Bloody, Creepy and Gory

"Religions continue to dispute the importance of the undeniable fact of individual death to postulate a life after death...Since almost all of us still think as savages do on this topic, it is no matter of surprise that the primitive fear of the dead is still so strong within us and always ready to come to the surface on any provocation."


Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsion, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality.

Horror films go back as far as the onset of films themselves, over a 100 years ago. From our earliest days, we use our vivid imaginations to see ghosts in shadowy shapes, to be emotionally connected to the unknown and to fear things that are improbable. Watching a horror film gives an opening into that scary world, into an outlet for the essence of fear itself, without actually being in danger. Weird as it sounds, there's a very real thrill and fun factor in being scared or watching disturbing, horrific images.



Early Horror Films: Monsters, Vamps and More

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - 1919 The first horror movie, only about two minutes long, was made by imaginative French filmmaker Georges Melies, titled Le Manoir Du Diable (1896) (aka The Devil's Castle) - containing some elements of later vampire films.


The Cabnet of Dr. Caligari



One of the more memorable and influential of the early films was Germany's silent expressionistic landmark classic, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1919) (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) from director Robert Wiene, about a ghost-like hypnotist-therapist in a carnival named Dr. Caligari (Werner Kraus) who calls pale-skinned, lanky, black leotard-wearing Cesare (Conrad Veidt, later known for his portrayal as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942)), his performing somnambulist (and haunted murderer), from a state of sleep. The shadowy, disturbing, distorted, and dream-nightmarish quality of the macabre and stylistic 'Caligari,' with twisted alleyways, lopsided doors, cramped rooms, overhanging buildings, and skewed cityscapes, was shot in a studio. It was brought to Hollywood in the 1920s, and later influenced the classic period of horror films in the 1930s - introducing many standard horror film conventions. As with many classic films (i.e., Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)), the original story was altered (due to its insinuation that "authority" was questionable and insane), and a flashback framing device (composed of an epilogue and prologue) was added to soften its message. This made the film appear to be a delusional nightmare in a psychotic mental patient's (Francis) dream, thereby diluting the subversive nature of the original.


Nosferatu 1922 (120 min.)



Nosferatu - 1922The earliest vampire film was director Arthur Robison's German silent film Nachte des Grauens (1916), aka Night of Terror, with strange, vampire-like people. The Hungarian film Drakula halala (1921), aka The Death of Dracula, was the first adaptation of Irish writer Bram Stoker's 1897 vampire novel Dracula. The first genuine vampire picture was also produced by a European filmmaker - director F. W. Murnau's feature-length Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror (1922), aka Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. Shot on location, it was an unauthorized film adaptation of Stoker's Dracula with Max Schreck in the title role as the screen's first vampire - a mysterious aristocrat living in distant Bremen named Count Graf Orlok (Max Schreck). Because of copyright problems, the vampire was named Nosferatu rather than Dracula, and the action was changed from Transylvania to Bremen.


[Note: At the turn of the century, Shadow of the Vampire (2000) fancifully retold the making of the 1922 classic, with John Malkovich as obsessive director F.W. Murnau. It asked the question: "What if Max Schreck (Oscar-nominated Willem Dafoe), who played the character of Count Orlok, was indeed a vampire?"]

The emaciated, balding, undead vampire's image was unforgettable with a devil-rat face, pointy ears, elongated fingers, sunken cheeks, and long fangs, with plague rats following him wherever he went. In the film's conclusion, the grotesque, cadaverous creature is tricked by the heroine Nina (Greta Schroder) into remaining past daybreak, so Orlok meets his fate by disintegrating into smoke in the sunlight. [The film was remade by German director Werner Herzog - Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), with Klaus Kinski faithfully recreating the title role.]



Here a top 50 of Horror Films

50. Re-Animator
(1985)

Stupid, gory, and fun. Don't watch this if you have a weak
stomach and no sense of humor. It's allegedly based on an H.P. Lovecraft
story, but it doesn't even approach the mystery and creepiness
of Lovecraft, and, well, it doesn't even try to -- it just borrows the
premise of the story as a framework for a lot of sick, in-your-face
visual ideas.

