Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Off the book topic – What is your favorite scary movie?

I would have to say Sweeney Todd, the Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.  It’s the horror story of the demon barber of Fleet Street who murders his customers, who are then baked into meat pies by his landlord.  Sounds delightful, right?

It’s really a cathartic viewing experience–I feel everything.  It’s funny, romantic, horrifying, tragic, heart-breaking, terrible…and it’s all accompanied by a brilliant soundtrack.  As Andrew Lloyd Webber once said, musicals are for expressing emotions that are so intense that words are not enough–and so all those feelings in Sweeney Todd are more intense because of the music.

My other favorite scary movie is Secret Window, based on the Stephen King novella.  It has some of that creeping dread that I enjoy in Hitchcock movies, as events spiral more and more out of control, until a final climax that is even more horrifying for being psychological.  (Incidentally, it’s not a coincidence that my two favorite scary movies star Johnny Depp–I need a good incentive to watch a scary movie to begin with!)

Honorable mention to The Sixth Sense for being both brilliant and much scarier than either of the previous two, but not a favorite…because it’s so good at what it does that I will probably never watch it a second time!  Second honorable mention to the entire Hitchcock canon, with particular fondness for Rebbeca, Rope, Suspicion and Strangers on a Train.

What are your favorite scary movies?  Will you be watching any for Halloween?