Scott's scariest movie moments 

• MGM
• The Wizard of Oz

You learn a lot about someone when you understand what they find funny, but it can be just as revealing to learn what they find scary. Both responses are primal stuff, examples of things that either work or they don't, in a way that is difficult to analyze.

I watch hundreds of movies a year, but I still approach most horror movies with dread, because I find being scared almost too unsettling to be shared in a public space. It occurred to me, then, that one of the most honest things I could do for a Halloween-themed cinema feature would be to give you a peek inside the movie stuff that has frightened me most over the years. Your mileage, of course, will vary—that's part of what makes the psychology of terror so intensely personal.

The Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz (1939): The original nightmare fodder of my childhood came from my first-ever viewing of the classic L. Frank Baum adaptation, likely when I was around 7 years old. Margaret Hamilton's performance as the Wicked Witch is iconic on its own merits, but what probably made the character most terrifying to me was that she took such delight in terrorizing a kid. Plus, she had an army of flying monkeys to do her bidding, and man, that's just never good.

• Universal Pictures
• Jaws

Discovering Ben Gardner's boat, Jaws (1975): While staying with my cousins in the summer of 1976, my uncle took me, my brother and my eldest cousins to a double-feature of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster classic and the subsequent year's killer-animal knock-off Grizzly—when I was 9 years old. The latter was just kinda gross and silly, but Spielberg's scenes were absolutely chilling, particularly the moment when Richard Dreyfuss's Matt Hooper goes underwater to investigate a derelict fishing boat, and finds what's left of its owner. It haunted my dreams for months, but it probably still didn't match the fury unleashed on my uncle by my mother for letting us watch it.

TV spot for It's Alive (1974): This one is kind of an odd example, because the movie in question is one I've still never seen. The reason for that is probably my intense reaction to the TV spots that aired for the 1977 re-release of the monster-baby horror film, in which a music-box lullaby plays as a basinet slowly rotates to reveal a clawed hand dangling from one side. It freaked me out so much that I had to leave the room any time it came on. In the same category: the TV ads for the Anthony Hopkins psychological thriller Magic, with its evil ventriloquist dummy.

The shape in the hospital, The Exorcist III (1990): Very little else about William Peter Blatty's own follow-up to his classic The Exorcist sticks with me decades after seeing it, but I sure as hell can recall what might be the single most effective jump-scare I've ever experienced. If you've seen the movie, there's no need for me to explain which scene I'm talking about; if you haven't seen it, I wouldn't dare deprive you of the experience. Suffice it to say that I've learned from that scene how much the effectiveness of a scare depends on the use of distance and off-screen space to keep a viewer off-balance—and this was a moment of terror I never saw coming.

• Haxan Films
• The Blair Witch Project

Heather's search for Mike, The Blair Witch Project (1999): Some folks may recall the scariest-movie-ever hype that followed this "found-footage" horror tale out of the Sundance Film Festival, simultaneously making it an immensely successful box-office hit when it was released that summer, and causing a backlash among those disappointed in its aesthetics and anti-resolution. As for me, it caused one of the most gut-deep feelings of dread I've ever experienced, particularly as our protagonist Heather (Heather Donahue, in a performance I still consider astonishing in its understanding of feeling scared beyond reason) made her final quest into what might be the home of the titular creature. The movie's final shot still gives me shivers every time I think about it—and when, upon leaving the midnight Sundance screening where I saw it, a stray tree branch snagged the cuff of my pants, I nearly jumped out of my skin. That's the power of cinema, folks.