100 Scariest Movie Moments Trailers
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100. 28 Days Later An infirmary patient awakens from a coma to an empty room…in a vacant hospital…in a deserted city. A powerful virus, which locks victims into a permanent state of murderous rage, has transformed the world around him into a seemingly desolate wasteland. Now a handful of survivors must fight to stay alive, unaware that the worst is yet to come. |
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99. Creepshow Two macabre masters - writer Stephen King and director George A. Romero - conjure up five shocking yarns, each a virtuoso exercise in the ghouls-and-gags style of classic ’50s horror comics. A murdered man emerges from the grave for Father’s Day cake. A meteor’s ooze makes everything … grow. A professor selects his wife as a snack for a crated creature. A scheming husband plants two lovers up to their necks in terror. A malevolent millionaire with an insect phobia becomes the prey of a cockroach army. |
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98. Zombie The carnage classic about an onslaught of ravenous corpses that threatens to devour an island in the Caribbean and head straight for the streets of New York City. This is the notorious disc that DVD Review says “belongs in every horror film collection”. This is the bloody mother of all Italian zombie epics presented in all its eye-gouging, throat-ripping, gut-munching glory. This is Zombie! |
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97. Cat People A woman, a member of a race of feline humans, will revert to her animalistic self when she has sex. Arriving to meet her brother in New Orleans, she finds herself disturbed by his sexual presence. A zoo curator becomes fascinated by her, but he will discover that her kittenish ways are just the tip of the claw. |
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96. The Birds As beautiful blonde melanie daniels rolls into bodega bay in pursuit of eligible bachelor mitch brenner she is inexplicably attacked by a seagull. Suddenly thousands of birds are flocking into town preying on schoolchildren and residents in a terrifying series of attacks. |
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95. Jurassic Park Based on Michael Crichton’s novel about an island amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, Experts and others are invited to a theme-park site featuring dinosaurs man-made from dna. |
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94. Child’s Play After 6-year-old Andy Barclay’s babysitter is violently pushed out of a window to her death, nobody believes him when he says that “Chucky,” his new birthday doll, did it! Until things start going terribly wrong dead wrong. And when an ensuing rampage of gruesome murders lead a detective back to the same toy, he discovers that the real terror has just begun’the deranged doll has plans to transfer his evil spirit into a living human being young Andy! |
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93. Pacific Heights Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine play an over-mortgaged San Francisco couple with the hope of keeping their renovated victorian dream home depends on leasing the downstairs. Michael Keaton is the new tenant from hell, a sociopath scam artist out to claim the house for himself. |
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92. Village of the Damned A truly unsettling film drawn from John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The brilliant opening sequence depicts the sudden and temporary paralysis of a small English hamlet, which is followed by the town’s women becoming mysteriously pregnant. The spawn of this occurrence are a dozen eerie, blond-headed children, who are either gifted, evil, or “the world’s new people.” A splendid outing, not least in the way it catches parental anxiety about this small new stranger in one’s home. |
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91. Shallow Grave Shallow Grave begins with three obnoxious roommates mockingly interrogating applicants who want to share their spacious flat. The guy they finally choose doesn’t last long–they find him dead from a drug overdose along with a suitcase full of money that he no longer needs. They decide to keep the money; this of course requires that they discreetly dispose of the body, which proves to be a gruesome, traumatic business. They begin to suspect each other of betrayal and become increasingly deranged. |
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90. Night of the Hunter Night of the Hunter tells the suspenseful tale of a demented preacher who torments a boy and his little sister–even marries their mixed-up mother–because he’s certain the kids know where their late bank-robber father hid a stash of stolen money. So dramatic, primal, and unforgettable are its images–the preacher’s shadow looming over the children in their bedroom, the magical boat ride down a river whose banks teem with fantastic wildlife, those tattoos of LOVE and HATE on the unholy man’s knuckles, the golden locks of a drowned woman waving in the current along with the indigenous plant life in her watery grave–that they’re still haunting audiences today. |
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89. Alice Sweet Alice When ten-year-old Karen is killed in church on the occasion of her first communion, her seemingly innocent older sister Alice becomes the prime suspect. Matters become complicated as more of Alice’s family members are attacked, along with residents of her apartment building. Can a twelve-year-old girl be capable of such mayhem, or is someone else with a vicious plan destroying her family? |
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88. Invasion of the Body Snatchers Something’s wrong in the town of Santa Mira, California. At first, Dr. Miles Bennell is unconcerned when the townsfolk accuse their loved ones of acting like emotionless imposters. But soon the evidence is overwhelming–Santa Mira has been invaded by alien “pods” that are capable of replicating humans and taking possession of their identities. It’s up to McCarthy to spread the word of warning, battling the alien invasion at the risk of his own life. |
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87. Black Christmas It’s time for Christmas break, and the sorority sisters make plans for the holiday, but the strange anonymous phone calls are beginning to put them on edge. When Clare disappears, they contact the police, who don’t express much concern. Meanwhile Jess is planning to get an abortion, but boyfriend Peter is very much against it. The police finally begin to get concerned when a 13-year-old girl is found dead in the park. They set up a wiretap to the sorority house, but will they be in time to prevent a sorority girl attrition problem? |
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86. Wizard of Oz The film follows schoolgirl Dorothy Gale who lives on a Kansas farm with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, but dreams of a better place “somewhere over the rainbow.” After being struck unconscious during a tornado by a window which has come loose from its frame, Dorothy dreams that she, her dog Toto, and the farmhouse are transported to the magical Land of Oz. There, the Good Witch of the North Glinda advises Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road to Emerald City and meet the Wizard of Oz, who can return her to Kansas. |
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85. Blood & Black Lace An unscrupulous business operating under the guise of a top fashion house with exotic models running sexual favors, cocaine dealings and blackmail, becomes a murder scene–after someone is pushed to the edge. The saga begins when a beautiful model is brutally murdered, and her boyfriend, a known addict supplying her drugs, is suspected of the crime…but is he guilty or is someone waiting in the shadows setting him up? |
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84. Blue Velvet After his father collapses in a preternaturally eerie sequence, college boy Kyle MacLachlan returns home and stumbles across a severed human ear in a vacant lot. With the help of sweetly innocent high school girl, he turns junior detective and uncovers a frightening yet darkly compelling world of voyeurism and sex. Drawn deeper into the brutal world of drug dealer and blackmailer Frank, played with raving mania by an obscenity-shouting Dennis Hopper in a career-reviving performance, he loses his innocence and his moral bearings when confronted with pure, unexplainable evil. |
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83. The Others While awaiting her husband’s return from war, Grace and her two young children live an unusually isolated existence behind the locked doors and drawn curtains of a secluded island mansion. Then, after three mysterious servants arrive and it becomes chillingly clear that there is far more to his house than can be seen, Grace finds herself in a harrying fight to save her children and keep her sanity. |
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82. Terminator In the Year of Darkness, 2029, the rulers of this planet devised the ultimate plan. They would reshape the Future by changing the Past. The plan required something that felt no pity. No pain. No fear. Something unstoppable. They created ‘The Terminator’. |
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81. The Howling Severely traumatized by a near-fatal encounter with a serial killer, TV newscaster Karen White takes time off at a secluded retreat called “the Colony.” But when, after nights of being tormented by bestial, bloodcurdling cries, Karen ventures into the woods seeking answers, she makes a terrifying discovery. Now she must fight not only for her life but for her soul! |
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80. Poltergeist Poltergeist taps into primal, childlike fears of monsters under the bed, monsters in the closet, sinister clown faces, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. At first, some of the odd happenings in the house are kind of funny and amusing, but they grow gradually creepier until the film climaxes in a terrifying special-effects extravaganza when 5-year-old Carole Anne is kidnapped by the spooks and held hostage in another dimension. |
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79. Dracula The inspiration for hundreds of subsequent remakes and adaptations, this classic film launched the Hollywood horror genre with its eerie passion, shadowy atmosphere, and thrilling cinematography. The children of the night are calling. |
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78. The Brood The Brood is an extremely unsettling horror film about familial disintegration and emotional trauma taken to a monstrous extreme. Art Hindle stars as a man embroiled in a bitter custody struggle with his estranged wife, who is undergoing therapy at psychiatrist Oliver Reed’s controversial institute. Reed’s treatment causes his patients to give form to their inner conflicts, and Eggar–whose psyche is at the boiling point from childhood abuse as well as the custody trial–creates a horde of homicidal humanoid children who enact bloody revenge on anyone who has threatened their “mother.” |
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77. Signs The story of the Hess family in mTgO18G5zjI County, Pennsylvania, who wake up one morning to find a 500-foot crop circle in their backyard. Graham Hess and his family are told extraterrestrials are responsible for the sign in their field. They watch, with growing dread, the news of crop circles being found all over the world. SIGNS is the emotional story of one family on one farm as they encounter the terrifying last moments of life as the world is being invaded. |
