Halloween approaches -- Which is the scariest movie in the scary movie canon?

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Sixth Sense and Friday the 13th all left off on purpose.

Friday the 13th actually scared me more than any of these, but it was the first "proper" horror movie I saw and the ending freaked me the fuck out.

dawn of the dead

I voted Suspiria because it has the aura of wrongness running right through it. I still think Blair Witch is scary as hell but its scariness only works once. The ending of Don't Look Now is horrifying for sure but I don't think it's a horror movie. My Dad reckons Psycho was pretty intense when he saw it at the cinema when it was first released. What I said about Don't Look Now goes for The Vanishing too, if we're talking about the original. I have no intention of ever seeing the remake.

wtf is Outer Space?

I like or love a lot of these movies but I can't say I'v ever been scared by any of them.

Movies just aren't that scary 'cause they're not real.

inland empire?

Outer Space

This is way better

body of evidence

Things I love that aren't on here: Xtro, the first 2 Demons movies, all the Phantasm movies.

You can Youtube clips of Xtro. It is Very Wrong Indeed.

Which reminds me that Von Trier's The Kingdom can be impressively scary too.

The Shinning

lol, that sounds very scary

Where's the "Wicker Man" remake?

(On a more serious note: "Black Christmas"?)

Remember kids, "Gore" and "Horror" need not be synonymous.

I was thinking Suspiria too, though Carnival of Souls has some great shocks and I love the end. Nice to see Possession up there. That is one strange, demanding and deeply wrong movie.

Black Christmas was one of the ones I knew I should've put in there after hitting submit (tho I haven't seen it) ...

This is way better
-- Noodle Vague, Saturday, October 20, 2007 6:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Which reminds me, the work of Damon Packard is awsome.

I sort of went with my gut for stuff from the last decade, since probably none of it has been around long enough to be "canonical."

I guess give me some credit for not including Cabin Fever. :)

i voted silence of the lambs. most believably scary serial killer in history.

Also considered for a few seconds: Decasia, but Outer Space had the creepy-avant-garde slot well filled.

Had never heard of Outer Space, just IMDB'd it, and I have to see it.

most believably scary serial killer in history

I thought you were talking about Hopkins for a minute and I lolled.

Rob Zombie puts me off seeing Devil's Rejects. I keep thinking it'll be horribly meatheaded. Am I missing out?

It's on YouTube, but I warn the effect is SERIOUSLY mitigated if you're not watching it, if not in a theater, at least on a TV (in total darkness).

It is sort of meatheaded, but also very cunning. It pushed all my buttons. I prefer Zombie's blunt sadism to the continuing parade of Americanized J-horror.

That goes without saying. Okay I won't avoid this if it comes on TV.

Kwaidan, out on Criterion.

Yeah, I believe it might pop up on IFC once in awhile. Otherwise, rent this DVD (which also has the Damon Packard on it).

For whatever reason, I sort of ditched all the horror anthologies.

Wow, Outer Space sounds amazing.

I think the Star Wars Mockumentary used to get shown on Sky a lot. I didn't watch it cos I don't dig SW and I didn't know what this was.

Outer Space

I turned the lights out and full-screened it. It's very good.

Devil's Rejects is great, and I say that with a complete hatred of most splatter/torture-porn/etc. films.

re: outer space, awesome! structured like a song rather than a film, i thought. it ought to come with an epilepsy warning, mind.

It sounds a bit like Whitehouse, yes.

It made me think of Tetsuo and Repulsion, too.

A Nightmare On Elm Street - the first horror movie I've ever seen

holy shit @ Outer Space

I really, really didn't like Repulsion.

Repulsion providess a rather accurate account of schizophrenia
but I wouldn't say that the movie itself is particualrly scary

xpost

lol I know you didn't

I thought it was ham-fisted, exploitative, psychologically crude, and really rather boring, myself. But hey it had Cathy Deneuve in it so WE'LL JUST GAWP AND NOD, EH?

