With Halloween fast approaching, seems everyone is getting into the scary spirit, and there's nothing better than turning off all the lights, curling up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, and watching a good horror movie. But which one? With so many out there, including sequels, remakes, ripoffs, and just plain torture porn (
Hostel, Saw sequels), it's easy to end up with the wrong one. With that in mind, here are my picks for the 13 greatest horror films of all time. While these may not be the absolute scariest, these are guaranteed to provide you with a good night and maybe a good fright.
Honorable mentions:
Amityville Horror, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Fog,
Scream, House of Wax (1953), Paranormal Activity.
13.
Friday the 13th (1980)- Director Sean Cunningham
It is somewhat appropriate that we start this countdown off with the film that launched one of Hollywood's most notorious slashers, Jason Voorhees. Ironically, the hockey-masked fiend doesn't appear until part two; the mask comes a sequel later. The original follows our group of happy campers, including a young Kevin Bacon, as they are systematically killed off by an unknown assailant. Remember those great campfire stories we all heard during the summer about the unlikeable janitor/counselor/camper who was died there and now haunts the campground seeking vengeance? That mood is captured here perfectly. The sequels are campy and somewhat ridiculous (See
Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan), and although they deliver a few thrills, nothing beats the original. Not to mention, it did give us one other thing: the last-minute scare. You've been warned.
12.
House on Haunted Hill (1959)- Director William Castle.
It is a general rule of thumb in horror movies that the remake is never as good as the original, and this is very true here. While the 1999 remake stars great actors like Famke Janssen and Geoffrey Rush, they don't make the film as good as the classic. Starring the incomparable Vincent Price, the film follows a group of strangers as they spend the night in a haunted house for the promise of $10,000. Is it cheesy? Yes. Does it have plenty of high-pitched black-and-white era screams? God, yes. Is Vincent Price creepy in it? This isn't
The Ten Commandments, so of course he is. The movie still remains one of my personal favorites in and out of the Halloween season and gave us one of the first haunted house movies. Just be sure to look out for flying skeletons.
11.
Poltergeist (1982)- Director Tobe Hooper
Where I grew up, there was hardly any major building that wasn't a) built on an old Indian burial ground or b) haunted. Combine the two and you get this gem about a family terrorized by the spirits living in their house. The film starts off with a bang and features such terrifying elements as killer trees, killer clowns, killer ghosts, and a pit full of real rotting corpses, not to mention the classic quotes ("Go into the light," "It knows what scares you," and "They're here.") While fans of the film remember the quirky Zelda Rubinstein as the psychic medium, the star of this film is sweet little Heather O'Rourke, who plays the youngest daughter and central target of the spirits, Carol Anne. The fact that she is so precious and innocent makes for a compelling story. People are also drawn to the film because of the legendary curse. Several actors in the film and its sequel died after production, including O'Rourke. The real life horror has drawn almost as many viewers as the simulated variety. Oh, I almost forgot. It was written by somebody named Steven Spielberg. You may have heard of him.
10.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)- Director George Romero
A lot of people will remember this film as the first movie to feature zombies in it, but it's much more than that. First, it's not the first movie to have zombies in it; several older movies featured them as villains, but they were found in jungles and the tropics and were often controlled by some evil mastermind. These were different. The zombies introduced to us by the legendary George Romero are independent and only have one thing on their mind: kill.
Night of the Living Dead gives us walking dead in the first five minutes and doesn't stop until the final frame. Exemplifying the idea of a movie on a budget, the rest of the film follows a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse as they devise a plan to escape the growing horde of stumbling, undead cannibals outside their door. This movie belongs here for not only putting Romero on the map and inspiring zombie creators and sequels for decades to come, but also for creating one more fear for mankind to worry about: our loved ones who want nothing more than to eat us. Not to mention, the image of a zombified little girl chewing on a human leg is just flat-out disturbing.
9.
Freaks (1932)- Director Tod Browning
After the success of his previous horror film,
Dracula, Tod Browning was given a new project by his producers: come up with a film scarier than
Frankenstein. What he came up with was one of the most disturbing and controversial films ever made.
Freaks follows members of a circus sideshow, specifically a trapeze artist and her love for a dwarf. His fellow freaks do not trust her motives but accept her nonetheless. However, when she leaves him for the circus strongman, they decide to take their bloody revenge. The film so disturbed audiences that it was banned for decades in Australia and the UK and Browning soon fell out of the Hollywood loop. Browning had done his job, though; he did make a scary movie. While it is unsettling to see the "normal people" as the villains in the film, the real scary part is some of the freaks themselves. Browning takes great care not to ridicule them; the cast was composed of real circus freaks including half-men half-women, dwarfs, bearded ladies, bird people, a human skeleton, and Prince Randian, born without arms or legs. There is, however, nothing quite as frightening as the sight of all the freaks stalking the trapeze artist with the chant of "We will make you one of us."