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76. Evil Dead Ash and four friends arrive at a backwoods cabin for a vacation, where they find a tape recorder containing incantations from an ancient book of the dead. When they play the tape, evil forces are unleashed, and one by one the friends are possessed. Wouldn’t you know it, the only way to kill a “deadite” is by total bodily dismemberment, and soon the blood starts to fly. |
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75. Candyman The legend of the Candyman is a potent one around the high-rise tenements of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing complex, where the residents speak of a dark, ominous figure who appears when his victims say his name five times in front of a mirror, then mercilessly slashes them to death. |
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74. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory A poor little boy wins a ticket to visit the inside of a mysterious and magical chocolate factory. When he experiences the wonders inside the factory, the boy discovers that the entire visit is a test of his character. |
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73. Blood Simple Blood Simple is grisly comic noir that marries the feverish toughness of pulp thrillers with the ghoulishness of even pulpier horror. The story concerns a Texas bar owner who hires a seedy private detective to follow his cheating wife, and then kill her and her lover. The gumshoe turns the tables on his client, and suddenly a bad situation gets much, much worse, with some violent goings-on that are as elemental as they are shocking. |
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72. Them! That ol’ cinematic devil the A-bomb has spawned a colony of giant murderous ants bent on destroying humanity in this, the seminal big bug movie. The special effects may be dated, but this brilliantly rational-sounding film has held up wonderfully in all other regards, including some starkly effective location work in the high Arizona desert, a genuinely inspired sound design guaranteed to bring on the creepy-crawlies, and an unexpectedly dry sense of humor. |
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71. The Sixth Sense When Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a distinguished child psychologist, meets Cole Sear, a frightened, confused, eight-year-old, Dr. Crowe is completely unprepared to face the truth of what haunts Cole. With a riveting intensity you’ll find thoroughly chilling, the discovery of Cole’s incredible sixth sense leads them to mysterious places with unforgettable consequences. |
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70. The Stepfather Terry O’Quinn plays The Stepfather in this intelligent, unsettling chiller. We’d tell you O’Quinn’s character name, but he has so many. You see, O’Quinn has been a stepfather many times over, romancing and marrying widowed women in several different states. After each wedding, everything is blissful–at least, until O’Quinn’s new wife and kids fail to measure up to his notions of perfection. Then he kills them en masse, and moves on to his next victims. |
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69. Re-Animator Jeffrey Combs furrows his brow and bugs his eyes as the preternaturally intense Herbert West, a maverick medical student whose gory, gooey experiments cause bloody corpses and body parts to jerk to life. Bruce Abbot is the studious roommate drawn into his extracurricular experiments, which soon involve the dean’s daughter (the frequently naked Barbara Crampton) and the college’s cadaverous, calculating star professor, who literally loses his head over a battle for West’s discovery. |
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68. The Black Cat Honeymooning in Hungary, Joan and Peter Allison share their train compartment with Dr. Vitus Verdegast, a courtly but tragic man who is returning to the remains of the town he defended before becoming a prisoner of war for fifteen years. When their hotel-bound bus crashes in a mountain storm and Joan is injured, the travellers seek refuge in the home, built fortress-like upon the site of a bloody battlefield, of famed architect Hjalmar Poelzig. There, cat-phobic Verdegast learns his wife’s fate, grieves for his lost daughter, and must play a game of chess for Allison’s life. |
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67. Duel The film stars Dennis Weaver as a mild-mannered traveling salesman who unintentionally angers the driver of a semi truck. Suddenly, the truck is not only riding his tail but trying to run him off the road. No matter what he does (pulling over, stopping at a diner, calling the cops), he can’t get rid of it. |
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66. The Tenant Polanski plays the mild-mannered occupant of a Parisian flat previously rented by a woman who committed suicide by leaping from her upper-floor balcony. The woman’s leftover belongings and the harsh attitudes of disapproving neighbors begin to grate on the new tenant’s psyche; his paranoia shifts from simmering anxiety to full-blown psychosis, until fate itself seems to run in a complete, tragically tormenting circle. |
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65. Marathon Man Hoffman plays a sullen and cowardly loner haunted by the suicide of his father, a suspected communist. He is drawn into a murky web of international intrigue when his brother, CIA agent Doc Levy, played by Roy Scheider, is murdered by a former Nazi who has come to the United States to reclaim a valuable stash of diamonds. Babe must confront his fears of the past as he runs for his life and tries to avenge his brother’s death at the same time. |