49. Friday the 13th
(1980)

Surprisingly good. As the progenitor of the "mad slasher goes
around killing teenagers who were about to have sex" genre, I thought
this film would be as bad as the countless imitators that followed. I was
wrong. Some fairly decent acting, good pacing, and a few real surprises.

Friday The 13th (1980) - Original Trailer

48. Creepshow
(1982)

If you're tired of horror films with pretensions
of being serious and artistic, here's your cure. It manages to be
frequently campy without losing the edge of horror. (Okay, maybe during
the animated sequences.) But this is just plain fun. It's an homage to
the horror comics of the fifties, especially the offerings from EC Comics.
(The sequel wasn't quite as good, so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it,
but if you really enjoy this film, check out the second one.

47. Cemetary
Man (1994)

I always think of this movie as Dellamorte, Dellamore,
it's Italian title, but I've listed it under it's American release title
so you can find it at your local video store. It's a strange one,
but I liked it a lot. It's moody, creepy, gory, hysterically funny,
and strangely romantic. Don't expect it to make much sense, but it's
fun to watch.

46. The
Fly (1986)

The first Cronenberg film I ever saw, this one is fairly typical
of his work. Not that this movie is typical by other standards; where
Dead Ringers gives us a slow deterioration of a relationship,


The Fly gives us a slow deterioration of a human body, as we
watch a man slowly devolve into a monster. Worth watching just for Jeff
Goldblum as the lead character; no one is better at being naturally creepy
than Goldblum, and Cronenberg gets an excellent performance out of him.


THE FLY (1986 Movie Trailer)

45. Scream
(1996)

Okay, maybe this one isn't really all that scary --
the first five minutes or so had me on the edge of my seat, but the
rest of it doesn't really live up to the opening -- but if you're a fan
of horror movies, you've got to see this one; it's made with
such obvious fondness and affection for the whole horror film genre,
and with such style, that it just picks you up and carries you along.
It's a lot of fun.

44. The
Thing (1982)

Usually, when someone makes a remake of a "classic" film, they
completely ruin it. This couldn't be farther from the truth here.
The original version of The Thing is, in my opinion, totally
boring. This film went back to the original source material, a short
story entitled "Who Goes There?" that the first film was based on,
and brought back into the plot all the elements that had made the story
work that the first film had just completely ignored. Lots of
action, a claustrophobic setting, and a wonderfully ambiguous ending
make this one memorable.

43. The
Return of the Living Dead (1985)

I wasn't really expecting much from this movie -- it looked like a
cheap knockoff of Night of the Living Dead, and that's essentially
true . . . . But if I'm not mistaken, the writer from NotLD


actually had some involvement in this movie, and in some respects,
was able to improve on his original ideas. These zombies really are
(almost) unstoppable -- and it's fun watching the characters try anyway.
It's dumb, it wants you to laugh at it, but so much of what it
does with the concept is so darn clever that you just have to stop and
appreciate the ideas while you're laughing. Also, it's got a really
great 80's soundtrack.

42. Nomads
(1986)

Unsettling and original, this movie really conveys the feeling of
a world both darker and larger than our own. Rather than tapping into the
same well of old stories that most horror films use, with their demons
and vampires and werewolves, this story creates a threat that feels
unmistakably urban and modern and real. The movie's slow breakdown
of linear logic echoes the mental breakdown of the lead character.
And the ending still really haunts me.

41. Return
of the Living Dead 3 (1993)

My expectations for the
original may have been low, but my expectations for this one were even


lower -- the first film was cheesy enough, but sequels are always
even worse, right? Wrong. This movie is hip, creepy, and clever,
and takes the idea of zombie movies and makes it personal as we watch
the deteriorating relationship between a woman who is slowly giving
into her undead hunger and the man who brought her back from the dead.
This movie is perfectly aware of both the real horror and the real
absurdity of its premise, and sets tense, dramatic scenes against
colorfully-lit, EC-comics-like backgrounds, giving the whole film a
surreal and dreamlike feeling.

Return of the Living Dead 3

40. Session 9 (2001)

Slow, moody, atmospheric, psychological. The decaying mental hospital is one of
the most disturbing places I've ever seen on film, and the slow breakdown of the
people working on it is even more disturbing. Even just thinking about the line "What
are you doing here?" makes me shudder.

