by Autumn Laws
The coming of fall brings a few things with certainty: a chill in the air, overzealous Ohio State football fans, and Halloween. One of the best ways to prepare for All Hallows’ Eve is cuddling up and watching classic horror movies. This can be hard, since our generation has been so over-exposed to gore, violence, and lunacy it’s hard to get any sort of reaction from us. Here’s a list of classic horror movies that can still send a shiver down my spine, so I suggest dusting them off and watching them again this season.
10. The Thing (1982)—This movie really plays on the psyche of those who are stranded together focusing on the deterioration of their nerves from the inside out. By the end of the movie, it’s impossible to know who you can and cannot trust, and I applaud that.
9. Psycho (1960)—People who watch this movie might think “Oh, this isn’t that scary,” but they have to remember the restrictions Hitchcock was under while making the film to avoid an X-rating. He knew the viewers’ brains could connect the dots and piece together the events that they don’t explicitly see. This tactic was genius, and really adds to the mystery of the film overall.
8. Saw (2004)—“I want to play a game…” That sentence alone can give people the chills, all thanks to this movie. The movie shows a lot of gore, but doesn’t rely on it; it scares the viewers because it has them asking themselves, “What if I was in this situation?” leading them to madness at the same rate as the poor souls in the movie.
7. The Shining (1980)—All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
6. The Blair Witch Project (1999)—This was the first movie that did the documentary-style horror, and really did it well. The film induces fear in exactly what is not seen, and what lurks in the shadows can sometimes be scarier than what could ever be imagined.
5. The Ring (2002)—There have been a number of Japanese horror films adapted for an American audience, and I can think of none more infamous as this. The film deals with the old theme the Greeks were so fond of writing about: fate. This movie forces the viewers to ask, “Can I change my own fate?” and the answer is as chilling as the gruesome images flashed throughout the film.
4. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)—This movie bundles up several horrifying story lines and stuffs it into one orderly, but terrifying, film. It doesn’t rely on the supernatural to scare its viewers; it uses what psychotic people in this world can actually do. Everything in the film could actually happen, which makes the entire movie that much more frightening.
3. Halloween (1978)—This film set the bar for most modern horror movies: the dark interior camera shots, the screaming girl running futilely through a house, and the deranged killer stacking up an impressive body count. This film is, without question, an oldie, but goodie.
2. Night of the Living Dead (1968)—George A. Romero’s first step into the horror film biz, this movie deals with some of the scariest villains imaginable: zombies. It’s a classic that defined zombies in the horror genre, and took a legitimate American fear and put it to the big screen.
1. The Exorcist (1973)—If you have not had the privilege of seeing this film, I highly suggest you watch it as soon as possible; you will never look at green pea soup the same again. The terror in the film is in what can consume someone—a force that has to be battled emotionally, not physically. When this movie came out, people were literally fainting in the movie theatres because it made even the final source of safety—religion—unreliable. The movie pulls out all the big guns – gore, jumps, the supernatural, and sacrilegious gestures – in a way that makes the viewers feel uncomfortable. This movie took risks, and it deserves to be remembered because of it.
alaws@capital.edu
