Friday Film Fun: Frightening films that freak you out

I'm a sucker for The Exorcist and The Grudge. My sister and I have seen The Exorcist more times than I care to imagine, and each time we lay huddled in bed afterwards daring the other one to fall asleep first.
I'm not sure what it is about The Grudge that creeps me out, but it's the first horror movie in my adult life that managed to make me squeal. The first time I saw it, I lived in a big old house with a winding staircase - after I got home, I had to have my roommate accompany me up the stairs, just in case the bogeyman was back-walking down with those terrifying jerky motions they shot so well.

It scared me to pieces.
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The Shining, The Exorcist, of course. I'm a big fan of Todd Browning's Freaks, but I wouldn't exactly call it scary.

The only movie to ever give me the full-on creeps isn't even a Halloween movie: Night and Fog ( http://www.amazon.com/Night-Fog-Collection-Michel-... ).

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From Amazon.com

Ever seen a film so terrifying that it made you want to sleep with all the lights on? A film so unsettling that some of its scenes were stuck in your mind long after you'd finished viewing it?

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer ( http://imdb.com/title/tt0099763/ ) is that film for me. My friends and I had to decompress at a coffee shop for several hours afterwards because we could not go home. I'm in the "great filmaking" opinion camp, though reviews tend to be mixed and polarized to a large degree.

My husband and I are going to see Nosferatu tonight -- the original silent film from 1922, not the recent remake. It stars Max Schreck as Count Orlok (Dracula) and was directed by F.W. Murnau. I first saw this in college and was totally fascinated and scared. It's much scarier than the Dracula movies, even the classic with Bela Lugosi.

My other favorite scary film is another black-and-white one from the 50s: Curse of the Demon. It stars Dana Andrews as John Holden, who comes to England to attend a conference on the paranormal. However, awful things begin to happen, all of which seem to have a connection to Julian Karswell, a man who professes to have occult powers. The cool thing -- and what makes it really scary -- is that you only see the demon twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. The rest of the movie is amazingly suspenseful. The Karswell character is loosely based on Aleistair Crowley, the famed occult practitioner of the early 20th century.

Others more well know: Psycho always makes me jump no matter how many times I see it, and The Exorcist scares the bejesus (heh) out of me.

Boo!

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