Writing about Leave Her to Heaven got me thinking about frightening scenes in movies that fall far outside the horror genre.
Now, there are quite a few "All-Time Scariest Scenes in Non-Horror Movies" lists out there.
Most of them are banal.
This one is better than most.
But more often than not, these writers and I disagree on the definitions of "all-time," "non-horror" and, well, "scary."
The youngsters who create these listicles persist in insisting that "of all time" means "anything after Star Wars," while stretching the definition of "non-horror" to include violent and creepy genre-straddlers like Zodiac and Se7en.
But admittedly, I do have a slightly eccentric definition of "scary."
Weirdly, for someone who has been terrified of pretty much everything her entire life — I still can't ride a bike, let alone drive a car — not many "scary" movies scare me.
Take The Exorcist. It's basically just The Searchers with vomit. The movie would have worked better if the possessed "child" really had been a child, like the fragile, angelic little girl in Poltergeist — but that movie could not have been made. The actress they chose, Linda Blair, comported herself admirably in a torturous part, except that like most female child stars of the 1970s (think of Jodie Foster and Tatum O'Neal) she exudes preternatural confidence — a kind of chunky invulnerability — that doesn't mesh with her role as a victim.
And she's fourteen. A Catholic girl that age barfing, coming downstairs to act out during a grownup party, and swearing at priests and her mom sounds more to me like... well, Tuesday.
When it comes to horror movies, I get my frights from opposite ends of the spectrum: Slow burns and jump scares. Here's an underrated example of the former, from The Leopard Man (1943).
Jump scares are too commonplace to choose just one.
They have a bad rap, because snobs consider them cheap and corny — the horror movie equivalent of puns. (Whereas I admire the brainpower behind a great pun.) And anyway, complaining about jump scares in a horror movie is like grumbling that a roller coaster has drops.
Furthermore, the most effective jump scare is the exclamation point at the end of a slow burn — an effect that compilation videos like the one above don't take into consideration.
It's no wonder then that the horror film that really left me shaken most recently was the unpromisingly titled Paranormal Activity 3, which combines both cinematic tricks to great effect.
So what else do I consider scary? If my blood runs cold, I can't move, and I "watch" the movie while peeking through my fingers, that's scary — whether the film is labelled "horror" or not.
For example: All rape scenes are scary, but the ones that are filmed more or less in real time are the worst. In the horror genre, the one in the rape-revenge flick I Spit On Your Grave (1978) is universally considered the hardest to sit through (and sit through, and sit through — NOTE: DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM!). In non-horror, there's 2002's Irreversible (DITTO!) and, of course, Deliverance.
But rape doesn't have to be shown onscreen to be chilling, as in Touch of Evil.
Or even happen at all: I was terrified, at first, by this sequence in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory when I saw it on TV in my teens. It ends harmlessly enough — Kubrick is uncharacteristically sentimental here — but we all know this isn't how such a scenario would've played out in real life.
Here are more of my candidates for the scariest scenes in non-horror films, in no particular order — please add yours in the comments.
Pretty obvious: The "Is it safe?" scene from Marathon Man.
Also obvious (and similar?): The "ear scene" from Reservoir Dogs.
Scout's proto-Lynchian ham costume adds a surreal touch to this penultimate sequence from To Kill a Mockingbird.
The death of Bambi's mom. Need I say more?
Here's a Freudian, existential nightmare courtesy of, of all people, Frank Capra: Your own mother claims she doesn't know you...
Despite all the gory violence in Goodfellas, this scene gives me the worst case of the creeps.
Two films inspired by the Columbine school massacre came out in 2003: Gus Van Sant's Elephant and Ben Coccio's Zero Day. Both are stylistically matter-of-fact and understated; if these movies were people, we'd call them "autistic." No intrusive music cues warn us of killings to come, or superimpose sick, slick glamor onto them when they occur. Most of the actors are amateurs. Surprisingly considering the subject matter, neither is a heavy-handed anti-gun screed.
(If I didn't know better, I'd speculate that both directors share my view that guns aren't the problem — schools are...)
For all those reasons, Elephant and Zero Day are far more frightening than any big budget "teen slasher" franchise flick — Zero Day in particular because its "found footage" concept gives it a documentary feel. These movies aren't for everyone, but I found both genuinely creepy.
The two nuclear bombing scenes in Fail Safe are pretty devastating on their own (but obviously more so if you've watched the rest of this high-tension, miserable downer of a movie.)
