So here's my twenty, for now at least, in chronological order.
If you watched Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO and though “hm … is that it?”, may I humbly present Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM, which debuted five months *before* Hitchcock’s suspense masterpiece and shares a lot of its DNA. It’s a tragedy to me that this movie basically ruined Powell’s career and he was never allowed to make a mainstream movie again. While nothing can touch PSYCHO’s place in the genre, PEEPING TOM tends to be the film I’d rather revisit. The grimy streets of seedy 1960 London shot in brilliant technicolor, the unsettling feeling of the murderer being our protagonist, and the fact that I want to be BFFs with Anna Massey’s Helen are just a few reasons why.
ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)
If you can’t bring yourself to watch this because of who directed it, I wouldn’t dare advise you otherwise. Roman Polanski is a bright red line for many, and that’s fair. If you *can* do it, however, what you’ll find is a pretty much perfect movie. It’s easy to see why it made him the hottest director in the business in the late 1960s. It is very easy to misread Mia Farrow’s Rosemary as weak, but she is truly beset on all sides, even within her own home -- even within her own body! There’s no gore here, nor are there any jump scares, but there is plenty of creepiness, as well as use of one of my favorite horror tropes EVER (and there are at least two more examples of it on this list): the one-two punch of paranoia plot and conspiracy plot. Am I just being paranoid or is this real? Okay, shit, it’s real, now what? How far does this thing reach? Who’s in on it? Is there anyone I can trust? (*happy sigh*)
THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971)
Before there was SEVEN, there was this movie. Only instead of basing his murders on the seven deadly sins, Phibes (Vincent Price) designs his based on the biblical plagues of Egypt (all the kills are great, but the frog one is … (*chef’s kiss*)). It’s more stylish than scary, and there’s plenty of dark humor (THAT UNICORN), but there’s plenty to creep you out. It’s a shame that Vincent Price doesn’t get to talk much here, but that vocoder he uses is one of the most disturbing things in the movie for me. I love the look of this film. It’s like if DANGER: DIABOLIK were a gothic horror movie; both protagonists have exquisite lairs. Like SEVEN, this movie gives the audience an unsettling compulsion to see all of the planned murders unfold, making you almost rooting against the police so they don’t catch him before he can see his project through to its completion. I love everything about this movie, especially Phibes’s diabolically stylish assistant, Vulnavia.
THE WICKER MAN (1973)
One of the great British horror films, and one of the great British films period. It fits into a lot of genres -- it’s even a musical! -- but I see it having a lot in common with hillbilly horror. An outsider comes to a community in the middle of nowhere and immediately clashes with the locals, disrespecting them and their customs, and eventually realizes he’s in way over his head. There’s more to it than that, but I don’t dare spoil it if you haven’t seen it. The ending is extraordinary, not just the fact of what happens but the tone the movie strikes as it leaves you with a terrifying sense of not knowing how you’re supposed to feel. Sumer is icumen in!
John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN is pretty much the accepted official birth of the “slasher” genre, but there were several films that preceded it that helped codify it and the tropes it’s so well known for. Bob Clark’s BLACK CHRISTMAS is one of them, preceding HALLOWEEN by four years. And it was already bucking the most famous slasher trope -- the virginal final girl -- as its heroine was pregnant and had decided to have an abortion (in fact, the virginal good girl in this movie is the first to die!). This movie also really leans in on the killer POV, so much that aside from one shot of the guy’s eye in a doorway, you never see who it is! CREEPY!
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974)
This movie sat at the top of my “never gonna watch it” list for quite some time. Something about the idea of power tools and human flesh made it something that felt very taboo and something I could never handle. Now that I *have* seen it, it still feels taboo and unsafe, and that’s what I love about it. There’s some beautiful filmmaking on display here, but you’ll hardly notice because it doesn’t feel like a movie; it feels like something that’s really happening. The dinner scene is one of the most upsetting things I’ve ever seen (at least partly because of the horror stories I’ve heard about the filming), and it’s wild to me that there’s so little blood in the movie, yet it’s remembered as being one of the goriest films of all time.
