When Norman Bates, dressed as his mother, ripped open Janet Leigh's shower curtain and knifed her to death in "Psycho", horror movies changed. Along with Leigh's blood, classic horror style and romantic figures like Frankenstein and Dracula went right down the shower drain. The veiled sexuality and hidden violence that dominated most classic horror films suddenly were gleefully dragged into the open, for everyone to exploit. For better or worse, style often became as important as substance, and booming box-office numbers proved that horror was serious business. The shifting times created opportunities for filmmakers to innovate, finding new and terrifying ways to scare the pants off audiences.
The mark of a great horror film is whether it sustains its vision of terror through several generations of increasingly desensitized viewers. Does the movie still make you jump or squirm or sweat or scream?
These are the movies that keep us up at night. Their images creep into our subconscious and change the way we feel about the dark corners of our lives. Everyone has their own top 10 films that scared them the most. Here's mine. They all succeed, in their own ways, of affecting the audience on a deeply psychological level. Consider these 10, in no particular order, and see if you agree.