I’m more a “thriller” type person and a major Hitchcock fan so “Psycho” is always on my list, it was never really “scary” to me either but I can’t think of a movie that has actually ever scared me. Besides maybe “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” when I was four. Most horror movies today also seem to be geared towards the gross-out and not necessarily the scare.

I do agree with your “boring” assessment of Blair Witch though, I literally fell asleep during it.

“Halloween” also makes my list just because it’s such a classic to me as it was the first “scary” movie that was really introduced to me.

Tonight after the party rounds my partner and I will be reaching way back and watching “Nosferatu”.

“Tonight after the party rounds my partner and I will be reaching way back and watching “Nosferatu”

The silent one from like 1910 or so?
I saw that when I was about 5, the degraded film quality gave the vampire a creepy, surreal glow in the dark look
I actually had nightmares over it

I think mine was ‘The Ring’, I was jumpy for a week.

Poltergeist, hands down.  “Theyrrrre, here!”

Scott1960:
What was it, Family Guy or Robot Chicken?  They did a Ring parody which gave us one of the best lines ever for absolute terror: “I think I just shit my heart”.

Phantasm

That scene from Jaws, when Quint tells the story of the USS Indianapolis, is one of the finest scenes in cinematic history…..love it. Next to the shark, Robert Shaw made that movie.

The scariest movie for me would have to be The Entity. My first husband was so scared of that movie he wouldn’t even let me bring a videocassette of it into the house. After I finally saw it, I knew why. Maybe it won’t hold up over time - I haven’t seen it in years - but it was one that didn’t allow me to sleep for days.

as for the Exorcist - that movie scares the crap out of me - but the scariest part is anytime they show that Devil’s face with the red eyes, yellow teeth, etc…...it only flashes up a few times (and I always know when to cover my eyes). But it TERRIFIES me to this day. In the longer version that was released awhile back, there is a scene added and the devil face flashes on (and I certainly wasn’t expecting it) and I threw my Twizzlers about 5 feet into the air.

Alien.
...
>gurgle<

You already said it Pam but John Carpenter’s The Thing is my favorite. When they’re trying to revive one of their crew and his chest caves into a giant mouth and then his head pulls away from his body totally scarred me as a child. I had to watch that movie from behind the couch.

I tend to be scared by specific bits, rather than whole movies.  I was 11 when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released, & the Ark-opening scene where everybody’s face melts off made me afraid to close my eyes for a week.

Halloween (which I saw that same year - too young when it was released), where the Jamie Lee Curtis character finds her friend’s body next to her sister’s gravestone.  Etched in my mind for weeks afterward.

Carrie (ditto), when Piper Laurie chases Sissy Spacek through the house with the big knife & that crazed smile on her face.

I got more, they’re coming to me ...

@MonkeyShines - didn’t know that - interesting.

Regardless - Robert Shaw is brilliant.

Halloween is a horror classic - it’s a great one! Halloween II also scared the bejeebies out of me as a kid. About a year after I saw it, I was hospitalized after a surgery and the one night my mom didn’t stay with me all I could think about was that movie and how Michael Myers would come into my hospital room to get me. Yeesh!

Halloween III?? What WAS that?! LOL!

I’m 46 so I don’t think much of the latest horror movies. That said, I’ll put The Orphanage (2007)  and Drag Me to Hell (2009) against anything we’ve talked about here.

From my generation: Alien. FearItself beat me to it.  Great cast, fine direction, suspenseful as all get out and even though it takes place in space it had an intense realism to it.

Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie battling it out in Carrie is about as harrowing as anything I’ve ever seen on the screen.

@MonkeyShines

According to IMDB, the uncredited writers of that speech are Howard Sackler, John Milius, and Robert Shaw.

I don’t watch many horror movies, but Wait Until Dark takes the lead in my suspense category.

oooh good call on The Oprhanage - that was good.

Yeah, I am more of a fan of good suspense movies than horror movies…....

Les Diaboliques (the original)
Play Misty for Me

I saw the original Dawn of the Dead at a midnight showing. I swear, if somebody would have stumbled out in front of my car on the way home, I would have sped up and hit them, that movie was so scary.

I agree with monkeyshines on Antichrist.  It was very disturbing.  I haven’t been able to get it off my mind.  The photography was beautiful, and it was very artsy, and I always liked Willem Dafoe, but it really bothered me. 

The film that scared me most was Alien though.  I saw it at a friend’s house when I was way too young and had bad dreams for weeks.

Happy Halloween everybody.

I got to see a screening of Texas Chainsaw at the house it was filmed at, which is outside Austin.  The house is actually a bed and breakfast, but they made it look super creepy in the movie.  We all sat outside and watched the film, with the house looming in the background.  *shudder*

Oh, and Evil Dead 2.  C’mon!  “I’ll swallow your soul!!!!”

Tenebre:  “pervert! filthy slimy pervert!!” heh heh

Also The Watcher in the Woods. Also Psycho - can’t beat it.

