They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. But what about movies? We’re huge fans of well-designed movie covers here at Way Too Indie, and while we wouldn’t say the design impacts our overall judgment of the film, we admit a good design may influence us to watch it in the first place. So we created a list of the 75 Greatest Movie Cover Designs of all-time, comprised of new and old titles, special edition releases, and from boutique distributors like the Criterion Collection (clearly our favorite, earning 34 spots on this list).

12 Angry Men (Criterion Collection)

Brilliant design with 12 hand-drawn portraits of the jury featured in this essential courtroom drama, each with red backgrounds except for the one in the middle, which represents Henry Fonda as the man who stands out from the group with his own opinion. [DJ]

127 Hours

It may not be immediately obvious, but the sides of the canyon form an hourglass timer and the setting sun looks like sand. Very fitting with the tagline of the film, “Every second counts.” [DJ]

A Clockwork Orange

Simply an iconic poster with minimal design that somehow makes the ’70s block font used on the title tolerable. [DJ]

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is an eerie, experimental film, so it’s only fitting that its home video release includes eerie, experimental cover art. [BH]

Adaptation

A funny little image that hints at the madness of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze’s hilarious and painful world. [RS]

Almost Famous (Special Edition)

Cameron Crowe’s magnum opus gets a fantastically ornate and fun cover for its Bootleg Cut. Have a magnifying glass handy. [NG]

Anatomy of a Murder (Criterion Collection)

The first of several Saul Bass designs on this list. This striking design is such a classic that Spike Lee essentially stole the design for his 1995 film Clockers. [DJ]

Artificial Intelligence

Using the kid from the film as the ‘i’ in Intelligence and then inversing him to form the ‘a’ in Artificial is a simple, yet clever design. [DJ]

As Above, So Below

The design fits the title of the film so perfectly. [DJ]

Being John Malkovich (Criterion Collection)

There’s more brilliance than meets the eye in this simple Criterion cover of Being John Malkovich, perfectly suiting the eccentric nuances of the film. [NG]

Bicycle Thieves (Arrow)

The shadow from the two main characters form a bicycle. Great use of…foreshadowing.[DJ]

Blade Runner (Steelbook)

The rainy spotlight shines on the origami in this gorgeous Blade Runner Blu-Ray steelbook, evoking the pulpy, mysterious mood of the classic sci-fi noir. [NG]

Blind Woman’s Curse (Arrow)

The original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Through beautiful design, Teruo Ishii’s exploitation classic practically jumps off the cover. [NG]

Blue Is the Warmest Color

Simple but gorgeous artwork which plays off the color from the film’s title. [DJ]

Boogie Nights

Simply a beautiful retro design on the special edition release of this masterpiece. [RS]

Boyhood

The contrast from the grass provides excellent contrast for the title. Plus, it wonderfully represents the dreamlike ideology of boyhood. [DJ]

Buried (Steelbook)

This cover explains the entire premise of the film; a man buried under ground and trapped inside a box. [DJ]

The Cabin in the Woods

The cabin pictured in the design looks almost like an Rubik’s cube, hinting at the puzzling plot found in the film. [DJ]

The Complete Jacques Tati (Criterion Collection)

Might be the best on the list because it doesn’t just come with one spectacular looking design cover, it’s a collection of several beautiful illustrated covers in one package. [DJ]

The Conjuring

At first glance it looks like an ordinary horror film cover, until you notice the shadow near the bottom. [DJ]

The Dark Knight Rises (Steelbook)

The broken mask and heavy rain combine for one dramatic looking design. [DJ]

The Devil’s Backbone (Criterion Collection)

There’s very little ambiguity in Criterion’s cover design for The Devil’s Backbone. A wartime horror film dealing with the paranormal receives artwork that seamlessly bridges the gap between those two subjects. It’s impressive, to say the least. [BH]

Day For Night (Criterion Collection)

Francois Truffaut’s masterpiece is a love letter to the beautifully chaotic nature of making a movie, and Criterion’s cover art for the film perfectly encapsulates the vibe of Day for Night. [BH]

