The Exorcist.

Psycho's great... I didn't expect it to be that scary.

And The Shining... I lived in a dorm with a basement that resembled that place. Creeeepy.

And Holloween, which I saw for the first time on Holloween, at midnight, and had to wait for a bus in a deserted parking lot at 2am afterwards. (I've never seen that one again.)

And the old Creature Feature movies, with the green hand rising out of the ground, that I used to watch with my mother when I was a kid. She loved vampires and mummies.

Children of the Corn scared me enough that I've only ever seen the first fifteen minutes of it (twice).

the new Dawn of the Dead is lots of fun
John Carpenter's The Thing
Alien
The Exorcist
The Wind
Them

Yeah, somebody might take a couple of those and say they're sci-fi; I hereby preemptively suggest they fuck off and think it through 'til they agree with me, or make their own damn list.

The Exorcist
Dead Ringers
Primer (creepy, but not outright horror movie)
Ghost Story (freaked me so bad when i saw it i walked out of the theater)

Heh, you may regret asking this, because I'm a total horror movie freak and will go on and on and on about them, given the opportunity.

Anything by Dario Argento, but particularly Suspiria. He's the Italian horror master, and Suspiria has the most inventive deaths I've seen.

I'm also a huge J-horror fan, there are a few that I particularly like. The original Ring (Ringu) and the original Grudge (Ju-on). Also, Suicide Club and Battle Royal. Japanese horror movies are like nothing else I've ever seen.

If you like cult classic movies, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a freaking classic - not scary for the most part, but still a great flick. Vincent Price is a freaking genius, and another good one is The Pit and The Pendulum.

Another oldie-but-goodie is Carnival of Souls, which has some cheese factor involved, but I like that.

I could give you a whole treatise on zombie movies, but I'll leave it at this - Anything by Romero, also 28 Days Later and Sean of the Dead. Don't watch Undead if you're looking for zombies, it isn't really a zombie movie or very good either.

The Exorcist scares me so much I can't watch it. The devil stuff is the worst. Even though it is badly made, Amityville (original) scares me in the same way.

This is great. I have to start adding these to my netflix. We really watch anything. She makes fun of them and I hide my eyes.

But then I have to just hide under a blanket to even block out the sound. Sometimes, THAT is the worst part!

Also, I remember watching part of Ghost Story as a kid and THAT freaked me out that I couldn't even watch anymore of it. I'm dying to see it now.

I also think its fun to see stuff that scared you as a kid but is so bad now. For example: I borrowed my friends DVDs of Creepshow 1 & 2 a couple of weeks ago. When I was younger I was always terrified of the story "The Hitchhiker" with the hit and run driver terrorized by the guy she hits.

He won't die. He just keeps popping up more gory than the last time with the line "Thanks for the ride, lady."

That scared me so much as a kid. When I saw it a few weeks ago...it was so lame.

I like Peter Jackson's Dead/Alive and Bad Taste, and I wholeheartedly second sasshat's recommendations.

Oh my god you gotta see The Hitcher with Rutger Hauer! And also Poltergeist is the best ever.

The Haunting, made in about 1963, in black & white. Absolutely terrifying.

And The Ring. I couldn't watch TV for days after I saw that!

Also, anything where the one-word title is the name of an animal.

Bride of Reanimator

Audition

Ringu, the real deal, scarriest shit I've ever seen. Also, the original Dark Water was pretty good.

I think movies that play on your psychological fears are way more effective than gory slash'em-ups.

Did you ever see that New Twilight Zone episode where the guy wakes up and the English language gets all scrambled up as he goes about his day? And then his son gets sick and he has to go to the hospital and can't understand anyone?

That was creepy.

Don't forget The Sixth Sense!

Here's a tip: when you are young, and you manage a video rental store, and you tell your first date to pick out anything she wants to see, DON'T let her pick out The Exorcist. Even if she says she is sure. Because then she will be too scared to drive home, and will have to sleep on your couch, and it'll just ruin everything.

Then, if you happen to be that girl, the next morning, when you return to the group house you moved into two weeks ago, don't tell your new housie what happened.

Because they might say "Oh, well, you know, right up the street? That vacant lot? That's where the house was that the shit went down that Blatty based the book on. Here. Here is a scrapbook my parents kept. They went to the Parish." ***

Because then you can't sleep in your own room and have to sleep on the couch for three nights.

The Shining and Blair Witch Project are also brilliant movies (although Blair Witch you can only watch once), but they won't send you to the couch like that.

***This was totally true. Every Halloween we would have death rocker pilgrims and such.

Oh, and the original Dutch version of The Vanishing (not the Keifer Sutherland remake).

I recently watched my copy of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I realized I had forgotten how scary and generally unsettling it is.

The Sound of Music

edelweiss frightens me

I gotta go for the Lost Highway for sheer psychological terror. The scene where the guy tells Bill Pullman to call his house and he answers the phone? And the part where they find the video tape of them sleeping? I don't want to spoil anything, but this (though not 'scary' to me) fucks with the minds of most anyone I know who tries to think about it seriously. THAT, to me, is horror. Not so much axe-wielding maniacs as the laws of reality collapsing in very obvious and almost sarcastically mocking ways. Things That Should Not Be. (Anyone who has other recommendations along this line, please send them!)

Best funny horror movie? Probably Brooks' "High Anxiety," but that might just be because I'm a Hitchcock fan. And Madeline Kahn. Rrreeeowr.

Not all of them are stellar, but the concepts expressed in them are all really interesting/different.
Threads
Henry
Night/Dawn/Day of the Dead - "Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!"
Videodrome - Brian O'Blivion: "The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television."
When the Wind Blows
The Quiet Earth -careful... spoilers. "Zac Hobson, July 5th. One - there has been a malfunction in Project Flashlight. Two – it seems I am the only person left on Earth…."
28 Days Later - for a few scenes, but not all.

A Tale Of Two Sisters is my favorite by a long shot, only The Shining comes close.

Eid, your love of Madeline Kahn has just endeared you to me further.

Hellraiser (the first one) so scared the hell outta me I'll never watch it again. But I'd have to say The Shining is my favourite with Poltergeist as a close second. The Omen, The Exorcist and April Fool's Day are really good too.

Rossi, you're actually one of the few people about whose endearment I care, so whoo!

Exorcist III (skip Exorcist II: The Bloodening)

The 1956 and 1978 versions of Invasions of the Body Snatchers

The Others