Scenes We Love »

In the Great Coen Debates that occur among film fans, there's one that I never feel gets enough love: Miller's Crossing. It's probably my favorite next to The Big Lebowski. The film is deliciously dark and dreary (you can watch this in summer and still feel cold), but punctuated by that startling Coens humor. The dialogue and character quirks are not as exaggerated as they are in other Coen films, and when a character does get theatrical, it's appropriate to the setting. These are thugs who find themselves in positions of great wealth and power, after all, and they'll never know quite how to behave in the real world.

The film has a level of tension I don't think the Coens matched until No Country For Old Men. Tom's white-knuckle walk into Miller's Crossing is probably my favorite scene (actually, it's difficult to pick just one), but it doesn't appear to be on YouTube. So, here's another moment of violence that just doesn't go the way you think it will, and features the best use of Danny Boy in history. I really want to believe that the gramophone is a nod to Sean Connery's death scene in The Untouchables, but I suspect it's a noir standard that ushered many a mobster and cop into his grave.

While other countries have headless riders roaming their empty places, I believe America can lay claim to The Headless Horseman. Born out of the mists of early America, the Horseman is a vengeful, anonymous Hessian who lost his head to a cannonball during the American Revolution. While it's popularly assumed he rides around looking for his head (and claiming any he comes across along the way), he actually has it resting on the pommel of his saddle. He doesn't need a new head. He's just sadistic.

As a kid, I firmly believed the Hessian was a real Sleepy Hollow legend, and finding out that he was just an invention by Washington Irving was a bitter disappointment. But now I find it impressive that a mere short story has worked itself so deeply into American folklore to become one of our most iconic horror characters. He's enigmatic and elegant in his hunting, traits that have survived Disney and Scooby-Doo without losing a shred of scariness. He really should be allowed to ride across movie screens more often. The wonderful thing about legend (even if it's not a real one that owes its existence purely to Irving) is that not one version is definitive, and any good writer or filmmaker can explore its murkier corners.

Though I love the Disney version with all my heart (like many kids, it's how I first encountered the story) I'm including a scene from Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow below the jump. I was disappointed by it when I first saw it in theaters (I still question the production designer's decision to just plunk the bridge in the middle of town), but its chilly atmosphere and Hammer stylings have grown on me. 18th Century America is one of my favorite topics for horror and history, and Burton painted a delicious nightmare version of it. If only he hadn't chosen to give the Hessian such a familiar face ....

There's just not enough ghost movies made these days, and certainly not enough good ones. Few filmmakers opt for Gothic manors, fog, and squeaky doors over the flashy "ghost" splatter-fests on display in The House on Haunted Hill and the 13 Ghosts remakes. I'm not sure why more directors don't opt to play in the spirit world, as I think movies like The Changeling, Paranormal Activity, and even The Blair Witch Project show that audiences can be scared with very little. As Jaws famously proved, it's what you don't see that's frightening, especially when you're dealing with the world of the living and the dead.

I think Alejandro Amenabar's The Others is one of the finest "haunted house" movies ever made. I watched it again last night, and I'm surprised at how little actually happens in this movie. When I first saw it in the theater, it seemed to be a symphony of voices, slamming doors, and moving objects. It's not, all of its chills come from the oppressive darkness, the fog, and a trio of grimly determined servants. Even though it relies heavily on the "twist" factor (and I still feel like Christopher Eccleston's appearance is an annoying red herring), it remains chilling for one of its final lines: "But now what does this all mean? Where are we?"

Below the jump is another scene that still gets me every time. On first glance, you're in the role of Nicholas, and unsure whether it's all an elaborate trick by sneaky Anne. But the hand that touches his cheek belongs to a little boy -- and nothing is scarier in the dark than footsteps from an unseen companion.

Great villains are scattered throughout the Westerns, but some of the most memorably savage come from the films of Sergio Leone. While Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West gets a lot of props for the way he mows down the McBain family (including its youngest and most adorable moppet), it was nothing that Lee Van Cleef hadn't already done in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Angel Eyes seems to be dismissed as something akin to Leone fan fiction, and it's his relation (or lack of) to Van Cleef's Col. Mortimer in A Few Dollars More that people find to be more interesting than his villainy.

But he's a great villain, mostly because he's absent for much for so much of the film. Leone gives him a ruthless introduction (a scene Quentin Tarantino mirrored perfectly with Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds) and promptly yanks him out of the narrative. As Tuco and Blondie torture each other for an hour, Angel Eyes is doing his own thing and it's a wonderful shock when he shows up running a Civil War prison camp. In today's cinema, no one could resist giving Angel Eyes a prequel and a spin-off relating the trail of bodies that led to that alias and that prison camp. But Leone allowed a squint to speak for itself, and told you everything you needed to know by the way men like Blondie and Tuco squirm around him. Considering that no one in this film is exactly good, and they're all a little bit ugly, it takes a lot to convince us that a man is worse than all the others. Van Cleef and Leone did that, and few villains can match his nastiness even when they've got double the screen time.

Go below the jump -- they don't call him Angel Eyes in here!

Villainy isn't just found in an evil plot, a straight razor, or a hockey mask. Sometimes it's a crippling state of mind and place that sucks the soul out of its heroes and heroines. It can be Purgatory, it can be hell, it can be a mental asylum, or it can be a bustling metropolis. So, I'd like to salute 1970s New York as being one of the most vicious, ruthless villains to ever wreck havoc on the silver screen.

By now you're regarding me with skepticism, outright derision, or a need to see Pinhead or Jigsaw saluted for the millionth time on a Halloween list. But think about the lurking menace behind Serpico, Taxi Driver, Fort Apache the Bronx, Cruising, Dog Day Afternoon, Klute, Mean Streets, Death Wish and dozens more. (Every once and awhile Hollywood mixed it up and set something in San Fransisco. But it always felt like a New York stand-in, didn't it?) The city's sickly decay spawned Watchmen. Without the drugs, spiraling crime rate, police corruption, and riots you wouldn't have Travis Bickle or Rorschach, who are rejected, broken, and made by what they witness on the city streets. In 1976, you wouldn't have had a charming dramedy called New York, I Love You. It probably would have been called New York: You'll Die Violently. The class and romance seen An Affair to Remember wouldn't come back until Disney dressed it up again.