Days of Heaven (Criterion Collection)

I love how sharply in focus and imposing the house is in relation to Gere’s fuzzy appearance in the foreground. [BB]

Dogtooth

A man staring at grass infront of a fence accurately sums up the absurd censorship portrayed in the film. And after you’ve seen the film the airplane makes a lot of sense too. [DJ]

Diabolique (Criterion Collection)

A dazzling illustration of a key scene in this French thriller. The rippling water effect on the typeface is a brilliant touch. [DJ]

Dressed To Kill (Criterion Collection)

A wonderful composition equal parts suggestive and creepy, totally befitting De Palma as a master of erotic thrillers. [RS]

Drive (Steelbook)

This Steelbook cover has rad ’80s flair thanks to hot pink lettering and the neon sign looking design. [DJ]

Enemy

The Toronto skyline transposed over Jake Gyllenhaal’s head signifies the brain-teasing doppelganger story found in the film. [DJ]

Enter the Void

Bright neon colors. Overstimulated visuals. Odd angles. The cover design perfectly matches the film. [DJ]

Escape From Tomorrow

The easy to recognize drawing of a certain iconic Disney character covered in blood captures the frightening twist this film has of the “happiest place on earth”. [DJ]

Eyes Without A Face (Criterion Collection)

Those eyes!! Edith Scob’s piercing gaze is captured in haunting fashion by Criterion’s designers here, made all the more striking by its ingenious choice of white as facelessness. [NG]

Foreign Correspondent (Criterion Collection)

The vibrant Criterion cover, with its 3D-like rain and sea of murky umbrellas, elevates one of Alfred Hitchcock’s lesser-known films to must-own status. Watch the behind the curtains video for this particular design. [NG]

The Game (Criterion Collection)

A brilliant design for a film about a man brought to the edge by both temptation and the illusory structure of society finally forgets his weight and allows gravity to pull him downward. [EH]

Hard Candy

The bright red hoodie draws your focus in like a target, and the trap fits well with the cat and mouse theme in the film. [DJ]

High and Low (Criterion Collection)

Perfect use of the epicenter motif that couldn’t be paired with a better image from the film. [BB]

House (Criterion Collection)

Those eyes just don’t leave you. It’s a fiery and startling image that you can’t help but pause to take a second look at while browsing through the DVD racks. [BB]

The Human Condition (Criterion Collection)

A simple design but not one without the kind of quiet power that characterizes Kobayashi’s work. [BB]

Jaws

I was tempted to write nothing here, quite possibly the most iconic cover in all of film it pretty much speaks for itself. [RS]

Jurassic Park

The iconic logo (which is used all over in the film) helped make this design an instant classic. [DJ]

The Lobster

Technically, this is a poster design for a film that hasn’t been properly released yet, but we’re including it anyways. Fantastic use of negative space. [DJ]

Lord Of War

Nicolas Cage’s face made out of bullets is exactly what the world needs. [DJ]

Make Way For Tomorrow (Criterion Collection)

Wonderfully represents two companions forced apart by circumstances out of their control, drifting gradually but surely down separate, melancholic paths. [EH]

Medium Cool (Criterion Collection)

A tremendously striking image from the juxtaposition of its colors to the image-within-an-image design. [BB]

Melancholia (Plain Archive)

Great contrast between the sepia tone still from the film and the turquoise script lettering of the title. [DJ]

Memento (Special Edition)

Nothing fancy here. Just pure, unfiltered, genius. Presenting Memento in the form Leonard’s case file will put an insta-smile on every fan, while enticing anyone who hasn’t seen the film to peek inside and get their minds blown. [NG]

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Criterion Collection)

A fittingly flamboyant explosion of color and a gorgeous application of the mirroring effect. [BB]

Moonrise Kingdom (Criterion Collection)

The latest Wes Anderson on Criterion is one of his very best films, aptly honored by one of Criterion’s most epic and intricate designs. [NG]

Network (Arrow)

