Entries from October 2020 ↓

*six people

Here we are at le Top 20. This is a thrill! It's like a Royal Rumble of genre classics both ye olde and ye newe. Let's see how the spandex shakes out! (?)

Number of votes each film received is written in ye bolde. Some of these are a tie! Please, should you have it, resist the pedantic urge to say "How can two movies with the same number of votes be ranked differently?" because this was explained at SHOCKtober's outset and also because I do not care!

The number in bold is the number of votes received.

55. Carnival of Souls -- 1962, Herk Harvey -- 16

54. The Innocents -- 1961, Jack Clayton -- 16

53. Train to Busan -- 2016, Sang-ho Yeon -- 16

52. Friday the 13th -- 1980, Sean S. Cunningham -- 17

51. The Fly -- 1986, David Cronenberg -- 17

50. Creepshow -- 1982, George A. Romero -- 18

49. Session 9 -- 2001, Brad Anderson -- 18

48. The Birds -- 1963, Alfred Hitchcock -- 18

47. Don't Look Now -- 1973, Nicolas Roeg -- 19

46. Hausu (aka House) -- 1977, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi -- 19

45. Ginger Snaps -- 2000, John Fawcett -- 20

44. The Lost Boys -- 1987, Joel Schumacher -- 20

43. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors -- 1987, Chuck Russell -- 21

42. 28 Days Later... -- 2002, Danny Boyle -- 22

41. Fright Night -- 1985, Tom Holland -- 23

40. Sleepaway Camp -- 1983, Robert Hiltzik -- 24

39. The Cabin in the Woods -- 2011, Drew Goddard -- 24

38. Evil Dead II -- 1987, Sam Raimi -- 25

37. Dawn of the Dead -- 1978, George A. Romero -- 26

36. An American Werewolf in London -- 1981, John Landis -- 27

35. Hellraiser -- 1987, Clive Barker -- 27

34. Jaws -- 1975, Steven Spielberg -- 27

33. Poltergeist -- 1982, Tobe Hooper -- 27

32. Trick 'r Treat -- 2007, Michael Dougherty -- 27

31. Let the Right One In -- 2008, Tomas Alfredson -- 29

30. Psycho -- 1960, Alfred Hitchcock -- 29

29. The Return of the Living Dead -- 1985, Dan O'Bannon -- 29

28. The Evil Dead -- 1981, Sam Raimi -- 30

27. Get Out -- 2017, Jordan Peele -- 31

26. The Fog -- 1980, John Carpenter -- 31

25. The House of the Devil -- 2009, Ti West -- 31

24. It Follows -- 2014, David Robert Mitchell -- 32

23. The Silence of the Lambs -- 1991, Jonathan Demme -- 32

22. The Wicker Man -- 1973, Robin Hardy -- 32

21. Night of the Living Dead -- 1968, George A. Romero -- 39

As for her list, she said "I totally agonized over this because I love so many movies, but I settled on these." Everyone who participated in this grand experiment knows that pain! It's true, what US Magazine says: Stars...they're just like us!

DRACULA (1958, Terence Fisher)

DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966, Terence Fisher)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968, George A. Romero)

DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978, George A. Romero)

THE DESCENT (2005, Neil Marshall)

DOG SOLDIERS (2002, Neil Marshall)

CANDYMAN (1992, Bernard Rose)

HALLOWEEN (1978, John Carpenter)

JU-ON: THE GRUDGE (2002, Takashi Shimizu)

RINGU (1998, Hideo Nakata)

ALIEN (1979, Ridley Scott)

PITCH BLACK (2000, David Twohy)

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999, Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez)

JAWS (1975, Steven Spielberg)

SUSPIRIA (1977, Dario Argento)

DEMONS (1985, Lamberto Bava)

COLD PREY (2006, Roar Uthaug)

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974, Tobe Hooper)

MAYHEM (2017, Joe Lynch)

ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017, Shin'ichirô Ueda)

So! You might remember me giving Mats Strandberg's Blood Cruise the ol' (HIGHLY COVETED, TRUST ME) Final Girl stomp (typo that stays) of approval the other day when I posted the list of his 20 favorite horror movies.

Well guess what? To celebrate the book's US release and SHOCKtober, I've got three copies to give away! If you're a US resident who wants to get your mitts and eyeballs on this very bloody vampires infest a booze cruise saga, all you have to do is drop a comment on my Instagram post about this before Monday. I'll pick three winners! I mean, you're all winners...it's just that three of you will win a copy of this terrific book. Good luck!

The following films received...

Ten votes each!

