The History of Horror: 1970s and 1980s: The Auteur Movement and When Horror Gets Graphic

The late 1960s saw a rise in horror films that became stylized and realistic, taking on the auteur movement of such filmmakers as Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffault. Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski had made a name for himself as a director in his native country with such psychological suspense thrillers as Knife in the Water (1962) and Repulsion (1965), starring French actress Catherine Deneuve, revealing a style suitable for horror films. In 1967, Polanski directed Fearless Vampire Killers, a humorous take on the old legend. When producer Robert Evans bought the rights to the Ira Levin novel Rosemary's Baby, he turned to Polanski to helm the big budget production. Rosemary's Baby isn't a horror film in the traditional sense with monsters and other horror creatures stalking the cinematic landscape, but, like Lewton's previous work, used the psychological fears of the recent Thalydimide scares of the 1960s to create a story of demon birth. The fear of authority, in this case medical authority, was prime material for younger audiences who were rejecting and rebelling against the values and conventional wisdom of older generations. Other films, such as George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, represented the changes occurring in American society during this period. Starring Duane Jones, one of the first African American actors to lead in a horror movie, Night of the Living Dead turned over old ideas of what constituted a

good horror picture by using cinema verité filmmaking and making its Black lead the hero. Romero has often stated in interviews that his film was a social commentary on the changing of the old guard (the humans in the film) being devoured by a new revolutionary spirit (the ghouls). His 1970's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, likewise commented on the growing mall culture in America and the incessant materialism and consumerism that replaced spirituality and communality.

The horror films of the 1970s, like many of Hitchcock's films, found terror in reality. In Willard (1971) and its sequel Ben (1972), rats terrorized the victims of their owner Willard, a wimpy and abused young man who uses them to get revenge. Films such as Steven Spielberg's TV-produced Duel (1972) provide its terror thrills from a demonic eighteen-wheeler which chases star Dennis Weaver through the Arizona desert. In 1973, veteran television director William Friedkin directed what would become to that date one of the scariest films to make it to the theaters, The Exorcist. Based on a novel by William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist brought a new level of horror storytelling by taking the story of demon possession with the same level of seriousness as drug dealing in Friedkin's previous film The French Connection (1971). The Exorcist also brought a level of gore and sexual content into the horror movie not seen before, with young demon-possessed Regan assaulting herself with a crucifix. Such depictions took the genre to another level, shocking and horrifying audiences.

Twenty-five years after the second World War and the holocaust and the ongoing conflicts in Vietnam and in the United States had primed audiences for more graphic depictions of horror on the silver screen. The presence of gore and graphic violence upped the ante for later films such as Brian de Palma's psychological thriller Sisters (1973), The Omen (1976) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1976). Based on the story of Ed Gein, a serial killer from the Pacific Northwest (Hitchcock also used Gein as the basis for Norman Bates in the 1960 film Psycho) who often wore the skins of his victims, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre featured a family of serial murderers to strike horror in the hearts of film goers. The later successful Halloween (1978) capitalized on the growing fear of crime in America to create horror, though the monster in this film, Michael Myers, was a more supernatural version of the super predator, creating a new genre of horror called slasher films. During the eighties, films such as Friday the 13th (1980) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) followed in this vein. These films often scored the growing societal problems of teen sexuality and pregnancies with the super predators of Jason Voorhies and Freddy Kreuger often attacking their victims in postcoital bliss. Other films during the 1970s that featured a high quotient of blood and gore were Black Christmas (1974), directed by Bob Clark (Porky and A Christmas Story), and Suspiria (1977) by Italian horror director Dario Argento.

The rise of Blaxploitation during the early seventies also saw horror films targeted toward Black audiences with grindhouse fare like Blacula (1972), which told the story of a cursed African prince who comes to L.A. in search of blood and his reincarnated lost love. A sequel Scream Blacula Scream was released a year later. The Thing With Two Heads (1972), starring veteran screen star Ray Milland and football champion Rosey Grier, was a campy horror take of race relations. Most of the Blaxploitation horror films were simply Black versions of well-known horror films, such as Blackenstein (1973) and Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde (1976). One film, though, released in 1973, Bill

Gunn's Ganja and Hess, took a detour away from the schlock of most Blacksploitation and told the story of a doctor who becomes infected with a disease in Africa that turns him into a vampire.