39. Last
House on the Left (1972)

Wes Craven's first film, and easily his single most disturbing.
I think this one works so well because he didn't know what he
was doing -- it doesn't fall into any safe, predictable patterns --
you never know what's going to happen to any of the characters at any
moment. This is not light, fluffy, kiddie-fare -- don't toss
this one in the VCR at your next Halloween party if you still want all
your friends speaking to you afterward. This one is brutal and nasty,
and shot in such a cheap, flat way that it looks like a documentary, or
a snuff film; the cheapness actually enhances the realism, just as the
badly-placed and -executed comic relief enhances the real horror of the
rest of the film -- you find yourself staring slack-jawed at the "funny"
scenes as you would at someone who brought a whoopie cushion to a funeral.

38. The
Company of Wolves (1984)

I've heard this film described as a "fairy tale for adults," and
that's pretty dead-on. There's a lot of creepy, bloody, sexual, chaotic
material boiling around under the skin of our culture's fairy tales,
and this movie takes that skin and peels it back. This film makes much
more sense on an emotional level than it does on an intellectual level;
sit back and watch it, wide-eyed and open and receptive as a child,
and get ready for nightmares.

37. In the
Mouth of Madness (1995)

The best John Carpenter film in years. Not that he'd been
slacking, or anything, but he really outdid himself this time. This one's
a nice homage, partly to Steven King, but mainly to H.P. Lovecraft.

36. Nightbreed
(1990)

I always feel a little sad when I see this now, knowing that
it should have been better -- apparently, the studio really
cut this one to ribbons, and it shows, with the occasional jump in the
plot or gap in logic. But what's left really makes me yearn for the
long-rumored director's cut to be released. Nightbreed is the
film that finally realizes that the most compelling and even sympathetic
characters in horror films aren't the victims -- they're the monsters.
And this film provides an entire nightmarish hidden city of them.

35. Prince
of Darkness (1987)

This one's really unsettling.
It's not much like John Carpenter's other work. It's slow and careful
and nightmare-like, and takes time to set up really disturbing images
and a sense of dread.

34. The
Exorcist (1973)

It's a little hard to judge this movie on
its own merits -- its images and ideas have become so firmly entrenched in
our culture, and it's been parodied and referenced so many times that's
it's hard to separate the film itself from this idea of the film.
Although it almost works better as an archetype than as a movie, The
Exorcist still has the power to shock and horrify, even by today's
jaded standards; and I have to give it proper credit for not going with a
"Hollywood" ending.

33. Cat People
(1942)

You'd think that a movie this old would seem too dated to scare
a modern audience, but this one still really shines. The characters
are intriguing and well-acted, and the story and the direction both
refuse to give you release from the tension they build up right until
the final frames. The film is also beautifully lit and shot, using
the black-and-white medium to its full advantage. There was a remake
in 1982, that had a great performance from Malcolm
McDowell and music by David Bowie and Giorgio Moroder, that
still couldn't touch the original.

32. Videodrome
(1983)

Yeee-ikes. Creepy, icky, weird, and makes no linear sense.
But should a film that shows someone's gradual mental deterioration really
have to make linear sense? It's hard to tell, as the film progresses,
how much of the action is "really" happening, and how much only takes
place inside the protagonist's mind -- but it doesn't really matter.

31. Martin
(1978)

Okay, sure, this is another vampire movie.
But I guarantee you that this is not like any other vampire movie
you've ever seen. For one thing, you can never really be sure whether
the title character really is a vampire, or whether he's just
horrifically delusional . . . . One of the creepiest horror movies I've
seen, since aside from the flashbacks (which could just be fantasies),
there's nothing in this film that couldn't actually happen. This isn't
one of George
Romero's better known films -- but it should be, dammit.