(that was an xpost. to NV it must seem like I'm the kind of tedious sod who enjoys repeating his more derisive opinions.)

(and to the rest of you too. zing.)

I don't think that's why people dig it really. Have you seen any other Polanski movies?

I don't think so. I heard he improved greatly.

I prefer Deneuve's sister, Francoise
she acted in Cul-de-Sac, Polanski's best movie imo

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/35/papierpeint13francoise8006vs.jpg

i still have trouble watching poltergeist in the dark. dvd rerelease recently / soon too. the way he tells the kid about the thunder to reassure him and later it works the other way is great.

there's someone else in jacob's ladder who's famous for other things too. yes, distracting. it's very manchurian candidate.

(louis black (daily show). oh, and eriq la salle (er))

As far as actual scary movies go, you're missing some of my personal favorites... among them The Changeling, Maniac, The Sentinel, Burnt Offerings, Just Before Dawn, The Innocents, and Let's Scare Jessica To Death. And that's not even getting into amazing-but-not-really-scary stuff like Re-Animator, Brain Damage, and the entire Larry Cohen cannon.

Also, Tourist Trap is pretty damned creepy.

Maybe I should've listed 100 movies instead of just over 60.

Maniac is great. I need to resee The Changeling. Not a fan of Let's Scare Jessica tho.

I really can't be scared by the random slaughter of teenagers. Exhilarated and amused, maybe.

Exactly why I like these movies: I am exhilarated and amused by them.

Having now watched it, I'm not really sure The Conqueror Worm really belongs here.

I'm glad you said so. There are no real supernatural notes (does horror need them?).

Jacob's Latter is so creepy...it's like a Buddhist/Christian horror movie

Blair Witch, b/c it is the only movie on this list that I can say scared the living crap out of me. But its ability to flat out scare diminishes greatly with repeated viewings.

The final scene is still classicly scary in the "What? What the hell? NO!!! Don't GO DOWN THERE!!! What the hell? AAHHH!!!" Dark screen.

I've only rewatched it twice, which might say something in and of itself.

Jacob's Ladder*

I forgot Conqueror Worm was Witchfinder General. No, not really scary. But brilliant.

surprisingly good scary movie: The Skeleton Key. David Edelstein and I were basically the only people on Earth who liked it, I think.

which one was that?

Kate Hudson+Peter Saaaaaaarsgard+John Hurt (I think) - voodoo, gothick mansions, etc.

oh yeah, that one was OK

Thanks for turning me on to Outer Space – now I can get obsessed with another obscure avant-garde short film dude

the skeleton key was such shit

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted for The Thing (remake). I need to see a lot more of these though.

Wicker Man ftw!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

dudes The Shining is NOT SCARY! well, it is, but only in those corridor twin-girls blood-flow flash-cuts. and they're only in the first half of the movie. the second half is YAWNSOME.

Possession 0

as you can tell, i missed this poll u_u

Wicker Man ftw!

-- Just got offed, Tuesday, October 30, 2007 11:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

dudes The Shining is NOT SCARY!

-- Just got offed, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 12:01 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i could say the same about The Wicker Man, really.

hah, well tbh i've only seen about 8 or 9 of these films, and i threw that in as a (literally) last-minute prediction rather than a genuine statement of belief. turns out i was wrong!

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/unmasked/halloween/williamsndin.jpg

The only thing SCARY about Wicker Man is how HILARIOUS it is!

(Entertainment Weekly will you hire me based on this work sample?)

Srsly I adore the original Wicker Man. I have a poster of it in my room. But not one whit about it is scary.

No votes for Jaws or The Vanishing? The central plot devices of those films -- being attacked by a huge shark or buried alive -- are scariest to me. I think that's because (a) they seem the most realistically possible to me and (b) in each case, you're totally out of your element in ways that heighten the terror (I mean, being stranded at sea or patrially-stuck underground is scary enough).

i expected a bigger turn out tbh.