During the 1970s, horror novelist Stephen King became the literal king of new horror films when the Brian de Palma-directed 1976 film Carrie, based on King's first novel, became a smash hit. Starring the young Sissy Spacek and John Travolta, Carrie used telekinesis as an analogy for a young woman's growing sexual maturation. The film's ending, when Carrie's prom is ruined after she is splattered with pig's blood, is one of the most frightening sequences to ever be filmed and also one of the most familiar to film audiences. In 1979, King's The Shining found film treatment under the helm of director Stanley Kubrick and starred Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. While King himself wasn't fond of this eerie and spooky version of his bestselling novel, audiences were easily spooked by Nicholson's performance of a writer who is driven to insanity while caretaker of a closed resort hotel in the mountain range with his small family. Other film adaptations of King's films during the 1980s include Cujo (1983), Christine (1983), Firestarter (1985), Silver Bullet (1986), and Maximum Overdrive (1986), shot often with mixed results.

During the early eighties, film audiences saw a return to the werewolf mythology, only this time with updated special effects to create a more believable transformation from man to beast. Such films as the John Landis-helmed An American Werewolf In London (1981) and Joe Dante's The Howling (1981) elevated the genre using special effects as a key ingredient to storytelling. The work of famed special effects artist Rick Baker helped bring a new appreciation to makeup and effects used in horror films and have since become a standard bearer. Other werewolf films during this period include Wolfen (1981), In the Company of Wolves (1984) and the aforementioned Silver Bullet.

The 1980s also saw an output of humorous horror films that recalled earlier movies such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Movies such as Gremlins (1984) and The Ghostbusters (1984) were extremely popular with audiences who preferred to laugh along to the frightening hijinks. Other films of this ilk include The Witches of Eastwick (1987), starring Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Jack Nicholson; and The Lost Boys (1987), starring Coreys Heim and Feldman, Jason Patric, Keifer Sutherland, and Dianne Wiest. The Lost Boys was heavy on atmosphere and humor, creating an interesting mix for this tale of teenage vampires who take over a seaside California community. Other films, such as the independent and underrated Lady in White (1988) returned to an earlier era of gentle horror films that played less on gore and violence and more on atmospheric chills.

Still, the 1980s became an output for a lot of horror films that used graphic violence for its source of fright. Along with King-based and slasher movies, Canadian director David Cronenberg, who began his career in horror films during the 1970s with films like Shivers (1975) and The Brood (1979), released the 1981 film Scanners, a movie that took graphic film violence to new levels when psychics with awesome telepathic abilities caused heads to literally explode on screen. Other films directed by Cronenberg during this period include Videodrome (1983), the popular remake of The Fly (1986) starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, and Dead Ringers (1988) with British actor Jeremy Irons playing dual roles as a pair of spooky twins. Wes Craven became a well-known name in horror circles starting with his 1972 film Last House on the Left, one of the first films to include graphic violence in this genre, and the infamous The Hills Have Eyes (1977), a horror flick about desert-dwelling killer mutants who terrorize a vacationing family. During the eighties, Craven's films, such as the Freddy Kreuger Nightmare series, defined much of horror films during this period. Graphic violence and gore became the norm during the 1980s as horror fans demanded more and more horrific depictions of violence to up the terror factor. Other horror producers and writers, such as Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead (1981) fame

Bruce Campbell, Evil Dead

and Army of Darkness (1992) and British horror novelist Clive Barker who wrote Hellraiser (1987) and Candyman (1992) brought an interesting mix of horror and humor to their films. Director Sam Raimi, due to his stylish camera work, enlivened many of these films, such as the scene in Evil Dead II, in which he shoots a shooting eyeball plopping into a young actress's mouth. These stylized and humorous takes on the genre would set up the 1990s, which became the decade of irony for horror fans.