The once acclaimed, now sadly forgotten 1979 film The Onion Field is a grim must-see, based on a true story, with a star-making turn from James Woods. Alas, this short clip also lacks the tense build-up that makes it so poignant — and brutal.
(In a later scene, the surviving detective, wracked with guilt and suffering from what we'd now call PTSD, seizes his infant son and violently shakes the screaming infant for a few seconds that feels like hours. You know it's really just a prop, a doll, but that doesn't matter — it looks, and sounds, real as hell.)
He can't live and he can't die — Johnny Got His Gun.
What makes this next bit from Terry Gilliam's Brazil extra horrible? That's universally beloved, perpetual good guy Michael Palin behind The Most Disturbing Mask Ever — and that thrilling, last-minute rescue, viewers will shortly learn, was just a wish fulfillment fantasy conjured up by the victim's now-lobotomized mind...
It's pretty hard to pick just one scene from the Coen Brother's 1984 breakthrough film, the neo-noir Blood Simple...
...so here's another one.
Shot for shot, the original Cape Fear (1962) gets my vote for the scariest non-horror movie ever, although it's hard to distinguish the genuine terror from the dragged-out, "Somebody please just shoot this guy!" sense of sheer frustration.
But at the end of the day, the killing of the Clutter family in Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood is my pick for most terrifying non-horror movie scene. We all know going in that the family will die — that's the whole point of Capote's book — yet Brooks still manages to amp up genuine suspense. Alas, this truncated clip doesn't do justice to the complete sequence, which is a tour de force.
Now, over to you:
What did I miss?
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69 Member Comments
Kathy - I'm a little late to the game with this one, but from Prisoners, the reveal scene near the end with the old lady and Hugh Jackman. It is blood curdling.
'Something Wicked This Way Comes' it might not qualify because it is described as a 'HorrorFilm',and
It sort of falls apart at the end. And it isn't the Ray Bradbury screen play. It's the library. That was the
library in the village 10 miles down the road, And the frame house with a porch and the autumn leaves
being blown by the chill October winds. That was the house next door!
"Straw Dogs", the Sam Peckinpah original with Dustin Hoffman, had some scary moments. Must admit I laughed when Hoffman killed one bad guy by slamming him over the head with a set bear trap. Probably not the correct reaction but then I never cried when Old Yeller died either.
The Innocents 1961 - Deborah Kerr and Michael Redgrave. The scene features sunlight, a gazebo, a pond. Then we see a woman standing there way in the distance, accompanied by a haunting melody. It is so simple and so effective! Guaranteed to haunt the viewer ... forever!
A fantastic film, you're right -- but still a horror movie, so I didn't include it.
it was mentioned here below. but I thought I'd add Deliverance.
WSBK TV38 used to show some pretty questionable stuff here around Boston over the airwaves and Deliverance was one (along with an uncut (no pun intended) version of "The Boys In The Band")
So I saw this at 12 and thought it was cool as hell....men in the woods being manly, bowfishing for their supper.
But then came the rape scene and I thought "Hey, I've been on a pee wee hockey team and I never saw something THAT brutal"
My original draft mentioned "Deliverance," and I forget why I edited it out. I shouldn't have!
Here are 3 picks:
"eraser head" gave me disturbing flashbacks both audio and visual.
I had a visual flashback of Linda Blair's face through the windshield on Queens Blvd from "the exorcist" coming home from that movie as a kid. I will never watch that movie again.
"The birds" from Alfred Hitchcock in the scene at the farmhouse with the farmer in his stripped shredded pajamas and eyes plucked out has Haunted me since my childhood. They never show that on tv. In the same movie, Suzanne Pleshette sprawled Upside down on the steps was also a sad shock.
Thanks for this disturbing column. I liked the Disney scenes best.
I can't help but think of The Birds as a horror film proper, but you are right, there are lots of scary parts. And Disney has (or used to have) lots more disturbing scenes than we might think.
Lots of great comments. A moment that always gets to me is Blanche's meltdown at the end of Streetcar Named Desire. It's quite a disturbing scene. (That it's Vivian Leigh probably plays into it a little, too.)
Yes it is very heartbreaking.
A forgotten horror film from the 70's, "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" has a lot of creepy scenes, probably the best is one where Jessica is swimming in the lake with the mysterious woman they've taken in who seems to be trying to drown her. She runs out of the lake screaming. The woman walks out of the water slowly and is now wearing an antique dress that was in an old picture in the house. Because Jessica has had a nervous breakdown you're not sure if it's real or in her imagination.