A wonderful rendering of a rouge news anchor ‘telling it how it is’ on air, with the finger-pointing arm coming out of the TV set. [DJ]

Nymphomaniac (Vol. 1 and 2)

The whole marketing campagin behind the film was very on point, and so is this cover design featuring nine characters mid-orgasm. [DJ]

On The Waterfront (Criterion Collection)

This screen print looking design is splendid, especially with the inclusion of the birds, which are a major theme in the film. [DJ]

Onibaba (Eureka)

This formidable Masters Of Cinema cover, alluding to the dementia in Shindo’s classic ghost tale, does Criterion one better! [NG]

Quadrophenia (Criterion Collection)

The choice to color and arrange The Who lyrics in a way that replicates the band’s logo and circles the film’s main character is simply awesome. [BB]

The Raid (UK Steelbook)

One of the best-looking steelbook designs around, the picture on this cover of The Raid paints a thousand words of glorious violence. [NG]

Repo Man (Criterion Collection)

It makes perfect sense for a decidedly West Coast punk rock film to receive a punk rock artwork over a map of Los Angeles. It’s a bit surprising that Criterion is the distributor to make that happen, but they have done a fantastic job. [BH]

Repulsion (Criterion Collection)

This Criterion cover recalls the broken nerves and intense paranoia of Roman Polanski’s classic apartment horror in loud and disorienting whiteness. [NG]

Scanners (Criterion Collection)

Criterion’s cover design for one of Cronenberg’s most beloved films features a different kind of head explosion, but it’s extremely clever nonetheless. [BH]

Seconds (Criterion Collection)

A strange and interesting design that draws me in every time I come across it. [RS]

The Secret of the Grain (Criterion Collection)

Hands held high in the air but eyes facing the Earth and a disparity of light and darkness on either side: will the story end in glory or tragedy? [EH]

The Shining

Saul Bass designed equally amazing the yellow theatrical release poster, but the actual cover used for the home release of the film is great too. Very Kubrickian. [DJ]

Submarine

Using a white background allows the colorful text and images to really stand out. Great example of a clean design. [DJ]

The Sweet Smell of Success (Criterion Collection)

It’s rare for DVD art to double as something that could easily be hung on the wall and admired. This is one of those rarities. [BB]

Talk To Her

Like the film itself, shows a wonderful use of color and Pedro Almodovar’s great imagery. [RS]

The Thing

Never fails to capture my attention. I always end up watching the film if I stare at this cover too long, usually only takes a minute or so. [RS]

Three Colors Trilogy (Criterion Collection)

Criterion borrows one the most emblematic shots from Kieslowski’s indelible Trilogy for this spectacular mixture of red, white, and blue. [NG]

Trance

A chatoic arrangement of shapes, colors, and an image of a man screaming. As the title suggests, it puts you in a trance. [DJ]

The Tree of Life

Gorgeous snapshots of life are found throughout the film, so it’s fitting that the cover contains a bunch as well. [DJ]

Under the Skin

Scarlett Johansson’s colorful face blended in with outer space personifies her character in the film perfectly. [DJ]

The Vanishing (Criterion Collection)

Possibly the most brilliant cover I’ve ever seen, the simplistic design brilliantly reflects the painful frustration of the protagonist as the more you step away the clearer the image becomes. [RS]

Vertigo

The figures appear to be falling into the vortex of the geometrical downward spiral which symbolizes the meaning of the film’s title. And the imperfect hand lettering of Saul Bass. [DJ]

Videodrome (Criterion Collection)

Setting aside the disturbing central image, the color bars in the Criterion bar and the subtle horizontal lines running throughout make this an inspired design. [BB]

We Are Still Here

With We Are Still Here, writer-director Ted Geoghegan pays tribute to old-school Italian horror. Its brilliant cover design pays tribute to traditional haunted house films. It’s a damn-near-perfect artistic interpretation. [BH]

Wings of Desire (Criterion Collection)

An angel looks down at the world, a well-meaning voyeur, and his gaze shows a fusion of both inquisitiveness and sorrow. [EH]

