Time Out's "100 Best Horror Films"
Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 12:01PM I am fascinated by the horror genre. From afar. As in: I am not at all fascinated by the horror genre but am endlessly curious about why it provokes so much feverish fandom in others. So I find myself reading about the horror genre a lot in an intermittent effort to understand it. From afar. Time Out London just came out with a poll of horror biggies and horror enthusiasts to form an eclectic list of the 100 best horror films. Some of them that I love I hadn't really thought of as "horror" (though on second thought they clearly are) like Dead Ringers, The Night of the Hunter and Ken Russell's The Devils.
I knew my three all time favorites would rank high though my fourth favorite horror film (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?) did not make the list.
Nathaniel's Horror Trinity: CARRIE, ROSEMARY'S BABY, and PSYCHO
The films on the list that prompted the most nightmares were The Silence of the Lambs (which I weirdly dreamt up constantly before seeing it) and The Omen which I saw on television by myself (after my parents had gone to bed) as a kid. It was probably severely edited but I was so terrified that Damien shared my birthday (June 6th) that I raced to the bathroom mirrors afterwards to check my head for a 666 mark -- no joke! I was so scared I had nightmares for a full week afterwards and vowed to never watch another scary movie.
As an adult the films I was most terrified of while I was watching them were: Halloween which I didn't see until the early 90s on VHS when a friend would not let me be until I watched it; The Descent which I saw in a completely empty theater... like one big dark cave, The Blair Witch Project's last ten minutes in which I basically thought I would die (though that experience seems unrepeatable); Audition because... holy hell; and The Shining which I saw for the first time in basically .... wait for it... a cabin in the woods.
In the interest of full disclosure and to illustrate my scaredy-cat nature I have seen but 32% of the 100 wide list which I've included in a visual after the jump if you must mock me. How many have you seen? And which 10 do you think should be mandatory viewing?
Reader Comments (50)
You have to see The Exorcist and Don't Look Now, come on!
I'll never understand people's hang-ups with Audition. I found it mind-bogglingly dull.
I'd also argue that The Exorcist hasn't aged well. I think there's so much material out there that discusses it that when I finally got around to seeing it I knew everything that was coming.
Most of them I've watched way back when I was a child so I can't remember the scenes. However, I believe I have watched on;y 26 of the one hundred and most of them on VCR and VHS. Now, I watch movies online and I'll watch Chernobyl Diaries online once its available.
Nathaniel, go watch Repulsion and Suspiria!
Poltergeist is one of my all time favorite movies, period. I truly believe it missed out on a Best Picture nomination.
Seen 39 of them, including 17 of their top 20. The eleven I've seen I'd count as absolutely mandatory viewing for non horror hounds are:
11. An American Werewolf in London (just the harrowing transformation effect scene alone makes this absolutely mandatory, plus, everyone's seen Jaws)
10. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
9. Don't Look Now (don't worry Nat, the ONLY gore is at the end)
8. The Innocents
7. The Shining
6. A Nightmare on Elm Street
5. Alien
4. Come and See
3. Bride of Frankenstein
2. The Night of the Hunter
1. Eraserhead
The three least necessary viewings:
Cannibal Holocaust (It's called Cannibal Holocaust. Unless you're a gore or horror hound, you're not going to get much out of this.)
Jacob's Ladder (Tim Robbins is amazing at grounding it, but the ending is a total cop-out of a genuinely engaging narrative.)
Black Sunday (Once you realize early on that the villain is going to lose, all fear and tension leaves the viewing process.)
Nathaniel! You really haven't seen The Exorcist? It's kind of predictable to have Rosemary, Psycho and Exorcist so high on a list like this, but it's because they're perfect movies. And I second Ooh la La - Suspiria is a really fun time.
I love this list - so many renting ideas!
Dude. The Exorcist, you HAVE TO SEE. Same with Texas Chain Saw Massacre. So freaking good.