That movie has developed quite a cult following from what I understand. I believe it was recently released on Blu-Ray and is enjoying rediscovery.
That's good to hear, cause it's one of those movies that frightens the piss out of you without jump-scares. Highly recommend it. There's a mix of elements of paranoia, fear, just general weirdness going on mixed with the theme of an old house being haunted and/or possessed.
I grew up in a 3 decker house that had an odd staircase that went from the 1st floor to the 3rd without a stop at the 2nd floor. My father walled off the connection to the 1st floor but I sometimes went down the narrow staircase and sat on the stairs and stared out the tiny window someone thought to include there.Nothing seemed scary there. Just ominous and a little depressive.
Oh man, that weirdness would scare me too. A bit too "Winchester House" for my peace of mind!
I never talk to movies except for the scene in Poltergeist where the clown doll in the bedroom disappears and the boy begins slowly to look under his bed... No, don't do that! Creepy clown doll plus things under the bed make a terrifying combination!
Yes that is a fantastically done scene!
Kathy, the 1988 Dutch film "Spoorloos" - The Vanishing - is the most disturbing film ever made, imo... even though I haven't seen them all! But many film buffs agree. (Apparently the Hollywood version - not surprisingly - was a different story altogether, and a huge disappointment in general.)
The "normal psychopath" lives among us, and somehow those stories and scenes are the most unsettling. Even the momentary face-in-the-crowd at the tennis, in "Strangers on a Train", is brilliantly creepy.
PS. I didn't watch (or rewatch) most of these clips. It's not "slasher" horror that bothers me (though I'm definitely not a fan), but eerie realism. "Don't Look Now" is in that category. And (the original), "Look at me Damien! It's all for you"...
Yes I've seen it, and it is incredible. Every copy of the remake should be burned -- even though it was by the same director!!
I may have this wrong, but it is based on a novel called "The Golden Egg," and the idea is that, when SPOILER ALERT the guy finds himself trapped in the coffin and lights a match, the flame from the match is the "golden egg" his girlfriend kept having dreams about...
In the book "The Sociopath Next Door" the author (Dr. Martha Stroud?) makes a point in the final chapter to say that she has been asked many times how to ID a sociopath.and she says that the one underlying common feature is that when they are painted in a corner, they will use the "pity play". They will cry, they will claim victimhood, whatever it takes to play upon the natural instincts of humans to forgive.
I have two suggestions, both of which are from films that you may consider "straddlers." The first is from the 1985 film "Cat's Eye" which is basically a compilation of Stephen King shorts. You may consider this a horror film. After all, it is Stephen King. But the scene I'm thinking of is distinctly non-horror. In it Robert Hays is forced to walk around the ledge of a tall building by Kenneth McMillan. Anyone with even mild acrophobia would be frightened by that scene.
The second film, which I also do not consider "horror" though some may disagree it the 2009 film "The Road" with Viggo Mortensen. The premise of the film is that following some un-discussed apocalyptic event pretty much everything on the Earth is dead except for a handful of human survivors. You can guess how these few have survived. I have a thing for the post-apocalyptic genre, which may be why I enjoy the Steyn Club so much. However, for me "The Road" was the hardest film I've ever had to watch. It was so disturbing that I essentially had to will myself to get to the end. Of the multiple frightening scenes in the film the worst is probably when Mortensen and his son stumble into the home of a family of cannibals, complete with emaciated captives locked in a root cellar. Of course, the family is away when the two enter, but just happen to come home shortly thereafter. Not a film for the faint of heart.
I almost added the cannibal house scene from The Road on this list but felt I'd be cheating since I haven't seen the whole movie. I'm used to scenes like that, as a Walking Dead fan, but I agree that it was very well done.
Your point about government funded schools is so horribly true. The SCOTUS should have ruled them unconstitutional by the first amendment clause: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [including government religion].
I would include several of your non-horror movies as horror movies--In Cold Blood, Paranormal Activity, Cape Fear--but that may be because I'm a wuss. I immediately went to films less horror-filled, but still had me soiling myself--no, not The Love Bug!
