Editor's Note: Visit our Halloween page for more tricks and treats, the costume and horror classics photo galleries, and our own scariest movies.

We posed the question to our writers: What is your personal, cover-your-eyes-and-ears, scariest movie? We wanted to know what movie, for some reason or another, touched that raw nerve, caused sleepless nights and recurring nightmares. We all know The Exorcist is the hands-down winner for scariest of all, so we removed that from the running. I still remember watching it back in grade school (on normal TV, no less), alone in my parents' house on a Saturday night, and being so freaked that I could not even think about sleep.
Is there a movie that just scares the life out of you? Discuss it in the Film.com Forums.

MaryAnn Johanson
MaryAnn contributes her geeky Movie and TV insight to Film.com twice a day.

The most terrifying movie I've ever seen, one that continues to scare the bejesus out of me long years after I first saw it, is Threads, a 1984 made-for-TV British movie about a global nuclear war and its aftereffects both in the short and long terms. Its documentary style is horrifyingly forthright about how fragile our industrialized civilization is, and how little it would take to sever the threads that keep it operating ... and the 3000-megaton nuclear exchange here is far from "little." From firing squads for looters in the immediate aftermath to the near loss of coherent language in the first generation born after the war, in the midst of a catastrophic decade-long nuclear winter, this is scary on a scale that no other movie I've ever seen can even approach, partly for its realism, partly for its matter-of-fact approach, and partly because we probably came so close to this actually happening. Threads makes The Day After look like Teletubbies; seriously, this is not for the faint of heart, but everyone should see it just to understand what awesome and destructive power we hold in our hands. This movie still keeps me awake at night, occasionally, and yet I'm weirdly drawn to watch it again and again. It's that powerful.

C. Robert Cargill
Austin-based Cargill, who "not only loves, but owns, The Cutting Edge," writes on Movies and DVD two times a week.

As a longtime horror movie lover, I haven't found myself truly scared by a film in a long time. However, one of the films I saw in my youth gave me nightmares for weeks. A Nightmare on Elm Street, while dated now, had to be the single creepiest horror idea since The Exorcist. The idea that the monster can get you when you're most vulnerable, and that the nightmares you have themselves enforce that terror is scary as hell. I can't even count the number of times I woke up the week after watching that, thinking that I'd just escaped Freddy's gloved hand and not wanting to go back to sleep. Of course I realized it was all a dream ... but the thought persisted in the back of my skull: what if it wasn't?

Sue Harvey
Sue (aka "Mom on Film") is a mother of three who shares her passion for film with bi-weekly, family-friendly movie recommendations.

I learned early on that I have a very low threshold for scary movies. At this point in my life I pretty much avoid them like the plague (except for a lapse in judgment a few years back when I saw The Sixth Sense). However, the movie that rocked my world -- made it impossible for me to get into bed with the closet door open or without having someone else check under the bed first, not to mention absolutely ruined me forever on clowns -- was 1982's Poltergeist. Geesh ... just saying the name makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up! No wonder I absolutely refuse to live in a suburban subdivision!

Ethan Morris
Ethan contributes his observations on movies and DVD four times per week.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) scared the living crap out of me when I was a kid, and still does! This flick is terrifying from the opening scene in the cemetery ("They're coming to get you, Barbra") to the final moment when the zombie hunters kill the only survivor in the farmhouse. There have been several sequels and remakes, some of them pretty good, including 2004's Dawn of the Dead (George Romero has been involved in almost all of them), but the original is still the best! Wanna be scared this Halloween? Rent Night of the Living Dead, you won't be disappointed. [See my scariest movie moments.]

Dre Rivas
Dre writes five times a week for Film.com, covering Movies and DVD with his Floridian flare.

Not to pull the macho card, but horror movies in general don't scare me anymore. Admittedly, this is coming from the kid who ran screaming from the room when he first saw Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. These days, a movie has to get in my head. Oliver Stone's JFK is probably the movie I'd least prefer to watch late at night, the film I'm most scared of today. And it's not because of Kevin Costner's acting either. Stone made a movie that still makes me paranoid when I watch it. I start to hear noises outside, checking out my windows, trying to spot the government car. And you try sleeping at night with images of Joe Pesci and his creepy toupee.