And don't read ANYTHING about Don't Look Now. Just watch it. Shivers for days.
Horror related: saw Rec3, Génesis just yesterday. Loved it. Recommended for people who liked the other 2 or even for people who didn't see the other two (the plot can make it work as a different, lone movie). It's worthy. In fact, I liked it much better than the second one which had (as it happens all the time) the burden of the sequel that can't live up to the first one. This one does, imo. It's just pure horror fun in a visceral love story.*
For me the appeal of horror movies is because it's pure escapism. It's a kind of horror you can escape from any time you want, as opposed to the horror in real life.
*What's the fascination with brides this year?
I really love Don`t Look Now but I'd say the best film on the list that you absolutely HAVE to see is Suspiria. It's one of the most visually complicated and beautiful films I've ever seen.
I've only seen 13, it's not my favourite genre either. You have to see The Exorcist, Nathaniel!!
Btw, aren't you missing Eraserhead from your list?
I've seen 64 of them for sure. A few have many titles and edits so I can't say for sure if I've seen them. Some of the films are really oddball choices. For example, I consider God Told Me To to be the best Easter film of all time, but it's hard to justify it as "best" anything without a healthy dose of irony. It's exploit/cult/serial killer/screwball by design. And, to be frank, there's not nearly enough sisters of satan/nunsploitation or psycho-biddy/seniors in peril on that list. And by not enough, I mean none.
Mandatory viewing:
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Psycho
Rosemary's Baby
Suspiria(too beautiful to ignore, and that's coming from someone who hates it)
Audition (super slick with an exceptional sound design, if a little light in plot and character)
Cat People
Eyes Without a Face
Les Diaboliques
The Wicker Man
Repulsion
I picked horrors that a non-horror fan would find value in. Lots of black and white and foreign because the modern horror dialogue is still driven by US films, which is terrible considering how many US directors borrowed from the French, Italian, and Japanese styles.
Of these, only Audition and Suspiria are gory. TCM shows you the aftermath and edits around the attacks. Eyes Without a Face has surgery, but it's beautiful, not horrible.
Nathaniel, I feel like you would really like the Val Lewton horrors. Films like Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and Bedlam are all about acting, suspense, and image-driven storytelling. Cat People, for example, is filled with cat imagery from the first scene. You just don't realize until later on when clocks, picture frames, and furniture cast haunting shadows of cats over every wall. They're not particularly scary. They're eerie, moody, and impeccably executed.
I came back to see if you've watched Eyes Without a Face. I know you liked The Skin I Live In, and Eyes Without a Face is an important insipiration for Skin. Hopefully you'll let us know what you add to your 32.
I was nervous when the list started right off with one that I hadn't even heard of before (Come and See at #100) that I wouldn't be able to be as haughty about being a scary movie expert as I'd planned to be when I clicked over, but I'm proud to report that there are only six films on that list that I haven't seen! They are Come and See, Threads, Daughters of Darkness, Society, Kill Baby Kill, and Night of the Demon. And now I have a list of new movies to seek out! That is why lists rule.
I love Suspiria and agree that it's one of the most beautiful movies ever made (man what the hell happened to Dario Argento?) but I think it might be too explicitly gory for Nat. On that same note though, Texas Chainsaw Massacre really is all suggestion, so I would say he has no excuse for not seeing it. No excuse, Nathaniel! Same goes for The Exorcist, and as mentioned any and all of Tourneur's horror movies would probably be right up your alley. I Walked With A Zombie is my favorite, it's so brilliantly shot. And The Haunting! See The Haunting! That's the greatest haunted house movie ever made - I just read the other day that it's Scorsese's favorite horror film.
How odd.
My girlfriend and I woke up this morning talking about horror films and how we were in the mood to watch one (which I never ever feel like doing... being scared sucks). We then navigated over to thefilmexperience to find this!
