Scariest Flicks for Halloween

Selected by a man who knows what's scary

(NEWSER) - Need some suggestions for a scary movie to watch this weekend? None other than the horror master himself, Wes Craven, offers up his 10 favorites in the Daily Beast :

1. Don't Look Now (1973): A "pretty moving work of art as well" as a horror film, this movie is a great example "of being able to scare without showing blood."
2. Psycho (1960): In the most frightening scene, "Hitchcock did a very surreal thing where he put his actor on a lift so he could be flying backwards in midair in slow-motion in a very surreal, dreamlike way. It was utterly terrifying."

The film critic explains why movie lists are awful

(NEWSER) - Lots of critics have dutifully supplied their top-10 lists of horror movies in time for Halloween. Not so Roger Ebert, who instead used the time to compile an essay on why he hates the exercise, at this time of year or any other. "No list of films has the slightest significance, unless it involves box-office receipts," he explains in the Wall Street Journal . OK, maybe one—the once-a-decade effort from British film magazine Sight & Sound. More»

Gore galore but not much makes sense in 'final chapter'

(NEWSER) - Saw 3D, the seventh installment in the gory horror franchise, will be the final one, according to its producers, and most critics are hoping they stick to their word.

• The use of 3D is effective but "a lack of multi-dimensional flying body parts wasn't this series' problem," Geoff Berkshire writes at Metromix . The Saw franchise, he writes, "goes down in history as the most unnecessarily convoluted horror franchise of all time—and that’s the nicest thing you can say about it."

It's all about the creative casting of an extra

(NEWSER) - Alfred Hitchcock didn't like to use sleight-of-hand to mislead viewers, but he did so in perhaps his most famous scene—the shower murder in Psycho, writes Steve North in Salon . (And if spoiler alerts apply after 50 years, here it is.) That's not Tony Perkins in drag wielding the knife. Hitchcock used a noticeably larger extra because he was afraid Perkins' slight frame would be too easy to recognize in silhouette—and thus people would know all about Norman Bates only a half-hour into the film. More»

5-year-old's new buddy gives dad flashbacks of 'The Shining'

(NEWSER) - A generally literal-minded 5-year-old has a new imaginary friend, and his dad is quietly freaking out—and blaming Stephen King. Oh, and Stanley Kubrick, who translated King's novel The Shining to the big screen. "Before King and Kubrick came along, I'm guessing that imaginary friends were kind of cute," Peter Hartlaub writes for the San Francisco Chronicle . "One more innocent thing forever ruined by the memorable words of Stephen King." More»