WTF I missed off The Thing. Edit coming as it usurps no. 10 thus giving me 2 cast offs.

Yay, Alien and The Shining are top 5 of all time material indeed.

I don't know if Eraserhead is exactly a horror but it certainly freaked me out.

Also The Thing is my all time fave movie, so that's number 1.

Yes reg!

Gozu/Audition/Funny Games (the best horror non-horror EVER) were all close to my list. Gozu is just I dunno the fuck.

The Blair Witch Project
The Omen
The Changeling
Don't Look Now
A Tale of Two Sisters
Jaws (my favourite film ever, I think)
The Shining
The Exorcist
Kill List
The Thing

Films that freaked me out the most: probably Candyman, Blair Witch and more recently, the ending to Shutter.  Edit: And an Aussie film called Long Weekend that destroyed me as a kid on a caravan/beach holiday - I still find whalesong spooky.

I am obedient. Although "in order" is maybe a bit of a stretch here...

10. Eyes Without A Face. Old as balls, but still very creepy and unsettling. Special effects that haven't really aged at all and just a horrid feeling running through the whole film.

9. The Devils. Only low because I'd question "is it a horror?" but yeah, it is a horror and it's genuinely brilliant. I've seen it a few times now, once at the cinema, and even though it gets people laughing it's still very disturbing. It's a whirling kaleidoscope of depravity and damnation, and Oliver Reed is absolutely the tits in it.

8. Poltergeist. Scary as hell, a film that's stuck with me since I saw it aged 12, it's really intense and sinister for a film that's frequently a fairly straight up family dramedy or whatever. I love it because it teases an otherness out of ghosts that is rarely explored. They physically impede on the world in the grossest sense: the tunnel to the spirit world in the cupboard is a fleshy nightmare.

7. The Thing. One of the greats of physical special effects, and a wonderful sense of creeping dread in a weird game of whodunnit, where the who is both obvious and impossible. Some excellent scares and twisted ideas, plus the best doge actor eva.

6. The Wicker Man. An arduous, foreboding, malignant film. Kinda sits in the same place as The Devils for me, as it's got this eccentric and vivid imagery going on, and it manages to be horrorible without any vicious monster or grotesque thing, instead pointing the finger straight at humans and saying "you are such terrible, awful beasts."

5. [Rec] The film that got me into horror, and transformed it from the shit I was forced to endure as a teenager, into something genuinely tense and scary. Found footage is frequently balls, but [REC] really works with the format, and the finale is one of the best jump scares of all time I reckon. I even like the religious overtones that come into, though I know many don't.

4. Martyrs. I found it hard to watch, it's so vicious and violent that it really does have you hiding behind the nearest hand/pillow, yet it never feels gratuitous or silly like Saw or the other US horrors at the time. The flip in the middle is brilliant as DS says, and it goes from being something you can't watch to something you feel utterly compelled to watch even though it becomes more and more terrible. Surely the greatest torture pay off in any film to, something unimaginably awful and fear inducing. Great idea for a film too, big theme on religion in good horror.

3. Alien. It changed so many things it's silly, and it's so eminently watchable. It's paced exceptionally, and the scares come from a place that's so fundamentally human (birth/penetration etc) that it's hard to imagine it ever aging. How they managed to make such a banal idea so riveting is great, and it's one of those films where absolutely everything comes together in perfect harmony.

2. The Exorcist. I only saw this in the last year or so, and it's terrifying. Yet more religious stuff, which somehow grounds ghosts and scares into a very real place for me, probably because I grew up a Catholic (no mo) More evidence that those religious folks were more wrong in the head than even the most depraved of modern writers and directors. It's also awful, and has that lingering, icy dread that all the best scary films do. The final exorcism is still something to behold even to this day, it feels like an eternity.

1. The Shining. Literally nothing can be said about this film that hasn't been said already. The labyrinthine hotel mirroring the maze mirroring Jack's mind, the endless corridors of isolation and madness are so expertly realised that even a camera tracking through the halls feels like the most ominous and terrible thing committed to cinema. A soundtrack to die for, Penderecki's work used in such a brilliant way. Kubrik really was an utter genius.

Because he recognised sterling efforts of noble doge actor

I fink The Shinning is leading soo far

I don't really get the martyrs. The whole swap thing is neat but the last bit of the film felt like drudge to me.

Dark Soldier wrote:

I fink The Shinning is leading soo far

Do you remember that pic in the old, old Sins of the Flesh thread? Now that was horrific.

What was King's issue with Kubrick's version of The Shining? I've not read the book. Is King just being a nob cheese?

I'll do my list when I've had a think, I'm not the biggest horror fan as they're 90% bollocks, and the few that do hit the mark and stay with me I kind of wish I'd never watched. Especially during the time it takes me to get from the light switch to my bed at night.

Paul the sparky wrote:

Dark Soldier wrote:

I fink The Shinning is leading soo far

Do you remember that pic in the old, old Sins of the Flesh thread?

Nope, do tell.

Dark Soldier wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

They've all got their little charms. Q is an oddun. It's all down to personal preference. Gozu has almost the vibe of a big budget film in places which makes it even more lollzzz

Its been a good while, but isn't Gozu the one with:

Spoiler:

The dog bit at the start and then the giving birth shiz at the end? Q and Audition are very clear in memory (lactation yay!) but Gozu is fuzzy

That's the one. "Yakuza attack dog" Lulzers

Not technically horror, but Mitchum is well terrifying in Night of the Hunter, also the difference in making OG Fear the best.

I'm a big fan of schlocky 70s/80s fare, mainly at an iconic level than pure quality, so Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Driller Killer, Chainsaw, etc. all entertain.

The film discards large parts of the book, mostly for the better I thought (not read the book in yonks) and so presents a completely different vision of the story to the one King had imagined.

Not that the book is bad or anything but the film leaves more to the imagination. I'm sure there was a King-endorsed TV movie of The Shining, which was predictably piss-poor.

IT is another of his books which really deserved a proper film version rather than a cheap TV movie.

EDIT: Too slow