We just finished watching Psycho and now I get to show her Rosemary's Baby for the first time. She's going to show me the original Wicker Man. I hope this is at least close to a fair trade.
Thanks for inspiring yet another one of my days!
Oh, I forgot. I've only seen 35 films of that list (those titles I can recognise without looking at their translation on IMDB). It makes me feel embarrased, but on the other hand, it means there're 65 horror films worth mentioning that I can see!
I count 67 films I've see, including a few very fine choices ('Dead of Night' was a nice surprise).
If I had to single out one film of the bunch I'd recommend to you, it would be Freaks. It is one of the most remarkable films I've ever seen, and the chant 'We accept her, we accept her, gooble gobble, gooble gobble, one of us, one of us' makes for one of film history's most memorable scenes ever.
Also I liked seeing three Jacques Tourneur films, 'The Black Cat' (Karloff's finest performance) and 'Vampyr' on there, as well as 'Come and See' and 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer', which I both wouldn't quite consider horror films.
Two side notes: I like 'Suspiria' a lot, but my favorite Argento film still has to be 'Profondo Rosso'. And 'Braindead' is my favorite Peter Jackson movie by a mile. Make that by two miles.
You haven't seen The Others??
My favorite on the list that I've seen is definitely The Descent. Loved it.
I'm not much of a horror movie fan myself, so I can't provide a Top 10 essential viewing, but I second the recommendations to see 'An American Werewolf in London' and 'The Haunting.'
Mandatory Films for viewing from that list
1. The Exorcist
2. The Shinning
3. Alien
4. The Thing
5 The Others
6. Halloween
7. Nightmare on Elm Street
8. Night of the Living Dead
9. Poltergiest
10. The Mist
I'd also suggest The Strangers. That is one of the scariest films I've seen in the past 10 years because it relies solely on sound design and sight scares, barely any gore. Also, some of the most memorable villains from a horror film in ages
You know what I just noticed about that list? So many of the best directors made horror films, which doesn't tend to happen as much, if at all, these days.
Not a huge fan of the genre (though I'm wondering about Whedon's new film because of the reviews and, well, it's Whedon) , but my top picks from the list:
1. Psycho
2. The Exorcist
3. The Shining
4. Rosemary's Baby
5. The Silence of the Lambs
6. Alien
7. The Blair Witch Project
The Birds still scares my mother to death, but the graphics make it hard for me to take seriously. (I think I laughed last time I watched it.) I haven't gotten around to Carrie - I know, I know, and I've seen so many parts of Jaws I can't remember if I've seen the whole thing or not. Ones they missed - I thought Aliens was better than Alien, though it was arguably more of an action film, and A Clockwork Orange feels like it's close to the genre. I adore the Screams, but they're so comedic I'm not sure they belong here.
My typical problem with horror is I never get invested enough in the characters to be upset when they start dropping like flies. Horror's like a stiff shot - unless it's completely amazing on it's own, I prefer it with a mixer. Comedy or mystery will typically do the trick, but add too much and it's not really horror anymore.
I've seen 38, which seems really low for me, but oh well...
Essential viewing (super hard to narrow down):
1. Halloween
2. The Exorcist
3. Suspiria
4. The Shining
5. Psycho
6. Rosemary's Baby
7. The Thing
8. A Nightmare on Elm Street
9. The Others
10. Poltergeist
No Scream??? I understand it isn't as 100% horror as some of these, but it's one of the best ever in my opinion.
You've never seen The Others, Nat? You need to! It's great.
I really need to see some of these, and watch some again. Poltergeist and The Exorcist (which I'm surprised you haven't seen btw) I've seen, but not in a formal viewing way. Same with Silence of the Lambs, I really want to rewatch that.
I kinda wanna watch Blair Witch Project again. I watched it as a kid and I remember it being pretty scary.
Gah, I left The Sixth Sense off my list! I really do love that one, and disagree when people say it hasn't held up well. Also, would Zodiac count? More of a mystery/suspense film, but that was pretty fantastic (and weirdly underrated).