8.
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)- Director Wes Craven
One of the main things people always complain about concerning horror movies is if the killer in the house, why not run away? Well, what if you couldn't? What if, no matter how hard you tried and how far you ran, that killer would hunt you down and kill you in your sleep? That's the premise of Craven's classic. A group of teenagers are haunted by the spirit of a child murderer, whom their parents burned alive, who attacks them in their dreams; die in a dream, die in real life. This movie breaks other slasher movie norms, as well. First, while many of our killers are silent, Freddy Krueger is a comedian, breaking out one-liners and taunting his victims. Secondly, while most of our killers are happy with a simple stab, slash, or broken neck, Krueger gets creative. In his first feature film, Johnny Depp is sucked into his bed and basically becomes a blood volcano. In the sequels, victims have their veins turned into marionette strings, are drowned in water beds, and have their heads smashed into televisions, among other gruesome means of demise. This is the one horror movie my mother won't watch, and I can't blame her. After seeing this, you may never sleep again.
7.
Nosferatu (1922)- Director F.W. Murnau
Before
Dracula, The Lost Boys, Interview with the Vampire, or any other vampire film, there was
Nosferatu, the silent German classic that introduced the undead bloodsucker to film. The movie was the first full film adaptation of Bram Stoker's iconic novel
Dracula, but the filmmakers were sued by Stoker's widow for copyright infringement. Since they did not have permission, writers changed the names of all the characters to more German names. While the plot is highly similar, there is one glaring difference. While the title character in other versions of the Dracula films is suave, seductive, and rather charming, Count Orlok/Nosferatu is quite the opposite. He is grotesque, with a bald head, pointed ears, razor-sharp teeth, and long, claw-like fingers. Max Shreck, the man behind the makeup, is almost comical trying to pass himself off as a reclusive yet normal European count; a scene involving Orlok in his nightcap and robe actually made me giggle. However, once he lets loose into his bloodthirsty alter ego, he is the definition of the word "scary," and the horror still echoes nearly 90 years later.
6.
Frankenstein(1931)- Director James Whale
The story of
Frankenstein is virtually embedded in all our minds. A mad scientist, trying to play God, resurrects a dead man with a rotten brain, and terror ensues. Colin Clive is brilliant as Dr. Frankenstein ("It's alive, It's alive,") but it's horror legend Boris Karloff as the monster that steals the show. Producers took great care not to let anyone see Karloff in his makeup before the movie premiered, giving the creature an air of mystery. Even in the opening credits, the monster is simply listed as "?." When he first appears on screen, he backs out of a doorway before slowly turning his face to the camera. Once he was looking straight ahead, the camera locked on his face with his dead, sunken eyes, scars, and green skin that seemed to transcend the fact the film was black and white. Audiences flipped out; many fainted or ran screaming out of the theater. Although the monster is terrifying, we also feel sympathy for him with his childlike manner, even as he commits his crimes. That complexity is what makes this a truly great film, but it's Karloff that makes it a great horror film.
5.
The Shining (1980)- Director Stanley Kubrick
If horror writing is an art, Stephen King is its Leonardo Da Vinci, and his Mona Lisa, at least in terms of his film adaptations, is
The Shining, directed by the master Stanley Kubrick. The plot, based on some of King's own experiences, follows a writer, played by the always entertaining Jack Nicholson, as he spends the winter in an empty mountain lodge with his wife and son. Of course, the hotel is haunted, and after they are snowed in, it slowly drives them all into madness. While critics dismissed the film at first, it has since become a horror classic, and it's easy to see why. Most people remember the classic lines "Redrum!" and "Here's Johnny," but there are so many inexplicably creepy moments in the film as well. Jack's manuscript. The bartender. The dead woman in the bathtub. The twins. The elevator. Tony. The hedge maze. Whatever the hell that guy in the bear suit is supposed to be. Each and every little moment will slowly make you feel unsettled as well. A word of warning: turn off all the lights on this one, and you may regret it.
4.
Halloween (1978)- Director John Carpenter
Take a director in his youth, a cast of new faces with one established actor, and an incredibly low-budget, and what do you get? The highest-grossing independent film of the 1970s and one of the greatest horror films of all time,
Halloween. Starring a young Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first film role, the movie follows a group of babysitters as they are stalked by masked maniac Michael Myers, who is, himself, being tracked down by his doctor, played impeccably by the late Donald Pleasence.