I didn’t rank these, but CARRIE is straight-up my favorite horror movie. Horror movies don’t always get a lot of respect (and let’s face it, a ton of the genre is garbage -- garbage that I almost unfailingly adore, but garbage), but CARRIE is a Good Movie. Anchored by two incredible performances (both Oscar-nominated), with a script that takes its time building actual characters. No matter how many times I’ve seen this, I watch Carrie at the prom -- happy for perhaps the first time in her life -- and hope against hope that things will turn out differently for her. They never do. I still vividly remember the first time I ever saw this and how much I screamed at the end. This movie still legit scares me.
HAUSU (1977)
Teenage girls go to house and house eats them. Pretty basic premise and you can see the bones of it in a whole lot of horror movies. It’s the “I came here to have a good time and honestly I’m feeling so attacked right now” of movie plots. But HAUSU is so much more and truly one of the most bazonkers movies I have ever seen (in the very best way). You will see a girl eaten by a piano. You will see a girl smothered by bedding. You will see a man turned into a pile of bananas (yes, that’s right -- this shit is literally B-A-N-A-N-A-S). A phenomenal movie to experience with an audience, especially if there are at least a few people who’ve never seen it and don’t know what they’re in for.
SHOCK (1977)
There are other Mario Bava films I love more but as a horror movie, this one left a lasting impression on me. It’s unlike his other films (though perhaps that’s because it was arguably co-directed by his son Lamberto) and there’s something about it that unsettles me more than his other movies. Its star, Daria Nicolodi, gives what I believe to be her best performance in a role, like Mia Farrow’s Rosemary, that’s easy to misread as weak until you learn just how much she’s being manipulated. It has a really great jump scare near the end (which was ripped off in ANNABELLE) and one of the all-time great evil children in horror.
THE BROOD (1979)
David Cronenberg has always been considered the king of body horror, which reached its apotheosis in 1986 with THE FLY but his earlier films were a touch more subtle (though more subtle than THE FLY is a low bar indeed). This movie centers around a woman who is undergoing experimental psychotherapy which is causing her to literally give birth to physical manifestations of her rage. Like a lot of pre-80s horror, this is a slow burn and it takes a while to get to the blockbuster shocks, but the time is not wasted. The reveal of how these children are born is breathtaking and repulsive. I do wonder what this film would look like if it were made by a woman, but this is definitely my favorite Cronenberg.
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (1986)
IT’S MILLER TIME! Stacie Ponder once said of this movie that it’s the kind of movie John Hughes might have made if he’d ever tried his hand at horror. There’s loads of teen angst and unrequited romance and jocks-versus-nerds drama in addition to an amazing B-movie about killer slugs from outer space that turn people into zombies. I really love how this film is constructed and how it doesn’t lay out its premise from the very first moment, preferring to unfold everything organically. It’s horror icon Tom Atkins’s greatest role (“Thrill me!”) and has the greatest tagline, which Atkins also gets to deliver in the film itself -- “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news, girls. The good news is your dates are here.” (“What’s the bad news?”) “They’re dead.” All of the heart eyes for this movie.
THE LOST BOYS (1987)
I recently watched a YouTuber's reaction to this movie and realized that it’s not exactly scary (though there are some frightening sequences). But it’s not really designed to be. It’s a teen movie above all else and an excuse to look at hot 1980s guys. At least that was the appeal for me when I was 12 or 13 and saw it for the first time. I absolutely buy that Michael is drawn to these bad boys (and not just because he wants to get closer to 1980s Jami Gertz). This movie took all the classic vampire lore and gave it a younger, more modern spin (I’m fairly sure this was the first time I ever heard of the significance of inviting a vampire into your home). And what the movie lacks in terror it more than makes up for in gore. The vamp deaths in this are GRODY. I adore this movie. Not least because it gives us an entire scene that seems to only exist to show a shirtless and sweaty saxophone-playing Tim Cappello absolutely Working. It.