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64. Near Dark Lance Henriksen is the leader of a makeshift family of renegade bloodsuckers, nocturnally seeking victims in rural Oklahoma; his immortal gal pal is Jenette Goldstein; and Bill Paxton is the group’s deadliest leather-clad ass kicker. Fellow traveler Jenny Wright lures Okie farm boy Adrian Pasdar into the group with a love bite, and he’s soon turning toward vampirism with a combination of frightened revulsion and relentless desire. |
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63. Deliverance The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen of various male stripe: Jon Voight’s character is a reflective, civilized fellow, Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes, Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighborly type. Together they decide to answer the ancient call of men testing themselves against the elements and set out on a treacherous ride on the rapids of an Appalachian river. What they don’t understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey’s variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. |
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62. The Wolf Man The Wolf Man tells the doom-laden tale of Lawrence Talbot, who returns to the estate of his wealthy father. Bitten by a werewolf, Talbot suffers the classic fate of the victims of lycanthropy: at the full moon, he turns into a werewolf, a transformation ingeniously devised by makeup maestro Jack Pierce. |
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61. The Devil’s Backbone During the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos is abandoned at a completely isolated orphanage. The tensions therein have been building for years, exacerbated by the unexploded bomb resting menacingly in the courtyard. Bullies scheme, tempers flare, and a ghost that visits Carlos’s bed seems to be the key to it all. |
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60. The Beyond From legendary Italian horror master Lucio Fulci come the ultimate classic of supernatural terror. A remote and cursed hotel, built over one of the seven gateways, becomes a yawning malevolent abyss that begins devouring both the bodies and the souls of all who enter in a graphic frenzy of gory crucifictions, chunkblowing chain-whippings, eyeball impalements, sulphuric acid meltdowns, flesh-eating tarantulas, throat-shredding demon dogs and ravenous bloodthirsty zombies. THE BEYOND is a towering schievement in hair-raising, mind-bending cinematic terror! |
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59. Fatal Attraction The date movie of the late 1980s, this had everyone arguing in the aisles. Does Michael Douglas deserve the unwanted attention he and his family are receiving at the hands of loony stalker Glenn Close? After a weekend extramarital affair with colleague Close, he returns home to wife Anne Archer, and Close becomes progressively angrier. You might even say she is boiling bunny mad. |
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58. Cujo In rural Maine, Vic and Donna Trenton struggle to repair their crumbling marriage, while their young son Tad befriends a hulking, lovable, 200-pound St. Bernard named Cujo. With Vic away on business, Donna and Tad take their decrepit car to be fixed at the remote farm of their mechanic. As their aging Pinto sputters to a stop and dies, Cujo appears. But the once docile dog has undergone a hideous transformation - and becomes a slavering, demonic, killer possessed by almost supernatural strength…and unholy cunning. |
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57. House of Wax A sculptor of wax figures for a museum is horrified when his partner proposes setting fire to the unpopular museum in order to collect the insurance money. As the wax figures melt amid the blaze, the two men have a fight. The sculptor is knocked out in the scuffle and left to “perish” among the flames. He resurfaces many years later for the launch of his own wax museum. The opening coincides with the sudden disappearance of some dead bodies from the city morgue. His assistant begins to suspect his boss of foul play, especially after the deranged wizard of wax begins eyeing his assistant’s lovely girlfriend’s friend as a model for a waxed figure of Marie Antoinette. |
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56. Single White Female An innocent want ad opens the door to murderous unrelenting terror in this pulse-pounding psychological shocker. When mousy hedra carlson answered her ad she thinks she found the perfect roommate. But before long hedra takes over the spare bedroom allies clothes her boyfriend and her identity. |
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55. The Vanishing Kiefer Sutherland and Sandra Bullock are on vacation when, while stopped at a crowded rest area, she disappears. He devotes the next several years to discovering what happened to her, ruining his life in the process. When he does get a clue, it leads him to Jeff Bridges, who plays a bizarre and highly organized individual whose motives are almost as strange as he is. |
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54. The Changeling When a recent widower moves into an antique Washington mansion, his realization that he may not be the only resident leads him toward a deadly secret that refuses to remain buried….The best haunted-house film since the legendary Haunting, this potent, classy combination of the mystery and horror genres eschews explicit gore and dumb shocks in exchange for a subtle creepiness that occasionally builds to a terrifying peak. The result is a satisfyingly intelligent horror film with an intriguing dash of Watergate-era paranoia. |