Source: IMDB.com and www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html

The History of Horror: 1940s WWII and the Cold War; 1950s and 1960s: Repression and Revolution

1940s: World War II and the Cold War

During World War II, real life horror was playing across the silver screen in newsreels delivering word back to Americans from the home front. The holocaust, whose extent of true horror was not revealed until after the war ended, made cinematic versions pale in comparison. Yet during this period, Hollywood continued to churn out horror films to audiences' delight. Two such filmmakers who created some of the classic horror films of this period were Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton. Russian born RKO producer Lewton teamed up with French director Tourneur to create such suspenseful films as The Cat People (1943), I Walked with A Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943). Though Lewton and Tourneur's films tended to be more suspenseful psychological dramas rather than straight horror, the chills they created had far more impact on the cinematic imagination. In the classic The Cat People, for instance, horror is conveyed through what is implied and not what is shown. The film is about a young woman who is transformed into a black panther whenever she is overwhelmed by sexual desires and jealousy, leading her to stalk the young heroine who has fallen in love with her husband. One of the film's most frightening sequences occurs when the heroine is stalked by a panther while swimming in a local pool. We don't see the panther crawling in the darkened pool room, but only its shadow and its growling. Other films such as The Uninvited (1944) starring Ray Milland and the gentle ghost love story Portrait of Jennie (1948), starring Joseph Cotton, were films that were also depended on atmospherics to deliver their chills.

The 1950s and 1960s: Repression and Revolution

The changes occurring in 1950s and 1960s America found its way to the movie screen, particularly in many of the horror films created during this golden age of cinematic filmmaking. Capitalizing on the advent of the atomic age, 1950s horror revealed the frightening reality of the Cold War Era. Films such as The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), Godzilla (1954), and Them (1954), about mutant ants, revealed what could happen to the natural order of things when atomic energy unleashed its massive fury. Other films such as The Thing (From Another Planet) (1951), War of the Worlds (1953) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) played on Cold War fears of Soviet invasion as well as the previous decades' fears of the Nazi blitzkreig. During this period, rock and roll became the dominant soundtrack for a younger generation, prompting Hollywood to take advantage of the teen buying dollars by creating horror films marketed directly to this new demographic. I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957) and The Blob (1958), starring the young Michael Landon and Steve McQueen respectively, were two such representatives of this new subset of horror films. The decade also saw a rise in B-movie horror films produced by such sclockmeisters as William B. Castle (1959's The Tingler and The House on Haunted Hill). When theater ownership monopolies were struck down by the courts during the late 1940s, independently owned theaters and drive-in theaters opened up a field of independent filmmakers who could now get their films into theaters without dealing with the studios. Filmmakers, such as the director and producer Edward D. Wood (1959's Plan 9 From Outer Space), despite their lack of filmmaking skills, could raise budgets and shoot films that found their way into movie theaters. While these films lacked cinematic style, they more than made it up in cheesy frights that delighted teenage audiences looking for cheap thrills. During the 1950s, television had dealt a serious blow to the competitive edge films had over the attention of American audiences by delivering entertainment right into their living rooms. The studios competed with this new medium by shooting films in wide-screen (Cinemascope and Vistavision, for instance), while producers like Castle used gimmicks, such as films shot in 3-D, to offer audiences something extra for their cinematic viewing pleasures. Ironically, many nascent local broadcast affiliates broadcasted old horror movies to fill out viewing hours, often in the guise of horror hosted programs such as L.A.'s KABC-TV's Vampira (Maila Nurmi), which delivered classic 1930s horror pictures to a new generation of fans. It was during this period that a rise in classic horror memorabilia depicting such characters as Karloff's Frankenstein and Lugosi's Dracula became a moneymaking enterprise for both collectors and buyers.

While the days of horror films creating household names had ended by the 1940s, the 1950s saw one such actor whose name would forever be attached to horror: Vincent Price. During his early screen career, Price was a supporting actor often appearing in dramatic films such as 1940s noir thrillers Laura and Leave Her To Heaven (both starring screen actress Gene Tierney). Price's first horror film was in the 1948 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, where he was uncredited as the voice of the Invisible Man. But his first starring role in a horror film was in the 1953 Andre de Toth classic House of Wax, where he plays Prof. Harold Jerrod, a sculptor who uses real life victims for his wax models. Price would later star in other 1950s classic horror films such as The Fly (1958), as well as four films released in 1959 alone––House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, Return of the Fly, and The Bat.