World on a Wire (Criterion Collection)

An individual trapped in the center of a sideways cultural venn diagram, unsure of whether the environment surrounding him is the reality he’s used to, or merely a simulation brought forth by the incomprehensible Simulacron. [EH]

Y tu Mama Tambien (Criterion Collection)

A brilliant composition of blended images meant to look like an old photograph; slighly out of focus, large sun burst, and faded colors. A perfect summer road trip vibe. [DJ]

You’re Next

Even the pull quotes are aesthetically pleasing on the You’re Next home video cover, which is as aggressive and in-your-face as the home invasion masterpiece. [BH]

Zodiac (Director’s cut)

I’m a sucker for covers that double as pseudo-props from the movie like this Zodiac letter addressed to the San Francisco Chronicle. [RS]

Zazie dans le métro (Criterion Collection)

A clean, flat design which visually expresses the zany and cartoonish main character. [DJ]

So the groundhog saw his shadow, got scared, and scurried back into his silly little hole declaring that the rest of us miserable creatures need to just deal with the fact that in early February there will just always be at least 6 more weeks of winter. Thank you global warming.

And honestly, who gets scared of their shadow? Do groundhog’s not cast shadows at other times of the year? Are they just perpetually freaked out? So many questions.

At any rate, we’re not afraid of shadows over here at Way Too Indie. In fact, we rather appreciate them.

We can’t do anything about winter lasting as long as it does, but we can certainly counter the bad rep that groundhog is giving shadows. Here’s our list of the Top 8 Movie Shadows. Now if we can get the rodent to watch them, he might chillax and stop hiding.

Nosferatu

Perhaps one of the most ingrained shadows in cinematic history, who could forget the looming shade cast by the vampire Count Orlok? With iffy prosthethics in the early days of cinema who can blame filmmaker F.W. Murnau for utilizing the ever-creepy image cast by the night-dwelling creature? We admit, this one may not help the groundhog with his fears.

Citizen Kane

Orson Welles filled in quite a few chapters of the “How to Make a Great Film” book with his film Citizen Kane but his use of shadow throughout the film is one of the its defining features. Single light sources and half-darkened faces set the mood and give insight into characters. Dark shadows tell the tale in this classic film experience.

Harvey

I’m not admitting anything, but rare is the person who has not jumped at their own shadow now and then. Or thought their shadow might be in fact a man size rabbit with worldly advice and good humor. If only we could glean universal wisdom from all dark corners of the world.

Peter Pan

How many of us can say that we have a shadow with a mind of his own? Not many, I say. Peter Pan, however, has one hell of a spunky character for a dark follower. The groundhog might try and lose his shadow the same way Pan does and stop torturing us all with cold weather.

Jurassic Park

There are a few great shadowy moments in Jurassic Park. One of the most spine tingling moments of the movie, and certainly featuring the most jiggly of jellies, is seeing the raptor’s shadow through the construction screen as the thought-they-were-safe children indulge in some much-deserved sweets. I will never take the safety of an abandoned buffet at face value again.

The Shadow

These people knew what they were doing. They may have been poking fun at the shadows of the noir films of the early ’30s, but this would be a great place to look if one did want to find any of a number of completely good shadows this Groundhog’s day. Spring is practically already here.

Batman Begins

Quite the shadowy figure himself, Batman has never wanted for a shaded companion. Cloaked in darkness already, the man is only ever seen at night for the most part. Heck, he’s a bat. He lives for the night.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space

Shadows are one thing. But shadow puppets that eat their real life victims? There could only be one place these might come from and that’s outer space. We hope the groundhog has enough humor to see these shadowy clowns are way more hilarious than scary.

If last week’s release of the new Jurassic Park trailer wasn’t enough to trigger some pleasant nostalgia, then the trailer for Alan Taylor’s Terminator: Genisys, the first of a new trilogy of Terminator films, should really cap off your Throwback Thursday. As if this jaunt down memory lane wasn’t exciting enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger is BACK, making good on that over-quoted promise, to reincarnate the much beloved cyborg hero.

