Even though he tends to be a bit of a genre-bender, Martin Scorsese isn't what you would call a horror filmmaker. However, the man's brainpan is brimming with knowledge about cinema of all kinds, which is why it was such a treat when The Daily Beast took the opportunity to ask the legendary director to list what he thought were the scariest movies of all time. Here's the list:

  1. The Haunting (1963)
  2. Isle of the Dead (1945)
  3. The Uninvited (1944)
  4. The Entity (1982)
  5. Dead of Night (1945)
  6. The Changeling (1980)
  7. The Shining (1980)
  8. The Exorcist (1973)
  9. Night of the Demon (1957)
  10. The Innocents (1961)
  11. Psycho (1960)

As you can see, we've got some of the usual suspects sprinkled in there -- The Shining, The Exorcist, and Psycho, but the thing I love about the other films is that, even if they're not considered the best horror films of all time (I doubt that's what Scorsese was implying anyway), they certainly were made in times when horror film was on the rise and at its best.

He lists several films from the 1940s, which came at the tail end of the Golden Age of Classic Horror cinema (roughly 1919 to 1948), but the majority come from -- I don'tt know -- let's call it the Golden Age of New Horror -- that long stretch between the 60s and the 80s when Alfred Hitchcock, George Romero, Roger Corman, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and so many others were working hard to scare the bejeezus out of us. It was a time when the horror filmmaker was well-known and well-respected. This is when we saw filmmakers really push the boundaries of horror cinema, invent new ways to shock and horrify with special effects, and turn the scary monster at your door into the evil that lurks within us all.

Which horror films make your list of the scariest of all time? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: The Daily Beast

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