The big list of scary movies
November 6th 2008 00:48
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 Lĺt 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.
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Comment by Janet Collins
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I'll never forget the pea soup in the No 1 movie.
Comment by Chris Champion
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Comment by Bryn
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Check here for an interesting list as voted by readers of my blog.
Comment by Chris Champion
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I just had a long look at your Hall of Infamy post and enjoyed it a lot. Bit hopeless of me to spend probably a week preparing the above list, and all that time not knowing yours existed.
Like you, by the way, my favourite is Alien, but I don't think it's the scariest. Would your all-time 'scary' list be different from the all-time 'favourite' list on your home page?
The 1st Annual Horrorphile Hall of Infamy, however, surely qualifies as representative of scariest as well as favourite, and as such I hope you don't mind of I incorporate the result into my list! With due accreditation of course.
Comment by Bryn
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I don't mind the inclusion, by all means, perhaps a link through to my site.
cheers mate
Comment by Chris Champion
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Alien moves from 7th to 4th, and two new films appear on the list, Wolf Creek (Greg Mclean, 2005) and Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett, 2000).
Comment by Chris Champion
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Comment by Bryn
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Comment by Bryn
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I'm working on the list ... Thinking I might even expand to doing an actual post. However most of my lists have a rule of thumb: I usually number them to 13 (except for the original scary list I made). Is a list of 13 okay with you, or will that upset your numbers?
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It introduced two new films to the list: Hideo Nakata's 1998 Ringu and Ils, a 2006 film by David Moreau and Xavier Palud.
Bryn's choice of Alien as his all-time scariest movie lifted it past Psycho into fourth place.
Comment by Chris Champion
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It introduces four films to the list: The Devil's Backbone, Hellraiser (about time that got here), The Serpent and the Rainbow and House of 1000 Corpses.
The last is a 2003 debut film by director Rob Zombie. What sort of a name is that for a horror movie director!
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I much prefer Hellbound: Hellraiser II, the infamous sequel. "... And to think I hesitated ..."
Wes Craven is such a hit and miss director I dislike more movies of his than like, but Serpent and the Rainbow is definitely one of his better movies.
House of 1000 Corpses is Rob Zombie's best movie, which isn't saying a lot. He's a hack, who fancies himself an authority on horror. The Devil's Rejects is one of the most over-rated (amongst so-called horrorphiles) horror movies of the past ten years. And don't even mention his appalling travesty remake of Halloween!
Comment by Chris Champion
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Great comments, thanks.
The list is still sorting itself out. As I say in the notes, the scoring system was devised to allow objective comparisons between lists of varying lengths, so long as they have a minimum of 10. The drawback is that, as only the top 10 from any list gets included, my list is slow to fill out.
At the moment, the lower rankings lack integrity because there are still too few contributory lists. In time, this will reach the 100 constituent maximum, after which the lower rungs of the list will start filling out. Eventually, hopefully, consensus opinion will be reflected all the way through.
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thanks....
willie
Comment by bnimsu
1. Halloween (1978)
2. The Town that dreaded sundown
3. Carrie
4. Hostel
5. TX Chainsas Massacre
6. The hitcher
7. Audition
8. Saw III
9. Jaws
10. (tie) Devil's Rejects/Friday the 13th II
Comment by Bryn
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Never heard of that one ... I best track it down.
Comment by Chris Champion
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It caused some interesting changes. It moved Carrie into the Top 20, and confirmed Halloween as one of the Big 3, along with The Exorcist and The Shining.
Interestingly, though, it was only the second time Halloween has received a No.1 vote, compared to 12 for The Exorcist.
You added three new films to the list: Devil's Rejects, Saw III and The Town that Dreaded Sundown. The last is the only horror film made in this galaxy that Bryn has never heard of. Expect a review over at Horrorphile soon.
Thanks again for your list.
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