Top 10 Scary Movies
by Anna Kaufman

You’re safe at home in your living room. You’ve got popcorn, some soda. Maybe the lights are on, maybe you’re brave and they’re not. But the blinds are drawn. Your door is locked tight. You’re perfectly safe. After all: ghosts, demons, zombies, monsters…they don’t exist. As a rational adult, you know this. So what is it about certain films that can make your muscles tense, make an icy shiver race up your spine, make your heart quicken at a sudden sound—a quiet creak, a soft breath, the scratch of a nail or a claw on the windowpane? Probably just a tree branch, you tell yourself. But you don’t turn around. You don’t dare tear your eyes away from the screen.

These ten films don’t just shock or frighten: they get under your skin. Unlike the slashers of Elm Street or Camp Crystal Lake—who are here today, gone to terrorize another group of nubile young teenagers tomorrow—the fears evoked by the films on our Top Ten list will linger. Once you’ve seen them, we guarantee you’ll never look at a placid wave, a roadside motel or a plate of fava beans the same way again.


Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Bride of Frankenstein
Arguably the best of the early Universal monster movies, “Bride of Frankenstein” was one of the first films to give the genre a realistic gloss, with its lavish laboratory sets adding an air of authenticity to the actually rather tragic story of a monster looking for love in all the wrong places. While probably not bloodcurdling—or bloody—enough to frighten today’s jaded audiences, “Bride” did help propagate the horrifying trend of scary-movie sequels.




Psycho (1960)
Even if you know it’s coming—and who, 47 years after the movie hit theaters, would not know it’s coming—the pivotal shower scene still shocks. Brilliantly directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who does more with a small trickle of black-and-white blood than most directors can manage with full-color buckets of it, the sudden, terrifying death of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) will stick you right where you’re most vulnerable. After watching, who can stand naked and alone, with shampoo dribbling into your eyes, and not feel like Norman Bates might be lurking on the other side of the curtain? It’s enough to make Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking score haunt your dreams. Psycho




The Exorcist (1973)
The Exorcist Linda Blair projectile-vomiting pea soup has become something of a cultural joke by now, but actually viewing “The Exorcist,” you’ll find it surprisingly hard to maintain a detached, ironic air. Instead, watching trapped, transformed Regan MacNeil (Blair) spider-walk down the stairs or make highly-inappropriate use of a crucifix while her terrified mother (Ellen Burstyn) looks on, you won’t be laughing. You’ll be crossing yourself.




Jaws (1975)
The tagline for the sequel was the only brilliant thing about it: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” After seeing Steven Spielberg’s original, you’ll never feel comfortable dipping a toe in again. Spielberg, like Hitchcock, frightens more by showing less—the shark itself rarely appears, in part because the mechanical models so frequently malfunctioned. It works to the film’s advantage: your heart beats faster at just a hint of fin, at the racing pulse of John Williams’s famous score, at Robert Shaw’s measured voice as he details the terrible fate of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. And when that gaping maw finally does appear, well…prepare to throw yourself toward the back of your seat and away from anything resembling water.
Jaws




Alien (1979)

Alien

Though it spawned several action-packed sequels (those face-hugging aliens really can breed), what makes the original, Ridley Scott-directed film effective is the atmosphere of claustrophobic horror. It’s true that in space, no one can hear you scream; there’s also nowhere to run. Suffocating blackness outside, a huge, acidic-blooded monster inside…these are not good odds. Watching Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley best them, even as the rest of her crew is decimated, never ceases to thrill, terrify, and make one eye the starry sky just a little more warily.




The Shining (1980)
The elevator’s grand, gold doors slide open and a river, a torrent, of blood pours out. As a horror movie moment, it’s tough to top. And Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining is full of such visually arresting moments: the eerie ghosts of the murdered sisters standing at the end of the hall as young Danny (Danny Lloyd) rounds the corner; what’s waiting for Jack (Jack Nicholson) in the bathroom of Room 237; and, of course, an axe-wielding Nicholson breaking down the door that’s the only thing standing between him and a wailing Shelley Duvall—and, it feels like, the audience. Because that’s what’s truly frightening about “The Shining”: the idea that your father, your husband, your friend, anybody, could be the one to turn on you. The Shining




Poltergeist (1982)
Poltergeist “Poltergeist” has a way of polarizing people: which moment of this seminal spook story (why, yes, that was a cemetery they built that development on top of!) is truly the most traumatizing? The coulrophobic will cite the clown doll that the angry spirits bring to life, while those who feared the monster in the closet when they were young will be huddling behind the couch at a mere glimpse of what this wardrobe holds. But in many ways, “Poltergeist” is really a horror movie for parents. Your children are not safe, not even in your own home. Bad things are coming. In fact: “They’re here.”




Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Look at Hannibal Lecter. He’s so charming! So articulate! So dignified, even strapped down with a bite guard over his face. He’s just so…alluring, that you really would be tempted to accept his invitation to dinner. Which would be bad. ‘Cause he eats people. (And washes ‘em down with fine wine.) Sure—Buffalo Bill’s flashy, hide-tanning efforts form the bulk of “Silence of the Lambs’s” plot, but it’s Sir Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of “Hannibal the Cannibal” that really gets under your skin. Watching him, you’re both bewitched and repulsed, and the real fear becomes the worry that the repulsion will waver just long enough for him to get close.

Silence of the Lambs




28 Days Later... (2002)
28 Days Later...
Before “28 Days Later...” came out in 2002, the mental picture of zombies was universally that of a slow, shuffling, rotting corpse with an unquenchable hunger for “braaaaaaiiins.” But the writer-director team of Alex Garland and Danny Boyle changed all that. These new rage-infected zombies terrorizing a quarantined England’s few survivors are real speed demons: charging down tunnels, smashing through glass, leaping at you out of the dark. Once scary only en masse, just a single specimen of this new breed of zombie is deadly. Twenty-eight days later, you’ll still be nervous walking down an empty street after dark.




The Ring (2002)
And suddenly you’re not so safe in your living room anymore. This American adaptation of the Japanese horror film “Ringu,” about a cursed video tape, left thousands of wide-eyed cinephiles terrified of their own televisions. And for good reason: the flickering black-and-white images that kick off the unlucky viewer’s last seven days alive are still holding court behind the real life viewer’s eyelids. The smooth black screen of a silent TV set suddenly seems threatening—a dark portal through which angry ghost girl Samara can slip to wreak her vengeance. And we let her in, just by watching. The Ring


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PNJ092507
(Updated 03/06/08 HC)


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