Science has finally resolved the horror film debate as to which terrifying classic is the scariest.
Based on changes in viewers' heart rates, "The Shining" has been ruled the most terrifying--especially its iconic "Here's Johnny" scene, the Daily Mail reported.
Japanese-owned website Rakuten's Play.com asked people to vote on which horror films they considered to be the most terrifying, then hooked viewers up to heart monitors to see exactly which horror movie scenes made their hearts race the most.
"Here's Johnny," a key scene in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," was the winner, making pulses race and jump by 28.21 percent.
While 1984's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" had the greatest physical effect overall, increasing audience members' heart rates by 26.8 percent on average, the poll results combined with the individual scariest scene scores put "The Shining" ahead.
In a September survey, 10,000 Rakuten's Play.com customers voted for the scariest horror films of all time. The 1973 religious thriller "The Exorcist" came second, while Wes Craven's original "Nightmare on Elm Street" finished in third place.
Audience members were also asked what frightened them the most. The responses were typically spiders, snakes, ghosts, death and being buried alive.
The scariest movie scene was calculated by identifying the percentage increases in individual audience members' heart rates during spikes that occurred at the same time.
The jumps in heart rate were compared to each member's average heart rate during each film to calculate the percentage increase in heart rates of each spike, according to the Daily Mail.
These percentage increases were then added together and compared with other spikes to find the highest percentage increase of each individual scene. Across all three films, the average heart rates increased by 25.3 percent up to 100.1bpm (beats per minute).
The top three horror films just pushed audience heart rate's into the light exercise zone by 3.1bpm. Target heart rate for 'light exercise' is calculated as 50-85 percent of peak heart rate, based on the age of each audience member, as defined by the American Heart Organization.
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