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Film - The Blog of Lists

The massive list of favourite movie lines

March 10th 2011 08:05

Coming in this space: The massive list of favourite movie lines.

The reason the list isn't here yet is that I haven't collected, collated, sorted and sifted the favourite movie lines yet. But they are coming soon.

And meanwhile, leave your list of favourites (maximum 10) below and I'll add them to the list, with accreditation).

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Film, Quotes

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The big list of scary movies

November 6th 2008 00:48

In late October 2008, wide press coverage was given to the results of a poll of British film-goers on what they considered the scariest movie ever made. There was immediate debate as to whether the top choice of those polled, William Friedkin's 1973 classic The Exorcist, was indeed the all-time best in the genre.

The horror movie, as a subject and as a debate, is a crowd favourite. A web search will show the popularity of favourite scary movie lists - we used 29 of them plus two polls in compiling our original list. With contributions and new sources, that is now 30 and three.

So what is different about ours? It is an attempt - and as far as we know a unique one - to aggregate opinions on the subject and come up with an objective answer to the question of what is generally considered the best all-time scary movie.

The full list below gives it own, lengthy answer. A short answer, however, can be given in a list of the (now) 33 top choices from the 30 web lists and three polls sourced. The answer may not surprise you, but the extent of its dominance may.

Times chosen as No. 1
12 The Exorcist
4 Psycho
4 Alien
3 The Shining
2 The Blair Witch Project
2 Halloween
1 The Thing
1 The Silence of the Lambs
1 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
1 It
1 The Ring
1 Don't Look Now
1 Jaws

The above, along with the big list, will be updated as we receive reader contributions (see Note 2 at the bottom of the page).

There are some explanatory notes on creating the list at the end of the post, but there are two points we would like to make here. First, the list is heavily biased towards western, and especially American, films. Within the limitations of our resources and time, we don't have much choice in that, but it is worth noting. There are a few non-American films on the list, but one can only ponder how many more of the plentiful and excellent Japanese horror films, for example, would have ranked if Asian web pages had enjoyed equal status in the list's preparation.

The second point is that some people like to differentiate between scary movies and horror movies. It is a reasonable differentiation, but we chose to treat them equally here. It made the task easier and we don't think it detracted from the value of the list.

THE BIG LIST OF SCARY MOVIES

No. Points Title
1 2570 The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
2 2232 The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
3 2114 Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
4 1703 Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
5 1648 Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
6 1536 Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
7 1423 A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)
8 1340 The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002)
9 1237 Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
10 956 Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968)
11 955 Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
12 947 The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
13 873 The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
14 760 It (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990)
15 756 Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982)
16 572 The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick, 1999)
17 562 Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976)
18 486 Ju-on (The Grudge) (Takashi Shimizu, 2000)
19 480 Seven (David Fincher, 1995)
20 478 The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
21 378 Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990)
22 373 Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981)
23 293 Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
24 287 Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
25 287 Pet Sematary (Mary Lambert, 1989)
26 286 Saw (James Wan, 2004)
27 286 An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
28 284 The Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)
29 283 Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)
30 281 Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980)
31 280 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1978)
32 279 Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)
33 194 The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005)
34 193 The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963)
35 191 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (John McNaughton, 1990)
36 190 The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001)
37 189 Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979)
38 189 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2003)
39 188 The Hitcher (Robert Harmon, 1986)
40 187 The Hills Have Eyes (Alexandre Aja, 2006)
41 187 Wolf Creek (Greg Mclean, 2005)
42 186 Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)
43 185 Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)
44 99 Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
45 99 The Town that Dreaded Sundown (Charles B. Pierce, 1976)
46 98 Child's Play (Tom Holland, 1988)
47 98 Rec (Jaume Balagueró, 2007)
48 97 Spoorloos (George Sluizer, 1988)
49 97 Frailty (Scott Thomson, 2002)
50 97 King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)
51 97 Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
52 97 Final Destination (James Wong, 2000)
53 97 Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
54 97 The Changeling (Peter Medak, 1980)
55 96 The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999)
56 96 Låt den rätte komma in (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
57 96 Ils (David Moreau & Xavier Palud, 2006)
58 95 Exorcist III (William Peter Blatty, 1990)
59 95 Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)
60 95 Salem's Lot (Tobe Hooper, 1979)
61 95 House of Wax (André De Toth, 1953)
62 95 Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
63 95 Exorcism of Emily Rose (Scott Derrickson, 2005)
64 95 Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton, 1999)
65 95 The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001)
66 94 The Stepfather (Joseph Ruben, 1987)
67 94 Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
68 94 Diaboliques, Les (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955)
69 94 Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2004)
70 94 Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
71 93 Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi, 1987)
72 93 The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932)
73 93 The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
74 93 Texas Chainsaw Massacre II (Tobe Hoooper, 1986)
75 93 The Saint Francisville Experiment (Ted Nicolaou, 2000)
76 93 Hellraiser (Cliver Barker, 1987)
77 93 Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 1987)
78 92 Martin (George Romero, 1972)
79 92 Stay Alive (William Brent Bell, 2006)
80 92 Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1962)
81 92 Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)
82 92 The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
83 92 Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett, 2000)
84 92 The Serpent and the Rainbow (Wes Craven, 1988)
85 91 Tourist Trap (David Schnoeller, 1979)
86 91 Bug (William Friedkin, 2007)
87 91 Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)
88 91 Friday the 13th Part III (Steve Miner, 1982)
89 91 Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
90 91 The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976)
91 91 Haunted (Lewis Gilbert, 1995)
92 91 Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967)
93 91 Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1999)
94 91 Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 1979)
95 91 House of 1000 Corpses (Rob Zombie, 2003)
96 91 Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, 2005)