Price continued his career in horror movies throughout the sixties, starring in a series of Edgar Allan Poe-based films such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), the horror anthology Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), all directed by Roger Corman, a film producer and director whose output during the 1950s and 1960s created an arena for low-budget horror and exploitation films. Corman's films during the 1950s, such as It Conquered the World (1956) and Attack of the Crab Monster (1957) were hardly film classics in the traditional sense, and were often ridiculed on the 1990s Comedy Central show Mystery Science Theater 3000. But Corman set the stage for offering work to some of the most inventive directors, such as Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13) and Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha) of the 1970s auteur movement. In Britain, the Hammer Studios released an outlet of horror films during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that have become classics within the genre, including such films as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and the Brides of Dracula (1960), starring such Hammer horror mainstays as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Other horror films released during the early 1960s include Herk Hervey's Carnival of Souls (1962), Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1965).

Though not necessarily a horror film director, British born Alfred Hitchcock directed two films during the early sixties that changed how horror films would be interpreted by modern audiences. In his 1960 thriller Psycho, Hitchcock proved that the most horrific models of evil were not vampires or werewolves but other human beings, in this case, Norman Bates, an outwardly normal if troubled young man who turns out to be a serial killer masking as his late mother. In 1963, Hitchcock released The Birds, using another normal and everyday creature as the villain in this piece. In The Birds, Hitchcock dispenses with exposition which explains the random and frightening bird attacks in the small California seaside community of Bodega Bay, making the horror seem arbitrary in the way true horror often visits upon everyday reality.

The films of this period––particularly Hitchcock's The Birds; Hervey's Carnival of Souls; the 1961 Deborah Kerr film The Innocents, based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw; and Robert Wise's 1963 classic The Haunting (starring Julie Harris) based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House––revealed the repressive nature of 1950s Cold War on the American mindset, often focusing on sexual hysteria and repression among its female leads. As the baby boom generation began to dictate popular culture during this period, the youthful rejection of the moral codes of previous generations was met with virulent opposition until the early 1960s, when even rock and roll was tamed for older audiences. But as the underground ideas and movements of the Beat generation slowly influenced artists as broad as Bob Dylan and The Beatles, younger audiences were slowly rejecting older values, giving way to a popular culture that represented this growing freedom of ideas about politics, spirituality, and sexuality.

During this decade, the Production Code, which controlled many of the films previously released, were relaxing, allowing filmmakers to push the envelope in what they could show in horror films. Challenging old Hollywood standards were a new wave of filmmakers, graduates of the nascent film school movement and the stepchildren of the European-based French Nouvelle and Italian neo-realism movements of the 1940s, '50s, and early '60s, emerged with a new style of storytelling for the horror genre.

Source: IMDB.com and www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html

The History of Horror: The Cinema, Part I

15 Horror Movies without the Gore

I’ve never been much into gory horror movies. They never scared me. I’ll take a nice horror story that delves deeply into the psyche of its characters and pulls out the darkness within any day. Therefore I’ve compiled a list of 15 horror movies I think are the best in piling on the creeps and chills while sparing the gory details. So in no discernible order, here is my list of some really great, creepy, chilling horror flicks.


1. The Innocents (1961)

Based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents is one of those horror films that succeeds in delivering the right gothic atmosphere for chills and thrills. Filmed in b&w and starring Deborah Kerr, The Innocents tells the story of a young governess whose two charges, Flora and Miles, may or may not be the victims of spectral manipulation. Like the novella, the movie is ambiguous about whether the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, the children’s previous and long deceased caretakers, are real or whether it is all in Miss Giddens’ sexually repressed head. But that only makes film viewing all the more fun. Regardless, the film has a few shockingly frightful scenes, such as when Miss Giddens, in a game of hide-and-seek with the children, comes across the ghostly image of Peter Quint himself peering ominously at her through a window; or the film’s climax, when Miss Giddens forces a psychological exorcism on poor Miles that goes horribly wrong. A great film for horror fans who want a heavy dose of psychology with their chills.