Mandatory Viewing:
1) Ring. I'm not a fan of a lot of the J-horror that followed (I really loathe The Grudge films, both original and remake), but this is a film that completely transcends its genre, is eerie in a way that's unexpected, and hugely influential on what followed. I also really loved Hideo Nakata's follow-up Dark Water.
2) Nightmare On Elm Street. Because I love Wes Craven and this is probably the film of his that I've seen the most. It also contains one of my favourite ever horror movie characters in Nancy's boozehound of a mother, who is a sort of camp heaven all by herself.
3) Don't Look Now. For the performances alone this is sublime, but it's also - for my money - the best film that's ever been made about grief.
4) The Thing. Simply because I was obsessed with the X-Files episode that used this as its template, before realising that it was riffing off Carpenter's version.
5) Wolf Creek. I watched this by myself on New Year's Eve for some reason and it scared the pants off me. Looking back, I do also think it rather smartly rewrites some of the typical backwoods horror movie rules, but at the time, all I can remember is how frightened I was whilst watching it alone.
6) Black Christmas. Sublime sorority horror that includes death by crystal unicorn.
7) Evil Dead 2. Because drunken university evenings in halls wouldn't have been the same without this and the Child's Play films.
8) Night of the Living Dead. This was the first horror film I watched when I was younger and was aware of what it was trying to say as well as how it was trying to scare. There have been films that I've re-evaluated later as an adult, but I have a perfect memory of my first time watching this and how enthralled I was.
9) The Orphanage. Desperately sad whilst still being very clever.
10) Society. This has one of the most batshit endings to any film I've ever seen. I taped it off late night TV when I was sixteen or something, and it terrified me for days without me ever being able to put my finger on what exactly I was terrified of.
I can't believe I forgot The Changeling! That's definitely one of the best horror films ever made! I'm throwing that into my list somewhere in the top five.
Oh yeah, I love love love The Sixth Sense.
Twenty-one films, with the oft-cited "The Exorcist", "Psycho", and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" among the missing. However, of what I have seen, these seem the most indispensible -
10. The Fog (shock-scares abound, though remarkably bloodless. And Adrienne's most notable talents [both of them] are highlighted.)
9. The Black Cat (try to imagine Karloff and Lugosi in a horror film...and neither of them playing a supernatural monster. Skip it if you cannot handle someone being skinned alive.)
8. Jacob's Ladder (for Elizabeth Pena...and that tail...)
7. The Sixth Sense (beacuse I love Night's work, and this is his best.)
6. Poltergeist (just a great movie, regardless of genre.)
5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956] (the Red Scare as a green pod.)
4. A Nightmare on Elm Street (the terror you feel is because we all sleep - and dream.)
3. Cat People (because Robert G. is right...this is a movie for cat lovers.)
2. The Birds (Hitchcock is a genius - I do not understand how I have managed to miss Psycho all these years.)
1. Carrie (only in the case of The Shawshank Redemption has anyone done a better job of bringing Stephen King to the big screen.)
Okay I can already cross one more off my list - since my last comment I just watched Society. OH MY GOD. Oh my god. What the fuck did I just watch?
Uh anyway I am down to just five on the list that I haven't seen! Thanks for sharing this list, Nat. Also Cabin in the Woods is terrific fun, I hope (if you haven't already) you're willing to give it a chance, there's really only minimal gore and as a fellow Whedon fanatic it is right in the wheelhouse.
Wait. Nathaniel hasn't seen The Others? This needs to be remedied. Nicole Kidman might have won Best Actress if she was nominated for this instead of Moulin Rouge!. She completely becomes another, less glamorous and emotional, person. Her role is a cross between the long-suffering mother role and the slow descent to insanity archetypes and it works. The film is more Shirley Jackson than Stephen King, filled with mood and nuance instead of sensationalism and gore.
