Stephen King has revealed his favourite horror movie of all time in a new essay.
Writing for Variety, the author gave two honourable mentions before naming, what he believes to be, the scariest movie ever made.
“I thought deeply about this question, perhaps more deeply than the subject — my scariest horror movie — deserves… but then, I’ve seen a lot of horror movies, so maybe it’s a valid Q,” he began the essay.
“My conclusion is that the ‘scariest’ varies according to the viewer’s age. As a kid of 16, the scariest movie was The Haunting (directed by Robert Wise). As an adult, it was The Blair Witch Project, with that building sense of doom and those truly horrible last 35 seconds. But overall, I’d have to say Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero’s low-budget masterpiece.
“I’ll never forget the smarmy older brother doing his bad Boris Karloff imitation — ‘They’re coming to get you, Barbara… there’s one now!’ He’s pointing to the elderly wino stumbling among the gravestones, only the elderly wino turns out to be a reanimated corpse, and when Barbara locks herself in her car, she discovers that the smarmy brother — Johnny — has taken the keys. Meanwhile, the old man is trying to get at her, and the viewer understands he will not stop. It’s a moment of pure atavistic terror. Barbara puts the car in neutral (probably impossible without the key, but that’s movies for you) and rolls it down the hill, getting away… temporarily.”
King concluded the piece by saying the movie has “lost its elemental power over the years — has become almost a Midnite Madness joke, like Rocky Horror — but I still remember the helpless terror I felt when I first saw it.
“And now that I think of it, there’s a real similarity to Blair Witch, both with minimal or no music, both cast with unknown actors who seem barely capable of summer stock in Paducahville, both with low-tech special effects. They work not in spite of those things, but because of them.
In other news, it was announced earlier this week that acclaimed horror director Mike Flanagan is set to adapt a TV adaptation of King’s Carrie.
According to reports from Variety, Flanagan will lead the eight-episode series for Amazon Prime Video, which has yet to receive a release date. Flanagan – who has in the past worked on several other King adaptations – will also co-write and executive produce.
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