Another Ranking of the Top Twenty Horror Movies of All Time…

Lists and rankings have been an Internet staple since at least the early 1990s, always recognizing this and excluding that, to someone’s ire, -often mine. Every time I read a list of the “best all time” horror movies, I'm left wondering just how much more emotionally flat and indistinct (in terms of our aesthetics and tastes) we can become as a movie-going public in America. It's probably not a new complaint, but we don't seem to care that there is a difference between what aims at the visceral, physical, physiological and that which operates on emotional or psychological levels.

There is a big difference between Horror movies and Thrillers or even “Scary” pictures.

I use the word "Horror" in the sense that a motion picture inspires not only fear at the time of viewing but that it also creates a lasting lingering feeling of dread long after the film is over. I think it's easy to disgust people or make them flinch with gore and other superficial and temporary frights, but pictures that "haunt" us psychologically, that unnerve us emotionally are the true horror pictures in my opinion. I leave pictures like the Nightmare on Elm Street series out of my consideration because although they are among my favorite movies, outside of the momentary scares and revulsion they provide during viewing, they are closer to thrillers and action pictures in my opinion, and only cousins to a picture like The Shining. If I opened consideration to shock and gore pictures, clearly films by Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and others would be all over my list below, and believe me those are not omissions or oversights, -but a difference of classification. Some of my selections are almost bloodless productions, but as I've already said, gory and violent spectacles are not necessarily what determines a horror movie; if that were the case, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill pictures would be considered for inclusion, but they both fail entry by my criteria as would Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk 'til Dawn. They are all great, entertaining pictures to be sure, they simply lack a strong enough psychological component to underpin the explicit shock they provide.

Lists and rankings are all about starting arguments; so if I've left any of your favorites off, feel free to list them in response.

My Top Twenty Horror Movies of all Time are:


1) The Exorcist
2) The Omen (1976)
3) The Shining (1980)
4) The Sentinel
5) Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
6) Night of the Living Dead (1968)
7) The Blair Witch Project
8) Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake)
9) Evil Dead
10) Alien
11) Poltergeist
12) Rosemary's Baby
13) Gates of Hell (1980)
14) The Changeling (1980)
15) Quatermass and the Pit (1968)
16) The Innocents
17) The Wicker man (1973)
18) Salem's Lot (1979)
19) The Reincarnation of Peter Proud
20) The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

(I listed years only where I thought there might be confusion due to a remake, and it should be known that it absolutely killed me to exclude John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as his Prince of Darkness: They would surely make my Top Twenty Five.)

-SJ