This time, Skynet has it out for John Connor using both the past AND the future to stage the ultimate attack. So it’s a good thing Matt Smith is rumored to be among the cast as he does seem to have a penchant for time traveling gigs. No doubt John Connor, played by Jason Clarke, will be needing a Doctor over the course of this three film journey. Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke will be breathing new life into the indomitable character of Sarah Connor. Really, as if we needed another draw. With the usual exorbitant amount of explosions, gunfire, and car chases complete with air-flipping school buses, the release date for this robot reboot is set for July 1st, 2015.

We get it, it’s the time of year when theaters are pushing ghosts, creepy possessed dolls, and axe-murderers onto the masses. But that’s not everyone’s jam. No taste for the supernatural but still want that rush of adrenaline? We’ve got you covered. Here are 13 of the most formidably frightening films we could think of, guaranteed to set your skin crawling and max out your energy bill with how many lights you’ll need on. Forget those psycho villains, the wide world of cinema offers plenty more thrills without ’em.

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park was the first movie my parents went to see on their own before deciding to let my brother and I see it in theaters. Not a bad idea as I was 10 and he was 9 when it released in 1993. Even with their blessing, in my first viewing of the film I had to leave the theater during the iconic t-rex chase scene because the adrenaline rush was too much for little me. As one of Stephen Spielberg’s absolute masterpieces, what makes this tale of extinct animals brought to life so thrilling is the perfect combination of Spielberg’s expert pacing and detailed visuals. Incorporating some of the first truly successful CG elements with elaborately crafted mechanics, the film had children and adults alike wondering if Spielberg had actually recreated dinosaurs. In one of the film’s most panic-inducing scenes, two kids (who 10-year old me identified with a little too well) crawl in fear around a stainless steel kitchen to elude two smart velociraptors. Their clacking claws on the kitchen tile, their echoing barks, and roving eyes searching for their prey still cause me to breakout in a cold sweat. [Ananda]

Gravity

First off, watching Gravity outside of a theater is significantly easier to handle than when the endless vacuum of space is projected onto a huge eyeball encompassing screen. Second, I can say from experience that seeing this film on a first date may cause you to relate stressful feelings toward that person and may impede the success of future dates. As Sandra Bullock’s Dr. Stone spins uncontrollably into the dark depths of space when her astronaut team is hit by an unexpected debris shower hurtling at them, viewers are introduced to a nightmare they’d previously been unable to imagine without actual space travel exposure. The never-ending inertia of zero-gravity and the utter loneliness of space are so absolutely realistic as we remain fixed inside Dr. Stone’s helmet, floating with her. A true survival tale, every difficulty she encounters is petrifying. Forget “edge of your seat,” this film has you clinging to the seat back, feet lifted, doubting everything you ever learned about physics and solidifying that those silly childhood dreams you had of being an astronaut were really, really not thought out. [Ananda]

Rear Window

The official “Master of Suspense” excelled at films that weren’t strictly speaking “horror” but were always enthralling. The one that presents the most uncomfortable feelings of distress for me as I watch it is my favorite of Hitchcock’s, Rear Window. Jimmy Stewart’s wheelchair-bound photo journalist Jeff starts to notice his neighbor in the apartment complex across the way has been behaving quite suspiciously. A scenario made incredibly relatable as his daily observances seem to affirm his rising paranoia. As he and his beautiful girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) push boundaries, eventually breaking into the man’s apartment, Hitchcock leaves us feeling just as vulnerable as Jeff is when forced to watch as the man comes home during the break-in and catches on to Jeff. Using Jeff’s telescopic camera lens to focus in on the scene, there’s hardly a shot so chilling as when the burly man turns to look straight at Jeff, and the audience, instilling instant fear. [Ananda]

