Quest For A Classic Horror Movie

I love scary movies. Probably more than any other type of film. There's nothing better than when pictures on a screen get your adrenaline pumping and genuinely scare the bejesus out of you.

Problem is, it's quite difficult for horror movies to actually get it right. I have no qualms about watching countless amounts of movies which are undeniably awful and were never going to be anything more. In my mind, there's something nice about watching a crappy horror movie, and as any casual movie fan knows these are in no short supply. But finding a genuinely scary and well made scary movie is becoming increasingly difficult. There are many acknowledged classics which actually do the trick, but at this stage I've seen most of them. So an unseen classic is therefore a rare commodity.

Being the stubborn bugger that I am, I refuse to resign myself to a future of hoping that this week's new horror movie will live up to the standards of, say, The Shining. So with that in mind I've begun a quest. There must be at least a handful of unseen classics out there, just waiting to scare us senseless, and I'm determined to find them.


A few ground rules:

• Gore is not scary. While it can be used in a scary fashion, it takes more than an unthinkable act of violence to make a good horror movie. This rules out a lot of the genre (and you, Eli Roth).
  
• Neither is torture-porn scary. It may be harrowing and unpleasant, but it's not scary. This rules out a lot of modern horror flicks, and even a lot of so-called 'classics' (Is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre merely torture-porn? Discuss.).
• A story is always necessary. No one cares if randomers get killed. And no, 'unsuspecting couple go to secluded place for romantic getaway only to be tortured and killed by mysterious strangers' is not a story. It's a premise. Laziness will not be tolerated.
• While 'loud noise' style shocks and jumpy moments are acceptable, they should preferably be used in conjunction with other methods of scaring the viewer. We could devise a points system- 1 for tension, 2 for a jumpy scare, 3 for slow realising terror- but that's unnecessarily complicated. You get the idea. Let's try not to be cheap with the scares.
  
• Artistic merit is again preferable, but not absolutely necessary.
  

I realise I'm setting the bar quite high, but let's not forget we're looking for classics here. It's good to have standards. So we know the kind of thing we're looking for, here's a few examples of what I would consider a classic scary movie:

The Shining
Possibly the greatest horror movie of all time. Artistically amazing, as Kubrick always was. Some jumps, general feeling of unease, gradual creeping terror, leaves food for thought.

Don't Look Now
Undeniably great film, regardless of horror status. Again quite thought provoking, suspenseful, shocking conclusion.

The Haunting (original)
Smart, great story, creates it's own mythology, tension galore, smart scares, fantastic atmosphere.

Ringu
Plays on classic urban-legend style mythology, creates uneasy tension throughout, one of the most spine-chilling reveals in movie history (typically botched in the hollywood remake).


There are several others I'd consider top notch, including a few modern offerings which I reckon have good claim to being classics (or at least modern classics). For example: The Others (plays expertly to genre conventions), Scream (completely fucks with genre conventions) and most recently The Orphanage, which contains one or two scenes that embody exactly what the classic horror movie should be all about.

Ok, so that's the general idea. My plan is to work my way through as many 'classics' as I can and hopefully find at least a few that genuinely deserve that title. If anyone can recommend anything that they reckon deserves to be watched please let me know. Hopefully at the end of this quest we'll be able to crown a few more legends of the genre.

To start, I've made a list of flicks I haven't seen which are reputed to be classics. They'll be watched and judged with the results being reported here. It seems that every list of 'greatest scary movies ever' online comprises the same handful of movies: Psycho, Alien, The Exorcist, The Omen... etc. So it may be hard to track down what we're looking for- classics that remain generally 'unseen' (I realise there may be some on the following list which I really should have seen already, but you'll have to bear with me on that).

Anyway, here's a list of preliminary research targets:

Hour of the Wolf
I've never seen anything be Ingmar Bergman, but he's reputed to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, so a horror movie by him must be good...

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
1920's silent film regarded as one of the first horror movies.

Picnic at Hanging Rock
Not quite a horror, but apparently quite creepy.

Repulsion
Early Roman Polanski.

Village of the Damned
Never seen this. Creepy kids are generally effective. The main kid is Martin Stephens of The Innocents fame- that should probably be on the list of established classics...

Jacob's Ladder
Saw this years ago based on it's reputation as a classic scary movie, but was probably too young to appreciate it.

Night of the Demon
As above

Session 9
Modern flick which I would have assumed to be a straight-to-video crapfest, but has a lot of support online as something that's genuinely good.

As I said, there's probably many others out there which I'm not aware of, so do help.

What movie scared the crap out of you most? There's bound to be one...

To get us all in the mood here's an Irish short film which was recommended to me as a smart little taste of suspense and what to do with it. Remember that scary movies should always be viewed late at night and, of course, in the dark.