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Martin Scorsese: 11 Scariest Horror Movies of All Time

October 29th, 2009 by Scott Marks

The Daily Beast asked Martin Scorsese to select the 11 scariest films of all time. The biggest surprise is Peter Medak’s “The Changeling.” Haven’t seen it since it opened, but don’t remember much beyond a few hilarious grunts and grimaces from George C. Scott.

The only one I have yet to see is “The Entity.” It played in Chicago and I avoided it because the scariest part of the poster was “Directed by Sidney J. Furie.” At the time I only knew of him from such monumental stinkers as “Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York,” “Gable and Lombard,” and “The Boys in Company C.” After last year’s viewing of “The Appaloosa” (and Marty’s personal dispensation) I’d be more than happy to give it a look.

Only two of His selections (”The Exorcist” & “Psycho”) made it to my list. Never really connected with “The Haunting” or “The Innocents,” and “The Shining” has more black comedic chuckles that jolts. “Night of the Demon” is a masterpiece, but I can’t say that it scared me.

Read Marty’s list here.

It takes a lot to scare me so I only came up with 9. Sure, I could have talked about how the transformation sequence in “The Nutty Professor” traumatized me when I was a kid, but that’s not exactly a film that comes to mind when discussing horror movies. My selections are based on my initial responses to the movies, not how I react to them today. As Marty noted, contemporary audiences, hammered by constant scenes of graphic gore, might view “Psycho” as something tame, but when it first came out audiences were terrified.

You can listen to my thoughts on Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” and Robert Harmon’s “The Hitcher” here.

“Repulsion” / Roman Polanski (1965)
Say what you will about the man’s personal conduct, he sure knew how to terrify audiences. Before motherly Rosemary became trapped by Satan in a New York brownstone, a sexually repressed Catherine Deneuve was assailed by nightmares and rabbits in a London flat. First saw it on the second half of a midnight double feature at the Playboy Theatre. It didn’t hit the screen until around 2 am and it unnerved me so that I didn’t fall asleep until the next night. A truly terrifying psychological horror film that still finds me flinching every time those arms emerge from the wall and hook Catherine Deneuve.

“The Exorcist” / William Friedkin (1973)
I have grown to hate this movie, but when I saw it opening weekend at The Gateway I almost peed my pants. We stood on line in the freezing cold for 90 minutes waiting to get in to. Back in the day films didn’t open on 4,000 screens across America and The Gateway was the only Chicago theater it played on its initial release. The hardest part for me to watch is the needle piercing Linda Blair’s throat. At one point, my friend became so startled that his bucket of popcorn went flying four rows in front of us.

“The Seventh Victim” / Mark Robson (1943)
I first saw a pristine 16mm Kodak print in my friend Rick’s basement. This atmospheric tale of devil worshiping in the Big Apple continues to creep the hell out of me. Most horror films from this period are dated enough that the fright has been drained out of them. Not “The Seventh Victim.” The ending still packs a wallop: “I run to death and death meets me as fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday” followed by the sounds of a chair falling and a noose tightening around the victim’s neck.

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Have a PSYCHO Halloween!

October 31st, 2008 by Scott Marks

Here’s a 10 minute solo piece I did on horror films a couple of Halloweens ago for KPBS-Radio’s These Days. I was asked to come up with three bone chilling DVD rentals guaranteed to scare even Count Floyd. Admittedly, horror films are not my drug of choice mainly because it is the most recycled genre of all. For every Psycho or Rosemary’s Baby or The Hitcher there are literally dozens (hundreds?) of wretched knockoffs, sequels and remakes.

For me, it all peaks a few minutes in when I recount an abusive childhood memory: Dad taking me to see Hitchcock’s Psycho when I was five. What was he thinking? That it was hot out, we didn’t own an air conditioner and he wanted to cool off in a movie theatre for a couple of hours.

This year I spent Halloween eve revisiting Roger Corman’s X:The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963) and Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1955). It’s hard to be horrified watching Ray Milland’s bad toupee and a Hawaiian-shirted Don Rickles as a carnival barker, but X remains a very well made, exceedingly entertaining horror film. (Rickles gives his best on-screen performance this side of Casino!) It’s an allegorical tale of a doctor who invents a miraculous serum that gives him a Superman-like power to see through everything. Instead of putting his invention to good use, Milland is kicked out of the hospital for malpractice and winds up as a sideshow clairvoyant. The film ends at a revival meeting, led by Corman regular John Dierkes, where the man who puts the “mentalist” in Christian Fundamentalist dutifully follows scripture and pulls the old “an eye for an eye” on himself. Columbia Pictures has announced a planned remake for 2010 and for once I’m not upset. In our soon-to-be post George Bush era, this parable is ripe for retelling. (It also makes a great double-bill with Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor.)

Have not seen Tarantula in ages and frankly, the only reason I pulled it off the shelf is because I remembered Whit Bissell in it. (No one says “Halloween” more than the good Doctor Bissell.) No Whit, and even less wit, as John Agar, Leo G. Carroll and Gina Gershon lookalike Mara Corday are terrified by a giant, hairy arachnid. They should have quit with the impressive spider FX, but, no, Leo G. had to experiment on humans and subsequently get a dose himself. As in too many 50s horror films, the makeup draws howls…of laughter. Dan Blocker’s cosmetic makeover in the 3 Stooges Outer Space Jitters is unnerving by comparison.

Happy Halloween, everybody, and as Pee-Wee Herman said, “DON’T EAT ANY APPLES YOU CAN SHAVE WITH!!!”

Listen to the KPBS broadcast here.

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