2. The Haunting (1963)

 

Another b&w classic, The Haunting is, like The Innocents, an adaptation from a literary source, in this case Shirley Jackson’s classic novel The Haunting of Hill House. Unlike most horror movies, The Haunting succeeds in delivering its frights by not revealing what is at the rotted core haunting the decrepit mansion. Sounds effects are put to great use as a small team of parapsychologists encounter a terrifyingly noisy haunting. At the heart of the story is the neurotic and unloved Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris), a woman whose desire to belong takes a shocking and fatal turn. Also starring Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, and directed by the legendary Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music), The Haunting delves deeply into the psychology of horror and how the things we don’t see are often the things we ought to fear the most. Forget the 1999 remake and check this one out instead.

3. Carnival of Souls (1962)

 

Carnival of Souls is one of those low-rent movies that were produced in the 1960s and then quickly forgotten. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when the film was revived for modern audiences, that its quiet and simple pleasures were appreciated. Carnival of Souls, the brainchild of industrial filmmaker, Herk Hervey, is a truly spooky entry on this list, with its b&w cinematography, its naturalism, and yes even its cheap production. With an even spookier soundtrack, composed of music performed on a pipe organ, Carnival of Souls makes for the perfect midnight viewing. I won’t give too much of the plot away since much of it depends on the twist ending, but needless to say the movie, which stars Candace Hilligoss as Mary Henry, a woman who is being stalked by an apparition, builds its creepy chills to a shocking conclusion.

4. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby is by far one of the most paranoid films ever made. In fact, one can argue that it is as much a conspiracy movie as it is a horror movie. But then again, what can be more frightening than a conspiracy against you? As the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you. That is the horror Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) encounters while she and her actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), await the birth of their first child. Unbeknownst to poor Rosemary, she is the victim of a worldwide conspiracy involving her neighbors (Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer) and her husband to steal her baby. Once Rosemary discovers the shocking truth, she tries to protect her unborn child, only to learn that the truth is far more shocking than she realized. With an ending that is enhanced by what it doesn’t show, Rosemary’s Baby, directed by Roman Polanski, proves that real fear comes when no one, not even your own husband, can be trusted.

5. The Entity (1981)

Starring Barbara Hershey, The Entity is one of those movies that plays for keeps. While not gory, the film is graphic in its depiction of a woman who is sexually assaulted by things she cannot see. Hershey plays Carla Moran, a single mom struggling to hold her family together. One night, Carla is raped by an entity, which then continues to assault her in the most brutally horrifying way. Fearing for her sanity, she seeks psychiatric help, but loses hope in psychiatry when her therapist insists that she is creating a delusion to deal with childhood abuse and sexual repression. Carla knows her encounters are too real to be a figment of her imagination. After she meets a group of parapsychologists in a bookstore, she convinces them to investigate and capture the entity. Supposedly based on true events, the film’s ending, no doubt added for dramatic license, nonetheless begs credibility. No matter. The film is still powerful and frightening enough whether you believe it actually happened or not.

6. The Others (2001)

The Others doesn’t start off as a terribly scary movie. In fact, most of the film deals with a young mother trying to keep her family together while her husband is away at war. Yet the film is deeply atmospheric and slowly builds its creep factor as the family begins to realize that they are not alone. The shocking twist ending adds a satisfyingly unexpected touch. Starring Nicole Kidman and directed by Alejandro Amenabar, The Others takes the haunted house concept and completely turns it on its head as audiences are forced to question who is truly haunted. A remarkable film that is gothic, moody, atmospheric, and unsettling all at once.

7. The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Directed by Guillermo del Toro, The Devil’s Backbone is the story of a young boy who is sent to an orphanage in the countryside during the Spanish Civil War and is drawn into a murder mystery involving a now deceased orphan and a shady character working at the orphanage. While there is a ghost story at the heart of the mystery, the true horror of this quiet gem is the one involving the uglier aspects of human nature, whether that be the horrors of war, of greed and corruption, or of the inexplicable behavior of adults as seen through the eyes of a vulnerable child.

8. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

 

 Night of the Living Dead, the granddaddy of all gory movies, not to mention zombie pictures, shouldn’t really belong on this list. So why is it? Well, I like it. But more than that, this 1968 feature does an excellent job of balancing chills, thrills, and gore. Shot in b&w, George Romero’s first movie has an eerie, claustrophobic feel to it as a group of people are trapped in a farmhouse while hordes of zombies who want to make them their midnight snack try to break in. You get the feeling while watching that the entire world has been confined to these people and this farmhouse, adding to the movie’s sense of dread and paranoia. What gore there is in the movie (shots of zombies gorging on the entrails of their victims) is kept to a minimum, and what is shown instead are the power dynamics between the film’s lead, Ben (Duane Jones), and fellow stowaway Harry (Karl Hardman), a typical suburban dad, who, along with his wife and daughter and a young couple, has been holed up in the basement. Like all great horror movies, Night of the Living Dead is as much concerned with the ways humans attack and destroy one another as it is about marauding zombies. There lies its effectiveness. How different really are humans from monsters? the film asks. This is the real terror and one of the reasons why Night of the Living Dead is a classic.

9. The Exorcist (1973)

Upon release, The Exorcist set box office records and also had audiences vomiting in the aisles. Modern audiences might find it implausible that a movie could cause such violent reactions, but The Exorcist, regarded as one of the scariest movies ever produced, earned its pedigree simply because nothing like it before had ever been committed to the screen. Director William Friedkin wasn't kidding around with this story, based on the novel by William Peter Blatty, about a young, innocent girl who is possessed by the devil. Starring Ellen Burstyn and the young Linda Blair as Regan, The Exorcist builds upon its horror slowly as we watch Burstyn’s Chris and Regan live out their otherwise normal lives only to be violated by the intrusion of unspeakable evil. The film creates sheer terror through the convincing use of special effects, makeup, and especially sound effects (when I was a kid seeing this movie for the first time on television, my mom told me not to look at the TV screen if I was too scared to watch it. But the sound effects were a lot scarier than what was actually on screen). Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller round out the cast as two priests enlisted to perform an exorcism to save Regan’s soul.

10. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

This recent take on demon possession is supposedly based on true events. Whether you believe in the devil or not, however, oughtn’t get in the way of enjoying this very effective horror flick. Laura Linney plays an attorney who is placed on retainer by the Catholic Church to defend a priest (Tom Wilkinson) who has been charged with the negligible death of a college student, Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter), during an exorcism. The Exorcism of Emily Rose, like Rosemary’s Baby, is a movie that reveals how flexible the horror genre can be. Taking demon possession and mixing it up in a courtroom drama, this movie is more concerned with the questions of belief, both in God and in the devil. Despite its philosophical and theological concerns, the film also works as a great horror movie without relying on cheap gore. Little moments, the ones that often occur in the corner of our eyes or in the back of our minds---a door supposedly closed now open; the smell of something burning; the little bumps in the night---add to this film’s creep factor. The flashback scenes of Emily Rose’s possession and exorcism are also scary as hell. This is one of those films that continue to play on your imagination long after the final credits have rolled across the screen.

11. Psycho (1960)

No list of horror movies can ever be complete without Psycho. Directed by the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho is precisely one of those movies which proves that you can still deliver on the shock and thrills without an excess of gore. All the more important to remember considering that Psycho is the granddaddy of all slasher films. Starring Vivien Leigh and Anthony Perkins, Psycho tells the story of a frustrated and unhappy woman, Marion Crane (Leigh), who steals money from the real estate office where she works so that she can be with her lover, who is at present too broke to marry her. Marion takes off with the money to meet up with her lover, but is detoured when she stops at the Bates Motel, an out-of-the-way motel run by the skittishly neurotic and loney Norman Bates. The rest of the story revolves around what happens next at the Bates Motel. For those who have yet to see this classic, I won’t spoil it. Needless to say, Psycho, known famously for its shower sequence, set the standard for horror movies and also showed that real horror sometimes comes with a welcome sign and a smile.

