Top 10 Horror Films
In honor of Halloween, we at Fatally-Yours.com decided to put together a definitive list of our favorite horror films ever!
One problem, though…we all know that “top ten” movie lists are a sham. Nobody can definitively say what the best movie is. Art is subjective. It’s all a matter of opinion…one man’s Citizen Kane is another man’s Daddy Day Care.
But, top ten movie lists are good for a couple of things. First, they stimulate conversation. They can get us all talking and discussing the merits of our favorite flicks. Also, they can expose little-known movies to a broader audience.
Below, you’ll find lists from the entire staff (well, nearly the entire staff…some of us appear to be MIA) here at Fatally-Yours.com sharing our top ten horror films. Notice how I worded the previous sentence. These aren’t necessarily lists of the ten best horror films of all time, but rather each staff member’s personal picks for their favorite horror films.
We hope you enjoy the lists and maybe even find a horror movie or two you haven’t seen before (in that case, if it is on one of our top 10 lists, you should definitely check those movies out!!).
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Fatally Yours
1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper)
2. Suspiria (1977, Dario Argento)
3. The Tenant (1976, Roman Polanski)
4. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Robert Weine)
5. Return of the Living Dead (1985, Dan O’Bannon)
6. Blood and Black Lace (1964, Mario Bava)
7. Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Ji-Woon Kim)
8. Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972, Lucio Fulci)
9. The Descent (2006, Neil Marshall)
10. Ginger Snaps (2002, John Fawcett)
Runners up: Audition, American Werewolf in London, The Shining, Dawn of the Dead, The Devil’s Backbone, Rosemary’s Baby, etc.
Theron Neel
Now, this list is in no particular order. I can’t tell you which of these is better than the other—they all kick ass, some more than others, I suppose. And my top ten changes daily. This list is accurate only at the moment I’m typing it. If you asked me to write another list five minutes from now, you’d likely get a totally different set of movies. Hell, I’ll probably change my mind before I type the ten I’ve already chosen (…I did). So, I present to a list of ten of my favorite horror movies – valid as of this second.
The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (Sam Raimi, 1987)
The Tingler (William Castle, 1959)
Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)
Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon, 1985)
From Dusk ‘Til Dawn (Robert Rodriguez, 1996)
John Carpenter’s The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
May (Lucky McKee, 2002)
Fiend of Grue
1. The Evil Dead
2. Day of the Dead
3. Cannibal Holocaust
4. The Beyond
5. Halloween (original)
6. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (original)
