Favorite scary films

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I’ve often wondered what it was like for Nicholson, who in terms of his glamorous lifestyle, is so unlike Schmidt, to play Schmidt. Did he sometimes think as he filmed a scene with a woman his own age - Schmidt’s wife - lying in bed next to him, that this could have been my life?
 
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The Others is always on my list.

The ORIGINAL “Bad Seed” is chilling.

I’ve always considered “Deliverance” to be a scary thriller.

ETA Original “The Omen”, original “The Thing”
 
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It is one of the rare films that was so faithful to the novel.
 
I always thought The Bad Seed was more of a psychological thriller than a scary movie. It really wasn’t scary.
 
I guess I had forgotten the subplot about
the mother. It has been more than 20 years since I have seen the film. I remember the actress who played the little girl was really good.
I didn’t realize the film was based on a novel.
 
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s.cono said:
I saw a movie called “The Sentinel” when I was a teenager. 1977. It scared me somewhat, and I was pretty jaded. Maybe because I lived in an apartment house in Brooklyn, like the movie was set.
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I keep trying to watch “The Sentinel” but have dozed off several times. I might give it another shot soon. I almost watched it for Halloween but I decided to watch “Bad Ronald” instead.
 
I don’t tend to watch many modern “scary” movies, nor am I big on gore or extreme death scenes or all the tropes about who dies and who doesn’t.

I tend to prefer old movies.

My list would include:
  • Carnival of Souls (somebody already mentioned this above)
  • Night of the Living Dead, the original only. This was filmed around my husband’s hometown, which appears in the list of cities at the bottom of the screen during the news broadcast; I mostly like it because it’s interesting to see an area I have visited many times looking scary.
  • Vampyr (1932) directed by Carl Dreyer
  • Day of Wrath (original title, Vredens Dag) (1943) also directed by Carl Dreyer. Yeah, I guess I really like Dreyer 😉
  • Peeping Tom (1962). I actually got my mother to watch this with me and she really enjoyed it though the subject matter about a serial killer is not something she would normally have watched. It’s really well made.
  • Bunny Lake is Missing (1965). The police in this movie are about the stupidest in existence, but the movie has the Zombies playing music in it and it really kept me guessing up till the end.
I liked Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist too, but I didn’t find them particularly scary. Rosemary’s Baby was more campy than anything. The Exorcist was just weird and sad.
 
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I remember that “Day After” TV movie. It came out when I was in college, and I thought it was just blatant propaganda designed to scare people. Now, of course, 80 percent of TV is blatant fear-mongering propaganda, but it didn’t seem so prevalent then.

I had about five roommates then and I remember a couple of them decided to watch the movie. One who did got so scared and depressed she shut herself in her room. I along with another roommate decided to boycott the movie and we walked to the convenience store and bought snacks to get away from it.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
I keep trying to watch “The Sentinel” but have dozed off several times. I might give it another shot soon. I almost watched it for Halloween but I decided to watch “Bad Ronald” instead.
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To an impressionable kid it’s really terrifying. To a jaded adult, it apparently makes little to no sense.
 
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I like it from an atmospheric standpoint. One of my former best friends was a huge fan of it.
I often watch movies more for the cinematography or the soundtrack or to see a particular era portrayed than I do for the plot anyway.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I like it from an atmospheric standpoint. One of my former best friends was a huge fan of it.
I often watch movies more for the cinematography or the soundtrack or to see a particular era portrayed than I do for the plot anyway.
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Fair enough. That’s how I feel about David Lynch’s ‘Dune.’ It’s an unsalvageable mess of a movie, but I still like the sets and costumes (and the soundtrack by Toto - so 80’s!).

I remember being very scared by ‘The Sentinel’ while watching it late at night as a kid; but I wasn’t aware enough about the world outside of my own little existence to follow the plot such as it was. I just knew there was this scary old man (John Carradine) maniacally walking in circles in a dark brownstone apartment a floor above the protagonist, and he was blind or something, and when the protagonist went upstairs to confront him, he lashed out at her. He seemed almost to be a ghoul or something, not quite human. And Burgess Meredith was in it! 'Nuff said.
 
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I will second the choice of “Wait Until Dark.” In addition to the superb performances, I will mention the music. They used a specially prepared piano with quarter-tone tuning to produce notes that were half-way between normal notes, giving a very disconcerting feeling. They played that super-dissonant music only in the moments when Susan Hendrix (Audrey Hepburn) would have just become aware of horrific realizations, so as not to over-do the musical gimmick.
 
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tomarin said:
That’s how I feel about David Lynch’s ‘Dune.’ It’s an unsalvageable mess of a movie, but I still like the sets and costumes (and the soundtrack by Toto - so 80’s!).
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Decided to watch it again here a few months ago. Wow, I’d forgotten what a mess it really was. Makes me wonder why no one has tried another adaptation.
 
I really like that one.

Alan Arkin is a very good actor. He could play such a sociopath, yet be very good at comedy. (There’s no need to shoot at me, I’m a dentist!!)

The scene where he finally has his doll, where Suzy tells him, “I thought you said you weren’t going to hurt me?!”

“I did? I must have had my fingers crossed!” Is really chilling.

I think he was as good an actor as Pacino or DeNiro, but didn’t seem to have that reputation.

In a side note, he used to be a singer and was the one who wrote, “the banana boat song” made famous by Belafonte.
 
I don’t scare easily since I know all the behind the scenes stuff.

Even so, I know something has affected me when I dream about it. I don’t know how many Daleks and Cybermen I’ve barely escaped from while shopping at Kroger. I always wake up in a cold sweat with my heart about to burst through my chest.
 
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