I don’t find “horror” movies to be scary. Maybe that’s because my dad is a film editor, and when I see gore in a film I think about what was used to make it, and the guys standing just offscreen throwing buckets of red water across the set.
So my list is different (and really incomplete)
1984, Requiem For a Dream, Schindler’s List, Deliverance, Tapped, Wall-E, District 9, Idiocracy…
Battlefield Earth was the scariest movie I ever saw. It scared me that someone would actually release such a bad movie. And that’s coming from someone that enjoyed Howard the Duck.
I laughed all the way through that one – had my own little Mystery Science Theater riff track going in my head, it was great!
My all-time favorite bad movie is Reptilicus. It’s kind of a “Godzilla does Denmark” thing, SO bad – you can see the lines where they cut out and pasted in the guy the monster was eating in one scene. I had a couple of Danish employees at the time, and my kids were in HS so we’e all get together at my house for a movie night every Friday night. Probably at least once a month Reptilicus was the opening feature – poking fun at it just never got old.
For me, the movies that are most memorable, and seriously scared the crap out of me as a kid–I’m not sure I would say they’re favorites–are, in no particular order:
The Car
Willard
Ben
Children of the Corn
Jaws
Honorary mention to the original Halloween. The movie didn’t scare me, but the music still freaks me out.