Alfred Hitchcock, of course, took thrill to a sadistic extreme, but he didn't need to have his characters dangling from the Statue of Liberty or Mt. Rushmore to make my palms sweat. How about the end of Notorious? Give Hitch a staircase, crypto-Nazis, and a domineering mother, and see if he can't scare the bejeezus out of you. The Wizard of Oz may have had flying monkeys and old bastard apple trees, but the shots of the darkening Kansas sky and the approaching tornado was, for me, the stuff of nightmares. Still is, I confess. (Not the tornado itself, which is played for "laughs".) Russian Roulette in The Deer Hunter? Freaked me out then; feels overwrought now. Then there's the least violent horror scene in The Silence of the Lambs, when Hannibal Lecter, a shrink remember, coaxes from Clarice Starling the memory of the slaughter of the spring lambs. I wrote "coaxes", but it's more of a mental rape as he forces himself on her. The memory itself means little to me--I know where lamb comes from--but the coercion is cold-blooded.
PS: Your Exorcist crack may have been "mean-spirited" (not to me, it wasn't), but I still snorted coffee through my nose. Speak softly and carry a big schtick.
"More of a mental rape" -- that is very insightful!
Hi Kathy.
What really scared me was the scene in Titanic where the #2 character is handcuffed to the pipe and the #1 character wades through the rising waters of the sinking ship with an axe in an attempt to rescue him. The scene where they were diving for the key while trapped behind the cage-like doors was terrifying. Any movie or documentary that involves characters crawling on their bellies through caves, pipes, ventilation ducts, sewers, earthquake wreckage, flooding tunnels, etc. triggers my claustrophobia and makes me very uncomfortable.
On the other hand, movie scenes involving gothic architecture and baroque music cause me intense pleasure; the moment a flash of pointy facade appears or the first bar of a fugue sounds, all fear is lost and my point of view changes instantly to full empathy with the gargoyles, vampires, ghosts, and whatever else is frightening the protagonists.
"Come down to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..." So I take it "Die Hard" isn't your favourite Christmas movie, then? :-)
Your reaction to anything gothic is so interesting! The only time I had a similar experience was watching the opening credits of a a restored Hammer horror film (I don't find _them_ scary either...) and the jewel-like greenery in the forest, especially the moss, was so lush you felt you could take a bite out of it. Best part of the movie!
Kathy,
Interestingly, "Die Hard" wasn't quite so bad: it's skyscraper scenes, explosions, and action were sufficiently distracting. For he same reason, I'm not bothered by submarine movies either: "Das Boot" and "Red October" are just fine. Combine gothic architecture with confined spaces and I'm fine too: I could tolerate the Wuhan corona lockdown forever if only I could do it like Quasimodo, the Phantom of the Opera, or the Count of Montecristo. If being bit by a vampire means spending eternity haunting a gothic mansion, bite me up, I'm all in with only one condition: no sleeping in coffins (although I can be flexible on that if the baroque organ music is loud enough).
What gets me is the quiet boring stuff that is not supposed to be scary, spelunking documentaries, underwater caving, undersea wreck documentaries, Viet Cong tunnel documentaries, etc. Your theme, Scary Scenes in non-scary movies strongly resonates with me.
But who needs scary movies anymore? Why watch some zombie apocalypse or alien invasion flick, when you can go on YouTube and watch a clip of five corona-cops piling on top of a woman with a toddler in the New York Subway because she wasn't wearing her mask properly? Combine everyday life in the modern world with some crude amateur videography, and the whole scary movie industry becomes redundant.
Yep, this is me:
"Combine gothic architecture with confined spaces and I'm fine too: I could tolerate the Wuhan corona lockdown forever if only I could do it like Quasimodo, the Phantom of the Opera, or the Count of Montecristo."
My ideal home is a lighthouse (but with high speed internet, and a Starbucks at the bottom.)
Burnt Offerings; 1976; Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Bette Davis. A plethora of scary scenes, so it is difficult to choose The One. Oliver has been plagued by nightmares ever since moving into the evil house, but this particular day is sunny and he actually feels rather content. Then he hears an engine and a hearse appears in the distance, driving towards him. His nightmare has become reality. Darn it, this description just doesn't do it justice! A superb horror movie that movie critics did not love, to my puzzlement.
Wasn't the hearse drive a creepy looking guy with an evil smile? Great ending scene too !
Oh that "smile" (shiver!) And yes, the ending ... just when the family is on the verge of escaping ...
Though not movies, some of the early Twilight Zone episodes had some great frightening non-horror moments. The Sixth Sense (1999) had a few too.
