Continuing our monthlong celebration of Halloween with various scary movie and TV-related lists. Check out our online movie database at channelguidemag.com to see if any of these or other scary titles are on this month. (Note: Videos may contain graphic violence, disturbing images and language.)
DON’T MESS WITH A WOMAN: TOP 5 SCARY FILM HEROINES
They screamed, they ran, and then, with no other choice, they turned and faced the enemy and proved that the so-called weaker sex can kick some monster butts when it has to:
5. Suzy Hendrix – Wait Until Dark (Audrey Hepburn)
“Fragile” is a word that aptly describes the petite Audrey Hepburn. Here she plays blind woman Suzy Hendrix whose night of terror begins when her husband comes home from a business trip carrying a doll a woman left with him. It’s stuffed with heroin and soon the real owner of the drugs comes to claim it, leading to a sequence of terrifying events. The finale ranks as one of the most suspenseful ever put on film:
4. Rosemary Woodhouse – Rosemary’s Baby (Mia Farrow)
Poor Rosemary! All she wanted was a baby and instead she got … well, if you don’t know what she got, why are you reading a list of scary films when you should be watching this one? Yes, this film is scary but not because of any surprises. We know how that baby was conceived long before Rosemary figures things out. No, it’s Rosemary herself – innocent, pregnant and surrounded by evil – that makes us pray she finds the strength to fight back, which makes the finale all the more heartbreaking:
3. Agent Clarice Starling – The Silence of the Lambs (Jodie Foster)
An FBI trainee, still unsure of her strengths and painfully vulnerable, Clarice Starling is the perfect bait to get psychopath extraordinaire Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter’s help in finding a serial killer who skins his victims. There is a strong wall between agent and psychopathic psychiatrist – she’d never get so close to Lecter otherwise – but he manages to emotionally wound her at every meeting. So perfectly acted and directed, it’s no wonder it swept the top five 1992 Oscars.
2. Laurie Strode – Halloween (Jamie Lee Curtis)
In her first film role, Jamie Lee Curtis plays a babysitter with way more problems than kids that won’t go to bed. But she knows her responsibilities and rises to the occasion, even when being terrorized by a psychotic killer in a William Shatner mask.
1. Ellen Ripley – Alien & sequels (Sigourney Weaver)
The monsters in Alien and its sequels were the Giger-esque nightmares but still no match for the hard-as-nails Ripley. The first film featured an incredible alien birth but it’s in Aliens where Ripley – and her maternal instincts – create the ultimate human vs. alien showdown. Would the films have been as effective if, as the scriptwriter planned, Ripley had been a man?
