What’s your favorite scary movie?

Having posted earlier this week about how much we hate slasher movies, our friend Ben, Silence Dogood, and Richard Saunders had a little chat about which scary movies we really like. This time, we’re not talking about fun, campy movies like the Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee versions of “Dracula” or, say, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” To qualify, these movies have to be genuinely creepy and/or frightening, disquieting, disturbing. To keep this post from becoming interminable, we’ve limited ourselves to our top four. So here are our faves. What are yours?

Our friend Ben:

The Wicker Man (original Christopher Lee/Edward Woodward version, not the horrible Nic Cage “update”). This movie looks plenty campy at the outset, but then it takes a turn for the worse.

The Silence of the Lambs. Even Silence loved Anthony Hopkins’s magnificent performance as Hannibal Lecter, but she could never bring herself to watch the film again.

Mr. Frost. This little-known Jeff Goldblum classic is really creepy in the best possible way.

The Night Visitor. This is certainly one of the scariest, most amazing things our friend Ben has ever seen. A Swedish family kills a farmhand, then pins the crime on their supposedly simple-minded brother. But he’s not as stupid as they think. The ingenious way in which he manages to escape from prison and return to wreak revenge, and what happens then, is pretty much heart-stopping from first to last. If you look for this, there’s apparently another movie with the same name about the Nazis, so make sure you read the plot before you rent it. Liv Ullman and Max Von Sydow star in the “correct” version.

Silence: 

Marnie. I loved Tony Perkins’s performance as Norman Bates in “Psycho,” but it’s not something I’d want to watch over and over. But when Hitchcock filmed the novel Marnie with Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren, he portrayed real fear and suspense without the slasher aspect. A great movie.

Sleepy Hollow. Okay, okay, maybe it’s not all that scary. But you knew I’d find a way to work Johnny Depp in here somehow, right? He’s just great as Ichabod Crane, giving him a Sherlock Holmes star turn. And there’s plenty of suspenseful atmosphere here, too.

The Usual Suspects. This one ranks at the top of both my and our friend Ben’s “great films of all times” lists. As many times as we’ve seen this movie, it still has us on the edge of our seats, and I still can’t watch it if I’m home alone. Great performances all ’round. And it takes a great movie to singlehandedly add a villain of the stature of, say, Dracula to the lexicon. “The Usual Suspects” pulled it off with Keyser Soze.

The Virgin Spring. Ingmar Bergman isn’t exactly known as the Hitchcock of Sweden, but he sure managed to make his share of creepy films. Maybe it’s the absence of dialogue—there’s very little in this film set in mediaeval Scandinavia—that builds up the suspense, but whatever it is, it works.

Richard Saunders:

The Prestige. On the one hand, this film about rival magicians is so campy you just want to call up the director and complain. On the other, it’s majestic. And it’s genuinely scary, with great performances all around, especially from Michael Caine and Hugh Jackman.

The Quiet Earth. The scariest science fiction film I’ve ever seen. It would be bad enough to know that you were one of the three last people left on earth. But what if you also knew the destructive cycle was coming back?

The Draughtsman’s Contract. This Peter Greenaway film seems quirky and atmospheric, a period piece set in Georgian England. Not your typical horror movie. But then, as with OFB’s favorite “The Wicker Man,” everything changes. The ending will shock you as much as it did the protagonist, wonderfully played by Anthony Higgins.

A Thief of Time. I like all three of Robert Redford’s adaptations of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo murder mysteries (the other two are “Coyote Waits” and “Skinwalkers”). But A Thief of Time made for especially skin-crawling reading, and the movie captures the creepy feeling while showcasing the personalities of the protagonists, Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn, and Joe’s delightful wife Emma, and the lifeways of the Dine (Navajo) people. Too bad Redford didn’t film all the novels!

Okay, your turn! We’re eager to expand our Hallowe’en viewing fare. Let us know what you love and why! But no out-and-out slashers, please. Silence can’t take the nightmares!