Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time’ on Shudder, Your Go-To Spooky Movie Night Resource

The 101 Scariest Movie Moments of All Time (Shudder) slices its master list into seven episodes of 45-ish minutes each, and brings in an interesting cross-section of directors, producers, actors, and film experts to explore its respectably deep list. What scenes, creative decisions, stylistic flourishes, visual effects, in-camera wizardry, or resonant, unforgettable lines made these horror films the stone cold classics of the genre?

THE 101 SCARIEST HORROR MOVIE MOMENTS OF ALL TIME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shrieking violins! The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time opens with a legendary clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 gem Psycho. “I don’t know which came first,” Kate Siegel of Haunting of Hill House says, “my fear of being in the shower with my eyes closed or me watching Psycho.”

The Gist: Structurally, 101 Scariest is like any “list” show you’ve ever caught during a grazing session with your remote: films appear in order counting down from 101, with their director and year of release, followed by commentary from an assorted group of Hollywood notables, horror movie experts, and genre enthusiasts. Tony Todd, the Candyman himself, discusses the elusive and rewarding art of a really effective jump scare. Keith David confesses how shook he was to actually see the creature from The Thing in the finished film, since the cast was acting to and getting scared by nothing during filming. And director Edgar Wright lauds the technical and tactical genius of how makeup effects were presented in George Waggoner’s 1941 horror classic The Wolf Man. (That one notches on the countdown at #94.) It moves fast, and there’s no filler. But 101 Scariest really is in love with outstanding movie moments of the frightful variety.

In the early going, the series is a long way from number one. But in its discussion of, say, It Follows at #101 or the 1942 Cat People at #93, 101 Scariest doesn’t seem to put a lot of stock in list position. Film scholars Tananarive Due and John Jennings applaud the tension, misdirection, and promise of mayhem in the former, while the discussion of the latter turns toward Tinsel town history lesson as RKO Studios rose to confront Universal Studios in the “horror factory” of 1940s moviemaking. A lot of the chart positioning feels like it could be free-floating, and nothing would be lost from how each descriptive blurb unfolds.

While it moves at a pace steady enough for quick consumption, The 101 Scariest Movie Moments of All Time is also careful to include enough space for each film on its list for the extra question to be asked, or the extra observation to be made, so it helps that its list of contributors is so varied. Mike Flanagan, the hero of Netflix’s recent houses of horror, is interviewed here, along with Creepshow director Greg Nicotero, It director Andy Muschietti, Gremlins director Joe Dante, and film scholars including Due and Jennings, Todd Kushigemach, and Amanda Reyes, and Shudder film curator Samuel Zimmerman.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time shares its executive producer Kurt Sayenga with Eli Roth’s History of Horror, where the director speaks with directors, actors, and writers about horror’s deep storytelling roots. And quite a few years back there was the Bravo television special 100 Scariest Movie Moments, which is notable for its interviews with John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Tobe Hooper, and George A. Romero.

Our Take: Like so many shows that adhere to a list pattern, 101 Scariest has its share of hot take moments – in some ways, each of its self-contained blurbs about a movie could exist as a jumble of observational tweets. But it holds together as a package because the majority of those takes are structurally sound and not just hot air. And mostly it’s just cool to hear directors who are veterans of horror productions themselves offer some professional perspective on a film’s technical aspects. Like the editing and film speed tricks employed by Pulse director Kiyoshi Kurosawa that made his ghosts move in such a freaky way. Or the unappreciated emphasis that lighting can add to a film’s scare factor, observed in the discussion of Cat People and the 1979 film Salem’s Lot. It doesn’t spend forever on each film it references. But The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time packs the kind of detail into every segment that might prevent or at least delay your perusal of a particular film’s Wikipedia entry. Why all that scrolling? Just let Edgar Wright tell you why a horror movie is so perfectly, sublimely bloody, scary, funny, cool, or all of the above.  

Sex and Skin: Nothing. But if you forgot about Chucky launching an ax into an unsuspecting lady’s face in Child’s Play, or the brutal death blow from the beginning of It Follows, you can relive those gory movie moments here.

Parting Shot: The “episodes” of 101 Scariest are arbitrary – they actually act as chunks of the larger whole. But as its initial segment is driving toward its abrupt finish, Etheria Film Festival founder Heidi Honeycutt makes a great point about An American Werewolf in London and its famous double-twist. “I love when a film does something like that. You can’t trust what happens next. You have no idea if anything you’re watching at any moment is gonna suddenly be blown outta the water as a dream or as a fantasy or as a hallucination. It’s really fun and unsettling when horror films do that.”

Sleeper Star: Listen when David Dastalmachian, aka Polka-Dot Man in Suicide Squad and Abra Kadabra in the CW’s Flash, goes deep on the genre. “The Wolf Man grabbed me and dragged me into the love affair that has continued to this day with horror,” he says. “Lon Chaney, Jr. was someone that I just felt an instant empathy towards as a kid, and I still do as an adult. The performance that he gives as Larry Talbot is just so vulnerable and sad and beautiful.”

Most Pilot-y Line: Dr. Sleep director and Netflix horror franchise player Mike Flanagan says there’s something intangible about the best scenes from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and The Exorcist, among other classics. “I think all of us who work in the industry spend all of our time revisiting these scenes that have seared their way into our imagination the first time we ever saw them, scenes that you see one time and you’ll never forget. We love them. We discuss them. We dissect them. We try to understand what makes them work mechanically and logistically. But it’s something emotional. It’s nothing you can kind of cynically recreate.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time offers a wealth of details and shorthand for any list you’re compiling of the truly terrific and totally memorable movies to include in your Halloween Horror Film Festival.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges