Movies that keep me up at night...

These are the movies that keep me up at night. Their images creep into my subconscious and change the way I feel about the dark corners of my life.

Everyone has their own favorite films that scared them the most. Here's mine.

The Haunting (1963)
Forget the dumb 1999 remake, the original, directed by Robert Wise in 1966, is the truly scary one. Julie Harris effectively portrays the innocent and unstable Eleanor who, along with others, are induced to stay in an old mansion that is reputed to be haunted. And indeed it is. The special effects are understated, but stick with you.

The Sixth Sense
Nine-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) always seems disturbed, frightened... and his mother cannot figure out why. He finally confesses to psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) that it's because he sees dead people - everywhere... and they're not always pleasant to look at. Director M. Night Shyamalan has brought back a good old-fashioned scary movie in this "Twilight Zone" tradition, without relying on special effects. The film is cleverly constructed and provides a truly surprising twist at the end.

The Changeling
This one is quite spooky. George C. Scott portrays a composer who has recently lost his wife and daughter in a tragic accident. He moves into an old mansion where he hopes to concentrate on his work, but quickly learns that he is not alone. The house is haunted, it turns out, by the ghost of a child who lived there many years before. The subtle creepiness of this film makes this one of my favorite ghost movies.

Alien
"In space, no one can hear you scream..." But that didn't stop audiences shrieking at this superior sci-fi. Definitely the scariest science fiction movie of its day. No matter how many times I watch it, it still gives me a jolt or two and sets my nerves a-tingling. The alien was like nothing moviegoers had ever seen before. The sequels weren't bad either.

Signs
The story has a mixture of religious and classic sci-fi elements which are blended together by Shyamalan's remarkable sense of visual style. Mel Gibson is a minister who has lost his faith as the result of his wife's tragic accidental death and who now rejects the concept of unseen powers entirely--so he is perplexed when his children discover a crop circle in his own cornfield. He remains skeptical even as television news coverage reports alien crafts hovering over major cities. But his denial is exploded when he and his family have a close encounter of the extremely nasty kind. There is not a single movie that is out there which scares the viewer on a level of things they are NOT seeing rather than what they do see.