SOCIETY (1989)
Another example of my favorite trope (see ROSEMARY’S BABY), the paranoia-conspiracy two-step. The way this movie handles it is to make us doubt even what we see through our protagonist’s eyes by setting up that he has genuine hallucinations and can’t always trust what he himself sees. Is the metaphor for the rich sucking the life out of the poor a whole lot on the nose? Sure. But the way it’s visualized in the movie’s unforgettable, has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed “shunting” sequence is truly stunning and like nothing anyone would ever attempt today. And it seems so perfectly suited for the 1980s, the Greed Decade. Please, no one ever remake this movie. Everyone should just see this one. It’s great. There is no way a remake would be a ballsy and wackadoo as this is.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
My favorite movie, period. I don’t consider it a horror movie myself, but I know many do and I don’t argue with it. Ted Tally wrote a perfect adaptation of the original novel, distilling it down to just the essentials. The cast is phenomenal, from top to bottom -- from the irreplaceable Jodie Foster as Clarice (sorry, Julianne Moore) to the perfectly slimy Anthony Heald as Chilton to the kind-faced Frankie Faison as Barney. It feels incredibly grounded and yet lets itself veer into the operatic and grand guignol when it wants to. And it has one of the most brilliant “oh shit” reveals in any movie ever that still wows me every time I watch it.
TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL (2010)
Good horror comedies are much more than just spoofs and parodies. They actually engage with the genre and say something about it. There are countless movies about teens going into the woods and encountering murderous hillbillies. This movie makes the hillbillies our heroes, makes them a pair of sweet yokel BFFs, and makes the scary cabin in the woods their dream vacation home that they’re working to spruce up. And our teens get themselves killed through their own misunderstandings and prejudices. Love a horror movie with heart.
THE LOVE WITCH (2016)
There’s a ton of horror and B-movie iconography that this movie will remind you of, but director Anna Biller would insist that this movie isn’t an homage or a pastiche. This isn’t a genre exercise for her; she’s simply crafting her own story in the style of movies that she likes. And she does a ton of the work herself -- not just writing and directing, but designing and sewing the costumes and designing the sets. The movie has style oozing out of its eyeballs (Elaine’s look, in particular, is so iconic that I’ve seen many a Love Witch cosplay and Halloween costume in the years since) but it also has some stuff to say, particularly about misogyny and the patriarchy.
RAW (2016)
It’s a lot to stomach (ba-dump-bump-chhhhh), but RAW is a richly rewarding take on body horror via cannibalistic fairy tale. Justine’s descent from strict vegetarian to cannibal, doubling as a metaphor for her sexual awakening, is fascinating to watch and director Julia Ducournau shows it to us with zero judgment, cleverly placing us squarely on her side in early scenes of school hazing humiliation. Great horror should show you something you’ve never seen before, and this movie has many of those somethings (including the most horrifying bikini waxing you will EVER see). I can’t wait to see what Ducournau does next.
GET OUT (2017)
The third in the paranoia-conspiracy trifecta, along with ROSEMARY'S BABY and SOCIETY. It’s hard to overstate how significant this movie has been to horror, a genre that has not had the greatest track record with Black characters and the few stories in the genre that have revolved around them. There are others far more equipped than I to talk about the movie’s portrayal of the theft of Black lives and bodies. But what I do feel equipped (and in fact compelled) to talk about is the way it portrays White privilege and how not one White person is exempt from it. The fact that there is not one White savior in this movie is more than a conscious rejection of a trope. It’s a reminder that, no matter how woke you might be, if you’re White you don’t get to be excused from your privilege or the responsibilities it entails.
This movie just plain knocks me out. Every time. If all you see in this movie is a retread of THE WICKER MAN, you are not looking closely enough. Florence Pugh is superb, perpetually on edge and occasionally spilling over into outright despair (in at least two of the most emotional scenes I saw in any movie in 2019). The fact that so much of the movie takes place during the day, including its most horrific scenes, adds a layer of audacity to that horror. And the conclusion is such a beautifully disturbing opera of mixed emotions that it’s impossible to pinpoint an appropriate reaction. Which is horrifying in and of itself.
On the one hand, I’m not a big believer in sticking with something when it’s not working for me just because it supposedly gets better at some point. On the other hand, you HAVE to stick with the first half of this movie. It’s not especially compelling or entertaining the first time out, but without it, the second half -- which is all extremely satisfying payoff -- doesn’t work. Each half of this movie gives the other meaning, and that’s what makes it special. Well, that and the fact that it’s an absolute love letter to the chaos of independent filmmaking and the joy of creative collaboration.
