Halloween is upon us: cue hastily cobbled-together costumes and drunkenly ironic apple-bobbing at friends’ parties, the frenzied whoops of sugar-saturated children and an online avalanche of “best horror films ever” lists. It’s a beautiful time of year. We’ve already contributed our share to said avalanche, so allow me simply to highlight my viewing for the evening (courtesy of the BFI’s handsome recent reissue): Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents.”
Tag: The Innocents
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What scares Martin Scorsese … and me
Tomorrow, of course, is Hallowe’en — an institution more treasured in the US than it is on my side of the ocean, where it’s principally another excuse to get drunk. (But hey, this year I’ll be getting drunk while wearing a silly hat. Progress!)One aspect of the holiday that travels well, at least, is the celebration of horror cinema: Pinewood Studios, for example, is hosting a drive-in double-feature of “The Omen” and “The Shining” on the world’s largest cinema screen.
Meanwhile, horror DVD marathons will take place in living rooms around the world, so Martin Scorsese (whose own upcoming film looks to have its share of jolts) has helpfully provided his own playlist of the 11 scariest horror films of all time for The Daily Beast:
1. “The Haunting” (Robert Wise, 1963)
2. “Isle of the Dead” (Val Lewton, 1945)
3. “The Uninvited” (1944)
4. “The Entity” (Sidney J. Furie, 1981)
5. “Dead of Night” (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1945)
6. “The Changeling” (Peter Medak, 1980)
7. “The Shining” (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
8. “The Exorcist” (William Friedkin, 1973)
9. “Night of the Demon” (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
10. “The Innocents” (Jack Clayton, 1961)
11. “Psycho” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) -
THE LISTS: In Contention’s top 20 horror films of all time
Yes, how trite. Another list of the “best” horror films of all time. But this really is the most subjective of genres, is it not? What is scary to us all has slipped out of the realm of the universal and become much more of a personal thing.Certain films are inarguable, as our list certainly reflects here and there. But across the landscape of horror filmmaking, you find perhaps the broadest range of creativity in the medium. So it goes without saying that a list such as this ought to be varied.
Unlike the other lists we’ve featured here at In Contention, our rundown of the 20 best horror films of all time did not spring from the mind of this writer or that, but is instead representative of the collective. We’ve polled each of our six contributors to ascertain their high marks in the genre and, through a complicated process of tabulation that involved thorough computation, lots of late nights and perhaps an abacus as well, the list was whittled down to the 20 films you see here.
There are mainstays aplenty, but we think you’ll be surprised by a few of the entries. Each of us hold very different opinions, as should be expected when you get a southerner L.A. transplant, an Arkansas law professor, two Toronto natives 20 years apart in age, a north easterner who recently made the trek out west and a humble Brit.
We hope you enjoy the list.