As silly as it was at times, I’ll have to second evil dead 2- there are few things as definitely creepy as Ash descending into madness while the furniture goes wild and the deer trophy laughs at him.

The scariest movie I’ve ever seen is The Omen, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

I just didn’t buy that Damian was evil.  All the scenes that are supposed to show “OMGdevilkid” just seemed within the range of normal child behavior.  Which meant that the movie was about a couple of deranged people (the nanny and the priest) fixating on a random kid and swaying the dad to their madness.

The ending scene in the church with Damian begging his father not to hurt him?  *shudder*

also the Tenebre soundtrack by Goblin ROCKS!!!!

I’m a terribly jumpy person, so lots of movies can make me gasp or shriek, but the only ones that have stuck with me are the ones I saw too young. I watched The Birds on TV while I was home sick when I was eight or nine and to this day (I’m 31) a large flock of birds makes me look around nervously. Likewise, I’ve never been able to face clowns since the IT miniseries when I was twelve, even though I had already read the book.

but of course their performance on Suspiria was awesome too, but the Tenebre stuff totally rules

I would put ‘The Sentinel’ up there also. It is eerie for me even today.

The Shining’s always been one of my favorites because my cousins and I would always rent it and watch it down in the basement together during yearly family reunions. It hasn’t really scared me since I was 12, but I still love it.

And obviously it’s not scary, but one of my favorite Halloween flicks is Hocus Pocus. Oh, Bette.

Alien hasn’t stopped giving me bad dreams for two decades.  That’s some scary stuff.

German Expressionism is the creepiest shit ever. “Nosferatu” and “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” definitely gave me the wiggins, in a good way, ‘cos I use screencaps from Caligari as usericons in every forum that lets you have usericons.

The Nightmare Before Christmas isn’t scary, but it’s definitely a favorite Halloween movie.

I just saw Evil Dead 2 yesterday for the first time. And Army of Darkness. I cannot believe I’ve what I’ve been missing for all these years. o.O

There’s a gothy fabulous BBC show from a few years ago called “Hex” that nobody’s heard of, but is pretty awesome. Very creepy, and very funny.

What, not Bob Roberts?

Night of the Lving Dead remake is right up there on the list for me. And there was some thing I saw when I was a kid about invisible monsters that sucked people’s brains out through the back of their skulls that had me walking around pressed up against walls for months…

Alien and Terminator were very scary and quite compelling.  Especially since neither were really over when they were over.

Oh, its not a movie, but a few people in this household (and my sons’ fifth grade teacher) were freaked out for weeks by a Dr. Who episode called “The Empty Child”, which aired a few seasons back.

Again, “The Orphanage”. I can’t believe how scary a movie can be when it shows so little. And then, of course, it was sad. So very, very, very sad.

I don’t think anyone else has mentioned “May”. I read a review of it
some years ago, and filed it away in the back of my head. It was, when I finally watched it, just as creepy and unsettling as I’d heard.

Both are really fantastic movies, but I don’t think I could ever watch them again.

”And there was some thing I saw when I was a kid about invisible monsters that sucked people’s brains out through the back of their skulls that had me walking around pressed up against walls for months…”

Oh yeah! The guy who was in “F-Troop” was in it, right?

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both of them. Their taking the identities of your family, your friends. Not knowing if you´re the only one left. I saw the first one when I was around 10, and the second one around 20, and got equaly scared both times.

“The Serpent and The Rainbow” best of the voodoo style scary movies

Well, Jacob’s Ladder is still one of my favorite movies of all time.

Also have big love for The Devil’s Backbone, most all versions of Ringu (including The Ring), Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives, and The Descent.

Also, for those who think themselves too jaded for the horror genre: Suicide Club. It will fuck you up no matter how inured you are to violence or horror tropes. The opening scene, the bowling alley of horror, or the little children. Seriously fucked up movie.

Ms Kate:

Ooh, yes. And if I were younger “Blink” would have freaked me right out.

I’m afraid I must out-geek all of you Italian horror movie fans:  Mario Bava stomps Argento and Fulci’s asses when it comes to actual scariness (as opposed to mere gross-outs).  How about when they pound the spiked mask onto Barbara Steele’s face at the beginning of Black Sunday?  Or the dead medium coming back for her stolen ring in the (should be) third segment of Black Sabbath?  Or the ur-slasher film Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Blood Bay and a whole lot of other titles)?

The movie that really freaks me out every single time is the original version of The Haunting from 1963 (not the piece o’ crap remake with Catherine Zeta-Jones).  Bad afterlife movies scare me much more than bad death movies.  I’ll jump at Halloween, but it doesn’t stick with me.

Oh, and Ken Russell’s The Devils.  That is one fucked-up movie, and the scariest thing about it is that, in the end, there’s not one single supernatural event in it.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both of them. Their taking the identities of your family, your friends. Not knowing if you´re the only one left. I saw the first one when I was around 10, and the second one around 20, and got equally scared both times.

