Just in time for the weekend Halloween frenzy, The Daily Beast quizzed super-director Martin Scorsese on his 11 favourite horror films of all time.
Let's count down, shall we? For some more clips head on over to
The Daily Beast website.
11. Psycho
"Again, it’s so familiar that you think: great movie, but it’s not so scary anymore. Then you watch it…and quickly start thinking again."
10. The Innocents
"This Jack Clayton adaptation of
The Turn of the Screw is one of the rare pictures that does justice to Henry James".
9. Night of the Demon
"Forget the demon itself—again, it’s what you don’t see that’s so powerful."
8. The Exorcist
"A classic, endlessly parodied, very familiar— and it’s as utterly horrifying as it was the day it came out."
7. The Shining
"I never read the Stephen King novel, I have no idea how faithful it is or isn’t, but Kubrick made a majestically terrifying movie, where what you
don’t see or comprehend shadows every move the characters make."
6. The Changeling
"George C. Scott, recovering from the death of his wife and child, discovers the angry ghost of another dead child in the mansion where he’s staying."
5. Dead of Night
"Like
The Uninvited, it’s very playful…and then it gets under your skin."
4. The Entity
"Barbara Hershey plays a woman who is brutally raped and ravished by an invisible force in this truly terrifying picture."
3. The Uninvited
"... the tone is very delicate, and the sense of fear is woven into the setting, the gentility of the characters."
2. Isle of the Dead
"There’s a moment in this Val Lewton picture, about plague victims trapped on an island during the Greek civil war, that never fails to scare me. let’s just say that it involves premature burial."
1. The Haunting
"“You may not believe in ghosts but you cannot deny terror!” was the tagline for this absolutely terrifying 1963 Robert Wise picture about the investigation of a house plagued by violently assaultive spirits."