EVERYONE'S ENTITLED TO ONE GOOD SCARE

With Samhain fast approaching, the STARBURST team have assembled around the campfire to share 31 of their personal favourite screen scares, one for every day of the Halloween season...

‘Somebody’s at the Door’

THE HAUNTING (1963)

Picture if you will a stormy October night in the year 1980. An impressionable tenyear-old sits frozen in fear as he witnesses two nightgown-clad women screaming in terror because some unknown entity is frenziedly pounding upon their bedroom door. The film was Robert Wise’s The Haunting, based upon Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. Exteriors were filmed at Ettington Park in Warwickshire, just down the road from that ten-year-old. The aforementioned scene is a masterclass of ‘less is more’. There are no gimmicks or effects to ratchet up the tension, just a terrifying use of sound, sudden extreme close-ups, and disorientating camera angles. The scene begins simply enough. Eleanor (Julie Harris) and Theo (Claire Bloom) are awakened by eerily loud footsteps. The footsteps stop outside their room, the doorknob turns painfully slowly, then the frenzied pounding starts. Then it abruptly stops while the camera follows the door frame in a crazy zig-zag movement.

Suddenly the pounding resumes before reaching a crescendo with a woman’s maniacal laughter retreating from the door. Forty years later, I still jump at a door slamming and I’m content to let whatever walks at Hill House, walk alone. | CHRISTIAN JONES

‘Casey Becker’s Final Moments’

SCREAM (1996)