The Night of the Living Dead movies freak me out for very similar reasons:  not only will your friends and family turn on you, but they’ll actually rip you to pieces and eat you alive.

Fave raves:

Midnight Ride (1990). Mark Hamill, Michael Dudikoff. Savina Gersak. Robert Mitchum. A woman leaves her husband but picks up a psycho killer. Hamill is in full live-action Joker mode for this and totally sells it.

Gothic (1986). Gabriel Byrne, Natasha Richardson, Julian Sands, Myriam Cyr, Timothy Spall. Story of the night Mary Shelley dreamed Frankenstein. Over the top, dreamlike and weird.

The Wicker Man (1972). The tension grows almost unbearable as Edward Woodward hunts for a missing girl on an isolated island. Plus, Christopher Lee gets to sing!

It’s not exactly scary, but you should see Return of the Living Dead now- it’s right up there with Evil Dead II for sheer fun. Also, Frank Hennenloter’s movies are really enjoyably trashy- Basket Case, Basket Case 2, Brain Damage, Frankenhooker.

I think The Haunting (the original) is my current favorite actually scary movie.

I like Mario Bava the way I like Hammer Horror. Meaning a LOT! But not as scary as Argento. If you like that stuff, try the Vampire Lovers, with Jon Finch. Hilarious. Also Oliver Reed in the werewolf one. Curse of the Werewolf.

The Ring and The Exorcist are jumping to mind. I had to go home all by myself after getting taken to the Ring and have yet to forgive that group of friends. The Orphanage didn’t so much scare as just made me want to kill myself from depression after watching it. A few jumpy moments but overall sadness. In that same thought, Pan’s Labyrinth was also frightening (both in the ‘aggh, that is scary imagery’ and the ‘oh god, how can someone do that?’ sense).
More recently a fan of Alien (I didn’t see it until a year or two ago) and Coraline.

The Audition, 1999 by Takashi Miike, probably one of the most disturbing and compelling films I’ve seen. As an friend use to say of it, “that film can mess you up”

Jacob’s Ladder, not least because it inspired my favorite scary game, Silent Hill.  The Thing and the ‘68 version of Night of the Living Dead get honorable mention.

The Hills Have Eyes (original version)

Basket Case

Can’t think of any others right now.

Like many others have said, “Alien” is scary as hell.  The suspense is terrible and I love that you don’t really get to see the alien too clearly.  My imagination was scary enough.  Besides, Sigourney Weaver kicks ass. 

I’m glad to see you mentioned, “The Thing”, Amanda.  I’ve always thought that the suspense was well done in that movie and it gets overlooked a lot. 

Suspense, not gore, makes a movie scary for me.  I find the slasher movies funny, boring or just plain disturbing - and not disturbing in a good way.  Torture offends me.  I don’t find it entertaining in any way.  Not even when it’s pretend.

Most frightening movie: Jesus Camp, hands down, but I don’t want to see it again.

On a lighter note, I really liked The Ring, the American version.  The Japanese version explained more about the little girl’s origin, which made her behavior make more sense, reducing the fear factor for me.  I liked the facial distortion in images that the victims had after seeing the video.  It was a reminder of their fate and really fucking creepy.

Night of the Comet, Shaun of the Dead, Student Bodies, Buffy….

I don’t care much for horror, slasher or suspense, not unless heavily dosed with humor.

Additional note about The Ring: I think I was nervous about that movie until 7 days after I saw it, even though I knew it was fiction and am an atheist.  At the very least, I was happy when the 7 day mark came and went with no horrifying girls popping out of nearby TVs

I don’t like scary movies, but I love The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a modern B movie homage to B movies.

It’s filmed in Skeletorama.

How about “The Tenant”?  (scary director, too).  I know it’s not an official horror movie, but it had me in the fetal position in my chair, whimpering softly.  I’ll second on The Devils and The Wicker Man, too.

Otherwise - haven’t seen scary/horror movies for years, because I get too, well, scared.  For months.

I have always found “Don’t look Now”  (1973) to be totally creepy.  I am not one for slasher movies and prefer psychological horror.  When you throw in Venice, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, it is a treat for the eyes as well as chilling.

I’m with #52:  the scariest movie I’ve seen in the last 15 years was the incredibly disturbing “Audition,” which also manages to make a compelling case for feminism and equality while freaking you right the fuck out.

Also, want to agree on “The Orphanage.”  Totally terrifying, and also heartbreakingly sad.  Really well done.

Not a movie, but a 90-minute BBC TV mockumentary broadcast on Hallowe’en night 1992 - Ghostwatch and never since, such was the controversy it generated due to many people not realising it was a mockumentary and being seriously frightened by the events portrayed. It featured a then well-known BBC Children’s TV presenter doing a ‘ghost watch’ allegedly live from a suburban house puported to be experiencing psychic disturbance centering around the young daughters, with footage being discussed back in the studio by trusted and affable BBC talk show host Michael Parkinson. It slowly builds from a jolly Hallowe’en night jape to something increasingly out-of-control, sinister and disturbing. It inspired the Blair Witch Project at least in past. You can find the whole thing on youtube.