Jace
Through his three articles a day, Jaces keeps all of Film.com apprised of the latest on TV.

I'd have to say that my favrorite scary movie has got to be David Lynch's Blue Velvet. It's not a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it presents the scariest and creepiest depiction (second only to Twin Peaks) of the seedy underbelly of life in suburbia. When Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) stumbled upon that severed ear in the middle of a field my whole teenage notion of both cinema and life in the 'burbs fractured completely. No nitrous for me, thanks, and mind where you point those scissors. Brutal, beautiful, and damaging, it's a haunting journey to the heart of the heartland and a twisted romp through the brilliant mind of David Lynch.

If we're talking about actual horror movies, it would have to be Shaun of the Dead, easily my favorite for the way Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright magnificently manage to fuse horror and comedy together in a satisfying, frightening, and hysterical way ... and Shaun and Ed (Nick Frost) have got to be the best dynamic duo in recent cinema history. Plus, you've got Lucy Davis (The Office), Dylan Moran (Black Books), Bill Nighy (State of Play), Jessica Stevenson (Spaced), Martin Freeman (The Office), and Tamsin Greig (Black Books) popping up as well, making it the equivalent of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game for the British telly set.

Maassive
Maassive is a Texas-based journalist who contributes to Film.com on a semi-regular basis.

When I think horror, I think about John Carpenter. However stinky the cheese factor (muenster?), Big Trouble in Little China and They Live will always rank high on my middle-of-the-night, cold-pizza favorite list. But, it's Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness that really gets to me. The gore and shocks aren't what do it; instead, it's the whole theme of the film, and how you're stuck in a world where an author's demented imagination is eating away at reality. The script doesn't play by the conventional rules of horror, and instead corrupts them to the point where dread, not fear, makes your stomach turn, and you're left wondering what you can believe when the lights come up.

Laremy
Laremy ponders and portends on Movies, DVD, and TV five times per week.

This is an unorthodox choice, but I've got to be honest: Just Cause (1995) is the scariest thing I've ever seen. It's got Ed Harris as a released inmate who goes after his parents in a ghoulish manner. It's got Blair Underwood playing a good guy who comes off as menacing near the end. No one saw this movie, but it happens in the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and contains all the creepiness they can conjure from that murky heat. It's a complete mind twister with dread being the only constant. I'll never get the picture of Ed Harris and what he did to his parents out of my mind, and I had nightmares about it for a long while after.

The Evil Beet
The Evil Beet provides Film.com with daily doses of evil-twinged celebrity gossip.

Typically, I am able to keep in mind that I absolutely, positively hate scary movies. They're like roller coasters for me: other people get a real kick out of the adrenaline rush, while I grip the handlebars and sob quietly, so I've made it a point not to get near either a roller coaster or a horror flick for years now. I fell off the wagon this spring, while trapped in a Maui hotel room on a rainy night, and I watched Saw II. I'm still in recovery. I know I'm not alone in my condition, so I've selected a "scary" movie that anyone can enjoy: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This 1992 predecessor to the television series stars Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry (when he was hot instead of old), and even has Hilary Swank, a full two years before she did The Next Karate Kid. There's plenty of blood and gore for those who like that sort of thing, but there's also a kick-ass, hilarious backstory as a high-school cheerleader transforms into a lean, mean, vampire-slaying machine, and manages to fall in love with Luke Perry in the process.

Drake Lelane
Drake's 3-4 entries a week keep Film.com tuned to the subtle, musical nuances within movies and TV.

From the perspective of a young child, the scariest movie I ever saw had to be Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The film lulled you into thinking that it was a children's movie ... but that was a lie! There's one specific scene which I call "the boat ride to hell" -- it's got Gene Wilder yelling out insane poetry, interspliced with footage of chickens getting their heads cut off, and it's all shot like a bad Jerry Garcia acid trip. Are you sure this is for kids? The child in me is still spooked anytime I see that uncut scene (chicken head decapitation was removed in later broadcasts). Tim Burton's version is, by comparison, a neutered affair.

Ted K -- Film.com Producer

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