93. April Fool's Day -- 1986, Fred Walton

92. Bride of Frankenstein -- 1935, James Whale

91. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II -- 1987, Bruce Pittman

90. Nosferatu -- 1922, F.W. Murnau

89. The Autopsy of Jane Doe -- 2016, André Øvredal

88. The Conjuring -- 2013, James Wan

87. The Final Girls -- 2015, Todd Strauss-Schulson

86. The Innkeepers -- 2011, Ti West

85. You're Next -- 2011, Adam Wingard

Eleven votes each!

84. Cat People -- 1942, Jacques Tourneur

83. Prince of Darkness -- 1987, John Carpenter

82. [REC] -- 2007, Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza

81. The Slumber Party Massacre -- 1982, Amy Holden Jones

80. The Others -- 2001, Alejandro Amenábar

Twelve votes each!

79. Audition -- 1999, Takashi Miike

78. Drag Me to Hell -- 2009, Sam Raimi

77. Let's Scare Jessica to Death -- 1971, John D. Hancock

76. Near Dark -- 1987, Kathryn Bigelow

75. Possession -- 1981, Andrzej Zulawski

74. The Babadook -- 2014, Jennifer Kent

73. The Brood -- 1979, David Cronenberg

72. The Ring -- 2002, Gore Verbinski

71. Us -- 2019, Jordan Peele

Thirteen votes each!

70. Dracula -- 1992, Francis Ford Coppola

69. Martyrs -- 2008, Pascal Laugier

68. Night of the Demons -- 1988, Kevin Tenney

67. Ringu -- 1998, Hideo Nakata

66. The Exorcist III -- 1990, William Peter Blatty

Fourteen votes each!

65. Event Horizon -- 1997, Paul W.S. Anderson

64. Halloween III: Season of the Witch -- 1982, Tommy Lee Wallace

63. Jennifer's Body -- 2009, Karyn Kusama

Fifteen votes each!

62. Deep Red (aka Profondo rosso) -- 1975, Dario Argento

61. Demons -- 1985, Lamberto Bava

60. Eyes Without a Face -- 1960, Georges Franju

59. Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- 1978, Philip Kaufman

58. Phantasm -- 1979, Don Coscarelli

57. The Beyond -- 1981, Lucio Fulci

56. The Changeling -- 1980, Peter Medak

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II (1988, Tony Randel)

Us haunts me. I think that Get Out is the more important horror movie in Jordan Peele’s so-far-flawless oeuvre, but Us gets my nerves going, a tale of doppelgängers and oppression and oddity that is by turns extremely funny and extremely disturbing.

Of all the underrated Carpenter films, this may be the most underrated. It’s just so moody and creepy and rich, a sort of Jaws on quaaludes experience. It also features pirate ghosts and Adrienne Barbeau in a lighthouse, things I never knew I needed until I saw them.
This is just a ridiculously well-done zombie movie, using the literal and figurative tightness of a single location, well-drawn characters, and a genuinely sad and affecting ending so, so well.

There’s something just delicious and cold and terrifying about Under The Skin, a treatise on what it is to be alien vs. human, that I find irresistible. The sound design is haunting and unforgettable, as is the inherent inhumanity (groping, maybe, towards humanity) of its central character.

I’ve only seen The Babadook once. I don’t know if I strictly need to see it again, because it scared the utter bejesus out of me, but it also stuck. I mean, really stuck. Some of its lessons about abuse and trauma and grief -- especially the practice of living with grief and never getting over it (the ending is, IMO, one of the most brilliant and poignant in the genre).

Aliens once, memorably, freaked me out so much when I was watching it as a teenager that I hid behind the couch. It’s nowhere near the masterpiece that the original is, IMO, but it’s great, scary sci-fi that punches up pretty reliably at good old toxic masculinity and corporate malfeasance, so it has a nice, special place in my heart. Plus, it’s one of my mom’s favorite movies and was instrumental in my own falling in love with the genre.

Another wildly underrated Carpenter film (of course, in his end of the world trilogy) and just a wonderful tour de force of reality-bending horror complete with Sam Neill, weird creepy New England at its weird creepy best, and a favorite trope, fiction-turns-reality. Plus, a depiction of hell/chaos!

This is the darker, bleaker, weirder Alien movie before the franchise went all the way to camp, and then back to doofy blockbuster (and then to Hammer Horror, but, somehow, with less subtlety). I think it may be the scariest Alien film, not just for the threat of the creatures but for the threat of desolation and misery that the prison camp promises.

