50 Unmissable Horror Movies
26. Halloween (1978)
Off the back of mixed-to-positive reactions to his sophomore feature Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), director John Carpenter signed on to direct a very cheap film initially titled The Babysitter Murders. Working with screenwriter Debra Hill in the beginning of a long partnership together, they changed and crafted the film into something primal.
Michael Myers, six years old, murders his sister. Fifteen years later, he (Nick Castle) escapes from the asylum on Halloween night to return to his small town of Haddonfield to wreak chaos. There, armed with a butcher knife and a mask, he stalks Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode and her friends through the streets, whilst Dr Sam Loomis (played by Donald Pleasence) chases after him.
Stories of Halloween’s production are now the stuff of legend. The crew had to keep moving lights into position whilst filming the film’s five-minute long opening take because they couldn’t afford additional lights. Future Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund worked throwing three trash bags of painted leaves on the ground to give an autumnal feel. Hammer icons Peter Cushing and Sir Christopher Lee turned down the role of Sam Loomis (something Lee would anecdotally describe as the worst mistake of his career). And yet the film remains a masterpiece in suspense. Carpenter’s no-nonsense directing strips away all but the essence of the film. The performances by Pleasence, Lee-Curtis, and co, are perfectly suited to their roles. The score, by director John Carpenter himself, is one of the most recognisable in all of cinema.
Most of all, the film made Michael Myers one of the most iconic and beloved horror characters of all time. The blank, white-sprayed William Shatner mask gives no emotion. Myers is ‘purely and simply evil’. There is nothing else. He is terror in the streets because there is terror to be put there. Halloween became one of the highest-grossing independent films ever made – it became the subject of countless academic studies. It started a franchise of more than one dozen films and laid the table for the following year’s Prom Night and Terror Train, which would in turn set the stage for Friday the 13th to kick off the slasher craze in earnest. It is simply impossible to present the best, the most important, or the most influential horror movies of all time without giving mention to John Carpenter’s original slasher masterpiece. KJ
Recommended for you: The ‘Halloween’ Franchise Ranked
27. Alien (1979)
Writer Dan O’Bannon had originally worked with John Carpenter on a student film titled Dark Star, which was made into a very low-budget feature in 1974. The film centred around an alien creature made of a beach ball and a pair of rubber feet. Later on, O’Bannon would team up with Ronald Shusett to create the horror version of their comedy monster. Titled Star Beast, their script sat on desks unlooked-at for a number of years. Then Star Wars happened, and studios wanted to cash in immediately. Star Beast happened to be set in space, so within six weeks the film was greenlit and promising director Ridley Scott was hired for what would be only his 2nd-ever feature film.
In a near future, seven members of the crew of the space mining ship Nostromo are instructed to investigate a signal from an alien planet. What they find there is unlike anything we had ever seen.
Alien took the world by storm. The sets were incredible, the acting was top of the range, the script was tight. Director Ridley Scott drew on the work of everyone from Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) to Stanley Kubrick to bring intensity to Alien, and it resulted in a box office hit that was nominated for two Academy Awards. A glut of space horror films were released in the years following Alien, including multiple sequels and eventual crossovers with the Predator franchise. It launched the careers of Ridley Scott, artist H.R. Giger, and lead actor Sigourney Weaver, whose character Ripley would go on to become a feminist icon the world over.
Often imitated but never replicated, Alien remains one of the greatest horror films, one of the greatest science-fiction films, and one of the greatest films of any genre, in history. KJ
28. Friday the 13th (1980)
The slasher subgenre was a developing thing by late 1979 – Halloween was a sleeper hit but wasn’t an immediate runaway success. Around the same time, director Sean Cunningham was checking to see if anyone had made a film titled Friday the 13th by using the trade magazines and newspapers to advertise ‘the scariest film you’ve ever seen’; a film he promised would be coming soon. When nobody called, he realised he’d have to actually make the film. Cunningham hired Victor Miller (Manny’s Orphans) to write a screenplay. The rest is history.
What the slasher film really needed more than anything was the blood and violence that audiences of the time expected. Two previous slasher hits, Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, were very bloodless. Cunningham got a load of teenagers together (including a fresh-faced Kevin Bacon) and created a killer that would pick them off one-by-one – a sellable concept if ever there was one – but his most ingenious move was to hire Tom Savini, known for his effects work on films such as Dawn of the Dead, and thereby turn each murder into a big event. Action movies had explosions, and Friday the 13th had axes to the face and spikes through the neck. Placing this violence in a well-directed murder mystery with a small but memorable part played by Betsy Palmer (who only took the job because she needed a new car), ensured Friday the 13th had the template for an effective horror film. Add in a final scare for the ages to set up an entire franchise, with the iconic hockey-masked Jason Vorhees taking up the killer’s mantle in future instalments, and it was all distributor Paramount Pictures could have ever wanted.