During my childhood 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' always got a run on TV every Easter and, while I loved watching the film and still do, the scene where the boat goes through the tunnel and various nightmare images flash across the screen, including a chicken being decapitated, always frightened me. The weird little song that Gene Wilder sang throughout the scene, "Is it raining, is it snowing?, was disturbing in its own right too. Another figure who frightened me as a kid was the Wicked Witch of the West in 'The Wizard of Oz'. I remember a scene in the witch's castle where Dorothy is weeping and the witch appears in the crystal ball and mocks her cries of "Aunty Em! Aunty Em!" Never failed to scare me.
That scene is on many of the lists I mentioned (and in the first video I embedded) but I didn't single it out because Gene Wilder (who I devoted a previous column to) was someone I was so fond of as a child that he was incapable of scaring me. He was a gentle, reassuring figure, like Mr. Rogers; I must have figured that this was all part of his plan to punish the bad kids -- a plan I heartily approved of -- and therefore let it go.
For me the scariest part of Willy Wonka is the sight of those four old people lazing around in bed, pretending to be sick. It pushes all my buttons.
The scene in "The Year of Living Dangerously" where the really good looking woman is at the crowded party but Mel Gibson is trapped in the opposite corner by a long winded sententious bore and can't get to her while she's being chatted up by other men.
No normal man can watch that scene without being reduced to sheer terror.
I was going to say Wait Until Dark or the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but I see they're taken. How about the scene where Chekov and Terrell are made "susceptible to suggestion" in Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan?
If you include TV, it's hard to beat a young Billy Mumy in the Twilight Zone, where he sends people to the corn field if he doesn't like them. Or for that matter, Agnes Moorehead dealing with strange creatures in her house. Boy, did the Forbidden Planet sets and props ever get a workout on that TV series. I never thought of Twilight Zone as horror, as it was so rooted in seemingly ordinary real life settings.
Yes you're right! And isn't there some kind of weird insect that burrows into your brain in that one?
See, I still consider The Twilight Zone too "genre" to make this list, but yes those were very effective. However, the one that filled me with the most dread was the one where Burgess Meredith finally gets his wish of being alone with all the books in the world -- and his glasses break. THAT'S a nightmare!
The clip that I couldn't watch again was Bambi's Mom. Too scary. I didn't see that film until I was in my 30's. I don't want to see it again.
One film that is perhaps more disturbing than scary that I would nominate is "The Prestige." The scene might be the one where you see all the water tanks in storage, so you see the result of what has been going on. There's something metaphysically disturbing that might not bother other people, but it creeps me out a bit. Good film.
I've never seen it but I know I should.
If you are short of time, you could try watching Bambi Meets Gozilla.
The bathroom scene in The Shining with Jack Nicholson talking to "Delbert Grady". No violence, just talk. But it sure sent chills down my spine. My vote for scary and, yes, disgusting violence goes to another Stanley Kubrick film, A Clockwork Orange. I once asked me wife to watch A Clockwork Orange with me and she refused - good thing, or I would probably have been divorced soon after.
The diner scene in Mulholland Drive. Every scene in Eraserhead (not sure if that qualifies as horror). I guess David Lynch is responsible for most of the scenes that I find just plain creepy although I wouldn't call them horror. Insanity and mental hospitals scare me. I thought the lobotomy scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was scary. The scene in Walkabout where the father starts shooting at his kids and also the scene where the aborigine boy is found hanging in a tree. I was only 11 when I saw Walkabout and it was the first "grown-up" movie I saw in a theater so these scenes made an impression on me.
Absolutely. It was in the first video I posted but as I say, the problem is that there is a slow burn buildup in that scene and they left that out of the compilation-- you just can't show the thing jumping out at the end.
I should have mentioned that scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for sure -- but knowing that Jack Nicholson's character is a statutory rapist (a fact glossed over very quickly at the start) prevents me from seeing him sympathetically.
Speaking of nuclear war films, The Day After when a patient wakes up screaming in a hospital ward, Special Bulletin where the alarms are sounding as nuclear technicians struggle to deactivate a nuclear bomb, the end of Threads, which is a long English horror show, where the girl is handed her newborn and screams at what she see's. We don't see it.
Threads -- I had forgotten all about that! I used to find all these "nuclear war is coming any minute" things utterly terrifying, but then of course that war never happened so now I see them more as propaganda, like all the "climate catastrophe" movies that took their place.