I think this might be the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. Something about the nauseating intensity of loss and family trauma goes right to my lizard brain and makes me want to run screaming from the screen. I watched Hereditary in theaters, with my hands over my eyes for some of its tensest moments, but I still feel like every frame has been burned into my memory. The other element that makes Ari Aster’s feature debut so chilling is the sheer inevitability of every event. It doesn’t matter what Toni Collette’s grieving Annie does, really, or what she’s willing to do, everything is going to go very, very wrong for her and her whole family. That’s TERRIFYING to me.

Pulse is a little long, but its quietly pervasive terror is hard to beat. There are some shots in this film that will haunt me forever, and the themes on loneliness and disconnection and dissonance hit me where it hurts. Like great horror should.

For a long time, when I was a much younger woman, renting this movie AT A VIDEO STORE and bringing it on a date was my party trick. It’s a gorgeous, luscious, totally queer vampire movie starring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, and David *fucking* Bowie, and it features one of the most inexplicably arty (and hot) love scenes of the early 80s.

Another underrated Carpenter classic, this is just a buckwild creature feature that mashed up religious iconography with movie science, and tons of truly wild effects and a genuinely unsettling and creepy plot.

 

Of all the classic Cronenberg body horror, The Fly is the most intense and the saddest. It may also be the most timeless. I loooove Videodrome, for example, but it’s milder-than-first-draft filmed ending and the sheer douche factor of both James Woods and his character push it further down the list. But The Fly is unimpeachable. It’s the story of a (really hot) scientist who flies too close to the sun, sure, but it’s tragic. He never tried to hurt anyone, only experimenting on himself. He does, genuinely, want to benefit humanity with his invention. But he falls to a horrific (and truly disgusting) mutation, in the process showing just how messed up we all are, what with our fragile bodies and nasty diseases and all the horrible things that can go wrong. Body horror is one of the main reasons I love horror, since it’s — at its very core — honest about these awful truths. And The Fly is one of the very best.

This may not grace all that many horror lists, but it plays enough in the territory to count, and it’s good enough to hold this high a place on my list. It’s dark, beautiful, deeply sympathetic sci-fi/noir with enough pure horror shots (think of the creepy aliens and their reality-bending machine!) to give me a few delicious nightmares. It’s a film that’s concerned with reality and the matter-bending, memory-twisting slipperiness of it all, and it really kind of deserves to be mentioned every time someone calls out “Remember The Matrix?” for doing this particular blend of mind-fuckery a good deal better.

This is an all-time favorite film of mine, a scary, spooky, sci-fi horror cult classic with a near-perfect cast and a wonderfully unhinged plot. I’m such a sucker for “space crew deals with the unknown, gets asses kicked in weirdo ways,” as you can see from the rest of this list, and few other movies do it with such a delicious dash of 90s camp. It also has an incredible cast and buckwild production design.

The Thing is very close to being a perfect horror movie, and I just love it. I love hot Kurt Russell. I love the scope of cosmic horror that this group of guys-being-dudes has to contend with, whether they are up for it or not. I love the horrifying creature effects, as much as the first day I was exposed to them, at the now-defunct but truly formative Gory Gruesome and Grotesque Horror Makeup Show at Universal Orlando, which opened this little lass’s eyes to so many wonderful, terrible delights.

I watch Hellraiser every October, as part of my own personal Halloween festivities. I love that it’s basically a high-gloss tragedy about kink and wanting too much, a queer horror movie from long, LONG before queer horror movies could be explicitly queer or focus on queer characters as being anything other than pure evil. Not that we’re in an entirely enlightened age now, but Hellraiser still feels daring and fresh and dangerous. I’ll always feel bad for poor Frank (even though Frank is a huge asshole), the guy who just couldn’t get his rocks off enough. Or poor Julia (also, to be clear, an asshole), who just couldn’t get enough of Frank. Or for the poor cenobites (again, assholes), who can never seem to get enough of… anything, really. Desire is terrifying. Hellraiser is just honest about it.

I actually called Annihilation the best movie of the decade (best non-franchise, that is) a year ago, and I stand by that completely. It’s intoxicating, smart, weird, and also makes a genuine attempt to understand an alien force, something that may well prove entirely impossible for our human pea brains. Even the best and brightest pea brains around! This is a modern sci-fi classic, and it spends enough time in genuinely terrifying body horror territory (the pool scene and THE BEAR) to qualify as horror, for my tastes.

When people ask me what my favorite movie is, this is my go-to answer. It combines so many things that I love: sci-fi, spaceships, real-ass people who don’t act like perfect Hollywood stereotypes, women who are tough and smart and don’t let their underwear trip them up, intense body horror and nauseating fear of the things that go on inside you when things go wrong, and imaginative production design. It’s a brooding, spooky, sometimes terrifying vision of corporate malfeasance and sweaty engineers in coveralls trying to survive. It’s feminist and freaky and I see something new in it every time I watch it.