Of the recent movies, an honourable mention goes to “Rec” which went right for the fear impulse and just kept pushing it.  You know it’s going to be a bad night the first time a firefighter hits the floor…

Older movies - one of the scariest ones I ever saw was Threads.

Keep your psycho slashers and disembodied demons.  Gimme monsters:  Ginger Snaps, the original Hellraiser (Doug Bradley FTW), a Nosferatu/Shadow of the Vampire double bill, and fans of silents might also like the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s silent adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu (Iä!).

I also like my horror pics the way I like my pizza: With lots of cheese.  You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Hammer’s attempt to combine a kung fu with horror.  Popcorn stands out from the 80’s slasher genre in that the victims in the movie are offed by gimmicks reminiscent of the heyday of William Castle.  But for a perfect cocktail of both pure ham and the most transparent disguises outside of an Inspector Clouseau movie, nothing beats Vincent Price and Diana Rigg in Theater of Blood.

thecynicalromantic - there is another person who has heard of “Hex” - me! I loved that show, but somehow managed to miss the final show of season two so I have yet to know what happened to the characters. :(

“Exorcist” is one of the few movies I have never been able to watch from beginning to end in one sitting. It freaks me out too much. I’ve seen the whole movie, but in bits & pieces.

Since there are so many horror movie fans here, maybe someone can help me remember the name of a movie I saw when I was in high school…it was one of the first “unrated” movies to show in my hometown’s cinema.  It was about a town that had drowned a witch in a lake, and she came back centuries later to seek vengeance (the town had drained the lake and removed the cross that was keeping her spirit at bay). I remember one scene distinctly…a character was gutted by a circular saw blade that flew off the saw.  It was quite gory, and I’m sure it was the scene that earned the movie it’s non-rating.

Saw The Shining when I was in 3rd grade and it freaked the hell out of me. It was years before I could take a bath again (became shower buy the next day). Plus the guy in the dog suit giving the other guy head still makes me feel unclean (at the time I had no idea what was going on, it freaked me out as bad as bath lady)
Tobe Hooper’s “Salem’s Lot’ Not now, but then I remember holding my sneakers over my ears so I didn’t have to hear the vampires talk (the rocking chair in the attic scene.)
Evil Dead 1.
Suspiria & Tenebra.
and any scene where a character is talking with a voice not their own (e.g: The Believers-lame movie but the voodoo guy talking with the kid’s voice still gives me shivers)

oh, and this old Telly Savalas Movie where some monster on a train makes people bleed from their eyes. The tv was never shut offf at my grandma’s house and I awoke on her living room floor and saw people bleeding from there eyes (dem eyes! Dey bleed! to quote my cousin). I’ve never rewatched it (Terror Train?) because I love how horrified I was.

Sorry. I’m a horror nerd with a candy buzz.

Mnemosyne—-BAVA. He directed the underwater scene in Argento’s Inferno. It’s so creepy and nail biting and NOTHING happens. Love it. One of my favorite scenes in a horror film.

But for a perfect cocktail of both pure ham and the most transparent disguises outside of an Inspector Clouseau movie, nothing beats Vincent Price and Diana Rigg in Theater of Blood.

Except, of course, for The Abominable Doctor Phibes, where all of the murders are based on the plagues of Egypt.  Damn, that’s a freaky-ass movie.  The frog mask that crushes the guy’s skull freaked me the hell out.

Whoever mentioned The Beyond- I completely agree. I remember seeing it on Sci-fi years ago and the part near the end where the guy is just a mass of flesh that’s trying to pretty much eat the main character… the special effects seemed to scare me.

I had nightmares, but then again I was a wee one at the time.

Haute Tension scared me when I first saw it. Same goes for Dans Ma Peau, which is just totally creepy and disgusting. I also love 28 Days Later.

It’s kind of weird- I’m a very anxious, fearful person,  but movies never scare me. One of the few things that does, though- the X-Files episode “Irresistible.” It’s one of the few episodes that isn’t supernatural- it’s just about a serial killer. It scared the shit out of me, and if I ever see the actor who played the killer (Nick Chindlund) on another show, I’m really freaked out, even if he’s not playing a bad guy.

Ursula: Most frightening movie: Jesus Camp, hands down, but I don’t want to see it again.

What was it for you? In retrospect, the kids all Golden Calf’ing around that cardboard George Bush was creepiest, but I swear that when that woman started speaking in tongues for the first time, I broke out into a cold sweat. Maybe it was just that I’d never heard anyone doing that before, but it was profoundly creepy for me.

The original black & white ‘60s version of The Haunting, hands down. Although more psychological horror than bloody mess, like current stuff.

Everyone I’ve ever introduced this to, screams out loud at one scene.

Although I caught “Hellraiser” a decade or more after it’s release on late-night cable, and it’s cheesy, the acting is bad, but I’m found of it for some weird reason.