7. Zombie
8. Don’t Deliver Us from Evil
9. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
10. An American Werewolf in London
Tony DeFrancisco
1. Requiem for a Dream – Untraditional horror, but scary as hell.
2. Psycho – After forty-seven years, cinema audiences are still shitting themselves.
3. Evil Dead 2 – The greatest low budget horror flick… ever.
4. Audition – The film that introduced me to the mind of Takishi Miike.
5. Silence of the Lambs – Scary as hell.
6. Blair Witch Project – Old childhood favorite.
7. Bug – My vote for the scariest movie this year.
8. Shaun of the Dead – Funny and highly intellegent horror film
9. House of 1000 Corpses – Rob Zombie’s wet dream made into a film? Who WOULDN’T like that?
10. Full Metal Jacket – Again, not a traditional horror film, but it scares the living piss out of anyone who is planning on going into the military
Dr. Royce Clemens
10. Candyman (Bernard Rose)
The first movie I ever saw that actually scared me. Bernard Rose’s evocative script, elegant direction and Tony Todd’s straight up brave and creepy performance (how did they get those damn BEES in his mouth?) can make scar an eleven year old kid for life. After I first saw it at that age, I hid in the bathroom with the lights on until the sun came up.9. Frankenstein (James Whale)
The movie that broke open American Horror. Gothic in its visuals and housing an awesome physical performance by Boris Karloff, Frankenstein invaded the world’s consciousness and our every day way of life.8. Last House on the Left (Wes Craven)
This torture-occupied shithole of current horror directors WATCHED Wes Craven’s masterpiece but didn’t SEE anything. When confronted with an outlandish threat (killer hippies) and the death of their daughter, two reasonable, loving people became homicidal monsters, and THAT’S what makes this movie frightening, not the gore. It’s smarter and deeper than even its most staunch defenders will admit to.7. Carrie (Brian DePalma)
The movie that gave us Brian DePalma and Stephen King, for better AND for worse. A stylish and breathtaking look at a human evil pushed too far, that cannot be reasoned with. And I can’t help but smile that the person who would usually be the FIRST to die in a horror movie is the one doing all the killing.6. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper)
Relentless, kick-you-in-the-junk, immediate, realistic horror on one level and on another, a backwoods comedy of manners about a guy trying to remodel his house…Oh it’s there, trust me.5. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Inaugural American Slasher Prototype. By far the most influential horror film ever made, it changed even the way films were conceived and marketed. No one would be seated after the showing started back in 1960, (thus leading to the now mandatory practice of advertising start times in newspapers) because Big Ass Star Janet Leigh died twenty minutes in. When folks saw that, they didn’t know what would happen next. No horror film made since has shown such initiative.4. The Descent (Neil Marshall)
There was an eight month span of time last year where I wouldn’t shut up about this movie, so I’m just gonna say that this movie rules your ass and the asses of your loved ones.3. Alien (Ridley Scott)
Odd that the quintessential Haunted House Movie deals not with ghosts or creaky wooden floorboards, but a shapeshifting biological entity in the cold reaches of space. Ridley Scott’s break-out movie uses a dearth of dialogue, spare performances, eerie sets and fantastic creature effects to essentially rewrite the playbook of what’s scary on-screen.2. Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero)
It’s been forty years and none of the grisly power of Night of the Living Dead has been lost. To the people in the VCR generation, it was always the “Movie in the Plain Brown Wrapper,” the big no-no, the one your parents would not under any circumstances let you watch. It was the first to remove layer after layer of breathing room between itself and its audience. The games were over, and for the first time a movie actually tried to terrify you on a primal level…That and there are the allegories about Vietnam and racism and shit…1. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau)
The more horror movies I watch where the bar gets higher and higher for gore and lower and lower in terms of quality, I think about how the attempts to be realistic are futile. The complicated pains gone through to convince us that we’re not watching a movie make it all too APPARENT that we’re watching a movie. But what makes Nosferatu so Goddamned creepy some eighty-five years after the fact is how simple it is. The camera is stationary, the actors are in front of it, and the light and shadows do the rest of the work. And the eerie visage of Max Shreck as the title character is something to behold. The scratchy, decades old film print makes him more threatening and unmistakably inhuman. We do not see a man in makeup. We see an actual vampire. And it is the only vampire I’ve ever seen on film…
Siko Mike
1. Halloween (original)
2. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (original)
3. The Descent
4. 2001 Maniacs
5. Friday the 13th
6. A Nightmare on Elm Street
7. Child’s Play
8. Saw
9. House of 1000 Corpses (may be cheesy but I personally liked it)
10. Scream
The Wolf
1. John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)
2. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
3. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)
4. The Howling (1981)
5. Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (1986)
6. Return of the Living Dead (1985)
7. George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978)
8. Nosferatu (1928)
9. Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
10. Phantasm (1979)
Jeffery J. Timbrell
10. Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
Classic psychological thriller from the 1950s that set the standard for thousands of Boogeymen, stalkers and slashers to come. A haunting story highlighted by excellent performances, easily one of the most overlooked and influential horror movies of all time.9. Twitch of the Death Nerve (Mario Bava)
