Best In Class: Scary Movies

564   7.6   7.5 

Winner : Best Vampire

Dreamy, handsome vampires with great clothes and perfect hair are all the rage these days. Yet old-school horror mavens know that vampires should look like death warmed over. F. W. Murnau's 1922 classic featured the seriously spooky Max Schrek as the fearsome bloodsucking count, but he didn't have the freakish intensity of Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's remake.

293   6.9   7 

Runner-up : Best Vampire

5053   8.2   8.5 

Winner : Best Haunted House

Helpful hint: If you're planning to work as a caretaker for a beautiful, if isolated, hotel over the winter, make sure it wasn't the site of a familial bloodbath the previous season. The ghosts are sure to interfere with marital harmony and that elevator of blood is a real pain to clean up.

jay-jay's rating:

1465   6.9   7.4 

Runner-up : Best Haunted House

3653   7.2   8.2 

Winner : Killer Animals

Basically, a shark is a razor-sharp set of teeth with fins. It's an animal that looks like it was thought up by some demented Hollywood production designer. So it isn't surprising that tinseltown turned a Great White into one of the scariest bad guys ever to hit the big screen.

2227   7.4   7.8 

Runner-up : Killer Animals

3494   8   8.5 

Winner : Alien

There's been a long history in movies of creatures from outer space freaking out the good citizens of earth -- from Gort, the robotic enforcer in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" to the burger-shilling extra-terrestrial in "Mac and Me." But few creatures have been as terrifying as the snarling, acid-bleeding, astronaut killing machine found in "Alien."

1706   7.8   8.2 

Runner-up : Alien

jay-jay's rating:

331   7.1   7.3 

Winner : Best Giant Monster

Since World War II, Japan has been plagued by an epidemic of massive rubbery creatures who can flatten a city in less time than it takes to get a pizza delivered. But hands down, the granddaddy of the Tokyo trashers is that fire-breathing lizard from under the sea.

2006   6.5   7.1 

Runner-up : Best Giant Monster

5238   8.1   8.7 

Winner : Best Cannibal

Cannibalism is generally regarded as only slightly less reprehensible than working as a health insurance executive. But Hannibal Lecter snacks on his fellow man with such aplomb. After all, anyone can eat a liver. Only Lecter would serve it with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

jay-jay's rating:

1327   7.4   7.5 

Runner-up : Best Cannibal

1903   7.8   8 

Winner : Evil Child

In today's real estate market, you may have to make a metaphorical "deal with the devil" to get a good deal on a great apartment. Rosemary, on the other hand, found out too late that her husband made a literal one.

3155   7.4   8 

Runner-up : Evil Child

1007   7.1   7.5 

Winner : Werewolf

Think about how much turning into a werewolf would hurt: hands stretching into paws, face contorting into a lupine features, teeth sharpening into fangs. John Landis' "American Werewolf in London" captured the pain of transformation, but also the regret that comes from changing back.

333   6.5   6.5 

Runner-up : Werewolf

1296   7.9   8 

Winner : Zombies (slow)

George Romero's 1968 low-budget masterpiece set the standard for movie zombies. Those slow, shuffling reanimated corpse were frightening because of their relentless thirst for human flesh, not because they could out run Usain Bolt.

1213   7.8   8 

Runner-up : Zombies (slow)

2937   7.3   7.6 

Winner : Zombies (fast)

Though purists might scoff at Danny Boyle's vision of zombies as mindless disease victims with anger management problems, the movie, and its unnervingly realistic vision of the zombie apocalypse, is unquestionably frightening.

1608   6.8   7.4 

Runner-up : Zombies (fast)

1776   7.4   7.9 

Winner : Masked Killer

Take a latex Captain Kirk mask, paint it white, mess up the hair, and put it on a silently lumbering maniac. What you've got is both the originator of the "slasher" genre and still the best one ever made.

2771   6.5   7.2 

Runner-up : Masked Killer

jay-jay's rating:

2131   7.1   7.5 

Winner : Supernatural Boogeyman

A masked chainsaw-wielding psychopath is plenty scary, but with a little planning and forethought -- some mace, a well-hidden weapon, years of kung fu training -- you can, in theory, take them out. But how do you fight against a pizza-faced crazy who lives inside your dreams? A six-pack of Red Bull can keep you awake for only so long.

jay-jay's rating:

579   6.3   6.5 

Runner-up : Supernatural Boogeyman

1136   6.9   7.3 

Winner : Best horror flick you've (probably) never seen

THE. SCARIEST. MOVIE. EVER. Trust us. It will freak you out.

1792   7.8   8 

Runner-up : Best horror flick you've (probably) never seen