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53. Demons Set in a refurbished German movie palace, our hapless soon-to-be victims arrive for a sneak preview of a horror movie only to see the gore unfold in the audience, as well as onscreen. While the exposition remains murky, one patron finds that an infected cut leads to a gooey transformation, and every one of her victims follows suit until the snaggle-toothed monsters outnumber the humans. |
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52. The Phantom of the Opera At the Opera of Paris, a mysterious phantom threatens a famous lyric singer, Carlotta and thus forces her to give up her role for unknown Christine Daae. Christine meets this phantom (a masked man) in the catacombs, where he lives. What’s his goal\? What’s his secret? |
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51. The Dead Zone The Dead Zone is at heart a sensitive and thoughtful portrayal of main character Johnny Smith’s dilemma. Christopher Walken, king of the vaguely creepy, plays Smith, a man who awakens from a five-year coma with the very mixed blessing of second sight. At the mere touch of a hand, Smith is unwillingly launched into scenes of past and future terror. |
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50. The Last House on the Left A quartet of criminals–a distorted version of the nuclear family–kidnaps a pair of teenage girls and proceeds to ravage, rape, torture, and finally brutally murder them in the woods, unwittingly within walking distance of their rural home. The killers take refuge in the girls’ own home, but when the parents discover just who they are and what they’ve done, they plot violent retribution. |
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49. Diabolique Vera Clouzot plays the sickly wife of a callous headmaster of a provincial boarding school going to seed, and the commanding Simone Signoret is the headmaster’s mistreated mistress. Together they plot and carry out his murder, a brutal drowning that director Clouzot documents in chilly detail, but the corpse disappears, and a nosy detective starts sniffing around the grounds as threatening notes taunt the women. |
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48. The Thing It all begins when scientists at an arctic research station discover an alien spacecraft under the thick ice, and thaw out the alien body found aboard. What they don’t know is that the alien can assume any human form, and before long the scientists can’t tell who’s real and who’s a deadly alien threat. |
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47. Nosferatu The greatest horror film of all! A long time ago in middle Europe, a decrepit, forbidding castle stood. Casting an ominous shadow over the townspeople who dare not look upon it, the unholy dwelling is home to one Count Orlok, an undead night creature with a taste for human blood. |
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46. The Sentinel There’s never been a traitor in the United States Secret Service…until now. And the evidence points to Pete Garrison, one of the most trusted agents on the force. Now on the run, with two relentless federal investigators hot on his heels, Garrison must fight to clear his name and thwart an attempt on the President’s life before it’s too late! |
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45. The Wicker Man When a young girl mysteriously disappears police sergeant howie travels to a remote scottish island to investigate. But this pastoral community led by the strange lord summerisle is not what it seems as the devout christian detective soon uncovers a secret society of wanton lust and pagan blasphemy. |
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44. The Game There are no rules in “The Game.” And that will make life very difficult for Nicholas Van Orton, a successful businessman who is always in control. Van Orton lives a well-ordered life - until an unexpected birthday gift from his brother destroys it all. Like it or not, Nicholas has been enrolled in a game - “a profound life experience” that begins quietly but soon erupts in a rush of devastating events. Van Orton has to win this deadly game or lose control of everything in his life. |
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43. It’s Alive! A young couple joyously awaiting the birth of their newborn is in for a horrifying surprise in this thrilling low-budget ’70s hit. It’s Alive wastes no time in establishing that there is something terribly wrong with the Davies’ new baby in a shocking opening “escape” sequence not intended for the faint of heart. As baby “It’s Alive” makes its way home from the hospital destroying anything in its path, the Davies must face an impossible dilemma, and a parent’s worse nightmare! |
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42. An American Werewolf in London An American Werewolf in London is more of a makeup showcase than a truly satisfying movie, but the film is effectively moody when David Naughton discovers that a wolf attack has turned him into a bloodthirsty lycanthrope. Jenny Agutter plays his love interest (watch out, he bites!), and who can forget Griffin Dunne as Naughton’s best friend, an undead corpse who progressively rots away as the plot unfolds? |
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41. The Hills Have Eyes The Hills Have Eyes strands a suburban family in the desert and pits them against a clan of inbred cannibals. The resourceful killer brood quickly decimates the outsiders’ numbers, forcing the survivors to fight back with equally savage means. |
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40. Black Sunday This chilling vampire tale begins in 17th-century Moldavia, where the evil Princess Asa is executed for witchcraft and vampirism, along with her brother Javutich. Two centuries later, a pair of traveling doctors discover Asa’s crypt and inadvertently revive the evil princess, whose scheme of vampiric revenge is aimed at her own identical descendant Princess Katia, an innocent beauty whose lifeblood will ensure Asa’s immortality. |