Halloween sticks out from a lot of other slasher films of the era. It lacks the blood and gore of later films, which isn't a bad thing, and it actually gives us characters we care about. A low budget might doom some films, but in this case, it's part of the film's charm. While looking for the perfect mask for the killer, a crew member found a William Shatner mask. Painted white and its hair teased out, the mask was a blank slate far creepier than anything before or since. With no expense for someone to create a soundtrack, Carpenter wrote the music himself. What he created was one of the most haunting and recognizable themes in cinema history. The movie has plenty of jokes to couple with the screams, giving audiences a real treat. Not to mention, the ending is a real shock, leading to one of the few well-done sequels in horror. Fun fact: the film initially did very poorly in theaters and with critics, until one critic praised the film, comparing it to
Psycho. The critic's name? Roger Ebert.
3.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)- Director Tobe Hooper
Unkillable zombie in a hockey mask terrorizing summer campers? Impossible. Ghost of a serial killer killing teenagers in their dreams? Implausible. Lunatics killing tourists in the middle of nowhere, Texas? Makes sense to me. And that is what makes
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so terrifying. The plot is simple: a group of young people traveling through the Texas countryside run afoul of a group of backwoods cannibals, most notably Leatherface, the chainsaw-wielding lunatic wearing a mask made of human skin. As gory as the name would have one believe, the film relies more on implied carnage than the actual impalement and slaughter. That's not to say there aren't a few gory bits. What really makes the film scary is Hooper's presentation of the film as real. The very beginning claims that this is all based on true case files, which isn't entirely untrue: Leatherface is based on the real-life serial killer Ed Gein, as is Norman Bates in
Psycho and Buffalo Bill in
The Silence of the Lambs. The lack of a real soundtrack and documentary-style shooting makes it seem all too real, and it's all brought together by the gritty look of the film itself. Ignore the sequels and the remakes; only the original is truly terrifying, something I know from personal experience. I once watched the film with a group of friends: of the 20 of us, all but one of us screamed, and that was only because I had seen the movie before.
2.
Dracula (1931)- Director Tod Browning
Of all the classic Halloween monsters, none is more recognizable than Count Dracula, and it's all thanks to this 1931 classic. The story, based on the stage play rather than Bram Stoker's novel, sees the enigmatic vampire Dracula leaving his reclusive mountain castle for England and new blood. This tale has been told a hundred times, sometimes successfully, such as Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version and the Spanish version that was shot at the same time and on the same set as this version. Both are excellent, but there is one major thing they lack: Bela Lugosi. Everything we associate with the stereotypical vampire comes from Bela's performance: the slicked back hair, the cape, the seductive nature, and that heavy Eastern European accent. Ironically, we never see any fangs, but the movie doesn't need them. Instead, we have the great dialogue ("Children of the night. What music they make." and "I don't drink...wine.") Most remastered versions include a soundtrack added by Philip Glass; the original had no soundtrack, and Glass's addition is equally as eerie as the silent background of the original. However, it's still Bela that brings the picture together, and it's all in his stare. With pen lights under his eyes, Lugosi's Dracula is as hypnotizing to audiences as he is to the other characters in the film, and it's guaranteed to give you chills. Theater owners in the 1930s were often dared by producers to show this film and
Frankenstein on a double bill to see if audiences could handle it. Needless to say, many could not.
And the #1 horror movie is..........
The Exorcist (1973)- Director William Friedkin
What
Citizen Kane is to American cinema,
The Exorcist is to the horror genre. It is the film that all other serious horror films are compared to and the one that all of them should try to emulate in that it breaks the rules of horror films. 12-year-old Reagan MacNeil is possessed by a demon, and her only hope lies with two priests, one being played by the legendary Max Von Sydow. Think about most horror movies and who the victims are; they have usually brought the violence on themselves either through their actions or their loose morals. Kids in slasher films that get knocked off are usually drinking, smoking, doing drugs, having sex, or swearing that the killer is either dead or doesn't exist.
The Exorcist lacks that element; Reagan is wholly innocent, and it is never fully explained why this demon chooses to possess the poor girl. Not to mention, the movie really is scary. The transformation this girl goes through, complete with the foul language, the head spinning, the vomiting, the creepy voices, and the levitating, are all truly terrifying. Grab the director's cut, and you'll get even more scares, including the infamous spiderwalking scene. Still not convinced? The movie won two Oscars in 1974 and was nominated for another eight. When was the last time you remember a horror movie winning an Oscar, let alone get nominated? Plus, the soundtrack is just plain haunting. If you need just one movie guaranteed to scare you, this is it. Happy Halloween everybody!