30. The
Ugly (1997)

Disturbing, entrancing, and beautifully shot in a very modern,
jerky, and disorienting style, this movie is the life story of a serial
killer with a supernatural edge to it. While having an "unreliable
narrator" is a common enough technique in prose fiction, I can't remember
another film that uses the same technique so well; we're left uncertain
whether the events we're seeing are real memories, imagined memories,
or simple lies. This movie also has a very distinctive visual style; for
example, the blood in this movie isn't red, it's oil-black. That might
sound almost cartoonish, but it's incredibly effective -- it draws your
attention to the blood in a way that a normal portrayal wouldn't, and
underlines the horror of the situation. Simon's victims look soiled
and unclean by his acts.

29. Pumpkinhead
(1988)

I avoided this film for years, thanks to a pretty stupid title
and an unimaginative and cheap looking video cover design. I finally
rented it out of desperation one night, when I couldn't find anything
else that looked appealing -- and I was blown away by it. Great
creature effects from Stan Winston, the man who made the creatures in
Alien. An interesting story. And a compelling performance from
Lance Henriksen, whom I loved in Near Dark.

28. Near
Dark (1987)

Best damn vampire movie ever made. No question. (Even
though it never uses the word "vampire" once -- the characters
in it don't seem sure what they are.) It's the story of a
young man's descent into darkness, and his redemption. Features Lance
Henriksen as the lead vampire; he's probably better known now as
Bishop from Aliens, but this the role I always picture him in.
Great soundtrack by Tangerine Dream.

27. An
American Werewolf in London (1981)

This is a difficult movie to categorize -- it's hard to tell
what kind of film you're watching, even from one moment to the next.
It manages to be very genuinely creepy, occasionally hysterically funny,
and sometimes even both at once. I'm not sure if this movie succeeds,
because, quite frankly, I don't know what the hell it was trying to do.
But I found it fairly intriguing, even though it's inconsistently paced.
Definitely worth seeing just for Rick Baker's werewolf transformation
effects, which really pushed the envelope of what was possible to put
on the screen. And it has a perfect ending. Personally, I really
enjoyed the long-overdue sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris,
but I can't honestly say it was a good movie.

26. Phantasm (1979)

This is a very . . . weird little movie. I didn't like
it until about halfway through it, when I stopped trying to make sense
of it. It has a very creepy, dreamlike feel and structure to it, there
are parts of the film that are laughably bad and other parts that are
really terrifying, and it doesn't really add up to a cohesive whole --
but you get the feeling that it wasn't trying to, that it was just
trying to tow you along as it drifted through a nightmare for a while.
And I think it succeeds at that. Also, despite the overall cheapness
of the movie, the makers had a good sense of visual style, and the Ball
and the Tall Man are compelling images.

25. Candyman (1992)

It's based on a Clive Barker short story, so naturally I had to
love this one. It strays a little far afield of the story it's based on,
but it does so fairly gracefully. This movie does an excellent job at
creating an original supernatural menace, while grounding it so firmly
in the context of urban legends that you'd be convinced the character has
been spoken of in whispers for years. This movie has a quiet, low-budget
look and feel to it that actually helps to enhance the unsettling mood
it creates.

24. Jacob's Ladder
(1990)

This is, well, a pretty strange movie. I'm not
entirely certain I understand what happened in this film, although I have
some ideas -- but that's all right, because the main character doesn't
understand what's happened to the world around him, either. It's not
often I enjoy feeling as confused as the characters I'm watching, but
considering some of the themes this movie deals with -- the very nature
of life and death -- I suppose a little confusion might be justified.

23. Hellbound:
Hellraiser II (1988)

Almost as unheard-of as a good
Steven King movie, we have here another another rarity: a well-done
sequel. Even though it has a different writer and different director,
this movie still dovetails fairly seamlessly onto the end of the first;
one can cheerfully watch them back-to-back, if you're willing to ignore
the fact that the main character's house seems to un-burn-down between
films. Hellbound manages to delve even farther into the mythology
established by the first film while still remaining true to the spirit
of it. (Just a side note: Don't make the mistake of assuming that
because the first two films were so good, the third one will be as well.
It's excruciatingly bad. And it's not even bad in an entertaining way.)