Dudes, he's seen The Others. It's number 53. This is how rumors get started!
We can all calm down. The Others is number 53, with the girl in the veil and the doll.
Cabin in the Woods should be added to this list, though it's nowhere near "straight horror"
Where is Black Swan? Aside from the obvious scares and shocks, it has definitely startled me psychologically regarding art, obsession, and the polar forces of the black and white swan. Does anyone agree?
I haven't read anything in this post except the first three sentences about being perplexed by how passionate people are about it and I just wanted to come straight here and furiously agree with that statement.
The obsession with horror is the one thing I don't understand at all about online film culture. Not only do I don't understand it, I don't even care.
Okay, i'm going to head back and read the rest now.
Ok, I would make a top ten from their choices, but i got in shock when I saw the arguably best war movie ever made placed in 100th! Come and See is one of the greatest movies ever and would tie for the best war movie with The Ascent, also a Russian movie directed by the wife of Come And See director, Larissa Shepitko.
But, anyway, since you haven't a lot of these movies, I'll make a TOP FIVE GUIDE for the Actressexual, not including stuff you've seen, like Foster and Farrow and Signoret!
1 - Possession - You thought Adele H. and Camille Claudel were the crem of the crop of Isabelle Adjani's career? Try this one. New heights to screen acting.
2 - The Innocents - Deborah Kerr is pitch-perfect in another great turn of sexual repression and fear.
3 - Repulsion - Sexual repression for Deneuve too, but instead of seeing ghosts, she becomes herself a beast.
4 - Don't Look Now - Julie Christie is so delicate... This like Antichrist without the misoginy. Her kid dies and her sexuality is on fire, but she doesn't try to kill her husbands. The effects are on her, specially a heigghtended sensibility.
5 - The Orphanage - Killer performance by Belén Rueda, all maternal instincts and stubborness. Incredibly avoids repeating the Deborah Kerr performance in The Innocents. Such a detailed, controlled performance even when her part is all the rage. She is magnificent.
Samuel - Fear is a human emotion, a part of the human experience. Isn't it? And isn't it the job of art to attempt to explain and explore all of human experience? It seems willfully ignorant to me to avoid an entire spectrum of expression by an art-form one admires. They might be base emotions you want to feel above but that doesn't make fear and rage and paranoia and disgust and perversion and so on actual parts of every person's life, and trying to grapple with those realities is not a perverted cause. Whenever a horror movie does this well "responsible" critics fall over themselves to say it "transcends the genre" because there's some ridiculous stigma attached to being a "horror" movie, as if there isn't "horror" in the world, or it's somehow below us to try and grapple with that fact. I don't mind it when people say they can't watch horror movies because they get nightmares from them or whatever but they don't exist in a vacuum, they exist for a reason, and as much as any genre they get it right as they get it wrong. Hell I'd say horror movies on the whole do a better job at expressing horror than romantic comedies do at expressing love.
In summation, where would the rubber-mask industry be without horror? Think of all those poor unemployed people!
I'm glad there're some spanish movies in the list!
"The Others" and "Rec" are my favourite spanish movies of the list. I don't understand why they had to make "Quarantine", the remake of "Rec". In Spain we see dubbed movies and we don't have to make our own version, we see the original movie wich is better than the remake always (for example "Abre los ojos (Open your eyes)" and "Vanilla Sky")
I have seen The Others -- a few times. Hello, Nicki Kidman, Nicki Kidman.
And it's in the visual chart so I'm not sure why people are saying I haven't seen it. Curious.
but yeah. the exorcist and TCM are films I purposely have never seen. too scared. but i feel more and more guilty about the former. I have no intentions of ever watching the latter.
I'm not good with scary movies ever. Since my brother made me watch Halloween on Halloween when I was 12. Didn't sleep for at least a week.
