William Friedkin’s 13 Scariest Movies

Given the growing buzz about Paranormal Activity, I thought it might be interesting to see what the director of one of my favorite scary movies — The Exorcist — considered his scariest movies of all time. That director is William Friedkin and he provided this list of 13 movies last year with EW online. The movies are:

Psycho (1960)

Alien (1979)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Diabolique (1955)

Onibaba (1964)

Suspiria (1977) / Deep Red (1975)

Le Boucher (The Butcher) (1970)

Funny Games (1997)

Them (2006)

The Lodger (1944)

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Friedkin offers commentary with each selection. For example, here is what he had to say about Psycho:

‘Psycho was the first film that really scared me, that made me think, Oh my God, this is possible. Hitchcock based it on a novel by Robert Bloch, which was based on actual murders committed by a guy living in a shack in Wisconsin named Ed Gein. I grew up and lived in Chicago, a stone’s throw away….When I made The Exorcist, I understood what Hitchcock had done with Psycho. The build-up to those horrific scenes was more terrifying than the scenes themselves, as unforgettably disturbing as they were. Any work of art that can produce an emotional response is powerful. Hitchcock is able to scare you, almost any time he cares to.’’

Since today’s How They Write A Script featured screenwriter John Michael Hayes, who wrote four movies for Hitchcock, including Rear Window (1954) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), let’s go a bit deeper into the Hitchcockian realm by noting some of Betsy Sharkey’s observations about Paranormal Activity in her LA Times review of the movie today:

Before the lights go back up, and at some point you may wonder if they ever will, there will be a very tight coil of anxiety buried deep in your gut that is very hard to get rid of. I say that even though there’s no hard research yet. But it is 3 a.m. as I’m writing this and what with all the lights, I’m guessing the local electrical grid is recording a spike.

The man to curse for all this darkness is writer-director Oren Peli, who has created a psychological thriller of such small scale and yet such heightened impact that no doubt Hitchcock, wherever he may be, is smiling. Though the story does not have the complexity of the master, the first-time director understands that it’s what you don’t see, and the way in which you don’t see it, that counts.

“It’s what you don’t see, and the way in which you don’t see it, that counts.”

We humans must come with a genetic marker clearly labeled “fear of the unknown.” How else to explain why your breathing stops, stomach clenches and you suddenly develop bat ears in the face of the mundane — a light goes off, a door closes. The trick, of course, comes in not being able to explain the who, what and why of it.

Peli works at mining the unknown, the unknowable, like a minimalist, using small moments and virtually no special effects exceedingly well.

What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?

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