The following films received eight votes each!

121. Child's Play -- 1988, Tom Holland

120. Dead Alive (aka Braindead) -- 1992, Peter Jackson

119. Freaks -- 1932, Tod Browning

118. House on Haunted Hill -- 1959, William Castle

117. Interview with the Vampire -- 1994, Neil Jordan

116. Lake Mungo -- 2008, Joel Anderson

115. Mulholland Dr. -- 2001, David Lynch

114. My Bloody Valentine -- 1981, George Mihalka

113. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge -- 1985, Jack Sholder

112. Peeping Tom -- 1960, Michael Powell

111. Phenomena -- 1985, Dario Argento

110. Silver Bullet -- 1985, Daniel Attias

109. The Blackcoat's Daughter (aka February) -- 2015, Oz Perkins

108. The Craft -- 1996, Andrew Fleming

107. The Lords of Salem -- 2012, Rob Zombie

106. The Strangers -- 2008, Bryan Bertino

Each of the following films received nine votes!

105. A Tale of Two Sisters -- 2003, Jee-woon Kim

104. Black Swan -- 2010, Darren Aronofsky

103. Day of the Dead -- 1985, George A. Romero

102. Friday the 13th Part III -- 1982, Steve Miner

101. Paranormal Activity -- 2007, Oren Peli

100. Pontypool -- 2008, Bruce McDonald

  99. Ravenous -- 1999, Antonia Bird

  98. Re-Animator -- 1985, Stuart Gordon

  97. The Devil's Backbone -- 2001, Guillermo del Toro

  96. The Invitation -- 2015, Karyn Kusama

  95. The Wailing -- 2016, Hong-jin Na

  94. Videodrome -- 1983, David Cronenberg

Author Mats Strandberg has been called "the Swedish Stephen King" and while that is certainly a compliment, maybe Stephen King is the American Mats Strandberg, huh? Did you ever think about that? You should! But I get it: Mats's stuff is character driven and scary. But unlike Stephen King, Mats populates his work with characters that aren't so...I don't know, homogenous. Look! Comparisons aren't entirely useful. But if you give Mats's Blood Cruise a whirl--it's out in the US today!!--then you'll see what I mean. It's 'vampires on a booze cruise,' it's scary, it's gory, and it's a lot of fun (I really, really need Blood Cruise to be a mini-series, thanks), and I love that his characters that might be considered disposable in other works are really given a time to shine. I can't recommend the book enough, so I won't try! You lucky Europeans have access to more of his work (including The Home, which is out now in the UK)...have fun reading it while waiting for your free healthcare, you savages!

PET SEMATARY (1989, Mary Lambert)

How do I love these mothervolking witches? Let me count the ways. Or actually, I don't have to. The Gaylords of Darkness and this very blog have already done it way better than I ever could. I did try though, in the Suspiria fanzine that Stacie masterminded. (FG note: zine coming next month, woo! I will update with info when available!)

This is one of those movies that I keep coming back to, over and over. It is by no means perfect, but the imperfections are part of its magic. It always feels like I just have to watch it one more time, and then I'll somehow be able to unearth the perfect horror movie hidden just beneath the surface. (By the way: I feel the exact same way about another Sam Neill vehicle; Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness from 1994.)

This dark fairytale is of the most visually stunning movies ever made.
So in about a week, the future of the entire planet is decided in a rigged US election. No biggie, right? There couldn't be a better October to watch this movie.

Speaking of November 2020; I am so, so happy that this movie exists.

This scratches the same itch as Death Becomes Her (1992) and Addams Family Values (1993) for me; horror-adjacent, family-friendly comedies with very queer undertones. Blithe Spirit is based on a play by Noël Coward, so you know there's going to be campy fun, amazing ladies (both dead and alive) and one-liners galore.

My favourite incarnation of Laurie Strode. I think I might love this movie even more than the original Halloween. Yeah, I said it. *ducks for cover*

I will never forgive Stacie and Anthony for the fact that this wasn't part of The Three-ening.

A newlywed woman discovers that her husband sneaks out at night to meet up with other dudes in the park. Turns out he belongs to an alien species who secretly breed with Earth women. One of my favourite gay-panic movies from the lavender scare era. It's really hilarious or really depressing, depending on how you look at it.

These movies will always be part of my horror DNA. I will always enjoy them. I tell you what is scary though: going down the rabbit hole of erotic fanfiction about Jason Voorhees.