I was surprised I'd seen 37 movies on the list but even more surprised that no one, especially Nat, has mentioned Peeping Tom. It's not the scariest movie I've seen and it's not gory at all but it's easily the most disturbing movie I've ever seen and it's one of my favorites. This is the movie that ended Michael Powell's career. It says a lot about filmmaking and filmgoing and, needless to say is gorgeous to look at. It came out the same year as Psycho and works well as a companion piece as the movies have similar main characters. I urge anyone on this site who hasn't seen it to do so at once!
Nathaniel: Regarding The Exorcist and Turner Classic Massacre, have you ever seen the documentary American Nightmare? It's a really interesting movie about the Vietnam War's effect on horror movies. Basically the thesis is that while a director like Hitchcock wanted the audience to submit to his control, a movie like TCM wanted the audience to feel like no one was in control, ever. That's my paraphrase of the movie's thesis, but the point is, it's a documentary about horror, and if you haven't seen it, you might enjoy it. Lots of interviews and clips with Craven, Hooper, Romero, others...
timothy -- that does sound worth watching. I will obviously need to add a couple of these movies onto the Best Shot series to force myself to watch them.
Nate, watch "Let's Scare Jessica to Death". Despite the lurid title it is a really excellent mood piece. It falls off the rails a bit in the last act but Zohra Lampert's performance is extraordinary. And I mean extraordinary, Oscar-robbed material. Mariclare Costello is also very good and memorable. Unique score and fantastic photography. Really more of a psychological horror than a slasher, Martha Marcy May Marlene meets The Others meets The Innocents, kinda, but its its own beast.
Oops, also "Come and See" is on that list - certainly horrifying. A tour-de-force. IMO the best two war films of all time were directed by husband and wife - Elem Klimov's "Come and See" and Larisa Shepitko's "The Ascent". And each contain one of my all-time favourite male performances in Aleksei Fedorchenko and Boris Plotnikov. (Anatoli Solonitsyn is also in The Ascent and is unforgettable)
This is my least-favorite genre. I've seen only 26 movies :/ I should see more, I know, shame on me. But my 3 recommendations for you are:
-The Exorcist, watch this at least for Ellen Burstyn, she's very good in here.
-The Thing, crazy and kick-ass make-up.
-Freaks, I watched this movie years ago in a special at tcm, Latin-america, and I loved it, this could be a great choice for HWYBS :)
39 for me. But I hated some of them. Switchblade Romance/High Tension is crap.
Nat you have to watch the exorcist it tops my list as the greatest horror film of all time followed by psycho and the shining as top 3
Interesting list. I've seen 66 of the 100, including 9 of the Top 10 (sadly, still haven't seen Halloween). My own Top 10: 1) The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), 2) Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998), 3) Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977), 4) The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), 5) The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976), 6) Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), 7) Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978), 8) The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999), 9) Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf; Ingmar Bergman, 1968), 10) The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963). Best decade of horror films: 1970s, hands down.
I've seen:
2 from 100-91
4 from 90-81
5.5 from 80-71 (I shut Salo off very quickly, it's a vile film that I never want to revisit)
6 from 70-61
6 from 60-51
2.5 from 50-41 (I've only seen part of Peeping Tom)
5.75 from 40-31 (only part of Cannibal Holacaust and an even smaller part of Martyrs)
10(!) from 30-21
8 from 20-11
9 from 10-1 (damn you Suspiria!)
For a very impressive 58.75 total! Watch The Exorcist, Nathaniel. Best Picture of 1973 IMO.
Many of the horror films released since 2000 can be grouped into specific sub-categories. Over the last decade we've seen a rise in torture for sport films such as Saw and in horror-comedy hybrids like like Zombieland. There have also been an overwhelming number of remakes of both foreign films and older American classics. Some of these have been respectable (Let Me In), but too many others have offered nothing more than a reminder of how effective their original source material was (A Nightmare on Elm Street.... I am the Big Fan of Best Horror Movies and the Best thing i Found on Your site . I found only Best Movies in your site.......