Arguably one of the best directors of his generation, Martin Scorsese spoke to The Daily Beast about his personal top ten scariest horror movies. He actually came up with eleven and what you would expect from a true auteur, picked movies that were form over substance or art over blood and gore.
Although my top eleven looks nothing like Scorsese’s list apart from similar picks like The Exorcist, The Shining, and The Entity, I do agree with the premise behind each selection. Scorsese chose movies that were stylish and artistic in creation and frights that come from what we appear to see or in fact what we don’t see. These films play on our basic fright instincts of darkness and our own imagination getting the better of us. This type of horror is vastly superior to full frontal blood and guts.
I respect Martin Scorsese as a true auteur and lover of film as an art form and although his list reflects the choices of a man born from a different generation, I am certainly intrigued by some of the black and white movies that I have yet to see. I look forward to spending the next week hunting them down and finding out if I actually agree with the man. I am a little surprised that classics like director Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) and the original silent movie, Nosferatu (1922) from director F.W. Murnau, aren’t on the list. For those of you who think that only contemporary horror is scary, I dare you to watch these two movies with the lights turned off.
Here are Martin Scorsese’s top eleven scary movies:
2) Isle of The Dead (1945)
3) The Uninvited (1944)
4) The Entity (1981)
5) Dead of Night (1945)
6) The Changling (1980)
7) The Shining (1980)
8) The Exorcist (1973)
9) Night of The Demon (1957)
10) The Innocents (1961)
11) Psycho (1960)
