Entertainment Weekly's recent list of "The 20 Scariest Movies of All Time" has got me thinking about the last time I felt truly girl-screamy at a theater.

The Kathy Bates naked hot tub scene in "About Schmidt"? Nah, she didn't show us anything scarier than Jack Nicholson's eyebrows in that scene.

Maybe Nicholson Heeere's Johnny-ing through "The Shining?" Uh-uh, the real scare here was Shelley Duval's face when he was hacking through that door.

As men, we're discouraged from admitting that we can be shaken by anything as trivial as a popcorn thriller. Still, a good horror flick really only supplies the blanks for our customized closets of anxiety to fill in.

Scary films can succeed in any number of ways — by filling your belly with a slow drip of icy dread, by lulling you with the mundane then shocking you with vivid bursts of the unnatural, or by luring you into a dark theater only to find that you've shelled out $15 to see Sophia Coppola slay the "Godfather" franchise. As Robin Williams playing Elmer Fudd playing Marlon Brando's Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now" once said: "the howah, howah!"

As always, EW provides us a great conversation starter. And, to be sure, there's no conversation I love more than a one-sided one. Here, then, is my carefully considered, entirely subjective, admittedly neurotic list of the scariest films ever.

"Exorcist III": EW rightly acknowledges the original "Exorcist" for its ability to "mess you up for months." E-III, however, was an underappreciated gem, with sustained tension, a growing sense of supernatural menace AND New York Knicks center Patrick Ewing (still with his flat top) playing the Angel of Death.

"Titanic": Chilling was the realization that if you hooked up with the wrong woman, you might have to sit through this unimpressive, overblown mess, like, 10 times.

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original)": I was too young to see it in its first run, but I did catch it in discount revival. Way scarier than any of the slick splatter-fests that were being released at the time, and the crappy cinematography only added to the effect.

"The Longest Yard (2005)": A terrifying testament to man's inhumanity to classic guy films.

"Rosemary's Baby": A classic thriller. And, if I'm not mistaken, didn't director Roman Polanski date the baby?

"The Da Vinci Code": Haven't seen it. Frankly, I'm way too chicken to witness the unholy pairing of mediocrity meisters Dan Brown and Tom Hanks. Truly, the apocalypse is upon us.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.