The Horror! The Horror!

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.

Top-10 movie lists are always subjective. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the horror genre, where the level of psychological scarring easily trumps any fancy notions about quality or historical importance. Your scariest movie could be some Z-grade monster-chiller-horror-theatre flick you watched when you were 11 while you were supposed to be babysitting your little brother. And could there be anything more personal than your very own “eyeworm scenes” — those images that have burrowed into your skull, burned themselves into the back of your retina and set up house in the dank, dark corners of your brain? To celebrate Halloween, here are 10 flicks that scared us.

Photo by MGM/Courtesy of Getty Images.

The Haunting (1963) This eerie adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s haunted-house novel does more with its sound effects than most contemporary horror flicks do with $20 million worth of overwrought CGI. Director Robert Wise doesn’t want to do anything as vulgar as scare you: he wants to manoeuvre you into scaring yourself.
Eyeworm scene: The door that bulges ... but never opens.
Accept no imitations: Avoid Jan de Bont’s bloated remake. Even Catherine Zeta-Jones prowling around as a gorgeous lesbian in Prada boots can’t liven it up.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) Despite the title, this pop-cult phenom is not about the fear of witches — it’s about the fear of camping. With nerve-ripping verité techniques, directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez probe the primal terror of being disoriented and lost.
Eyeworm moment: Nothing about this minimalist movie sounds scary in print, but the filmmakers get macabre mileage from twigs and rocks.
Accept no imitations: Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 proves that it’s hard to follow up a fluke.

Dead Alive (1992) Back in his pre-Lord of the Rings days, Peter Jackson shocked with this slapstick splatterfest, about a good lad who’s just trying to look after his undead mom and a house full of uninvited guests. While this fanboy favourite may be one of the goriest movies ever made, it’s also strangely cheerful.
Eyeworm moment: The “lawnmower scene,” which should be of particular delight to anyone who would secretly like to apply lethal gardening methods to those damn hobbits.
Accept no imitations: Stay away from anyone who wants to wallow in Jackson’s extremes without bringing along his humour and intelligence. (Like, say, Rob Zombie.)

Photo Warner Bros./Getty Images.

The Exorcist (1973) Everyone remembers the spinning heads and green bile in this classic of demonic possession, but it’s William Friedkin’s long, slow lead-up that really unnerves. (The E-word doesn’t even come up until about the 45-minute mark.)
Eyeworm moment: In a quiet preview to the big shaking-bed show, Regan interrupts her mom’s radical-chic ’70s party by standing in her white nightgown and urinating on the floor.
Accept no imitations: Avoid Renny Harlin’s hack-job on the Paul Schrader prequel, which just confirms rumours that the Prince of Lies has a branch office in Hollywood. (On the other hand, Jennifer Shiman’s animated web short, The Exorcist in 30 Seconds, and Re-enacted by Bunnies, is definitely worth a look-see.)

The Fly (1986) This remake of the 1958 horror classic is ostensibly a creature-feature, but this account of Seth Brundle, half-scientist/half housefly, is actually David Cronenberg’s very squishy version of Love Story, wherein Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis try to hold on to each other in the unlovely face of decomposition and death.
Eyeworm moment: In the interests of science, Goldblum sets out his eating habits: “Brundlefly regurgitates on his food, it liquefies, and then he sucks it up.”
Accept no imitations: Be very afraid of Fly II, a mutated cinematic mess with Eric Stoltz playing Brundlefly, Jr.

Frankenstein (1931) James Whale overcomes a weak script with sheer directorial will and atmospheric style, finding both irony and poignancy in the idea that the bolt-necked Karloff is not a monster, but a victim.
Eyeworm moment: The scene in which the creature accidentally drowns a little girl was cut because it was considered upsetting. What remains is a shot of the monster moving toward her and then an uncomfortable gap. Many viewers fill it in with something much worse than drowning.
Accept no imitations: This is that exceptional case in which the sequel, the gloriously Gothic Bride of Frankenstein, might actually surpass the original.

Photo Kent Miles/Getty Images.

Halloween (1978) John Carpenter becomes the father — wait, make that the insane older brother — of the teen-slasher flick with this seminal movie, an unstable mixture of tantalizing topless shots and punishing puritanism.
Eyeworm moment: The opening POV sequence forces you to identify with an unknown murderer.
Accept no imitations: Gee, where to start — the seven sequels or the countless knife-wielding-maniac-stalks-horny-high-school-kids knock-offs?

The Tenant (1976) As a child, Roman Polanski escaped the Krakow ghetto for the Polish countryside, where he survived by passing as a Catholic. All that film-theory chatter about the annihilation of identity is completely and tragically concrete for Polanski, and it shows in this unsettling psychological study about a man who might be turning into the suicidal girl who previously occupied his squalid Paris apartment.
Eyeworm moment: Who is that figure standing in the opposite window? And why is it motionless for hours at a time?
Accept no imitations: There are none — though Polanski’s Repulsion can be seen as a creepy companion piece.

Photo Pictorial Parade/Getty Images.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) Rookie director George Romero and buckets of fake blood (actually, Bosco chocolate syrup) kicked off a gory, low-budget revolution, combining B-movie scares with social comment and ruthlessly bleak endings.
Eyeworm moment: Actress Kyra Schon, who played the little girl who eats her parents, now runs a website offering engraved reproductions of her matricidal garden trowel. There’s a reason they sell.
Accept no imitations: Skip the “colourized” version, which tints all the zombies green.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Director Tobe Hooper admits that the film channels “my own fears and terrors of, you know, family get-togethers.” He’s referring to that grotesque parody of the all-American supper hour, in which a girl is strapped to a dining-room chair and tortured by the slack-jawed, snaggle-toothed rural relations of cannibalistic serial killer Leatherface.
Eyeworm moment: Leatherface’s little “happy dance.”
Accept no imitations: Forget the 2003 remake, which plays like a Guess Jeans ad with disembowelment.

Alison Gillmor is a writer based in Winnipeg.

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