“Psycho” (1960) – Alfred Hitchcock once said of his audience that he wanted to “give them pleasure, the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.” Forever the auteur of suspense and mind-games, nevermore was he as skillful with suggestively violent fare than with “Psycho.” The choice to film it in black and white during an era of widespread color prints was brilliant: The antiquated technique gave his movie an atmosphere akin to film noir. The famous shower scene, which features 50 cuts and two minutes of shrieking (not to mention a damn fine musical score) ensured every woman in America would shower behind locked doors.
Unforgettable moment: That last shot, which cements how much of a psycho Norman Bates really is.
“Halloween” (1978) – You had to see it coming. For those who haven’t seen this flick, check it out for the opening sequence alone. The first-person view might seem gimmicky at first, but that feeling soon turns to dread as we witness the coming horror as if we were committing it. Shot for a measly $300,000 and eventually grossing more than $50 million, John Carpenter’s first foray into horror featured some gore but mostly suspense. It virtually gave birth to the slasher genre, though the copycats that came after focused more on violence than Hitchcockian thrills.