(I starred in a very bad early ‘80s horror film, both gruesome and boring, now available on DVD under a variety of titles, including “Toxic Zombies,” but I really can’t recommend it. To anyone, ever, but apparently zombie fans are fond of it.)

I’ll put The Orphanage (2007) and Drag Me to Hell (2009) against anything we’ve talked about here.

*Damn* my little sister! She swore up and down that The Orphanage wasn’t scary so I agreed to see it (I *cannot* watch scary movies, I have zero tolerance) and I spent the entire movie basically being like “HOLY FUCK. HOLY FUCK.” My friend, another wimp, burst into tears during the scene where the creepy old lady died and then spasmed. I didn’t cry but it certainly haunted my evenings for the next few months.

And then, just recently, my sister was all “hey, we should totally watch Drag Me to Hell! It’s not that scary, I’ve heard!”

...why does she hate me so much?? ;_;

I just watched the remake of “The Haunting” tonight!  Dumb and not scary at all, and I’m the easiest person in the world to scare at the movies.  The effects and set design are incredible, though.  Mostly it just made me want to live in that house.

Alien, easily.

I confess to loving the whole Friday the 13th series, but they were really predictable.

Carnival of Souls was on TV in NYC when I was 12 years old visiting there, now that’s a scary movie!

A few more notes on ‘Jaws’.

Robert Shaw did the final and complete write-up of the USS Indianapolis speech. Sackler had the idea, Milius extended it and Shaw finished it.

‘Jaws’ was perhaps the most watched movie of my generation with ‘Star Wars’ being the only contender. It was the first true blockbuster, shown in over 1000 theaters the first weekend of release with immediate and gratifying results for the studio. It is easy to forget that amongst the cast and crew, only Robert Shaw thought the movie was going to be a hit (referring to the Academy Award winning movie he co-starred in a few years earlier, Shaw said, “It’ll be bigger than the bloody ‘Sting.’”). There were reasons for others to be pessimistic. All movies shot on water are a nightmare and ‘Jaws’ was no different: delays were caused by sudden changes in the weather and the current, the robotic shark kept breaking down, the cast and crew worked through seasickness and, according to IMDB, Shaw couldn’t stand Richard Dreyfuss. Director Steven Spielberg is reported to have said that the first thing people on set will see after the last shot is the exhaust from his car leaving the location. In spite of it all, the movie was a sensation with lines stretching to the parking lots and people at the beach thinking twice before dipping their toes in the water.

A few years ago, there was a retrospective about the movie (I think it was the 30th anniversary special or something) in which Dreyfuss contributed a good deal of time. I have sympathy for anyone who had to work with the younger Richard Dreyfuss but age had mellowed him considerably and he spoke of his unqualified admiration for Robert Shaw, saying that while he was known as a great actor, few were aware that Shaw was a first-class writer.

Dreyfuss is the last surviving actor who rode the Orca. Roy Scheider passed away in February of 2008; to his dying breath he said ‘All That Jazz’ was his best work even though he knew ‘Jaws’ was how people would remember him (he was right on both counts). Two years after the release of ‘Jaws’, a heart attack took Robert Shaw; he was 51.

When I was a kid, I loved reading horror.  Jaws was the first book I ever read for pleasure, and it’s turned me off on swimming in the ocean at night forever.  I devoured Stephen King books when I was in high school, and I’d read The Shining or It, and spend days not being able to look out the bedroom or bathroom window at night.  But as much as I loved reading horror, I’ve never been a fan of scary movies.  I don’t have the stomach for it.

”I’ve never rewatched it (Terror Train?) because I love how horrified I was”

I have it on and old VHS under the name of “Horror Express”, but I believe that its gone through several re-namings

I don’t freak out much about gore or slasher flicks.  More suspenseful horror films, though…I’m a total wimp.  The Ring had me jumping at my own reflection in the mirror for weeks (I had long brown hair).  I don’t think I can ever watch Event Horizon again.  Session 9 had me curled up on the couch, clutching a stuffed animal.  Even that Dr. Who episode—the one with the statues that moved if you didn’t look at them—kind of freaked me out.  And I watched all of these movies as an adult, so I really have no excuse. 

When I was a kid, there was always Shock Theater on Saturday nights, and even if those old movie classics seem tame or even silly now, they scared the living daylights out of me back then. Does anyone remember The Tingler? Jeezy, that was terrifying! And The Brain That Wouldn’t Die? Those and the original Frankenstein movies kept me riveted to the sofa with a big pillow for burying my head when things got too scary.

Now movies are more sophisticated and gore-filled. I am more often disgusted or repelled than I am frightened. I’d say the second tier of horror films from my young adult days, like Alien or The Exorcist will remain my most frightening favorites.

Seconds on Home and Trilogy of Terror. I just played the Zuni hunter segment at a party and fun was had by all, but when I was a kid and was told “Bedtime.” right after it was finished, it was very scary.

I prefer atmospheric to things that jump out, and gore. The Others is one of my favorites, although I also really liked The Mist.