Also known as ‘Bay of Blood‘, the nightmarishly beautiful Twitch of the Death Nerve is the real-deal prototype for thousands of wannabe slasher movies around the world. Director Mario Bava turns each violent scene into a gorgeous stylization of inhumanity. Thousands of movies like Friday the 13th stole entire scenes and indeed the formula of the slasher film from Twitch, making this not only one of Bava’s most bloody and beautiful films, but also one of his most influential.8. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
A true low-budget legend, Henry is a disturbing, mature and powerful image of the serial killer. Henry doesn’t glorify or sympathize with the main character. Featuring a monstrous and epic performance from Michael Rooker, Henry is blazing with a sense of no frills authenticity, not seen or even attempted since Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left.7. Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
One of the single craziest motion pictures ever put to celluloid. Holy Mountain is Jodorowsky’s epic mind-blowing festival of the grotesque, the sacrilegious and the beautiful. A collection of thieves unite together with an alchemist to plunder the treasures of heaven, only to realize that the quest will make them face the illusion of their existence, and expose the true self-destructive nature of evil.6. Ichi The Killer (Takashi Miike)
The most depraved, disturbing and daring horror film of the last 10 years. Ichi has set a forbidden standard that no other filmmaker or studio has since had the guts to match. The gorehound epic is one part hallucinogenic nightmare, one part parody and one part serious social criticism of the time. It’s confrontational with powerful performances, artistically beautiful like a desolate Blade Runner in hell, politically incorrect and not for the timid.5. A Clockwork Orange
Kubrick’s stylish vision of a harsh lesson in morality; where a violent monster is trapped in a hell of pacifism. Clockwork flips all the conventions of violent cinema upside down, completely re-invents the genre and assaults the senses. A Clockwork Orange is a masterful psychological odyssey that questions the nature of humanity and violence itself.4. Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho)
The best crime thriller since Silence of the Lambs, based off of a true unsolved mystery from the 1980s and Korea’s most notorious serial killer. Memories of Murder is everything Zodiac, The Black Dahlia and From Hell wanted to be, but couldn’t pull off. Memories of Murder is a desolate, dry-witted and intelligent masterpiece that enriches every scene with a profound sense of verisimilitude.3. Titus (Julie Taymor)
Full of cannibalism, rape, murder, incest and hedonism, Titus is arguably Shakespeare’s most divisive and radical story. In the hands of the inventive and brilliant Julie Taymor, Titus becomes positively iconoclastic. Featuring a scalding performance from Anthony Hopkins; portraying Andronicus not just as a raving madman, but as a noble facade shattering under the weight of a thousand woes. Like one of the great Greek statues standing proud and expressionless, slowly cracking and falling apart. Titus is a classic story of madness and revenge.2. Freaks
Before there was David Cronenberg, before there was Alien, there was Freaks. A daring film for it’s time that dissected and deconstructed the notion of the body beautiful.; showing that criminally mistreated freak show performers of their era were real people with real lives, being manipulated and exploited by the greed of others. In Freaks the expectations of the audience was played on, creating a film that shocked thousands. In the end Freaks showed that beauty is indeed skin-deep and that for some ‘beautiful people’, being turned into a freak show monster to frighten children is a vast improvement.1. Night of the Living Dead (George A Romero)
The groundbreaking original in the living dead series that broke all the rules of conventional horror movies of it’s era. Featuring a strong female lead who saves herself from monsters instead of relying on the hero (who dies in the opening minutes), an empowered African-American who takes charge of the situation, a group of hopelessly blissful teenagers that are consumed by their own myopia and a middle American family that literally eats itself alive. Night of the Living Dead is a nihilistic wonder that changed horror as we know it from the inside out and laid the groundwork for everything to come.
Runners-up: Jaws, Suspiria, Return of the Living Dead, In the Mouth of Madness, Ringu, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Audition, Night of the Living Dead, Psycho, Day of the Dead, Terror at the Opera, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Cronenberg’s The Fly, Carpenter’s The Thing, The Beyond, Don’t Torture a Duckling, Perfect Blue, The Shining
Noel
10. Calvaire (The Ordeal) (2004)
I’m not sure what this says about me, but every time I see this it gets funnier every time. Quite possibly the funniest/sickest case of mistaken identity ever. I think even the rednecks from Deliverance would think this town is really fucked up. The most recent time I’ve seen this, I realized, with a laugh, what a chick magnet the main character Marc is…considering his job is entertaining old people. I never would have thought that type of job got one so much play. And the animal fucking/group gazing scene is one of the strangest scenes I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it’s Marc dressed up like a girl the gallows. Or maybe it’s the dance scene in the bar. Or maybe it’s that it ends on a genuinely touching note. Or maybe…I’ll just watch it again.9. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Love the movie. Love the title. Now that I think about it’s my favorite horror movie title of all time and quite possibly the best movie overall with the word ‘plumage’ in it. Yes, it’s even better than 1998’s British horror classic Carlton Plumage: Vampire Agronomist directed by Ken Russell and starring a pre-Bond Daniel Craig in the title role and Sir John Geilgud as the butler Habersham. Crystal Plumage is my favorite of Dario Argento’s creations. Other than Asia Argento of course…8. Rosemary’s Baby
It’s almost too easy to put this on a Top Horror list, but…it still scares the crap out of me. Whether it’s Mia Farrow’s fragile Rosemary or John Cassavetes’ banal bastard Guy…there’s a reason this movie has stood the test of time.
