortless and relentless with his tension here, succeeding where Ridley Scott failed in his 2001 sequel, Hannibal by keeping Lecter more of a believable monster and less of a monstrous caricature.
1991's best film, according to the Academy, is worthy of multiple viewings if you can get through a first. We suggest watching it with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
Scene to watch with the lights on: Dinner with Kane and the crew of the Nostromo, fresh after Kane wakes up from his facehugger coma, ends with Kane disagreeing with something that ate its way out of his chest. They don't get much better than this, movie fans.
Alien movies are generally thought of as being planted in the science fiction realm. However, with the original at least, Alien was as much a horror film as a sci-fi one. With a small cast being hunted by a lone, terrifying creature, Alien was a long way removed from the Star Treks of Hollywood.
Alien is set several centuries in the future when humanity has ventured into the stars. The crew of the mining vessel Nostromo become unwitting hosts to a bloodthirsty alien lifeform. One by one, the crew members fall to an enemy that hides in the shadows and springs from above. Only Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is savvy enough to survive the alien's onslaught. Too bad for her it was only the first round.
Alien doesn't resemble many sci-fi movies of the time. Artist H.R. Giger designed a world full of twisted tubes, cold hallways, and pervasive darkness. Before Alien, pop culture never warned us how dark, dirty and scary the cold depths of space were. Director Ridley Scott adopted a "less is more" approach that later sequels sadly abandoned. Modern directors can cram all the Aliens and Predators they want into their films, but none can match the sheer claustrophobic terror generated in the original Alien.
Scene to watch with the lights on: It's a tie! When the shark turns Alex Kintner into a human chew toy and when Bad Hat Harry stands before Brody, wearing a bathing suit and shaking his saggy gym-sock moobs.
The first blockbuster ever and the scariest movie (maybe even the best one?) Spielberg's ever made, Jaws is equal parts monster movie and character piece, centered on an island called Amity that's preyed upon by something that leaves teeth the size of shot glasses in the hulls of boats and turns their owners into decapitated flotsam. The late Roy Scheider gives a career-defining performance as Chief Brody, the local sheriff with a fear of water, who is put in charge of taking down the murder fish.
Joining him on the Orca for the hunt are Richard Dreyfuss' Hooper and Robert "Find 'im for 3, Catch 'im and Kill 'im for 10" Shaw as Quint, the number one cause of death for just about any marine life.
But you already know that. You should have seen this movie at least 10 times by now, thanks to cable and VHS and DVD. You've probably contemplated making John Williams' theme your ring tone. It's made out of the type of movie magic that warrants repeat viewings, that warrants lots of praise using words like "perfect" and "instant classic."
And if you haven't seen it yet, remedy that soon. So you can walk amongst normal society as a non-wrong person.
Scene to watch with the lights on: What scene could we pick but the quintessential shower slaying? Coupled with the iconic music cue, this scene remains a horror classic 50 years later.
Psycho is both one of the greatest thrillers of all time and one of the greatest entries in Alfred Hitchcock's legendary resume. A true master of suspense and tension, Hitchcock crafted a memorable horror experience with a limited cast and even more limited budget. Like so many great horror movies, Psycho's scares far exceed its limited scale.
Psycho is the story of crazy old Norman Bates and his even crazier mother. When a young woman on the run from the law arrives at the remote Bates Motel, she falls victim to a knife-wielding killer. Several more victims are claimed before the killer is brought to justice and the true secret of the Bates family stands revealed.
The content of Psycho isn't as shocking as it was way back in 1960. After all, girls get stabbed in the shower all the time in modern horror cinema. However, it's a testament to Hitchcock's skill as a director that Psycho remains a tense and nerve-wracking experience. The killing of Janet Leigh's character and the accompanying musical key is one of the most iconic scenes in Hollywood history.
Psycho is such a classic of the genre that it inspired a shot-for-shot remake in 1998. We wouldn't recommend wasting time with that film, but we would urge any horror lover who hasn't seen Psycho to move it to the top of their priority list.
Scene to watch with the lights on: All of it. No no no, trust us. Watch it at mid-day, with the blinds open and the lights on. And then get used to the fact that you may never, ever sleep again.
"Tubular Bells" is the scariest music arrangement ever made. We hear it and we're the scaredy cat equivalent of Pavlov's Dog – the Satan bells ring, and we tense up, scream and piss our everythings. More than once. And then cry ourselves to sleep with one eye open.
The movie's premise, a little girl possessed by a demon, is scary enough as words on paper. But what director William Friedkin does with it, aside from prove that he has a seriously strong (or frightfully off) constitution for this sort of stuff, is treat the extraordinary of it all as if it were really happening next door to us.
The scares come from a place based in Faith, where Heaven and hell are as real as your beliefs in them care to be. Faith, for all the documentation on the subject, is tethered to the intangible; it's not something science can define or strategize. The demon that comes from The Exorcist's interpretation of that idea is something more powerful than a Freddy or a Jason. Something that can't be shot or stabbed or detonated.
Before it can be attacked, let alone defeated, it has to be first believed in – as terrible and soul-threatening as this may be to the young priest and old priest charged with delivering the climatic exorcism. Fathers Karras and Merrin spend the third act of the movie fighting back the Devil for control of young Regan's soul. And in doing so, Karras, a man of wavering faith throughout most of the movie, finally believes in the only true good he knows by sacrificing himself to save that little girl.
Film school analyze this movie more if you want. Bottom line: It is the best horror movie about the consequences of belief ever made. It is the reason why so many exorcism movies flood the marketplace and never fully deliver.
It is the number one movie on our all-time list.
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