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39. Dawn of the Dead A Milwaukee shopping mall under siege by cannibalistic zombies in the wake of a devastating viral outbreak–a well-chosen cast, some outrageously morbid humor, and a no-frills plot that keeps tension high and blood splattering by the bucketful. |
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38. Peeping Tom A frank exploration of voyeurism and violence, Michael Powell’s extraordinary film is the story of a psychopathic cameraman-his childhood traumas, sexual crises, and murderous revenge as an adult. Reviled by critics upon its initial release for its deeply unsettling subject matter, the film has since been hailed as a masterpiece. |
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37. House on Haunted Hill Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife’s idea for a haunted-house party into a contest–$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in “the only truly haunted house in the world”–it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors, and the spook show begins. |
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36. Cape Fear This 1962 thriller stars Robert Mitchum as a creepy ex-con angry at the attorney whom he believes is responsible for his incarceration. After Mitchum makes clear his plans to harm Peck’s family, a fascinating game of crisscrossing ethics and morality takes place. Where the more recent version seemed trapped in its explicitness, Thompson’s film accomplishes a lot with a more economical and telling use of violence. |
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35. Aliens In this action-packed sequel to Alien, Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley, the only survivor from mankind’s first encounter with the monstrous Alien. Her account of the Alien and the fate of her crew are received with skepticism - until the mysterious disappearance of colonists on LV-426 leads her to join a team of high-tech colonial marines sent in to investigate. |
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34. The Hitcher Thomas Howell plays a guy taking a drive-away car from Chicago to San Diego. On a whim, in the rain, and against his better judgment, he picks up a hitchhiker. The hitcher quickly admits to being a murdering psychopath, and once Howell finally gets him out of his car, he is pursued with all the vengeance of the ancient furies. |
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33. The Fly Seth Brundle, a brilliant but eccentric scientist attempts to woo investigative journalist Veronica Quaife by offering her a scoop on his latest research in the field of matter transportation, which against all the expectations of the scientific establishment have proved successful. Up to a point. Brundle thinks he has ironed out the last problem when he successfully transports a living creature, but when he attempts to teleport himself a fly enters one of the transmission booths, and Brundle finds he is a changed man. |
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32. Pet Sematary For most families, moving is a new beginning. But for the Creeds, it could be the beginning of the end. Because they’re just moved in next door to a place that children built with broken dreams, the Pet Sematary. It’s a tiny patch of land that hides a mysterious Indian burial ground with the powers of resurrection. |
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31. Friday the 13th A group of eager (and horny) teenagers decide to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, which 20 years earlier was closed after the shocking and mysterious murders of two amorous camp counselors. You can take it from there, as the teens get picked off one by one, during a dark and stormy night; of course, their car won’t start and there’s no phone. |
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30. Blair Witch Project Three film students set out into the black hills forest to make a documentary on the legendary blair witch. Armed with a 16mm camera a hi8 video camera and a dat recorder every step word and sound is captured. After wandering around black hills forest heather josh and mike are cold lost and hunted. |
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29. The Serpent and the Rainbow The story of a Harvard researcher who travels to Haiti to procure a secret voodoo powder that places people into a state of simulated death. His investigation into the hidden world of black magic grows increasingly dangerous until he’s caught in a living nightmare–a potentially deadly predicament that inspired the film’s advertising tag line: “Don’t bury me… I’m not dead!” |
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28. When a Stranger Calls The film begins with a babysitter fielding threatening phone calls while on the job. She soon finds that a pair of children in her charge have been murdered in their beds; she is nearly killed herself by the homicidal maniac before police arrive. |
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27. Frankenstein Boris Karloff stars as the screen’s most memorable monster in what many consider to be the greatest horror film ever made. Dr. Frankenstein dares to tamper with life and death by creating a human monster out of lifeless body parts. It’s director James Whale’s adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel blended with Karloff’s compassionate portrayal of a creature groping for identity that makes Frankenstein a masterpiece not only of the genre, but for all time. |
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26. Seven A serial killer forces each of his victims to die by acting out one of the seven deadly sins. The murder scene is then artfully arranged into a grotesque tableau, a graphic illustration of each mortal vice. From the jittery opening credits to the horrifying (and seemingly inescapable) concluding twist. |