12. The Shining (1980)

Based on the popular Stephen King novel, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, The Shining has a creepy, cold feeling to it. And I’m not just talking about the winter atmosphere. Rather, everything seems off in this flick. Nicholson’s line reading and facial expressions have a kind of dream-like effect to it, like he’s operating at a completely different speed than everyone else. And the relationship between his Jack Torrance and Duvall’s Wendy, as well as with his son, seem cold, distant, aloof. You sense that this family has seen horrors far more frightening than what they’ll experience at the Overlook Hotel. Kubrick’s directing style adds to the film’s dread. The lighting and camera angles, the use of silence interrupted by abrupt sounds (such as the scene of young Danny [Danny Lloyd] riding his Big Wheels through the hallways) all create an atmosphere that is slightly abnormal and off-balance. The real horror, of course, lies not with the ghosts that haunt the Overlook, though when they appear they’re as shocking and disturbing as in any ghost story. Rather the real horror lurks in the soul of a man who is slowly disintegrating into madness.

13. The Sixth Sense (1999)

While M. Night Shyamalan’s first film The Sixth Sense deals with ghosts, it isn’t really a horror movie in the traditional sense. Rather, the lead character, Cole (Haley Joel Osment), a troubled young boy who is a conduit to the spiritual world, struggles to cope with his otherworldly capabilities while dealing with the even scarier problems of bullies, divorce, and alienation. Yet there are genuinely frightening scenes in this movie, especially when Cole is visited by ghosts who seek him out for help or companionship. The Sixth Sense, though, earned its way to the top of the box office with a twist ending involving Bruce Willis’s child psychologist who tries to help Cole wrestle with his emotional problems, unaware that he might have more to do with Cole’s psychological problems than he realizes. The film works still even without the twist as it delves effectively into the emotional lives of its characters.

14. Ringu (1998)

You can't find a scarier image than the one above. It's from Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (aka The Ring) and it's the spookiest thing you'll ever see in film. Ringu involves a videotape that causes the gruesome death of anyone who watches it. A young reporter Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) researches the tape following her niece’s death and is drawn into the mystery regarding the young girl who appears in it. After viewing the tape, she has exactly one week to find a way to avoid an equally gruesome fate. The movie is a race against time as Reiko not only tries to solve the mystery of the little girl’s death, but save her life and the lives of her loved ones as well. Creepy, atmospheric, and thoroughly original, Ringu is a marriage of traditional horror with modern technology.

15. Carrie (1976)

This second Stephen King-based adaptation is notable for the fact that the real horror starts in the last third of the film. Starring Sissy Spacek, Carrie is the story of an abused, loveless, and otherwise unremarkable girl who has the remarkable power of telekinesis. Much of the film deals with Carrie struggling to understand her powers while coping with being the punching bag for both her classmates and an overbearing mother. The film shows how group conformity and religious zealotry can be pretty scary too. Poor Carrie is so abused that when she finally gets her revenge, you can’t help but root for her. The movie ends with a twist that’s a real shocker and proves that director Brian de Palma knows how to bring the terror and suspense. Spacek’s performance is likewise notable for bringing to life a character who goes from a sad sack to a blossoming flower with enough potential that her final degradation is as heartbreaking as it is horrific.

Honorable Mentions

16. The Universal Horror Movies: these 1930's Universal horror movies, such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), the Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and others, are light on scares, but big on atmospherics. Still it’s a little hard to go through Halloween without settling down with one of these classic horror films.

17. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1991): Sure, Keanu Reeves’ performance nearly sinks this movie, but there’s always Francis Ford Coppola’s baroque excesses and, of course, Gary Oldman as the titular vampire.

18. The Lost Boys (1988): Joel Schumacher’s creepy and atmospheric movie is pretty funny too. It is also one of the great ‘80s vehicles starring Corey Feldman and the late Corey Haim.

19. The Lady in White (1988): not particularly scary, but it does have the nice, curl-up-in-a-blanket-and-pop-the-popcorn feel to it. A horror movie that’s gentle enough for the kids.