Polled Moviegoers Select Their Horror Film Favorites

With Halloween creeping just around the corner, I thought it might be fun to do explore the favorite horror movies of all time. Although, I would love to do an opinion piece, because I have such distinct opinions on all matters movie related, I didn't think that would be fair to my audience. So, instead, I decided to do a poll.

I questioned a wide variety of individuals, ranging in age from age 12 to 55. I also managed to gather a decent division among males and females. Those I interviewed included students, stay at home and working moms, and a good cross section of workers in fields ranging from food service to aeronautical engineering.

As might be expected, there was a vast difference of opinions between the older and younger generations. A lot of the younger population had, in fact, never seen horror movie classics like "Psycho," "Rosemary's Baby," or even "Carrie." On the flip side, those of us who are little further along in years weren't that familiar with some of their choices like "Hostel" or "Saw."

There was also a decided difference in the "type" of horror movie preferred among the younger and older groups. The youngsters have become so accustomed to blood, guts, and gore that they don't consider a movie scary if it doesn't contain a lot of violence. On the flip side, people around my age much prefer the movies that "go bump" and those that "imply" situations, rather than display them for the world to see.

While there were some movies that everyone agreed belonged on the horror classic list, there were also a lot of significant differences between the lists. Therefore, I've decided to list them like this. The first movie list will be horror classics. The second list will be the movies chosen by those interviewees between the ages of 12 and 25. The final list represents the movies chosen between the ages of 26 and 50.

The top ten recommended horror classics were:

Alien (12%),
The Exorcist (12%),
Halloween (12%),
Rosemary's Baby (11%),
Nightmare on Elm Street (10%),
Silence of the Lambs (10%),
Dawn of the Dead (9%),
Poltergeist (9%),
The Omen (8%), and
Friday the 13^th (7%).