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the creeps. Hitchcock manages to mount the suspense without using the trite conventions of modern horror films. The shower scene itself manages to be one of the most terrifying moments in horror film history without showing the actual slashing. Janet Leigh is never shown nude, but you're so aware of her nakedness that you can't help but feel a sympathetic vulnerability. I've read that strangely, many people remember the scene in color despite the fact that it is distinctly in black and white. People remember it in color because they see it as being real in their memories and nightmares. The only direct bit of gore in the film is the simple swirl of the blood down the shower drain.

Norman Bates, like Frankenstein's Monster, is also a sympathetic character. His nervousness around girls, his dependence on his mother, his weird hobbies: well, we've all known that guy. haven't we? It's that touch of true personality that makes the line between movies and real life painfully real. Psycho scares today because it's not a monster movie. It's possible.

Night of the Living Dead (1968, directed by George A. Romero)

Reporter: "Are they slow-moving, chief?"
Sheriff: "Yeah.They're dead. They're all messed up."

Perhaps no single movie has made an impact on the horror genre like Romero's first zombie flick. Attempts to analyze it usually fall short of the simple truth: this is a good, scary movie. Period. It has a fear factor that's almost impossible to shake. When the dead start returning to life and preying on the living, a few survivors are holed up in a farmhouse fighting for their lives. The zombies come in wave after wave, their fight seeming more and more futile by the minute.

It's this exercise in futility that is at the heart of the movies scariness and its success. The themes speak to life itself and universal truths. What are we here for? What are we fighting for? Is it worth it? Would it be simpler to just give up? It might seem silly to attribute philosophical ideas to a zombie film, and Night of the Living Dead certainly isn't trying intentionally to preach any truths. They're simply there, though, bubbling below the surface, inescapable, just like the profusion of the undead.

Rosemary's Baby (1968, directed by Roman Polanski)

Dr. Sapirstein: "Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don't argue or make a scene. Because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft, we're gonna be forced to take you to a mental hospital. You don't want that, do you?"

Rosemary's Baby is

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