When The Wind Blows is another in this genre, except it's animated. More sad and certainly more tender than Threads etc...but it sure did terrify me as a kid.
Being Canadian, the one we all saw over and over was "The Big Snit"
Oh yes, Kathy! I was born and raised in Toronto and remember it well. It was kind of sweet how they made up just before being blown up to kingdom come.
Did you go around saying, "Stop shaking your eyes at me! Why don't you join a shakin' rock & roll band"? Because it became kind of a catchphrase for a while.
Two-non horror/SF for your consideration: The DTs scene from "The Lost Weekend", when Ray Milland hallucinates mice peeking out of the walls, and the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" number from "Cabaret".
Yes to both. I also hate the part in Cabaret where they leave her dead dog on the stoop. Any "killing pets" stuff gets me -- another reason Cape Fear is on this list.
In Hondo, the Indian spears John Wayne's dog in the pouring rain.
yeah I don't want to see that!!
Neither Chris nor Reagan McNeil were Catholic, so not only is your summation of Catholic teenage girls incredibly petty and mean-spirited, it's wrong in this context.
Point taken, J. except I'm speaking as a Catholic girl myself. "Mean spirited" is kinda my schtick.
I hate scary movies. My husband loves Alien but have never watched it. 1984 was for me the worst.
The movie with Audrey Hepburn playing a blind woman was very scary with the fridge scene.
Yes "Wait Until Dark" really does have its moments. The claustrophobic atmosphere helps. It would have been more effective in black & white, though -- although I feel that about most movies anyhow.
"Wait Until Dark" has a great jump scare scene at the end. When I saw it at the theater in the '60s they turned downthe theater lights for the last ten minutes or so to add to the atmosphere. When the jump came, most of the audience gasped and there were a few screams.
Probably shouldn't stray away from movies, but the "Blue Duck" character in the TV miniseries "Lonesome Dove" was one scary dude.
Quincy Jones' score helps heighten the tension in your final scene selection from "In Cold Blood." If you or Mark have the opening to follow up, could you include a clip from the "In Cold Blood" score called "Lonely Bottles"? I believe it accompanies the killers getting drunk on beer bottles, throwing them out the window as they drive. The crashing bottles in the sound track are courtesy of percussionist Emil Richards. The muted trombone solo is by the ill-fated Frank Rosolino, who sadly became a hot-blooded murderer of his family later on.
Quincy's "Lonely Bottles" from "In Cold Blood": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaoFWnlK_Kc
Criterion.com has a good video called "The Menacing Sounds of 'In Cold Blood.'" You're right: That score by Jones was incredible.
I'm not sure this qualifies as a non-horror film, since it's essentially a ghost story, but for the creepiest, most scary scenes in any film, period, from my perspective, the original "The Haunting" with Julie Harris gets my vote. This is of course the '63 original and not the ludicrous remake that will forever remain a blemish on the memory of the Julie Harris version.
A strong second for this one, along with a plug for the 1955 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" , particularly the scene where Dana Wynters goes to sleep while Kevin McCarthy is hugging her, and director Don Siegel's orginal ending with McCarthy screaming "YOU'RE NEXT!" .
To me, it's a horror film so I didn't include it. But as such, it's in the Top 10 for sure.
I consider it a horror film, or at least, like "The Haunting," horror-adjacent.
I really wanted to look beyond any "genre" movie in this particular column, to movies that would never, for instance, be considered ideal for broadcast during Halloween Day/week/month. And the movies you mentioned, while great, are also in heavy rotation every October.
But agree that the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" remains really effective (and sadly relevant.) Extremely taut, and the characters are well developed so you really get hooked by their dilemma.
Plus they didn't waste time explaining where the pods came from and so on, which is a downfall to many fright flicks that came before it, where the action gets interrupted by Some Scientist Giving a Slide Show. Not knowing exactly WHY these pods are suddenly appearing makes it worse.
Very true, the entire period of the late 50's early 60's created some exceptional films perhaps best described as psychological horror. Another that comes to mind in that vein is the '61 Deborah Kerr version of "The Innocents". A very, very high creepy factor.
It really is fantastic.
How about doing a follow up essay on non-traditional horror films? The three we've been discussing would be a great start. The odd and atypical within the genre, those that are different in a memorable way. Ought to make a great piece.
I'd have to think about that Richard. It's hard to define "non-traditional" though.