The Prince of Darkness goes to the movies

Warner Bros. Pictures

Who’s being demonized: Spunky 70s kid Linda Blair, so sweet and adorable for the first 20 minutes of the film. Then she begins to act out: peeing on the carpet, telling strangers they’ll be dying soon, that sort of thing. Nothing a good child psychiatrist can’t fix. But when an invisible force begins hurling her into walls, they have to call in priestly backup.

Most hellish moment: Something so indelibly horrible that, even today, almost 40 years after the fact, it defies polite description. It involves a crucifix, how’s that?

Eternally frightening? Fully. The gold standard of modern gothic horror.

20th Centurty Fox

Who’s being demonized: Every single person who crosses little 6-year-old Damien’s path. And though it’s pretty clear from the number of dead bodies left in his wake that he’s the antichrist, no one seems to notice the 666 engraved in his head until it’s too late.

Most hellish moment: In the real world, facilitating your own mother’s death in a staircase fall would be the greatest cause for alarm, but this movie’s coolest jolt involves the nanny’s drama-queenish public suicide.

Eternally frightening? Nope. You find yourself rooting for the enigmatic, Mona Lisa-smiling demon child.

Paramount Pictures

Who’s being demonized: Mia Farrow. She’s got a cool husband, a great haircut and she lives in some sweet Manhattan real estate. And then she becomes pregnant, isolated, paranoid and, yes, stalked by super-creepy geriatric Satanists. It doesn’t help her case that she’s carrying the devil’s fetus.

Most hellish moment: The final christening scene is a legendary moment of climactic horror and will make you look twice at every 70-year-old person you meet from that point onward. The part where she has to have sex with the devil isn’t much fun either.

Eternally frightening? A classic of paranoid fears fulfilled, one of the greatest inescapable doom movies ever.

Magnet Release

Who’s being demonized: A babysitter in a spooky house on the outskirts of town. A spooky house owned by spooky people. And there’s something upstairs. No it’s not from the 1980s. It’s a clever, retro-minded, “Satanic panic” film from 2009 that rejected modern horror film aesthetics and reached to the past for its jolts.

Most hellish moment: Multiple moments of anxiety, compounding the sense of dread. It builds to a typically scary/silly climax but it’s really the ride, more than the destination, that leaves you shaken with this one.

Eternally frightening? Destined for cult status thanks to a lack of box-office. Don’t watch it when you’re home alone at night.

AP

Who’s being demonized: A young couple who think they have a ghost in their house. They’ve got more than that.

Most hellish moment: The genius of this movie is its ritualistic return to the same shot of an open bedroom door leading to a dark hallway. You know something is down that hall. You just don’t know what. And in theatrical screenings, every time night fell and the surveillance camera aimed itself at that black hole, the audience would whimper.

Eternally frightening? There’s no telling if it will hold up over time, but it struck a chord and is currently still pretty darn frightening when viewed in the right circumstances. Also known as NOT ON YOUR IPHONE.

TriStar Pictures

Who’s being demonized: Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet, in a New Orleans that had yet to become a real life horror show.

Most hellish moment: For most audiences it was the chicken-blood-and-Denise-Huxtable sex scene. But the most genuinely disturbing aspect of this movie was Robert De Niro as a long-fingernailed Satan. The scene where he cracks a hard-boiled egg by rolling it on a table, those gross fingernails in extreme close-up, is one you won’t shake.

Eternally frightening? None of it was scary to begin with.