I have not watched the Human Centipede, but simply reading a synopsis and a few stills were enough to make it automatically my own “scariest movie.” I actually had trouble getting to sleep the night I read that. Thanks, can’t-remember-which-Pandagon-commenter!

Audition is definitely a game-changer for movie watching.  Total freakout!  But also worth mentioning, though it’s not really a horror movie is Begotten.  Creepy as hell and nearly impossible to get through.  Also pretty much anything by David Lynch but especially Eraserhead and Inland Empire.  Frikkin’ masterpieces, both.  And his daughter Jennifer did one recently called Surveillance that was the most intense nail biter I’ve seen since the Zuni hunter scared the bejesus outta me when I was a lad, glued to the TV.  We kids then had the added benefit of our very own local news anchor come on right before that part of the trilogy and warn our parents - who were safely upstairs - that the following program was not for the kiddies and contains intense shit people just shouldn’t be exposed to.  What a thrill for the three of us, sitting on the floor of our rec room, dressed in our pajamas, to have a seriously famous adult role model tell us we were about to see something so wildly inappropriate for us. 

And thanks for the kudos to X-Files’ Home episode!

Alien.
The Shining The gorgeous hotel, Scatman Cruthers, and the kid who played Danny make me extra fond of this movie. In the book, the Cruthers character lives and all three of them escape. I was pissed they killed him
Silence of the Lambs:  I watched it with a friend, who then left me home alone.
Fire in the Sky: 4 guys go camping and end up in a ufo. Scared the crap out of me.
Rosemarys Baby. The look of horror on Mia Farrows face when she sees her baby for the first time was amazing. Movies where it seems the whole world is after you are frightening to me.
The Ring. I saw both the Japanese and American versions. The part where she comes out of the tv scared me to death.

What a thrill for the three of us, sitting on the floor of our rec room, dressed in our pajamas, to have a seriously famous adult role model tell us we were about to see something so wildly inappropriate for us.
LOL!

The Ring. I saw both the Japanese and American versions. The part where she comes out of the tv scared me to death.

I saw both The Ring and Signs at a sleepover I went to as a teenager. ...And The Ring freaked me out pretty good but it was *Signs* that had me jumping at reflections the most. It seriously scared me more, I think. (What the hell, self? That was a ridiculous movie!)

Of course, part of that was that I purposefully looked away for most of the time the video was playing in the movie—in order to have not “watched” it, and thus be safe in 7 days. Hooray for taking the rules of the movie way too seriously! :p

And then, just recently, my sister was all “hey, we should totally watch Drag Me to Hell! It’s not that scary, I’ve heard!”

Oh, that was mean.  By any chance do you owe her money or something?

Hooray for taking the rules of the movie way too seriously!

Candyman…  Candyman…  Candyman… Candyman… oh, look!  A squirrel!

Alien  was twelve and my big brother took me to the midnight show.  Lied that I was 11 to get a cheap ticket.  It’s a good show.

The Other  Creepy damn 70s movie about twins who kill people who bother them.  SPOILING

STARTS

NOW—when they take their infant cousin and pickle her to make her look like the freak show thing at the carnival???????  Fuck.  That scares me now.  And then it turns out that the “evil” twin IS DEAD and has been for the whole movie?  And the “nice” twin is actually out of his fucking mind….

And the ultimate…some cheesy 70s movie…I don’t even know what it’s called, but I had to be 5 or so when I saw it, and when I find others my age who saw it, we’re all equally freaked out.  It was about a couple who move to a farm.  The woman keeps seeing these little creatures who live behind the walls and want to kill or kidnap her.  No one believes her.  Eventually she’s left there alone, and they get her.  They tie her up and are dragging her through the house.  She gets a hold of a camera—an old one with the 4 sided flashcube.  Every flash scares the things off, b/c they can’t stand the light…but they come back.  Soon she’s shot all the flashcubes, and they drag her off to the well.

Hubby comes home looking for her and can’t find her.  She voice-overs some crazy shit about how it’s not so bad living in the well, and you know that the pictures will be developed and they’ll know she wasn’t crazy, at least not then, but shit.  I was scared of the dark for decades thanks to that movie.  Scarred, I tell you.

Well, shit.

I went looking around teh internets for that movie.  It’s called, fittingly enough, “Don’t be afraid of the dark”.  This page http://www.kindertrauma.com/?p=97 has a screen cap of the creepy little unstoppable things.

Guillermo del Toro is remaking it.

I am never turning my lights off again.

The Night of the Living Dead movies freak me out for very similar reasons:  not only will your friends and family turn on you, but they’ll actually rip you to pieces and eat you alive.

Just watched that movie at a friend’s house earlier this week one late evening.  Wasn’t scary as the zombies were lumbering and moving so slowly that they resembled a bunch of drunken/depressant addled people who were looking to pillage/destroy stuff/people in slo-mo right after finding out the concert with their favorite band was sold out.  It more like a documentary/allegory of the underlying tensions prevalent in late 1960’s US society than an actual horror flick to me. 

