Ghost on Screen's Top 13 Horror Movies

Over the past one hundred years, horror has proven to be the most durable genre of the cinema.  It has survived countless failures and relentless critical disapproval, and has continued to sell well since it was popularized in the thirties.

I think it is because fear is such a universal sensation, and that we have always been excited by its capacity to thrill us and to heighten our senses.  The following thirteen films have done that.  Many continue to do that.  Here are the top thirteen horror films of all time.  Why thirteen?  Why not?

13. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Tobe Hooper shot “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in triple digit heat in Texas over a period of about thirty sixteen hour (plus) shooting days.  The result is about as close to sadism as high art can get and still be high art.  Many think the film is based on a true story.  It isn’t, but it’s a testament to the film’s raw power that its myth has become so engrained in American culture.

12. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

“Dr. Caligari” might not be the most frightening horror movie on the list, but it is the first.  The film was a first in many ways.  It contained the first wild twist of an ending, and it was also the first film to use set design and lighting to convey the distorted mind of its characters.  It also scared its 1920s audiences out of their seats.

11. The Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George Romero invented zombie horror with “The Night of the Living Dead”, which was one of the first Vietnam era horror movies to exemplify the darker direction in which horror was headed.  There were no gleefully creepy bumps in the night here.  Romero deeply rooted his film in hopelessness and despair.

10. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Hannibal Lector has become one of the two or three most iconic movie villains of all time.  Anthony Hopkins plays the role with a quiet but daunting intelligence, a man who gets under our skin because he so easily gets into the minds of everyone else.  Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece is the most recent of only three examples to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay)

9. Freaks (1932)

Director Tod Browning had worked in the circus before “Dracula” (1931) launched him into the limelight.  One year later, casting real circus freaks for all of the lead roles, “Freaks” destroyed his career.  The film premiered only once in 1932 and was so shocking that it wasn’t shown again in the U.K. until the 1960’s.

8. Diabolique (1955)
Henry-Georges Clouzot pleaded to his audiences that they not reveal the shocking twist at the end of “Diabolique”, a gimmick that Alfred Hitchcock would later borrow for “Psycho”, among most everything else that made the film so revolutionary.  Both films are inspired examples of sly misdirection.

7. Halloween (1978)

If director John Carpenter had patented the slasher movie formula he coined with “Halloween”, he would now own four islands in the South Pacific and half of Frito Lay.  Modern horror movies begin here, with what has become one of the most profitable independent films of all time.

6. Jaws (1978)

Many people might not consider Stephen Spielberg’s aquatic thriller a horror movie, but note that for weeks after “Jaws” was released to theaters, beach attendance plummeted across the country.  Why?  Because people were scared to go in the water.  If that’s not horror, I don’t know what is.

5. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Roman Polanski founded his paranoid chiller set in sixties Manhattan on the inherent fears of motherhood, that something could be wrong with your child while it grows inside you, that someone you know could be plotting to take your child from you.  “Rosemary’s Baby” is a slow-burning candle in a room full of dynamite.

4. Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror) (1922)

F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” is the greatest vampire movie of all time.  It will not scare movie audiences today, but I admire it for the beauty of its composition, and for the sincerity of its delivery.  Complimented by the constraints of silent cinema, “Nosferatu” feels now like a half-remembered nightmare, the residue of evil left over after we wake.

3. Psycho (1960)

It’s hard to find any movie lover who doesn’t know the secrets to Alfred Hitchcock’s remarkable “Psycho”.  The reason for this is simple.  Hitchcock earns the right to manipulate us by selling his misdirections so sincerely.  “It wasn’t a message that stirred the audiences,” Hitchcock later revealed in an interview with Francois Truffault.  “Nor was it a great performance…They were aroused by pure film.”

2. The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” is like one of those closed-door mysteries as seen from the inside out.  Nothing makes sense, because there is no one there to make sense of it.  Widely regarded as the most epic horror movie ever made, “The Shining” was Kubrick’s most financially successful film and immortalized Jack Nicholson with the great horror catchphrase, “Heeere’s Johnny!”

1. The Exorcist (1973)

William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” dropped like a bombshell into theaters across the country just in time for Christmas in 1973.  The result was a documented spike in church attendance.  Ambulances were called to theaters to treat viewers who suffered violent panic attacks and seizures. 

People fled theaters screaming.  Those who stayed often wept or occasionally vomited.  Televangelist Billy Graham declared that the original celluloid reel of the film was possessed by evil spirits.  The Pope even took time to publically condemn the film.  Unsubstantiated rumors would eventually surface of a devout Christian couple committing suicide hours after seeing it.

What a visceral movie this is, how mercilessly it preys on our sympathies.  The tale of a beautiful twelve year old girl falling pray to the devil is in itself unsettling, but Friedkin’s realistic presentation and unrestrained courage pushed the project over the edge.  Shots of young Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) projectile-vomiting pea soup and stabbing her crotch with a bloody crucifix are images that have still not lost their staying power.  When it comes to truly terrifying movies, “The Exorcist” is in a league of its own.  It is a black, evil, soulless movie.




Rollan Schott
November 6, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan