5. THE SHINING (1980)

Whoa, Jack Nicholson is one creepy mother. And so is Stephen King, but we all knew that. If you've ever gotten the willies going downstairs to fetch a glass of water in the dark, you'll die of thirst after watching this movie. Like the ad for a horror movie in Crazy People said, this movie won't just scare you, it'll f*** you up for life.

Here's the story: Jack is hired to watch over a fancy hotel for the few months that it is shut down for the winter. The snow is so bad that you can't get in or out of this place for several months, so they leave just one person up there to keep an eye on the place. Jack brings his wife and kid. And then things just go horribly wrong. The source of the psychosis is not completely understood, but as with all leading behavioral theories, we can reasonably infer that both nature and nurture play a part. Jack is nurtured into lunacy by the mind-numbing boredom of hanging around this massive abandoned hotel for months on end; but one has a pretty solid idea that nature had a good hand in making Jack predisposed for homicidal neurosis.

We won't ruin the story for you; suffice it to say that there's blood-filled (and we mean FILLED) elevators, radical hatchet surgery on bathroom doors, and a rather aggressive game of tag in a maze. This is the one movie that perfectly realizes the sheer depravity of Stephen King's mind. Despite having written some of the craziest stuff out there, very little of it has translated into good film, but this does (having Jack as your leading psycho and Stanley Kubrick to direct it certainly helps). Well, okay, The Shawshank Redemption translated well too, but that isn't the terror-inducing Stephen we know and fear.

If you really want to figure out why everyone thinks Jack Nicholson is just the baddest guy around (despite his obvious problems with fatness and oldness), take a gander at this nightmare. He is so cool in the worst way.

Notes:

  • Stephen King hated this movie, believing that it wasn't true to his book

  • Won a Saturn award for Best Horror Film.