The scary factor wasn’t helped when one friend kept reminding how the movie reminded him of President Reagan.  As a result, I had to show him the following two clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHsEpC0FZNY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkes1YzoLdY

After the end of the film and hanging out until 2 am, my friends jokingly asked if I knew what to do if any zombies approached me at that late hour.  I replied that if any happen upon me, the 7-8 pound guitar I happened to have with me can double as an effective club if they’re not already scared off by my horrid guitar playing techniques. 

Robert Wise’s The Haunting, FTW.  Absolutely shows that masterful atmosphere can make the audience do all the work for you when it comes to pants crapping dread and terror.

Audition, the only “torture porn” movie that actually disturbs the deep waters of the mind.

50’s Body Snatchers, Alien and The Thing hands down for the sci-fi category.  The Descent for runner up.

Session 9 for masterful use of a location.

And Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, and especially Mulholland Drive (opening scene in the diner . . . brr) for scariest movies probably not meant to be strictly horror.

Oh, and the original Japanese Pulse (Kairo) as the pinnacle of Japanese horror!

Glad this conversation is still going.

There was a film with Lon Chaney where he falls in love with a girl and he amputates his body parts to prove his love or something. Anybody know what I’m talking about? I caught the tail end of it on cable and the final shots of Chaney, without spoiling anything here, were incredibly disturbing; just an amazing performance.

House of 1000 cOrpses and Devil’s rejects. I love me some Rob Zombie.

I really do not like torture porn. If I wanted to see stories about people getting tortured and abused, I’d turn on the news. YMMV, of course. I don’t like gore either, but there are movies that violate the “no gore” rule that I like anyway.

Movies that scare me in the way that I like to be scared include:

Haunting (the original)
The Others
Ringu
Shaun of the Dead
The Changeling
Kairo
Dark Water (the Japanese version. Haven’t seen the other one)
Let the Right One In
The Sixth Sense
The Devil’s Backbone
Night of the Living Dead (proof that you need neither stars nor a big budget to make a good movie)
Rosemary’s Baby
“Hush”—an episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (for me, the gentlemen are the scariest monsters ever.)

A couple of the “monsters of the week” from the TV show Supernatural are impressive. All of the monsters play on previous myths and tropes, but most of them are executed well. I especially liked the episode about the haunted painting.

I saw Frank Langella’s “Dracula” as a kid and it scared the hell out of me. With the exception of the seduction scene (lasers? really?) it’s held up pretty well. Back then “Halloween” and “The Fog” scared me, too. I’ve been meaning to see the latter at some point to see if it’s as good as I remember.

The Night of the Living Dead, watched at 1am on Thanksgiving night, followed by a 3am walk home through the fields in the mist, nearly killed my whole family. Pheasant. We all nearly died of fright on the spot. I’ve never watched it again, nor any sequels or remakes.

But then I never was a horror fan. Gore is right out, can’t abide it, and I’m disgustingly easily manipulated by movies in general, so I don’t watch them much, and I don’t watch scary stuff in particular.

Alien stands out though. Since it was sci fi it snuck under my radar & scared the piss out of me. I have never actually seen the alien pop out of Hurt’s chest, hands over eyes every time no matter how hard I tried…

But I love that old stuff - Cabinet of Dr Caligari, M, Nosferatu, etc. Also the scary noir - Night of the Hunter & so forth. I need to start a serious DVD collection and hold a “history of film” party series. Or series of series, at this point; so much material!

maatnofret, the American remake of Dark Water is actually good.  Very different from the Japanese version, but it’s significantly creepy in its own right.

Looking around for that damn Don’t be afraid of the dark has made me realize why Sleestak were so scary—they were giant versions of the little creepy whispery things in the movie—same fear of the light, same desire to toss you down a dark well to be killed, same pointy heads—except the little creepy things WON and the lady didn’t manage to duck under their arms and get away like the Marshalls always did.  The little creepy whispery things were COMPETENT.

I’d like to suggest another one, not always considered a horror flick though I think it fits the genre: Cat People.  Amazing flick.

There was a film with Lon Chaney where he falls in love with a girl and he amputates his body parts to prove his love or something.

That would be The Unknown, and the hot babe he amputates his arms for is Joan Crawford in her flapper-girl phase.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was too scary for me, though now I kinda like most of it.  My cousins insisted we watch the encore of it so I ended up watching it twice at the drive-in as a child o-o

Skeleton Key because it is absolutely terrifying that some rather good actors and actresses were in a movie that insanely racist in this day and age.

Sorry for the spoiler, but if you haven’t seen it, you shouldn’t.  The twist?  The bad guys are black and practicing voodoo.

An American Werewolf in London scared the shit out of me when I watched it at the grossly inappropriate age of 13.  I’m still afraid of the dark because of that damn film.

More recently, 28 Days Later gave me a severe dose of the heeby-jeebies, and took me right back into the pit of oh-my-god-what-was-that-noise-in-that-dark-corner-over-there.

