Mr. Scary

I've been thinking about what movies I have found the scariest in all my years of horror fandom. There are tons of films with frightening scenes, and it would take ages to recall and list all of those. But as for motion pictures in their entirety, I find it really hard to decide which ones are really that scary throughout. Off the top of my head, I can name a handful that have really gotten under my skin:

The Conjuring

The Exorcist

The Woman in Black

The Haunting

The Changeling
The Innocents
Alien

These are more or less in order of fright factor, but I would probably re-order these and even change some of my choices months from now. In fact, I've learned from experience that a re-watch is the true test of a film's ranking on the horror scale. 

For example, I watched The Conjuring (2013) for the second time last night. The first time I saw it (at night, sitting alone at home in a pitch black room), I had a terrible time afterward getting to sleep and staying asleep, waking often and thinking of scenes from the movie, and when I did sleep, nightmares filled my head... and I hadn't experienced those since I was a kid. So, you see how much The Conjuring affected me. That was many months ago. Last night, I figured "Ah, I know how this goes... this won't even be scary this time". I was wrong. The movie still freaked me out, so much so that I had to watch something much lighter (The Muppets) to take my mind off of unseen evil and creepy dolls. That worked up to a point, but once I lay my head down to sleep, it was tough keeping images from The Conjuring out of my mind. I finally slept, and actually made it through the night in one piece. Whew!

The Conjuring is a rare example of a truly effective modern horror movie. Most of the films  (well, all of them, to some degree) these days rely heavily on tropes of the genre, and transcend only with some originality and better than average execution. As you can see on my list, only two other movies were released in the 1980's or later. Re-hashing ideas is common across the board in the film business, and that of course leads to a glut of average and poor productions. The ones that rise to the top of the heap owe their success to something special, and that is usually in the story and acting departments. Plenty of horror flicks look great, but the scares may be few or cheap, so we don't really remember them for the right reasons. 

The Exorcist was a movie that I was actually afraid to watch for many years. As a youngster, I'd heard friends describing its weird, disturbing, and violent scenes. I'd also heard about people fainting and running out of the first theatrical showings. I sort of filed that away as a warning that this was too much to handle. When I first watched The Exorcist on video rental sometime back in the 90's, it left an impression seared upon my psyche. There aren't a lot of truly terrifying bits in there, but the unearthly, disturbing atmosphere burrows into you, and in my case, I felt chills down my spine over and over again as I watched. The Exorcist pulled out all the stops in its graphic depiction of demonic possession and exorcism. At the time of its debut in 1973, this stuff was shocking, more than movie-goers had ever seen in a theatre before. Of course, this doozy inspired and influenced scads of cinematic horrors (including Exorcist sequels) since then. And we've seen how pretty much everything else pales in comparison. 

A quaint spot for a B-and-B.... not!

(The Haunting - 1963)

I place The Woman in Black (1989), The Haunting (1963), The Changeling (1980), and The Innocents (1961) in their own category. They are all ghost stories and they are all similarly low-key with only a handful of startling and frightening scenes. What sets them apart from their demonic counterparts is that more is implied, through tension and suspense built through music or lack of it, sound design, sets and locations, and camera techniques. You can find these elements in good demon possession movies, too, but you'll also find a whole lot more noise, gore, and over-the-top thrills and scares. These four ghost stories are my favourites not just because they are frequently ranked as among the best of their kind, but because they all achieved their goal to send me away with my spine still tingling. And the main reason these are foremost in the genre is the superior stories they tell, three of the four based on recognized works of literature. The Changeling was based on an alleged real experience.

The sense of quiet unease is the backbone of each of these films. The stereotypical gothic mansion serves as the setting for all four stories, each of which unfolds gradually, revealing a mystery upon which the subsequent events are built. For me, there are moments of terror sprinkled conservatively throughout these films. There are sudden frights, and there are also measured appearances of spine-chilling visuals. No monstrous bloody fangs here. Instead, we've got the carefully orchestrated manipulation of our deepest fears. And I do indeed shift to edge of my seat, pull my arms and legs in close, and lean forward in anxiety and dread.

This is called fun!

At the other end of the spectrum is Alien (1979), which I don't really rank last on my list, but just wanted to sort of set it apart from the others. It is a different beast. This very first entry in the film series is best described as a good old-fashioned haunted house movie, this time with a physical antagonist that voraciously eliminates its prey. Except in Alien, the "haunted house" is a spaceship, and the antagonist is not merely an Earthly monster, but an intelligent and aggressive extraterrestrial. Early scenes lead us through the daily lives of the ship's crew, and to their descent to an unknown planet to answer a distress call. Yeah, big mistake. As you, dear reader, may or may not already know, that creature stows away on the humans' craft and methodically takes out the crew members one by one. At turns quiet and spooky, then frightening and gory, Alien establishes an atmosphere of isolation, all cold corridors, mostly silent but for tiny machine clinks and clicks and drips. You've got your jump-scares, both real and false, but there are the more weird and creepy scenes, too, to satisfy your sense of wonder and imagination. A classic of both horror and sci-fi, though I feel this is more of a horror film in a sci-fi setting, less the other way around. 

Lovely chap, that Larry Talbot. Needs a shave, though.

Tonight is Halloween! I haven't participated in All Hallows' Eve in decades, at least not candy or costume-wise, but as I'm a long-time huge horror movie fan, I have always slapped some freaky seasonal flicks in the video player. Actually, for about the last month and a half, I have sporadically had little runs of consecutive nights of both classic and modern fright films. Last night was The Conjuring, which suitably unnerved me... a second time. Tonight I'll first watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown as a gentle cartoon warm-up, then the main feature will be Let the Right One In, a modern Swedish vampire gem that I love. After that, if I am so inclined, I may put on the original The Wolf Man, from 1941. The Wolf Man is my favourite horror movie of all time, one that I've watched just about every single year ever since I first bought it on home video back in the late 90's.