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25. Phantasm Michael Baldwin and Bill Thornbury star in the shocker that started it all, in which two brothers discover that their local mortuary hides a legion of hooded killer dwarf creatures, a flying drill-ball, and the demonic mortician known as The Tall Man (an iconic performance by Angus Scrimm) who enslaves the souls of the damned. |
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24. Suspiria The convoluted plot follows an American dancer from her arrival at a European ballet school to her discovery that it’s actually a witches coven; but, really, don’t worry about that too much. Argento makes narrative subservient to technique, preferring instead to assault the senses and nervous system with mood, atmosphere, illusory gore, garish set production, a menacing camera, and perhaps the creepiest score ever created for a movie. |
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23. Rosemary’s Baby Rosemary is a young, trusting housewife in New York whose actor husband, unbeknownst to her, has literally made a deal with the devil. In the thrall of a witches’ coven headquartered in their apartment building, the young husband arranges to have his wife impregnated by Satan in exchange for success in a Broadway play. To Rosemary, the pregnancy seems like a normal and happy one–that is, until she grows increasingly suspicious of her neighbors’ evil influence. |
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22. Don’t Look Now Working with elements of the traditional horror genre - second sight, ESP, warnings from the dead, a mad killer - and a cinematography of disquieting beauty and dreamlike sense of dislocation, director Nicolas Roeg weaves a fabric of anxiety that questions all reality. The evocative use of the back streets of Venice is a sinister participant in the action based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. |
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21. Jacob’s Ladder Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer thinks he is going insane. Or worse. When his nightmares begin spilling into his waking hours, Jacob believes he is experiencing the aftereffects of a powerful drug tested on him during Vietnam. Or perhaps his posttraumatic stress disorder is worse than most. Whatever is happening to him, it is not good. |
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20. The Ring The negligible plot follows a Seattle reporter as she investigates the death of her niece, the victim of a mysterious videotape that, according to urban legend, causes the viewer’s death seven days later. The countdown structure follows the reporter, her son, and her estranged boyfriend into deepening layers of terror–all quite effective until the movie attempts to explain itself. |
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19. Hellraiser Pinhead is the leader of the Cenobites, agents of evil who appear only when someone successfully “solves” the exotic puzzle box called the Lamont Configuration–a mysterious device that opens the door to Hell. The puzzle’s latest victim is Frank, who now lives in a gelatinous skeletal state in an upstairs room of the British home just purchased by his newlywed half-brother, who has married one of Frank’s former lovers. The latter is recruited to supply the cannibalistic Frank with fresh victims, enabling him to reconstitute his own flesh–but will Frank succeed in restoring himself completely? |
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18. The Haunting Consumed by guilt and grief over her mother’s recent death and driven to adventure by her belief in the supernatural, Eleanor Vance is the most unstable–and therefore the most vulnerable–visitor to Hill House. She’s invited there by anthropologist Dr. Markway, along with the bohemian lesbian Theodora, who has acute extra-sensory abilities, and glib playboy Luke Sanderson, who will gladly inherit Hill House if it proves to be hospitable. Of course, the shadowy mansion is anything but welcoming to its unwanted intruders. |
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17. A Nightmare on Elm Street A Nightmare on Elm Street stars Robert Englund as a mutilated monster who kills teenagers during their dreams. Craven, who only directed one Elm Street sequel (Wes Craven’s New Nightmare), takes the Hitchcockian step of layering in psychological explanations for the terror and then proving them all irrelevant in the face of mindless evil. |
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16. The Omen The Omen follows an American couple living in England, whose young son Damien bears “the mark of the beast.” Mysterious deaths and unexplained incidents draw the attention of a photographer, whose investigation leads to the young boy–and also to the photographer’s shocking decapitation. |
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15. Freaks Evil trapeze artist Olga Baclanova seduces and marries a midget in the circus sideshow, hoping to inherit his wealth. But in doing so, she has crossed the wrong folks: the tightly knit group of nature’s aberrations, who stick together like family–and who set out to avenge their little pal. |
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14. Halloween In the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, a teenage baby sitter tries to survive a Halloween night of relentless terror, during which a knife-wielding maniac goes after the town’s hormonally charged youths. Halloween stands on its own as an uncannily frightening experience–it’s one of those movies that had audiences literally jumping out of their seats and shouting at the screen. |