By far the best set of queens in any of the major franchise movies. I love all the characters so much.

Yes, Ripley is a queen. That goes without saying. But all the characters are amazing. This movie was a huge inspiration for my book Blood Cruise. On the Baltic Sea, no one can hear you scream either. A cruise ship and a space ship are both isolated settings that you can’t escape from, surrounded by a cold darkness that would kill you if you fell overboard. But my biggest inspiration was the way this movie depicted the crew: tired, unglamorous, human. They never asked to be heroes, but they stepped up when the blood hit the fan.

I have such a sweet spot for this campy franchise. It seems severely underrated in the horror community, but it's ridiculously entertaining with all the deliciously gory slapstick killings. Also: Ali Larter. Also also: The idea of having Death itself as the boogeyman is beyond brilliant. The franchise (created by our fellow gay, Jeffrey Reddick) has its ups and downs, for sure, but number 5 ties it all together beautifully.

I wouldst like to live deliciously too, please. (By the way, have you seen Daniel Malik who does the voice of Black Phillip? Delicious indeed.)

My favourite giallo movie and definitely the gayest.

Honestly, it was a toss-up between this one, The Haunting (1963) and The Others (2001). I chose this one simply because it came first, and because it was written by Truman Capote.

Wait, I'm at the end of the list already and I haven't even mentioned a found footage movie? Even though it's one of my favourite subgenres? Ok. (deep breath in) I promised myself not to overthink this list. I would simply choose the movies that first came to mind. (deep breath out) I could have gone with As Above, So Below (2014) or The Banshee Chapter (2013), or Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), the standout gem of the franchise. But I'll go with this mockumentary, which to me is much scarier than the movie it was made to promote.

OH DANG, spoiler, sorry. Although...you had to expect it, right? The wordplay of the title alone is enough to earn it top spot. They could have called it Amityville: It's About a Clock, because it is, but It's About Time is so much classier and it also really makes u think. 

Well, I guess we should all try to maintain some excitement as we barrel through these last 150 movies. After all, it's the journey, not the destination, you guys. Final Girl: really makin' u think, as always.

Each of the following films received six votes!

150. Raw (aka Grave) -- 2016, Julia Ducournau

149. Shaun of the Dead -- 2004, Edgar Wright

148. Slither -- 2006, James Gunn

147. Society -- 1989, Brian Yuzna

146. The Funhouse -- 1981, Tobe Hooper

145. The Host -- 2006, Bong Joon Ho

144. The Hunger -- 1983, Tony Scott

143. The Night of the Hunter -- 1955, Charles Laughton

The following films received seven votes each!

142. Dawn of the Dead -- 2004, Zack Snyder

141. Friday the 13th Part 2 -- 1981, Steve Miner

140. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter -- 1984, Joseph Zito

139. Ghostwatch -- 1992, Lesley Manning

138. Gremlins -- 1984, Joe Dante

137. The House on Sorority Row -- 1982, Mark Rosman

136. Ju-on: The Grudge -- 2002, Takashi Shimizu

135. Messiah of Evil -- 1973, Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz

134. Mother! -- 2017, Darren Aronofsky

133. Repulsion -- 1965, Roman Polanski

132. Sleepy Hollow -- 1999, Tim Burton

131. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 -- 1986, Tobe Hooper

130. The Blob -- 1988, Chuck Russell

129. The Faculty -- 1998, Robert Rodriguez

128. The Howling -- 1981, Joe Dante

127. The Lighthouse -- 2019, Robert Eggers

126. The Love Witch -- 2016, Anna Biller

125. The Orphanage (aka El orfanato) -- 2007, J.A. Bayona

124. The Perfection -- 2018, Richard Shepard

123. Tucker and Dale vs Evil -- 2010, Eli Craig

122. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? -- 1962, Robert Aldrich

LISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLISTLIST

Each of the following films received five votes!

182. Killer Klowns from Outer Space -- 1988, Stephen Chiodo

181. Knife + Heart -- 2018, Yann Gonzalez

180. Pumpkinhead -- 1988, Stan Winston

179. Salem's Lot -- 1979, Tobe Hooper

178. Silent Hill -- 2006, Christophe Gans

177. StageFright -- 1987, Michele Soavi

176. The Mist -- 2007, Frank Darabont

175. The Omen -- 1976, Richard Donner

174. The People Under the Stairs -- 1991, Wes Craven

173. The Stuff -- 1985, Larry Cohen

172. Theater of Blood -- 1973, Douglas Hickox

171. Tremors -- 1990, Ron Underwood

170. Under the Skin -- 2013, Jonathan Glazer

The following films received six votes each!

169. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night -- 2014, Ana Lily Amirpour

168. Bride of Chucky -- 1998, Ronny Yu

167. Burnt Offerings -- 1976, Dan Curtis

166. Children of the Corn -- 1984, Fritz Kiersch

165. Chopping Mall -- 1986, Jim Wynorski

164. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives -- 1986, Tom McLoughlin

163. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me -- 1992, David Lynch

162. From Beyond -- 1986, Stuart Gordon

161. Halloween II -- 1981, Rick Rosenthal

160. Happy Birthday to Me -- 1981, J. Lee Thompson

159. House of Wax -- 2005, Jaume Collet-Serra

158. May -- 2002, Lucky McKee

157. Night of the Comet -- 1984, Thom Eberhardt

156. Night of the Creeps -- 1986, Fred Dekker

155. Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon) -- 1957, Jacques Tourneur

154. Noroi: The Curse -- 2005, Kôji Shiraishi

153. Nosferatu the Vampyre -- 1979, Werner Herzog

152. One Cut of the Dead -- 2017, Shin'ichirô Ueda

151. Pet Sematary -- 1989, Mary Lambert

Each of the following films received four votes:

212. Slumber Party Massacre II -- 1987, Deborah Brock

211. Spider Baby -- 1967, Jack Hill

210. Starry Eyes -- 2014, Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer

209. Tales from the Hood -- 1995, Rusty Cundieff

208. Tenebrae -- 1982, Dario Argento

207. The Abominable Dr Phibes -- 1971, Robert Fruest

206. The Bad Seed -- 1956, Mervyn LeRoy

205. The Burning -- 1981, Tony Maylam

204. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari -- 1920, Robert Wiene

203. The Gate -- 1987, Tibor Takács

202. The Hills Have Eyes -- 1977, Wes Craven

201. The Invisible Man -- 2020, Leigh Whannell

200. The Ritual -- 2017, David Bruckner

199. The Sentinel -- 1977, Michael Winner

198. The Taking of Deborah Logan -- 2014, Adam Robitel

197. The Uninvited -- 1944, Lewis Allen

196. The Vanishing (aka Spoorloos) -- 1988, George Sluizer

195. Tourist Trap -- 1979, David Schmoeller

194. What We Do in the Shadows -- 2014, Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi

The following films received five votes each:

193. Alice, Sweet Alice -- 1976, Alfred Sole

192. Annihilation -- 2018, Alex Garland

191. Dark Water -- 2002, Hideo Nakata

190. Daughters of Darkness -- 1971, Harry Kümel

189. Final Destination -- 2000, James Wong

188. Happy Death Day -- 2017, Christopher Landon

187. Hell House LLC -- 2015, Stephen Cognetti

186. In the Mouth of Madness -- 1995, John Carpenter

185. Inside (aka À l'intérieur) -- 2007, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury

184. It -- 1990, Tommy Lee Wallace

183. It -- 2017,  Andy Muschetti

Anyway, each of the following films received four votes. 

244. All Cheerleaders Die -- 2013, Lucky McKee & Chris Sivertson

243. American Mary -- 2012, Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska

242. American Psycho -- 2000, Mary Harron

241. Army of Darkness -- 1992, Sam Raimi

240. Battle Royale -- 2000, Kinji Fukasaku

239. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon -- 2006, Scott Glosserman

238. Black Sunday -- 1960, Mario Bava

237. Brain Damage -- 1988, Frank Henenlotter

236. Climax -- 2018, Gaspar Noé

235. Creature from the Black Lagoon -- 1954, Jack Arnold

234. Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight -- 1995, Ernest R. Dickerson

233. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark -- 1988, James Signorelli

232. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood -- 1988, John Carl Buechler

231. Frankenstein -- 1931, James Whale

230. Funny Games -- 1997, Michael Haneke

229. Grabbers -- 2012, Jon Wright

228. Grave Encounters -- 2011, Colin Minihan & Stuart Ortiz

227. Hellbound: Hellraiser II -- 1988, Tony Randel

226. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer -- 1986, John McNaughton

225. I Know What You Did Last Summer -- 1997, Jim Gillespie

224. I Walked with a Zombie -- 1943, Jacques Tourneur

223. Jacob's Ladder -- 1990, Adrian Lyne

222. Just Before Dawn -- 1981, Jeff Lieberman

221. Krampus -- 2015, Michael Dougherty

220. The Lair of the White Worm -- 1988, Ken Russell

219. Martin -- 1977, George A. Romero

218. Misery -- 1990, Rob Reiner

217. Nightbreed -- 1990, Clive Barker

216. Onibaba -- 1964, Kaneto Shindô

215. Orphan -- 2009, Jaume Collet-Serra

214. Scanners -- 1981, David Cronenberg

213. Scream 2 -- 1997, Wes Craven

I don't know what's with all the alliteration today, sorry. Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to manifest a gig writing headlines for The New York Post?

