10 Scariest Movies That Aren't Horror

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom well and truly tested the bounds of what Hollywood could pass off as "family-friendly" blockbuster entertainment, because this is quite possibly the single most deranged four-quadrant tentpole ever made.

While Indiana Jones has always flirted with grotesquery - Raiders' traumatising face-melt sequence, for instance - Temple of Doom basically bathes in it. This is, after all, a film centered around a Thuggee cult that enslaves children, practises black magic, and rips out the hearts of human sacrifices for the goddess Kali. 

There's little goofy or light about these prolonged sequences, which frequently lurch into genuinely disturbing territory. Hell, Steven Spielberg himself even called it "too horrific," and went so far as to say that it "out-poltered Poltergeist."

George Lucas meanwhile suggested that Temple ultimately became a much darker beast than either he or Spielberg intended because they were both going through relationship breakdowns at the time, putting them in a headspace not remotely conducive to producing rip-roaring, breezy action-adventure entertainment.

While Temple is certainly among the series' more divisive entries, its bold edginess nevertheless won it many loyal defenders, who respect Spielberg for delivering such a ballsy horrorshow of a blockbuster.