I really do not like torture porn. If I wanted to see stories about people getting tortured and abused, I’d turn on the news. YMMV, of course. I don’t like gore either, but there are movies that violate the “no gore” rule that I like anyway.

Movies that scare me in the way that I like to be scared include:

Haunting (the original)
The Others
Ringu
web hosting review
Shaun of the Dead
The Changeling
Kairo
Dark Water (the Japanese version. Haven’t seen the other one)
Let the Right One In
The Sixth Sense
shared hosting
The Devil’s Backbone
Night of the Living Dead (proof that you need neither stars nor a big budget to make a good movie)
Rosemary’s Baby
“Hush”—an episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (for me, the gentlemen are the scariest monsters ever.)

A couple of the “monsters of the week” from the TV show Supernatural are impressive. All of the monsters play on previous myths and tropes, but most of them are executed well. I especially liked the episode about the haunted painting. business web hosting

I saw Frank Langella’s “Dracula” as a kid and it scared the hell out of me. With the exception of the seduction scene (lasers? really?) it’s held up pretty well. Back then “Halloween” and “The Fog” scared me, too. I’ve been meaning to see the latter at some point to see if it’s as good as I remember.

Of course, there’s always that ultimate horror flick, Six Days, Seven Nights. 

I have a soft spot for Blair Witch simply because the national park where it was fillmed is just an hour and a half north of me (the park is also so small a drunk cat could find its way out in less than two hours, which made the movie even more unintentionally hilarious).  There are two scenes that do it for me enough that I have it on DVD - the scene of all the stick figures hung in the trees is actually well filmed, and very atmospheric, and the scenes of them approaching the abandoned house in the dark are spooky, because abandoned houses have a “just waiting” kind of feel to them, especially at night.

Other than that, though, it’s mostly silly.  But I like silly horror movies - which is why I have Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows in my collection.  *sigh*

I suppose I shouldn’t have an opinion about Jesus Camp because I didn’t actually see it because I didn’t think I could handle it, but I agree with Ursula.  I also agree with Mnemosyne about Ken Russell’s The Devils, which is even creepier for being based on actual events.  The priest who was tortured to death for crossing the church was an actual historical person.  For the historical account, see The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley.

Maybe I just didn’t get it, but I thought Shaun of the Dead was so stupid, it couldn’t possibly be scary.

Definitely the B&W;The Haunting. Alien. Carnival of Souls. Cat People (the B&W;, not the Natasha Kinski one). The Devil’s Backbone. There’s another one with Anna Paquin, directed by a Spanish guy, I think it’s called Darkness. trippy ending.

My fave X-files isn’t as scary as humorous—it’s about vampires taking over a town, seen from both Scully’s and Muldur’s perspective. With Luke Wilson as the sheriff. he’s sexy and smart in Scully’s version and a doofus in Muldur’s.

No mention of Something Wicked This Way Comes?

Sad.

I always thought “Aliens” was scary as hell. For some reason, I never got around to watching the original “Alien.”

Why is my comment replicated at #113? Is that spam or what?

Yes, Shaun of the Dead is more silly than scary. You could say the same thing about the original version of “Dawn of the Dead.” The mall scene still makes me laugh.

Something Wicked This Way Comes didn’t scare me that much, even as a kid. Loved the movie, though.

Caren at #107: Interesting. I expect remakes to be utter crap. I was pleasantly surprised that the American remake of Ringu (i.e. The Ring) was quite good. The remake even added elements that made it interesting in its own right.

So I’m going to have to check that out.

Also on the “to see” list:

The Unknown
The Call of C’thulu (a silent film made in 2005. Who can resist?)
Evil Dead II
Freaks

It’s a horror-fantasy film, but there is a movie made in 1924 from one of Lovecrafts’ stories:

Adaptation

In 1924 Peter Rhodes made a silent animated short based on the Lovecraft story, but the film was lost in 1938, at the time of Rhodes’ death. In 2006 it was found and restored, the original soundtrack replaced by a new score by Keith Hardy, and introduced in H.P. Lovecraft’s Horror Festival of that year. Lovecraft in person gave his permission to make the film in 1924, an exceptional case due to the disdain he had for the cinema. The movie has a technique very common in the 1920s and 1930s, using cut-out silhouettes to tell the story.

Link

Lovecraft came by his disdain for the movies honestly, one of his few employments for an hourly wage was being an usher in a silent movie theater.

Can someone help me out here: When I was young, too young, my older brothers watched a B-grade horror about a kind of zombie that walked around whispering ‘The Darkness’. I remember that it would not kill blind people, and in the end they kind of blew it up. This movie had a profound impact on me, in that, to this day, if I’m in a dark room and someone whispers: “The Darkness”, I freak the fuck out. I have been searching high and low for this film but it’s completely disappeared from this earth. I don’t think it’s called ‘The Darkness’ as all my searches have revolved around this term and been fruitless. Any help in this matter would be much appreciated.