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13. Scream When a serial killer starts hacking up their fellow teens, the media-savvy youngsters of Scream realize that the smartest way of sticking around for the sequel is to avoid the terminal behaviors that inevitably doom supporting players in the movies. They’ve seen all the movies, and the rules of the genre are like second nature to them. |
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12. Misery After Annie rescues the injured Sheldon from a car accident, she seizes the opportunity to nurse her favorite writer back to health, but her tender loving care soon turns to terrorism as she demands that Sheldon write his latest novel according to her wish-fulfillment fantasies. From this point forward, Misery percolates to a boil as equal parts mystery, thriller, and cleverly dark comedy, with the helpless author pitched in deadly warfare against his number one fan. |
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11. Audition Amiable widower Shigeharu Aoyama decides it’s time to find a new wife, and a friend suggests holding a fake audition to find the right girl. It soon becomes clear that there is something wrong with Aoyama’s choice. This is no ordinary Fatal Attraction-style thriller, however; Audition slowly and carefully builds into a wrenching exploration of both deep male fears and the stereotype of the cute, submissive Japanese woman. |
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10. Wait Until Dark Audrey Hepburn’s staS inr this adaptation of Frederick Knott’s famed stage thriller about a blind woman, a con man, and a doll full of heroin. Thanks to Hepburn’s husband, a photographer who does a good deal of traveling, she’s unknowingly come into possession of said doll, which was given to him on a plane by a comely young drug runner who winds up dead. The murderous Arkin, aided by sympathetic henchman Richard Crenna, will let nothing stand in the way of his obtaining it, even if it comes down to assaying multiple “personalities” in order to visit and terrorize Hepburn. |
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9. Night of the Living Dead The story is simple: Radiation from a fallen satellite has caused the dead to walk, and hunger for human flesh. Once bitten, you become one of them. And the only way to kill one is by a shot or blow to the head. We follow a group holed up in a small farmhouse who are trying to fend off the inevitable onslaught of the dead. |
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8. Carrie The center of the terror is Carrie, a tortured high-school misfit with no confidence, no friends…and no idea about the extent of her secret powers of telekinesis. But when her psychotic mother and sadistic classmates finally go too far, the once-shy teen becomes an unrestrained, vengeance-seeking powerhouse who, with the help of her ’special gift,’ causes all hell to break loose in a famed cinematic frenzy of blood, fire and brimstone! |
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7. The Silence of the Lambs A psychopath nicknamed Buffalo Bill is murdering women across the Midwest. Believing it takes one to know one, the FBI sends Agent Clarice Starling to interview a demented prisoner who may provide clues to the killer’s actions. That prisoner is psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant, diabolical cannibal who agrees to help Starling only if she’ll feed his morbid curiosity with details of her own complicated life. As their relationship develops, Starling is forced to confront not only her own hidden demons, but also an evil so powerful that she may not have the courage or strength to stop it. |
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6. The Shining A man, his son and wife become the winter caretakers of an isolated hotel where Danny, the son, sees disturbing visions of the hotel’s past using a telepathic gift known as “The Shining”. The father, Jack Torrance, is underway in a writing project when he slowly slips into insanity as a result of cabin fever and former guests of the hotels ghost’s. After being convinced by a waiter’s ghost to “correct” the family, Jack goes completely insane. |
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5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre In 1974, writer-producer-directorTobe Hooper unleashed this dark, visionary tale about a group of five young friends who face a nightmare of torment at the hands of a depraved Texas clan. Today it remains unequaled as a landmark of outlaw filmmaking and unparalleled in its impact as perhaps the most frightening motion picture ever made. |
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4. Psycho Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama’s boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman’s roadside inn for one fateful night. |
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3. The Exorcist A depiction of a young girl who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism. Ellen Burstyn plays Blair’s mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter’s body is wracked by Satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made. |
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2. Alien The terror begins when the crew of a spaceship investigates a transmission from a desolate planet, and discovers a life form that is perfectly evolved to annihilate mankind. One by one, each crew member is slain until only Ripley is left, leading to an explosive conclusion. |
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1. Jaws The story of a Long Island town whose summer tourist business is suddenly threatened by great-white-shark attacks on humans bypasses the potboiler trappings of Benchley’s book and goes straight for the jugular with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing sequences of action and suspense. |