22. The
Blair Witch Project (1999)

Yeah, okay, this movie received a lot of hype. And it
deserves it. How effective you find the film may depend on how likely
your imagination is to work against you; if you're like me, you'll find
that this movie lodges itself in your brain and ruins your sleep for days.
The aftereffects of the film are more unsettling than the actual
experience. Kudos to Haxan Films
for trying something daring and unusual instead of cranking out yet
another slasher flick, and for convincing so many people that their
invented legend was real.


The Blair Bitch Project Trailer

21. A
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Do you really need a
recommendation for this one? Well, maybe you do; maybe you'd just as
soon avoid any film that spawned a franchise of endless sequels. But,
really, the first one was groundbreaking and fun, and really manages
to convey the strange logic that nightmares operate under. If you've
never seen it, you need to.


Nightmare On Elm Street Tribute

20. The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

I know what you're thinking. But really, this is not that kind
of movie; despite the title, there have been many, many movies that have
gone much farther out of their way to splatter blood, gore and intestines
up on the screen than this one. This may have been visually shocking in
the early seventies, but it's awfully tame to today's jaded thrillseekers,
such as myself. It's not tame, however, in its plot and direction;
after slowly building up the atmosphere, nearly the last half of the
movie is one, long, extended chase sequence. It may sound boring put
that way, but it's not. The viewer is made to feel tense, claustrophobic
and trapped along with our heroine. Very creepy and unsettling.

19. The
Hitcher (1986)

This one is really creepy and unsettling, too, but in a much
more cinematic way, so it's a little easier to take. But not much.
The perfect movie for people who always thought there was something just
a little sinister about Rutger Hauer.

18. Les Yeux sans
visage (1960)

Simultaneously sadistic and gentle, dreamlike and brutally real. The surgery imagery
from this film has stayed buried in my subconscious more than any sophisticated modern
special effect.

17. The Wicker Man

The scariest part of the movie for me is not its famous ending -- and if you're one
of the five people out there who doesn't know what that is, I'm not going to ruin it for
you -- but just watching our hero wind his way through the slow, inevitable trap that's
been set for him. There was no way out from the moment he got off the plane, and
watching him figure that out is like slowly watching him die.

16. Carnival
of Souls (1962)

I rented this movie on the strength
of the recommendations on alt.horror,
and now I have to add my own. I love this movie. It's very slow-paced
by today's standards, but it's very creepy and effective. (There's a
so-called "remake" out there that doesn't seem to have anything to do
with the original. Skip it and rent this instead.)

15. Angel Heart
(1987)

Written and directed by Alan
Parker, who directed my favorite non-horror movie (Pink
Floyd: The Wall).
It has the voodoo-laden, jazzy, hard-boiled feel that I wish Lord Of
Illusions had managed to pull off.

14. Ginger Snaps
(2000)

Fresh and scary, as funny and clever as its title, this movie easily
pulls off what very few horror films have
even thought to attempt -- a close friendship between two young girls,
along with all the emotional minefields such friendships can bring. Maybe
the central metaphor -- using the werewolf legend to examine adolescence
itself -- is a little obvious, a little broadly played, but its still
well-handled and smart.

13. Stir of Echoes
(1999)

I'm really almost unreasonably fond of this movie. I've never been a
huge fan of Kevin Bacon, but I find him at his most likeable here, as an
everyday guy who is suddenly dealing with unwanted psychic powers, and a
ghost who won't rest. It's nothing that hasn't been done before, but it's
all done here with such conviction and style you'd swear they
invented the ghost story, just now. It was released very shortly
after, and completely eclipsed by, The Sixth Sense, a movie I also
liked, but not nearly as much as this one.

12. Frailty (2001)

I really wish this movie were more widely known. For one thing, it
has the best performance I've ever seen from Bill Paxton, but mainly, I
find the story and the mood so compelling. We're told from the start
exactly what's going on, as a man confesses his family's bloody history of
working for the Lord to the FBI, but we're still drawn through twists and
turns.

11. Cube
(1997)

Damn. I made the mistake of seeing this movie alone when I saw it
for the first time, and I couldn't sleep afterwards. Claustrophobic and
terrifying, this movie keeps setting up your expectations and knocking
them down. Extremely nihilistic in its outlook, this film has a lot
to say about the nature of life. Shot on an extremely low budget with
amazing special effects provided entirely free of charge by volunteers,
this movie proves what you can do with just a handful of actors and
one set.

10. Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990)

Yeeeesh. When you think you've become jaded, when you think
you've seen it all, and that nothing you could possibly see in
a movie could bother you -- please, by all means, watch this movie.
After seeing hours of stylized, glossy, slicked-up violence dished out
by the Jasons and Freddy's of the silver screen, this movie is
a real fucking wake-up call. Disturbingly realistic in a flat, stark,
almost documentary-like style, there is absolutely nothing


glamorous about this movie. It will mess you up bad. Worth seeing,
but really, really, unsetlling. See it with a friend who won't hate
you for making them watch it.

9. Dead
Ringers (1988)

Easily one of the best films by David
Cronenberg, the most twisted and messed-up director I know (I
love his work). I almost hesitate to call this a horror film;
it doesn't have the trappings of a traditional horror film, doesn't
have the pacing of one. What it does do is slowly unfold the
unsettling, disturbing breakdown of two identical twins, both expertly
played by Jeremy Irons with the aid of some flawless split-screen work.

8. 28 Days Later
(2002)

It never occurred to me that the director of Trainspotting would ever turn his hand to reinventing the
zombie genre, but he certainly did -- he took everything that works about
it and stripped away everything else, investing what remains with an
amazing depth of compassion for his characters, a sweeping sense of scale
for what the world has lost.

7. The Shining
(1980)

I've had a recent conversion experience over this one. I'd seen it on
video, and I always used to find it kind of boring -- but I got talked
into seeing it on the big screen, and I finally got it. It really
needs a cinema screen to convey the sense of scale and isolation, and now
I love it. (I still think Jack Torrance's slow descent into madness would
seem more convincing if they hadn't cast Jack Nicholson, who seems a
little unhinged at the start of the movie, but what the hell.)

6. The Ring (2002)

I don't remember the last time I was this scared in a movie
theater. The original version isn't as good, in some respects -- both of
them have their plot holes and leaps of logic, but the original's Sadako
is even more creepy and terrifying than the remake's Samara, if you
can believe that.

5. Night
of the Living Dead (1968)

I saw the 1990
remake long before I ever saw the original, and for quite

a while, I honestly thought I prefered the remake, at least
partly because it has the talents of the incomparable Tony
Todd and Babylon 5's Patricia
Tallman behind it. But when it came time to compile this list,
I realized that only one of the two had really managed to burn

its images into my brain, and that was the original. The original may
feel a little stilted and dated in some ways compared to the remake,
but it's got a power to it that just can't be denied.

4. Dark Water (2002)

The American remake is a perfectly serviceable little film, and has
some decent scares in it, but the original Japanese film is really, really
unsettling. I had a hard time going into elevators after seeing it. And
I never thought I'd be quite so scared of a little pink backpack.

3. Audition (1999)

Okay, I'm going to make kind of an anti-recommendation here, okay? If
you're just looking through this list because you're looking for something
kind of scary for a date, or for a party, don't -- don't pick this one,
all right? Physically brutal, psychologically off-kilter, this movie is
fairly brilliant -- but don't see it unless you're sure you really
want to.

2. The
Haunting (1963)

What can I possibly say about this movie that could convey
the creepy feeling it provides? In some ways, this movie is a little
stilted and dated, but no other film has ever really matched its
atmosphere of oppression and dread. The characters are well-drawn,
neurotic and compelling; the house really feels haunted, with shifting
perspectives and weird trappings; and the writers and directors had the
sense to know that what we don't see is much, much worse than
anything they could put on the screen. (Too bad the makers of the
1999
remake couldn't figure that out. Avoid the remake as if your life
depended on it.)

1. Hellraiser
(1987)

For me, nothing else comes close. The directing debut of my favorite
author, Clive Barker, Hellraiser is a charming little tale of
passions taken too far; it's a movie that isn't afraid to show gore, but
does so for a reason. Hellraiser is an intelligent, thoughtful
film, that sets up its own logic, its own reality, and its own mythology.
Strikingly innovative, it raised the bar for horror films.

Hellraiser Trailer