1. 28 Days Later
2. 28 Weeks Later
3. Aliens
4. Barton Fink
5. The Birds
6. The Blair Witch Project
7. Body Double
8. Dahmer
9. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
10. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
11. Deliverance
12. Della’morte Dell’amore (Cemetery Man)
13. The Descent
14. Eraserhead
15. The Exorcist
16. Eyes Wide Shut
17. Heavenly Creatures
18. Hellbound: Hellraiser II
19. Hellraiser
20. Hostel
21. Jeepers Creepers
22. Lost Highway
23. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
24. Nightbreed
25. Psycho (1960)
26. The Ring
27. Rosemary’s Baby
28. The Shining (1980)
29. Shivers
30. The Silence of the Lambs
31. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
32. The Thing (1983)
33. The Village
34. War of the Worlds (2005)
35. The Wicker Man (1973)
Watch one tonight! Happy Halloween!
Please work. Oh please god work.
But really, if you had another 65 slots, where would the 2006 ‘Wicker Man’ come in?
Yay comments!
Ahh, even just that shot from The Village works to freak me out! Such a perfect moment, that. And it doesn’t get any respect! Thanks for being the other person I know who enjoys it so, Sean!
Great list, though I’d expect no less.
I relied on good old-fashioned google-fu to find these images, so I was pretty goddamn thrilled to find that one. What a moment.
Hey Sean
Longtime reader, first time poster. I also enjoyed The Village, despite all the hate. I would love to hear your thoughts on why you consider it one of your 35 all time horror movies.
Shivers…shivers…shivers…
Oh, you mean PARASITE, which was the title I’d heard it referred to for the longest time. I really need to flesh out my knowledge of Cronenberg’s earlier works. Sigh.
ALIENS and not ALIEN? Interesting. I’d always felt that ALIEN was by far the purer horror flick and ALIENS (while scary) was more an action-adventure rollercoaster.
The list alone freaked me out. It’s interesting that you include “Heavenly Creatures” on this list – I wouldn’t have immediately thouoght of it when asked to list my favourite horror movies – however, when I think about it, it really is a terrifying film. It has stayed with me for a long time, even longer than, say, “Silence of the Lambs.”
And my initial reaction got me thinking.
It seems to me that your list demonstrates that, in many ways, we are conditioned to think of horror as a cheap, dispensible thrill. “Heavenly Creatures” would be pegged as simply “too deep” by most popular culture critics. Yet the social commentary of “Dawn of the Dead” (particularly the original, imho – the re-make lost me by the middle) is no less profound, when you think about it.
The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get at the way horror gets treated. Oh noes! It has a plot! And buckets of fake blood! It’s not art!
Grrrrr.
Brian:
The other day I went to visit my Mom and she was in the middle of watching the Wicker Man remake. And enjoying it! I dunno–she’s the kind of person who enjoys tuning into horror movies she knows nothing about; she finds the weirdness of many of them engaging. That doesn’t really answer your question, though.
Charles:
Thanks for posting! I love the The Village because I think it’s the apotheosis of Shyamalan’s use of long takes, rich sound design, and color to create emotion and tension. You don’t so much watch The Village as get submerged in it. It’s also graced with strong lead performances by actors whose faces can stand up to those close-ups (I never quite buy Adrian Brody in it, but I do at least find his breakdown over Bryce Dallas Howard’s final rejection convincing and heartbreaking). And it’s very scary.
Matt:
Yeah, I’ve seen it called “They Came From Within” (you occasionally see an old-school one-sheet using that title) and “The Parasite Murders.” I think you’d dig it; it’s like 28 Days Later with rape instead of murder.
As for Alien vs. Aliens, I like them both, but I honestly think Aliens is scarier. Any time I think of it I hear that motion detector beeping faster and faster, which was such a great way to build tension. It also has the most in common with post-apocalyptic horror of any of the alien movies–a society overrun, and the different reactions the characters have to the breakdown of that society. Hudson is hilarious, but he’s also frightening. And when those aliens attack it’s scary as shit, every time. I know it’s an action movie at least as much as it’s a horror movie, but you’re talking to a guy who put Barton Fink on his list.
Natalia:
I think you’re right about the “scare factor” part of horror being devalued. That’s why you see so many critics tripping all over themselves to find sociopolitical allegory in horror films, or in fact DEMANDING it in order to view the film favorably–they’re attempting to justify the genre to themselves and others. I hate to attribute motivation like that, but it really sticks in my craw. If a movie like Heavenly Creatures came out NOW, you MIGHT see more people call it horror, because critics have now been conditioned to prefer the high-falutin’ stuff.
It always annoys me when I do a list like this and someone drops a comment like: “WTF – you left out tktktkt?!?!!?”
But still – no Wes Craven?
Haha… Just kidding – I’ll just have to go and put The Hills Have Eyes on my own list.
Scrooged, even
Jon Hastings at The Forager takes a cue from my illustrated favorite horror-movie list and presents his own. It’s bigger (50!), it eschews the “horror” label to encompass scary movies that might not fit within the genre, and though he…
Jon, Craven’s early flicks are among the most embarrassing lacunae in my horror-watching career.
Yeah, right on — I couldn’t believe how much I loved Nightbreed upon rewatching it recently. A happy reminder, in the wake of the terribleness that is Mister B. Gone, that Barker can be a visionary. And is it fair that Cronenberg is one of the best horror movie ACTORS, too?
Have you seen Romero’s Martin and Dreyer’s Vampyr? Two of my favourites, for sure. And I prefer Lynch’s Fire Walk With Me [still guaranteed to give me nightmares] to Lost Highway, but that might just be me.
Favorite with a u
Like Jon Hastings before him, Steven Wintle at The Horror Blog gets on my illustrated favorite horror movies list tip–only he presents his as a quiz. Fun for the whole family!…
Carnival of souls
* I know what I just said about cat-killing, and I know that a movie about a lady getting trapped in a house with a man-eating tiger can only end one of two ways, but still, Burning Bright is so…