THE BEYOND (1981, Lucio Fulci)

It's a gothic nightmare that has no problem leaving us blindly standing alone in the road, lost in the depths of despair while one of horror cinema's best scores pounds in the background. Hell may be an endless void, but they really do have the much better band.

If this movie were an intentional slasher parody, it would have been brilliant. As it stands, it's just brilliantly inept. Line readings are sub-dinner theater level, dead extras forget to hold their breath and the killer cracks punny one liners that would make a third rate Borscht Belt comedian cry. Massacres are perpetuated with the titular nail gun at a brisk pace, damn the plot threads left to dangle in the Texas breeze. 
The mid to late 90s boom of meta horror started out as a breath of fresh air, but soon devolved into a dull, interminable game of "Are You Smarter Than A Slasher?" Released at the tail end of that trend cycle, Shadow Of The Vampire instead wraps its meta-narrative around the filming of 1922's silent classic Nosferatu. Rather than a joking poke at genre tropes, the film revises history to offer a terrifying explanation of what may have made the silent classic so damn scary. 
One of the first films rated X primarily for violence, David Durston's exploitation classic is a first-rate example of the wild world of grindhouse era, fly by night filmmaking. A faux-Manson Family of Satan-worshipping grifters terrorizes a tiny town in a spectacularly bloody fashion. Watching the last few townsfolk battle the frothing undead, we learn some valuable lessons about both rabies and LSD along the way. In all of the franchises that dominated the 80s horror box office, Clive Barker's Hellraiser was a welcome dose of Euro weirdness that gave gooey practical effects a highly stylized S&M groove that has been rarely matched before or since. 
Potter's Bluff is one of the greatest of horror's many small towns with a secret. Shrouded in seaside fog and as subtly unsettling as holes to a trypophobic, when the idyll becomes something far more grisly, it's almost a relief. As the body count rises, it’s very clear Sheriff Gillis isn't crazy and neither are we.
Speaking of seaside shockers, Messiah Of Evil is a moody chiller that transcends its myriad of production problems to become something far more unsettling than it otherwise might have been. A young woman goes searching for her father in a coastal California town, and runs afoul of a cult of ghouls that sit at an odd juncture between vampires and zombies, obsessed with moonlit bonfires and the consumption of raw flesh.
Outcasts and the creation of chosen families is a thematic throughline that genre cinema loves to come back to, but few films are more effective than Freaks at illustrating how tightly wound the ties that bind can be. Tod Browning's otherwise promising directorial career was ground to a standstill with this verbose melodrama and its cast of sideshow and circus performers. The open display of so called "oddities" and a sympathetic portrayal of their lives was considered obscene at the time.
In the massive glut of SOV content, Scooter McCrae's Shatter Dead deserves a reappraisal and rediscovery for its impressively empty post-apocalyptic world (made more so by the fact that the cleared streets were accomplished without the luxury of permits), and a conceptual ambition more in line with foreign art films than video store trash.
The Psychopath is a prime slice of grindhouse golden age weirdness that hasn’t seen home video release since the heyday of VHS. Tom Basham puts in a disquieting performance as Mr. Rabbey, a stunted manchild who also hosts an inexplicably popular local children’s television program. When some of his favorite fans and park playtime pals are abused by their parents, Mr. Rabbey takes the law into his own hands, assuming they aren’t otherwise occupied by his selection of creepy ass puppets.
Carnival Of Souls separates itself from the herd of low budget indie films in that it takes the opposite approach than most of the B cinema of its era. Rather than tossing its characters into a flashy parade of blood, beasts and bad taste, it surrounds its supernatural trappings with the distinctly ordinary patterns of small town life. Mary Henry is just trying to get settled in a new job, and a new city, not succeeding particularly well at either one.
Of all of the riffs on 50s creature features like The Blob and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Larry Cohen's The Stuff livens up his monster kid nostalgia with razor sharp satire of 80s consumerism and a host of lived-in, delightfully quirky performances.
Originally funded as an attempt to cash in on the success of Blacula, writer/director Bill Gunn instead used the loose framework of a vampire narrative to deliver a richly layered thematic kaleidoscope of the effects of addiction, assimilation, and religion on Black experience in America. The visuals are framed oddly, sometimes obscured, and Sam Waymon’s gorgeous musical history lesson of a score is often just as key to conveying plot elements as the spoken dialog. Ganja & Hess has far more in common with the arthouse explorations of the 70s “New Hollywood” period than exploitation flicks.
A hyper-realistic low budget film loosely based on the life of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer is a horror film in the most literal possible sense. There is no catharsis here, no comforting explanation of the how and the why of its protagonists’ ruthlessly efficient violence. Director John McNaughton and co-writer Richard Fire have very little interest in diagnosis or explanation, just a grey, grimy tour through a few days in the lives of men incapable of human empathy.
All roads in the journey to the center of the bad taste world of extreme exploitation and horror cinema eventually make at least one stop amongst the 80’s Italian cannibal trendlet. The cannibal films take the exoticizing, cynical snicker of the Mondo subgenre to its logical, fully fictional extreme. Hiding behind a thin veneer of ethnography and supposed larger points about the nature of civilization, the cannibal flicks had a perfect cover of plausible deniability for a plethora of blood, boobs, and completely unnecessary animal cruelty.
This manic 70s gem is one of the treasures lying buried in the trash heap of those 50 movie public domain DVD box sets. Matthew is a strange young man with a hook for a hand and the mother of all Oedipus complexes. He was sent away after murdering his dad with a tractor and mangling his own hand in the process. Years in a mental institution have done nothing to cure any of his issues, other than allowing his long-suffering mother to forget who he is.
Fritz Lang is better known to modern audiences for his sci fi masterpiece Metropolis, but while 1931’s M is less flashily stylized, it is both importantly directional (as one of the earliest extant examples of a police procedural) and quietly terrifying. A serial killer of children is on the prowl in Berlin, and when the police have no success locating the murderer, even the criminal underground joins the manhunt.
Baba Yaga is a loose adaptation of a story arc from Guido Crepax’s Valentina, a long-running Italian series of erotic comics. What plot there is involves a battle of wills between Valentina, a mod and modern fashion photographer, and the titular ancient witch, who is enthralled with Valentina after a chance late night run-in. 
One of the first stone cold, blood curdling classics of early silent horror cinema, Nosferatu’s genius lies not in its highly questionable, slightly clunky adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel, but in the visual vocabulary of creeping dread that it essentially invented. Lacking the technology or the inclination for the visceral and gratuitous, Nosferatu’s terror lies in the light exposing the outlines of the shadows and the things that lurk there. Max Schreck’s masterful performance as Count Orlok has none of the suavity of the later cinematic adaptations, but is something closer to death, at home in desiccation and decay. What thrall he wields is not a seduction, but the predatory instincts of a carrion creature, the not quite dead sapping the lifeblood from the living.
As a born and bred New Yorker, I have an eternal soft spot for films in which New York itself may as well be a billed character. Frank Henenlotter is another of my hometown’s indie eccentrics, and Basket Case is a seven layer dip love letter to grit, grime, and the Deuce, with all of the trash cinema delights it once had to offer.

