Everybody pretty much agrees that “The Exorcist” is the scariest movie ever made.

Likewise, you don’t need an expert to explain why the shower murder in “Psycho” is considered the greatest scene from any horror flick.

But there are plenty of other categories up for debate that involve the venerable horror genre.

What better time than late October to introduce some more “bests” that aficionados of scary movies can debate and dissect?

BEST HAUNTED HOUSE MOVIE

The category of haunted house movies is pretty broad. (Conceptually, “Alien” could be considered one.)

But for our purposes, let’s stick with the most narrow definition: people thwarted by supernatural forces in their home.

No film does a better job playing on the fear of madness and isolation than “The Shining.” Stanley Kubrick’s loose adaptation of the Stephen King novel avoids most of the “old dark house” chestnuts by presenting a brightly lit, modern hotel as the backdrop for mounting evil.

The director’s legendary obsessiveness with details gives even the most innocuous image or conversation an underlying edginess. (He went so far as subjecting star Shelley Duvall to 127 takes in one scene, and actually had someone type rather than photocopy the hundreds of layout permutations of the phrase, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”)

But in terms of sheer scariness, check out those freaky twin girls at the end of the hallway. And what about that disturbing cameo with the hotel guest in the dog costume?

Runners-up: “The Haunting” (1963), “The Changeling”

GORIEST HORROR MOVIE

Although Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson is now forever associated with the epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, for many years he was best known for an underground cult flick he helmed in 1992.

“Dead Alive” aka “Braindead,” is a quirky, garish, often hilarious horror picture concerning a mama’s boy named Lionel (Timothy Balme) whose overbearing mother is bitten by a poisonous “rat monkey” that turns her – and everyone she chomps – into bloodthirsty zombies.

Over the years, the New Zealand effort has rightly gained the reputation as the goriest movie every made. The climax involves Lionel dispatching hordes of the cackling undead using a lawnmower tipped with its blades facing forward. Jackson reportedly employed 300 liters of fake blood, pumped at 5 gallons a second during this tour de force of carnage.

Runners-up: “Re-Animator,” “Dawn of the Dead (1979),” “Audition”

BEST ‘DEAD TEENAGER MOVIE’

The phrase “dead teenager movie” was coined by critic Roger Ebert and refers to “any movie primarily concerned with killing teenagers, without regard for logic, plot, performance, humor, etc. Often imitated, never worse than in the ‘Friday the 13th’ sequels.”

The best is still the one that jump-started the genre: “Halloween.”

So much of John Carpenter’s 1978 effort – at one point the highest-grossing independent movie of all time – is composed of concepts that have become horror cliches that it’s easy to forget how innovative his flick originally was. The point-of-view-of-the-killer camera technique, the gruesome discovery of bodies scene, the never-dead killer – all of these were new ideas when the director-cowriter unleashed this suspenseful slasher.

Runners-up: “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974)

BEST HORROR SEQUEL

Filmmaker James Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he tried to launch a follow-up to Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning “Alien” seven years after the original debuted. Rather than trying to copy Scott’s methodical, design-heavy masterpiece, Cameron (“The Terminator”) made a more frenetic, battle-oriented thriller.

Sure, the futuristic “Aliens” has one foot rooted in the action genre. But first and foremost, it is a work of horror.

If anyone doubts this classification, look no further than two scenes of nail-biting terror: the claustrophobic first encounter with the hive of aliens that all but decimates the Marines unit, and the sequence in which Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Newt (Carrie Henn) are imprisoned in the lab with two “face-hugger” creatures trying to inseminate them.

“Aliens” was a huge box-office success and also netted two of the seven Academy Awards for which it was nominated. The three subsequent sequels – each made by a different director – only confirmed how superior Cameron’s vision was.

Runners-up: “Dawn of the Dead (1978),” “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Evil Dead 2”

BEST ‘DON’T TRUST YOUR SPOUSE’ MOVIE

“Rosemary’s Baby” concerns how the presence of evil permeates an everyday, mundane environment. And there’s nothing more everyday and mundane than marriage.

Roman Polanski’s faithful adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel is the granddaddy of all “Don’t Trust Your Spouse” movies.

Young newlyweds (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) move into an apartment in Central Park West, where they are befriended by eccentric neighbors – who just happen to belong to a coven of witches. Before long, the pregnant Rosemary (Farrow) believes her husband is somehow involved with the group, who may want their baby for a cult ritual. But the truth proves far worse than that.

The 1968 picture has arguably the eeriest “dream sequence” ever shot (Rumors that Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey portrayed the devil in the scene are false.) It also featured one of the most chilling movie posters, in which Farrow’s prone profile is superimposed over the shadow of a baby carriage on a forbidding, rocky cliff.

Runners-up: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978), “What Lies Beneath,” “The Stepford Wives” (1975)

BEST HORROR PARODY

The reason Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s “Young Frankenstein” has stood the test of time is that it looks and feels like a classic black-and-white project from Universal Studios’ heyday. In fact, the film was shot in the same castle, utilizing the same laboratory set as in the original 1931 “Frankenstein.”

The cast of Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Marty Feldman and an uncredited Gene Hackman (who improvised the Blind Man’s line “I was gonna make espresso”) are so clearly having the time of their lives onscreen that the audience can’t help but be sucked into the goofy story.

The 1974 effort is not only the best parody of horror flicks, it’s also one of the funniest movies ever made.

“Frau Blücher!” (horses whinny).

Runners-up: “Shaun of the Dead,” “Scream”

BEST HORROR MOVIE STARRING KEVIN BACON

“Stir of Echoes” didn’t really resonate. “Hollow Man” was nearly invisible. “Flatliners” was dead on arrival.

Of all the entries in the Kevin Bacon catalog, his only horror effort that shook things up was “Tremors.” Bacon plays a mulleted guy named Val in a dustbowl town who must thwart large wormlike predators from bursting out of the ground and eating people. (“This valley is just one long smorgasbord,” he says.)

In the best B-movie tradition “Tremors” is equal parts humorous and frightening – and it’s hard to tell how much of either is intentional.

Runners-up: “Friday the 13th,” “Footloose”