I really can't see how some people find Blair Witch Project a) scary, or b) good. It had exactly two somewhat creepy moments: in the beginning, where that one guy describes his encounter with the witch, and the ending. The rest of it is just some crappy camcorder shots of people trying to look scared, which are sometimes unintentionally amusing but never scary. It's kinda funny how the story about it being made on a 10 dollar budget and being mostly improvised became it's biggest selling point, when it's really the main reason why it sucks.

as someone who saw The Shining w/ highschool buddies on opening night I concur: not very scary, nor trying to be.

Someone very near and dear to me was rattled for days after seeing "Jacob's Ladder" during its theatrical release and I don't believe has seen it again since.

No names, mind you.

wtf with the lack of halloween movies on uk terrestial telly tonight, only Halloween and The Grudge on. I expected at least something from Channel 5.

poor show

I thought Halloween should have gotten a few more votes. Exorcist though, for sure.

The Exorcist would have been my answer until I saw Audition.

Where's the "Wicker Man" remake?

(On a more serious note: "Black Christmas"?)

-- HI DERE, Saturday, October 20, 2007 6:19 PM (1 week ago)

Uh, I only saw the remake but I cant tell you how pissed off I was when I got to the end of the movie. I was thinking of things I would have said if I were him. Like "FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU." instead of "HELP ME. HELP ME." Also I would have cursed their crops to hell. I would have yelled 'I sell my soul to the devil to burn your damn crops'. That movie really affected me I suppose.

i was just laughing uncontrollably at that point

the original isn't scary but is creepy

So, I live in South Pasadena, CA. One great thing about this town is that they shoot A LOT of movies here, because a) it has that SoCal light that cinematographers love and b)it has significant portions without palm trees or cacti, making it an ideal for Anywhere, USA.

Or Haddonfield, Illinois!!!!

Jamie Lee Curtis' house in Halloween is right down the street from mine, and the Myers house has been moved, but still stands (and is now purple, I think). My wife and I had a great time watching it last night and pointing out where different places we knew were.

Until she go scared and made me turn it off.

Blair Witch 2 is loads better than the original

getting your teeth knocked out by a golf club is loads better than chewing gum!

wtf with the lack of halloween movies on uk terrestial telly tonight

American TV didn't do so much better. Gone are the halcyon days of wall-to-wall horror on the tube. Even TBS (which used to show so many horror movies in October) couldn't be torn from its devotion to "Family Guy."

TCM had some Val Lewtons on, which was cool.

Blair Witch 2 is loads better than the original

-- milo z, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 11:46 PM (Yesterday)

I'm SO gld I'm not the only person who thinks this

Without prying, milo, have you ever done acid? I find that people who have seem to relate to this movie's scariness more than those who have not. I know, I know, it's lame, but think about it. That final scene when it is revealed that what the kids experienced wasn't really what happened, or vice versa - kinda like a really bad trip, am I right?

if they had given out complimentary tabs of acid it would've been much more entertaining i'm sure

Not too surprised about the low turn-out for The Exorcist, actually. That movie scared the shit out of me when I first saw it in seventh grade. Didn't watch it again for like three years, and just thinking about Reagan had me scared. But after re-watching it, it didn't retain its terror. I've probably re-watched it about five times since then, good film.

I voted for Candyman, despite it not really scaring me. But I've recently decided how amazing that film is, so I hads to.

I saw Night Of The Living Dead (original) for only the second time at MoMA last night, and I hadn't remembered the specifics of the hero's fate. Wow. Has anyone done an exegesis of it re racism, civil rights, etc? What does Romero say?

yeah i remember something on the DVD of the remake version about the racism and such, not sure if it was Tom salvini himself remarking or someone else. I'll check it again tonight.

Watched Session 9, starring David Caruso, last night. It was satisfying.

Climax Golden Twins do the soundtrack to that movie. Talk about your bad trips!

I feel like reduxing this poll for this year's Halloween. Not enough turnout last time around.