271. Something Wicked This Way Comes -- 1983, Jack Clayton

270. Son of Frankenstein -- 1939, Rowland V. Lee

269. Sorority Row -- 2009, Stewart Hendler

268. Sugar Hill -- 1974, Paul Maslansky

267. Suicide Club -- 2001, Sion Soto

266. Teeth -- 2007, Mitchell Lichtenstein

265. The Babysitter -- 2017, McG

264. The Children -- 2008, Tom Shankland

263. The Loved Ones -- 2009, Sean Byrne

262. The Lure -- 2015, Agnieszka Smocszynska

261. The Midnight Hour -- 1985, Jack Bender

260. The Neon Demon -- 2016, Nicolas Winding Refn

259. The Old Dark House -- 1932, James Whale

258. The Stepford Wives -- 1975, Bryan Forbes

257. The Witches -- 1990, Nicolas Roeg

256. The Woman in Black -- 1989, Herbert Wise

255. Thelma -- 2017, Joachim Trier

254. Triangle -- 2009, Christopher Smith

253. Trilogy of Terror -- 1975, Dan Curtis

252. Urban Legend -- 1998, Jamie Blanks

251. Uzumaki (aka Spiral) -- 2000, Higuchinsky

250. Viy -- 1967, Konstantin Ershov & Georgiy Kropachyov

249. We Are Still Here -- 2015, Ted Geoghegan

248. Wes Craven's New Nightmare -- 1994, Wes Craven

247. When Animals Dream -- 2014, Jonas Alexander Arnby

246. Witchboard -- 1986, Kevin Tenney

245. Wolfen -- 1981, Michael Wadleigh