Critics hated the film, but audiences loved it. The immediate box office success encouraged all the studios to jump on the slasher bandwagon, releasing films like My Bloody Valentine, The Burning, Madman, Final Exam, and others, in very quick succession. Some reports state that in the 18 months following Friday the 13th, there was a new slasher film (or ‘teenie-kill-pic’, as some called them) hitting the screen every six weeks. Its predecessors might have set the template up, but Cunningham’s picture proved to the studios that the slasher film could make a fortune. KJ
Recommended for you: Friday the 13th Movies Ranked
29. The Shining (1980)
By the mid 1970s, Stanley Kubrick was one of the most influential directors of the time. Between Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and A Clockwork Orange (1972), his films were eagerly anticipated by cinephiles and casual moviegoers alike. So, when he decided to adapt a ghost novel by up-and-coming horror writer Stephen King (who had only a few books under his belt at the time), it was a choice questioned by many. Why would this man known for breathtaking battle sequences and eye-widening intellectual visuals take on the story of a family holed up in a haunted hotel over the winter? And why on Earth, if you’re trying to tell the story of a man driven mad, would you choose to cast Jack Nicholson, who thanks to his Oscar-winning performance as Randall McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), audiences already think is unhinged from the start?
Nobody had the faintest idea of what Kubrick would create. The Shining became one of the most iconic, influential, revered, referenced, and heavily analysed films in the history of cinema.
A combination of astonishing sets and subtle techniques, Kubrick pushed both Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall to their limits (and arguably beyond them). The terror mounts throughout the film as the snow cuts the Overlook Hotel off from the outside world and Jack (Nicholson) begins to slowly lose his mind. The hotel distorts subtly without us knowing, rooms exist where they can’t, the layout makes no sense, and the film takes on a feeling of being truly wrong. And that all comes long before Jack Nicholson picks up his fire axe.
At the time of release, The Shining was reviled, earning nominations for multiple Razzie awards (handed to films adjudged to be the worst of any given year). Stephen King derided it, calling it ‘a beautiful Cadillac with no engine’, a work of intellectualism without heart. Despite these criticisms, The Shining has permeated every corner of popular culture, and has been referenced by everything from Toy Story (1995) to IKEA adverts. Multiple documentaries have been made trying to examine its hidden depths, and the works of academic study will only continue to grow as the years go on. The Shining stays with you long after it has finished. It is, simply, one of the all-time greats of the silver screen. KJ
Recommended for you: Shelley Duvall 3 Career-Defining Performances
30. The Evil Dead (1981)
You get murdered at cabins in the woods. That’s the rule. It doesn’t matter how picturesque it is, you get murdered there. Before Sam Raimi’s 1981 film The Evil Dead, however, that wasn’t a trope. Sure, taking a vacation with your friends to try and score (as Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams does) might be a great idea, but only after 1981 are you sure to find a cellar there. In the cellar, you’re going to find a tape recording of someone reading from an evil book, and you’re accidentally going to unleash the fiends of hell onto yourself and your friends.
Like most classic horror films, The Evil Dead (1981) was made with almost no money. Scenes with Ash trying to shoot demons with a shotgun involved no blanks; the crew just told everyone to duck as he fired live rounds. There wasn’t even a cellar in the cabin they rented, and as such they shot everything that shows underneath the cabin half a year after initial filming. Still, they made it work through sheer energy and enthusiasm for madness. It’s an incredibly bloody film, puncturing and severing and chopping off every possible limb that can be found, yet it’s not just blood and gore; it also features an invasive possession element at its heart that gives cause for everyone to look for a cross and hold it aloft.
With its iconic poster and acclaim from Stephen King (who was, by this time, one of the big names in the genre), the film soon found its niche. It made stars of its lead actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi, the latter of whom would go on to direct Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy a few decades later. With a franchise set up in its wake consisting of no bad films and a decent three-season TV show, Ash Williams became a rarity in the horror genre; a male final-girl. Raucous and savage and a little bit insane, The Evil Dead is proof that with sheer grit and energy, anyone can make a film. If you’re lucky, it might become one of the classics of the genre. KJ
Recommended for you: 10 Best Evil Dead Moments
Nice work everyone. Next year: 50 MORE unmissable horror films.
What a list, truly something for every horror movie lovers’ taste!