A Clockwork Orange

This 1971 Kubrick directed dystopian crime thriller is spine-chilling entirely because of the lurid actions of its main character, Alex. A sociopathic hoodlum, Alex leads his band of thugs on a crime spree that includes plenty of raping and pillaging. With the same creepy effervescence of a clown, Alex’s enjoyment of his actions and the way these scenes are drawn out and narrated with his cockney slang all add to the difficulty of watching it. From the gang’s outfits to their brutal actions, there is plenty of truly disturbing imagery. The moog-filled soundtrack by Wendy Carlos only adds to the ill-feeling. Not even Alex’s eventual capture and brainwashing lead to any sort of relief as the film leaves us with a sense that a “cure” for sociopathy is simply impossible. [Ananda]

Deliverance

This one’s for city slickers like me. Maybe it was my upbringing, or my longtime aversion to sleeping on the ground (others think “sleeping under the stars”; I think “sharp rocks on my spine”), but nature always frightened me. The four businessmen who choose to leave the concrete jungle and spend a weekend retreat floating down a river in the middle of nowhere in John Boorman’s Deliverance serve as filmic vindication of my fear of the great outdoors. (That’s how I look at it, at least.) While their excursion starts out pleasantly enough, the nightmarish events that await down the river subsequently ravage their minds and bodies, and while Boorman’s film is a pretty one (those trees…), it’s also given us some of the most iconically disturbing moments in movies. The film, starring the great Jon Voigt and Burt Reynolds, doesn’t fit squarely into the horror genre, but it’s as freaky as they come. Hillbillies give me the willies. [Bernard]

Requiem for a Dream

Darren Aronofsky’s quick-cut tale of addiction is one of the few films I’ve ever had to turn off and finish when there was more daylight to be had. Watching it alone isn’t just scary, the sensory overload may lead us sensitive folk straight into full-blown panic attacks. Following four different people, each with different drug addictions, it’s hard to decide which storyline is most traumatizing. For me Ellen Burstyn’s character, Sara, was most relatable as she starts taking over the counter amphetamine pills to aid in her obsession to lose a little weight. Her jitters, teeth grinding, and sedative-induced hallucinations aren’t even the hardest scenes of the film to watch, but a scene where she experiences the delusion that her own fridge attacks her will make anyone reconsider crash dieting. And then there’s all the heroin addicts that make up the rest of the characters. Not an easy watch, but the closest thing non-users will get to experiencing the actual horrors of drug addiction. [Ananda]

Hard Candy

Before David Slade made the hellish Alaskan vampire chiller 30 Days of Night (and later, one of those Twilight movies), he made a more subtly terrifying movie in his directorial debut, Hard Candy. The revenge fantasy stars Ellen Page as a 14-year-old girl who dupes a man she believes is a pedophile (Patrick Wilson) into letting her into his home. She then proceeds to outsmart and physically abuse the guy in gruesome fashion (the film came out when torture films like Audition and Hostel were cool), she threatens to expose him for the predator he is. It’s such a sadistic, monstrous film not because of gore or jump scares, but because of the psychological trauma we suffer along with the man as the girl toys with his precious…manhood. Revenge is messy, and deep down, although we hate to admit it, the whole “eye for an eye” philosophy exists on the ugly side of human nature. [Bernard]

127 Hours

Sometimes movies are scariest not when we’re shown the quick, flashy death of a faceless victim, but when we’re allowed to spend time with a person as they face death itself, feeling the weight of mortality sink into our bones and theirs, the character’s face growing pale along with ours. 127 Hours is the most extreme example of this there is. Based on a true story (which makes it scarier), James Franco plays real-life mountain climber Aron Rolston, who on a solo hike got trapped under a boulder in the middle of nowhere and had to do the unthinkable (with a small knife) to attempt to free himself from the crag. “What if that were me?” is the thought that’s on repeat as you watch Danny Boyle’s minimalistic meditation on the human spirit, and while most consider the film a story of heart and resiliency, the film plays more like a living nightmare for those like me who are scared shitless of mountain climbing, suffer from mild claustrophobia, and have never broken a bone. Much like Deliverance, 127 Hours demonstrates just how disastrous things can get when you’re out in the wild. [Bernard]

