Happy Halloween weekend! I was just going to call this post “5 scariest movies”, but you’ll disagree with me on them. Scaryness is a subjective thing, like politics and pornography. What works for one person won’t work for another. But these movies DO work for me, and I don’t scare easy. I haven’t had a decent nightmare in 10 years.

1. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) Director George Romero’s low-budget masterpiece has bad sound, high-contrast black and white photography and only so-so acting, but Jesu Christo what a premise! A small group of strangers are trapped in a farm house as the recently dead rise and walk the earth. Why the hell are they doing that? Nobody knows! It’s an insane idea made plausible by sheer lack of explanation. Plus the dead shamble, not sprint, like your modern living dead. You can easily outrun a Zombie but what if you’re surrounded by ‘em? Subsequent Romero zombie movies are less scare-fests and more social satire - great as sly metaphors, but not nearly so creepy.

2. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) John Landis, of ANIMAL HOUSE and BLUES BROTHERS fame, finds a perfect shock formula. Often horror movies build tension, then slip in a joke; it’s called “comic relief” and it’s useful to keep audiences from numbing on the horror. AWIL though is a genuinely funny comedy with sudden, sharp bursts of violence and terror.  Within the first half hour you literally don’t know what to expect from one minute to the next - imagine watching a 3 stooges movie where sometimes you get the funny eye-poke sound effect, but other times you actually watch the eye erupt in blood and viscera. And you can’t stop watching, because the sound effect is really good.

3. TAXI DRIVER (1976) You experience a story through the eyes of the lead character. In essence this guy is taking you on a tour. Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle seems like a pretty cool guy at first, then he’s a little quirky, then you gradually realize that you’re locked in a cab with a complete maniac. He’s speeding straight toward a brick wall, and he thinks it’s a freeway on ramp, and you can’t get out. Plus, you got Harvey Keitel with long hair.

4. THE SERVANT (1963) This early Harold Pinter/Joseph Losey effort is scary in subtle ways, which you can’t quite put your finger on. Terrible things happen, or perhaps they don’t, but you can barely tell and it just gets more and more ominous. By the time its over you feel like you’ve seen a dozen people murdered right in front of you, and the worst that’s happened is James Fox has gotten drunk. Or worse. Or not.

5. ANYTHING STARRING HILARY DUFF

5. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT - I wish!

5. THE RESIDENT’S ICKY FLIX - Not really a movie, but a collection of “videos” from the world’s weirdest band. This stuff gets under your skin like the lead creature in an early David Cronenberg movie. Especially creepy is the REYNALDO AND THE LOAF suite, 10 minutes of difficult music over the story of a lonely old man who kidnaps a child and smears mud on him. You may also be disturbed by MOISTURE, a sixty-second piece with is completely indescribable. You’ll be surprised how unsettling this stuff is.

Honorable mention goes to THE EVIL DEAD (1981), Sam Raimi’s first feature. Thing is, the first twenty minutes are pretty lame, which lulls you into a false sense of security; then suddenly it kicks into overdrive and sucker punches you. I can’t say whether it’s a strategy or a lucky break, but it works baby.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 8:29 pm and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.