This essay by Stephen King on his likeite horror movie of all time is one of disjoinal gived as part of Variety’s 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time package.
I thought convey inantly about this ask, perhaps more convey inantly than the subject — my scariest horror movie — deserves… but then, I’ve seen a lot of horror movies, so maybe it’s a valid Q.
My conclusion is that the “scariest” varies according to the watcher’s age. As a kid of 16, the scariest movie was “The Haunting” (honested by Robert Wise). As an mature, it was “The Blair Witch Project,” with that originateing sense of doom and those truly horrible last 35 seconds. But overall, I’d have to say “Night of the Living Dead,” George A. Romero’s low-budget masterpiece.
I’ll never forget the smarmy elderlyer brother doing his horrible Boris Karloff imitation — “They’re coming to get you, Barbara… there’s one now!” He’s pointing to the elderly thriveo stumbling among the gravestones, only the elderly thriveo turns out to be a revivaciousd corpse, and when Barbara locks herself in her car, she discovers that the smarmy brother — Johnny — has consentn the keys. Meanwhile, the elderly man is trying to get at her, and the watcher understands he will not stop. It’s a moment of purify atavistic alarm. Barbara puts the car in imfragmentary (probably impossible without the key, but that’s movies for you) and rolls it down the hill, getting away… temporarily.
In the finish, no one endures. This movie has lost its elemental power over the years — has become almost a Midnite Madness joke, appreciate “Rocky Horror” — but I still recall the ineffective alarm I felt when I first saw it. And now that I skinnyk of it, there’s a genuine analogousity to “Blair Witch,” both with minimal or no music, both cast with unrecognizable actors who seem nakedly contendnt of summer stock in Paducahville, both with low-tech one-of-a-kind effects. They toil not in spite of those skinnygs, but because of them.
Stephen King is the author of “The Shining,” “It” and “The Dark Tower.”