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Elizabeth Olsen plays Martha, a girl who attempts to reunite with her family after spending years away on a hippy cult compound, in Martha Marcy May Marlene, an unsettling mind-fuck drama by Sean Durkin. In the role that announced her as a serious talent to watch, Olsen is a picture of mental collapse as her soul-sick eyes telling most of Martha’s twisted story. The always-excellent John Hawkes delivers one of his spookiest performances as the cult leader who strips Martha of everything, mentally and physically, damning her to a life of perpetual paranoia and torment. Indoctrination and loss of identity are horrible things to think about, and Martha makes you think about them from every angle until your blood curdles and you’re as deeply troubled as the poor girl on-screen. [Bernard]

Shock Corridor

It’s typically a beautiful thing when someone devotes their life to their craft, but Shock Corridor serves as a stark warning that, yes, there is a line, and if you cross it you may not come back. (You hear that, Shia?) In Sam Fuller’s mind-bending masterpiece, Peter Breck plays Johnny Barrett, a journalist who feigns mental sickness to get himself committed to an insane asylum where he hopes to solve a murder three inmates were the only witnesses to. Off the deep end he goes. It’s a decidedly melodramatic film with lots of over-acting and pretentious dialogue, but the wackiness of it all sort of makes it scarier, distancing the film from the firm ground of reality in a way that’s really quite disturbing. Barrett’s “fake it ’til you make it” approach may have gotten him into the looney bin as planned, though “fake it ’til you break it” seems a more apt phrase for what happens to his brain once he’s locked in. [Bernard]

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

So much of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is enchanting and fun and delightful that it’s easy to forget the crazy levels of creepiness it reaches in a handful of unforgettably weird scenes. For one, the kids who fail Wonka’s cleverly orchestrated morality tests meet their fates in ways so bizarre and twisted you could look at the film as a loose precursor to recent Rube Goldberg death extravaganzas like the Saw series. On top of that, there’s Gene Wilder’s climactic spluttering tirade that reminds you of that time your dad caught you drawing on the wall with crayons when you were a kid. Traumatic! And don’t get me started on that acid-trip boat ride. “Is it raining is it snowing? Is a hurricane a’blowing?” You’re freaking me out, man! Just give me some snozberries and let me off the boat! [Bernard]

Mulholland Drive

Choosing only one of Lynch’s films to include in this list proves quite difficult, we mentioned in our latest podcast just how frightening a phone call in Lost Highway was and I mention that almost every scene of Eraserhead gives me the willies, but the Lynch film that is so genuinely start-to-finish utterly unnerving that it almost classifies as horror is without a doubt Mulholland Drive. Every scene of this dream-like film is confusingly creepy, one of the earliest scenes even includes a man who literally dies of terror when a nightmare he had proves to be reality. And that’s why this film is so scary, it can’t be trusted. No character is set in stone (not all of them even know who they are at any given moment) and the storyline literally snaps part of the way through and starts again with a whole new set of rules. Trying to make actual sense of the film isn’t advised, but the tension is real in every feverish scene that makes up the whole. [Ananda]

Sleeping With The Enemy

The most terrifying scenarios in film, to me, are those based in very real situations. It’s a sad reality that spousal abuse is one such real situation and no film has left me more scarred by the extent to which a controlling abusive spouse will go then this 1991 thriller. In it, Julia Roberts plays Laura, a young wife whose marriage to an affluent physically abusive jerk becomes unbearable. Laura fakes her own elaborate death and takes off to start a new life in a small town. But her husband starts to doubt her death, obviously there was no body found, and starts the hunt for her. There are plenty of close-call hold-your-breath types of scenes but the most formidable aspect is that feeling a good thriller permeates viewers with, which is a total sense of the villain’s ceaseless energy to pursue his weak prey. The climax, where Laura realizes her husband has found her because her bathroom towels have been aligned in his obsessive perfectionist style, is an exercise in slow dawning terror. [Ananda]