The best Max von Sydow’s horror movies

Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow

10/04/1929- 08/03/2020
Max von Sydow (10 April 1929-8 March 2020) was a Swedish actor. He also held French citizenship since 2002. He starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more. He performed in films filmed in many languages, including Swedish, Norwegian, English, Italian, German, Danish, French and Spanish. Some of his most memorable film roles include knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (the first of his eleven films with Bergman and the film that includes the iconic shot of his career in the scene where he plays chess with Death), Jesus in George Stevens's The Greatest Story Ever Told, Father Merrin in Friedkin's The Exorcist, Joubert the assassin in Three Days of the Condor, and Ming the Merciless in the 1980 version of Flash Gordon. He was twice nominated for the Academy Award - Best Leading Actor for Pelle the Conqueror (1988) and Best Supporting Actor for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011).
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The Exorcist

The Exorcist
8.1/10
  • Genre: Horror
  • Release: 31/05/1973
  • Character: Father Lankester Merrin
12-year-old Regan MacNeil begins to adapt an explicit new personality as strange events befall the local area of Georgetown. Her mother becomes torn between science and superstition in a desperate bid to save her daughter, and ultimately turns to her last hope: Father Damien Karras, a troubled priest who is struggling with his own faith.

The Wolfman

The Wolfman
5.8/10
Lawrence Talbot, an American man on a visit to Victorian London to make amends with his estranged father, gets bitten by a werewolf and, after a moonlight transformation, leaves him with a savage hunger for flesh.

Exorcist II: The Heretic

Exorcist II: The Heretic
3.8/10
Bizarre nightmares plague Regan MacNeil four years after her possession and exorcism. Has the demon returned? And if so, can the combined faith and knowledge of a Vatican investigator and a hypnotic research specialist free her from its grasp?

Needful Things

Needful Things
6.3/10
  • Genre: DramaHorror
  • Release: 27/08/1993
  • Character: Leland Gaunt
A mysterious new shop opens in a small town which always seems to stock the deepest desires of each shopper, with a price far heavier than expected.

Dreamscape

Dreamscape
6.3/10
A government funded project looks into using psychics to enter people's dreams, with some mechanical help. When a subject dies in their sleep from a heart attack, Alex Gardner becomes suspicious that another of the psychics is killing people in the dreams somehow and that is causing them to die in real life. He must find a way to stop the abuse of the power to enter dreams.

Hour of the Wolf

Hour of the Wolf
7.5/10
  • Genre: DramaHorror
  • Release: 19/02/1968
  • Character: Johan Borg
An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past on a windy island. Between midnight and dawn, he tells his wife about his most painful memories.

Sleepless

Sleepless
6.2/10
An elderly and retired police detective and a young amateur sleuth team up to find a serial killer whom has resumed a killing spree in Turin, Italy after a 17-year hiatus.

The Night Visitor

The Night Visitor
6.7/10
An insane Swedish farmer escapes from an asylum to get revenge on his sister, her husband and others.

Black Journal

Black Journal
6.3/10
Black Journal (originally titled Gran Bollito) is a 1977 Italian drama film directed by Mauro Bolognini. It is based on the real life events of Leonarda Cianciulli, the Italian serial killer best known as the "Soap-Maker of Correggio".

Terror in the Aisles

Terror in the Aisles
6.3/10
  • Genre: DocumentaryHorror
  • Release: 26/10/1984
  • Character: Father Merrin (archive footage) (uncredited)
A non-stop roller coaster ride through the scariest moments of the greatest terror films of all time.

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