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Harry Powell is one of the great movie villains, someone who cloaks himself in the Bible while murdering people in God's name. The most famous part of Harry is his knuckles: he has LOVE tattooed, letter by letter, on one hand, and HATE tattooed in the same fashion on the other. Powell's terrorizing of the kids is not only well-depicted but truly chilling. What would seem to be a classic horror-movie trope, or something that most kids must have thought about, occurs here in its best form: John and Pearl run up the stairs of their basement as Powell, his arms outstretched, slowly comes up the stairs, tripping over everything they've thrown in his path. The images here are chilling, captured beautifully by cinematographer Stanley Cortez. The film lives on now through Turner Classic Movies. For a good scare, and a truly unforgettable character, this is the right movie.

Jaws

Yes, this one's a bit of an easy choice, but come on: when you first saw Jaws, you were a bit scared to go to the nearest beach, right? Heck, some people probably got scared of the pool in their backyard (it's okay, I won't spoil your secret). Despite being, in many ways, an adventure film alongside a budding friendship between a local sheriff and a wisecracking ichthyologist, even from the first scene, director Steven Spielberg sets the audience up for maximum scares. The opening is iconic, as a young woman skinny-dips in the ocean and ends up being shark food. The main story is as simple: the sheriff of Amity (Roy Scheider), the ichthyologist (Richard Dreyfuss), and a local shark hunter (Robert Shaw) team up to kill the titular shark.

What makes Jaws a classic is more than just the infamous score by John Williams, that opener, and a few one-liners are those three characters. Brody, Hooper, and Quint become memorable not just for their one-dimensional character loglines but because of the great dialogue between them, as they all grow to accept each other despite their quirks and differences. The true classic scene here is when Quint tells the two younger men about his time on the USS Indianapolis, a ship that was sunk during World War II filled with men who ended up being shark food. The emotions in the scene run from humor to pathos to fear, as Quint's tale is climaxed by the title character banging around their little boat. Spielberg's first big hit, Jaws is not just a classic adventure flick, but truly scary and still holds up after over 30 years.

Se7en

Is there anything scarier than Brad Pitt screaming, "Oh, what's in the box?" Okay, seriously, 1995's gritty crime drama Se7en is a haunting, chilling procedural that stands out not just because of David Fincher's stylish and grim direction, but because of how uniquely baroque and dark it seems. Yes, we've seen movies about serial killers before, but the frights come here from who John Doe chooses to kill based on how they've violated one of the seven deadly sins and from his cruelly ironic manner of killing. Pitt, as a hotshot detective, is partnered with Morgan Freeman, currently working the last week he'll ever do as a man with a badge, to figure out who John Doe is and who he's killing next. Of course, Doe is just a bit smarter, and only reveals himself when he wants to.

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