Personal story- for whatever reason, every time I see Mia Farrow on the street she thinks I’m one of her children (I think it’s because I’m Asian). But every time she sees me, she points to me and screams “Its EYES! Look at its EYES!!!” At first it used to bother me, but over the years I’ve gotten used to it.7. Audition (1999)
Talk about picking the wrong girl. And kids…that isn’t laundry in that bag.6. Misery (1990)
Kathy Bates’ Academy Award Winning performance as Annie Wilkes is one of the few performances…that actually deserve it, subsequent viewings only prove the Academy right with its balance of terror and sympathy. My favorite of Stephen King’s horror adaptations (my favorite being Shawshank ‘cause I’m a big softie). Still, for those of you who like the T and A in your horror, I’m sorry to say that Kathy Bates does not appear naked in this movie (Boo!! Hiss!!). You’d have to wait 12 years until About Schmidt for that (Yeah!!).5. May (2002)
Angela Bettis’ heartbreaking/pathetic performance in the title character remains one of the best horror performances of the…well, ever. Thanks to May, we now know that broken glass + curious blind kids = not the best of ideas. The final shot of Amy is an absolute perfect, freaky, sad ending. Also, Susie is one of the best inanimate objects in horror history (“Who taught you how to KISS?!!”). So much so that I got a doll that looks like Susie and I even call her Susie. The difference being that the doll in May is just a prop and my doll Susie really does talk to me.4. The Descent (2006)
My favorite horror film of last year…and there’s no way it wasn’t going to be on my personal top 10. Still, I would have liked to a have seen a lesbian scene with a couple of the girls. It would have given the ‘exploring the cave’ motif another dimension.3. Se7en (1995)
It isn’t Brad Pitt’s bad acting. It isn’t Kevin Spacey’s creepily logical John Doe (way back when Spacey made GOOD movies- and notice you don’t necessarily disagree with Doe’s arguments). It isn’t even Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box. What makes David Fincher’s signature thriller twisted beyond repair is that by the end of the film what you want to happen and what John Doe wants to happen…are the exact same thing. My favorite “sin”- Lust. Damn…that’s gotta hurt (“I f-f-f-fucked her. I fucked h-h-h-her!!!”).2. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Is this technically a horror film? Maybe, maybe not…but I’ll say this movie’s scarier than 90% of what’s labeled horror today. From its perfect cast (Jared Leto and Marlon have never and will never be in anything this good) to its visceral imagery, no film has ever captured the feeling of what it’s like to be on hard drugs better than this one. I will say that after seeing this movie for the first time, I stopped doing them myself. And the only involvement I have with them is when I give them to children in local playgrounds. Just enough to get them hooked, but not enough to cut into my profit margin. Also, I tell them to throw any baggies or leftover plastic containers into the proper receptacles, because I am all about the environment.There’s a part of me that thinks this movie is also pro-drug. Why? Because if you follow the chain of events, it states subtly that if you do enough drugs…you too may have a chance to run a train on Jennifer Connelly…and that’s as good a reason as any. But before you tighten that rubber tubing around your arm to find that one good vein…remember that this is just a movie.
Fun Fact: In the insightful commentary, director Darren Aronofsky states as one of his influences for Requiem…You guessed it – Ken Russell’s Carlton Plumage: Vampire Agronomist.
1. The Vanishing (1988)
It didn’t realize this was my favorite horror movie of all time until about 20 minutes before I began writing this. Why? Because EVERY time I see this I cannot stop the DVD. I just let the credits run. I am that stunned by the ending no matter how many times I’ve seen it. It’s one of the quietest horror movies I’ve ever seen…and a part of it is because I probably spend the last 20 minutes holding my breath. The terrible 1993 remake with Jeff Bridges and Keifer Sutherland is almost inexcusable, if only because it was made by the same filmmaker that did the original. Watch this instead…and remember to breathe.
Mitch Emerson
1. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
2. Army of Darkness
3. Planet Terror
4. Nightmare on Elm Street 2
5. Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder’s remake)
6. Dead and Breakfast
7. 28 Days/Weeks Later – A tie
8. Scream
9. Christine
10. Trick or Treat (Old one with Skippy from Family Ties)
Popularity: 100% [?]
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