Number of films by decade
1920-29 1
1930-39 4
1940-49 0
1950-59 2
1960-69 8
1970-79 21
1980-89 18
1990-99 16
2000-09 23
2010- -

Directors who appear more than once
4 Tobe Hooper
3 Roman Polanski
3 George Romero
2 Sam Raimi
2 William Friedkin
2 James Whale
2 Wes Craven
2 Rob Zombie

Contributors and polls
British film-goer poll, October 2008
Newsday poll, October 2008
Bryn: 1st Annual Horrorphile Hall of Infamy 2008
bnimsu

Web sources

www.ew.com, www.boston.com, www.thehotspotonline.com, www.livescience.com, www.franksreelreviews.com, www.infoplease.com, www.the-top-tens.com, www.narrativejunkie.com, nozeez.com, paranormal.about.com, www.jawsmovie.com, www.amazon.com, www99.epinions.com, www.esnips.com, www.stuffmagazine.com, www.imdb.com, movies.msn.com, www.reel.com, www.salon.com, www.channel4.com, horrormovies.tribe.net, www.hauntedhamilton.com, www.fireworks.com, www.ditto.net, www.essortment.com, au.askmen.com, www.scaryforkids.com, www.wickedlocal.com, www.neowin.net, www.horrorphile.net, www.gothictimesnetwork.com

Notes on creating the list
1. Compiling the list presented some difficulties. Firstly, a way had to be found to treat equally lists of different lengths. Assigning 10 points to the most popular film on a Top 10 list, and 50 points to the most popular on a Top 50 list, would distort the aggregate. To make things equal, we decided to use only the Top 10 of any lists, no matter its size. Now we faced a further problem: allocation of 10 points to each first choice down to one point for 10th choice creates a disparity relative to longer lists. It was therefore decided to allocate points as if each list was a Top 100: thus 100 points for the top choice down to 91 points for 10th choice. The result should be an objective comparison of a broad sampling of personal lists and polls.

2. One consequence of using Top 10s only was to limit the entrance of lesser-known films. We had planned to include 100 films, but our selection system has delivered fewer than that so far. We hope it will grow to 100, however, because we are making this a live list (see Note 3).

3. This is a live list, which means we will continue to add to it, and invite you to help us do so. We will stop at 100 entries if we reach that number, but we will continue to modify the numbers either from new polls or web sites or personal opinion contributions. If you would like to leave your Top 10 scary movies list in the comment section, we will revise the list and add your name (or pseudonym, or blog address) to the contributors' section.