"The Exorcist" top horror film: survey

In a scene from the 1973 classic film ''The Exorcist,'' Linda Blair portrays a young girl whose body is possessed with evil. Actors Max Von Sydow (C) and Jason Miller (L) play catholic priests in the movie directed by William Friedkin. ''The Exorcist'' was voted the scariest movie of all time in a Halloween poll published on Wednesday.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - "The Exorcist" was voted the scariest movie of all time in a Halloween poll published on Wednesday.

The 1973 horror classic, starring Linda Blair as a possessed child, came out ahead of the Jack Nicholson movie "The Shining" in a survey conducted online among 6,500 customers of British music retailer HMV.

John Carpenter's "Halloween" took third place ahead of "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

HMV executive Mark Frampton said: "The horror genre was not really taken seriously for a long time but it's moved on from the slightly camp Hammer stereotypes that many of us remember and now enjoys the respect it fully deserves."