Happy Halloween: What's your favorite scary movie or book?

[Ad Orientem]

When I was a kid I was partial to horror movies. My personal favorites were the Hammer Films with Christopher Lee. The movie Salem's Lot was one of the few that really scarred me though. Mostly because it took the vampires from 19th century Transylvania where they were remote and non-threatening and moved them in next door to me.

[melveyr]

I just watched Evil Dead 2 which was a lot of fun  It's streaming free if you have Amazon prime.

[MediumTex]

The Shining is very good.

The original Halloween movie is pretty good.

[MediumTex]

I just watched Evil Dead 2 which was a lot of fun 

+ 1 zillion.

[KevinW]

The Wicker Man (the original 1973 version, not the recent Nicholas Cage mess).

[Mountaineer]

Two that stand out for me:

The Howling (1981) - when my wife and I came out of the theater, we actually thought we heard a wolf howl - scared the daylights out of us

Aliens (1986) - specifically the jumping out of the chest scene.

[Alanw]

Of all the scary movies I've seen, the one that still gives me chills is The Shining.  Especially the scene at the end where the camera zooms in on the photo in the hotel.  "Redrum" anyone.

[Tortoise]

28 Days Later is the scariest zombie movie I've ever seen.

Zombieland is the most all-around entertaining zombie movie I've ever seen. Has some very funny moments.

[MachineGhost]

I looked through the IMDB Top 250 and didn't see any but three horror movies, The Shining, The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, none of which I saw as a kid.  I didn't find any of them to be horror in the modern sense of the word, but The Shining was really top notch story and acting.  I think the ambience was further helped by having previously read the book.

Perhaps we need to segment by era.  There's a distinct quality to above movies, The Fog, The Thing, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead that we would never see in a modern-day movie anymore.  I doubt Generation Y or Z would appreciate them.

The last movie I recall being totally scared and engrossed by was Candyman way back in the 90's.  That wrung it all out of me.  Now nothing scares me anymore, though I got to admit Paranormal Witness was pushing the margin.  I'm still angry over that one!

Looks like the Red Dawn reboot is coming out on Nov 21, 2012.  The Red Communist Chinese Bastards invading America -- now that is horror!

[WildAboutHarry]

I thought Dawn of the Dead was pretty scary.  Zombies running!  Imagine that!

[Bob]

One of my friends recently saw 2016: Obama's America and he told me it was the scariest movie he's ever seen.  Hopefully the next four years won't turn into a "horror" show, regardless of who is elected. 

In 1979, my wife and I went to see a movie called When A Stranger Calls starring Carol Kane and Charles Durning.  The movie was about a psychopathic killer who terrorized Carol Kane when she was a babysitter - and then returns seven years later to terrorize the baby sitter who is watching Carol Kane's young children.  She keeps getting a phone call that says "Have you checked the children?"  Toward the end of the movie, Carol Kane and her husband rush home and find everything OK but little do they know that the killer is in the house.  Carol Kane hears a noise and checks on the kids - who are OK.  But when she gets back into bed, and her husband rolls over, it is not her husband but the killer.  When that happened, my wife jumped about a foot and two other girls in the theater started screaming for about a minute.  I have to admit that was one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. 

Does anyone else remember seeing that movie?

[KevinW]

I saw The Ring and The Blair Witch Project in theaters and thought they were really frightening. I don't think that'd translate to home video though.

[Xan]

Oh I think The Ring would translate to home video.  Especially the part where the chick crawls out the TV.

[KevinW]

I dunno, I guess I felt like it was the tension created by being surrounded by other people that are all scared and maybe screaming, that made those scenes so scary. I'm thinking those scenes would register as campy, like Godzilla or something, at home by yourself with the lights on.

[hpowders]

Kalifornia with Brad Pitt.