Richard Gere names the scariest movie he’s ever seen: “Scary to everyone”
As far as smooth customers go, cinema has produced few finer than Richard Gere. The ultimate silver fox, the esteemed actor has made a very sizeable living just by being extremely charismatic. It’s hard to imagine anyone else sweeping Julia Roberts off her feet in Pretty Woman or filling out that naval uniform in An Officer and a Gentleman. Even these days, as he creeps towards his 80th birthday, he’s still suave as all hell.
So classy is the Chicago star that it’s almost impossible to imagine him in the grotty, mucky confines of a horror movie. Apart from impressing Stephen King with one of his performances, he’s mostly avoided the genre. There’s also the notable exception in 2002’s The Mothman Prophecies. In this supernatural mystery, Gere plays a reporter hunting a peculiar cryptid that he believes killed his wife. He might not have been in many of them, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a soft spot for spooky stories.
In an interview with Review Graveyard to promote The Mothman Prophecies, Gere was asked about his own preferred vintage of horror. “The scariest movie I ever saw had no ghost in it and that was The Servant,” he revealed. “It was a Joseph Losey film from a Harold Pinter screenplay, and it was the same kind of terror that Mothman deals with: it calls into question the nature of identity. I think that’s scary to everyone.”
Released in 1963, The Servant is the first in a series of collaborations between four-time Palme d’Or nominee (and one-time winner) Losey and acclaimed playwright Pinter. It stars Dirk Bogarde as Hugo Barrett, who is hired by a wealthy man named Tony (James Fox) to maintain his large house in Brazil. The two form a blossoming friendship, but things quickly fall apart when Tony’s girlfriend and Hugo’s mistress (Wendy Craig and Sarah Miles, respectively) get involved.
Although the movie wasn’t a financial success, drawing just under £390,000 from a £139,000 budget, the critics loved it. Contemporary reviewers praised Losey’s direction and Pinter’s script, noting how on edge they were throughout the runtime. More modern reviews echo this sentiment, praising the film’s use of sound and technical camerawork to embody the emotions of the characters. In a 1999 poll, the British Film Institute (BFI) named this takedown of class structures amongst the 25 greatest British movies ever made, beating the likes of Doctor Zhivago, Withnail & I, and Zulu.
Losey studied under Bertolt Brecht in Germany, while Pinter made his name crafting intricate, psychological stories full of tense pauses and lingering, unspoken confessions. The latter also helped bring us Danny Dyer, so there’s also that. The point is, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these two (not Dyer) were able to craft something so terrifying without relying on monsters or the otherworldly. The relatability of The Servant is what makes it so frightening—it could realistically happen to anyone. The story is taken from a novel by Robin Maugham, but Losey and Pinter helped make it their own.
It’s hardly shocking that Gere went for something as refined and technical as The Servant when choosing his favourite horror movie. There is definitely a universe in which he plays the James Fox role in a remake, adding his incomparable touch of class to the proceedings. If any budding directors/screenwriters are reading this, you can have that idea on us.
