4. The Shining/ The Phantom Carriage
The Shining is rightly considered a horror masterpiece and Stanley Kubrick a genius, but the idea that such an iconic image as above could have come from another source is surprising. The creepy build up of the film hits its climax as Jack's instability turns into full blown insanity and he pursues his family through the Overlook Hotel, terrorizing them with an axe. The sequence has become one of the greatest and most memorable of Kubrick's entire canon, for good reason, but it's not quite original. Stanley Kubrick like many directors had an encyclopedic knowledge of film and likely had knowledge of the silent classic The Phantom Carriage, which lent its most iconic sequence to the director's most famous horror. The Phantom Carriage concerns David Holm, who belongs to the same mental school as Jack Torrence. He dies in the film and is given the Dickensian Christmas Caroll, treatment going back to review the events in his life. His story hits the same crescendo as David's, and he attacks his family with an axe through a locked door just as Jack does in The Shining. Yes, there are more camera angles, and it is slightly more sophisticated, but the scenes are too similar for there not to be a link.