15 Scariest Classic Horror Movies
There’s been a lot of discussion on X/Twitter lately about the idea that very old films can’t compete with modern ones. Older films lack color, often appear grainy and generally…not from the era. What about horror specifically? Comedy doesn’t always age well, even when we can recognize the skills involved, and thrillers can follow a similar path: the things that scared us collectively back in the day don’t necessarily continue to resonate, and sometimes the mere repetition of themes, visuals and images dull their impact over the years and decades. However, there are plenty of older horror films (I’m setting the record straight here at 1980) that work at least as well today as they ever did.
Nosferatu (1922)
“Let’s make Dracula ,” thought silent film director F.W. Murnau, “but let’s avoid royalties by calling it Nosferatu instead.” It wasn’t the best idea, as it was almost lost forever in the legal battles that followed, but the film survived, and that’s a triumph. Nosferatu introduced much of what we think we know about vampires, including much that was never in the source material (including the idea that vampires are killed by sunlight), but despite While much here is familiar, Max Schreck’s performance as Count Orlok remains striking (and problematic, given his similarities to Jewish stereotypes, intentional or not). This is no suave Count Dracula, but a wild, ugly monster, played with such conviction that it’s often hard to believe there’s a man underneath all that makeup – the 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire reimagines the creation of Nosferatu with the idea that Shrek was a real vampire. There are elements here that are unlikely to truly frighten modern audiences, but you will definitely enjoy this performance.
Where to watch: Prime Video , Tubi, Shudder, Crackle
Freaks (1932)
From the wildly successful Dracula in 1931 to what was almost certainly the biggest box office disappointment of his career, director Tod Browning treated Freaks as something of a passion project that irreparably damaged his reputation. The Freaks discover a devious trapeze artist who has joined a carnival act and then plots to seduce and kill one of the show’s little performers for his inheritance. Browning’s desire for verisimilitude leads him to hire disabled actors to play the roles of carnival “freaks,” an innovation then and for many decades after, even though the film often feels exploitative. The disabled characters are treated unfairly, but their revenge (though well deserved) is terrible: in the castration scene, among other things, people walk out of test screenings. A memorable climax with a chorus of “One of Us!” It’s one of the most unsettling climaxes in horror film history.
Where to watch: Tubi, digital rental.
The Black Cat (film, 1934)
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, who presided over the blockbuster era of horror films (with Dracula and Frankenstein , respectively), memorably team up here in this sometimes forgotten film, which also became one of the biggest hits of its year. Lugosi plays Dr. Vitus Werdegast, who meets a couple of stranded newlyweds in Hungary on their way to the home of old “friend” Hjalmar Poelzig, who lives nearby in a stunningly stylish expressionist mansion. It turns out that Poelzig betrayed Dr. Werdegast’s unit to the Russians during World War I and took his wife and daughter: this is not a secular appeal, this is revenge. The rest includes demonology, preserved corpses, attempted cat murders, and some of the most disturbing imagery in pre-Code cinema. Skinning one character while he’s alive may not have been done as overtly as it is today, but it’s no less jarring.
Where to watch: digital rental
Dead of Night (1945)
This British anthology film features four chilling stories about a traveler who arrives as a guest at a country cottage. He immediately feels vaguely uneasy, but despite everything, each guest has a story to tell. All the stories are more than sufficiently frightening, but the standout is almost certainly the final scene involving ventriloquist Maxwell Frere and his dummy Hugo. It’s the template for all the creepy doll stories to follow, and it does it better than many of them. Once the stories wrap up, the film has a memorable final twist that almost takes it into the realm of science fiction.
Where to stream: Kanopy, Plex
Isle of the Dead (1945)
Another Boris Karloff film , Isle of the Dead is a creepy but incredibly timely tale of disease and death on a remote island. Karloff is General Nicholas Ferides, who takes leave from the Balkan War to visit his wife’s grave on a small Greek island with an American reporter, but finds himself trapped when a plague breaks out. A brutal, efficient (but very correct) general takes charge of enforcing the quarantine, but is faced with locals who either want to escape for their own gain, or whose superstitious fears lead them to persecute those who don’t quite fit in. Is the nurse who watched over the deaths of the locals actually an undead vorvolak? This is what the charismatic housewife begins to believe, and she becomes more and more persuasive as the bodies pile up.
Where to watch: digital rental
Spiral Staircase (1946)
One of the progenitors of the slasher genre. The film is about a serial killer who preys on disabled women in a small Vermont town in the early 20th century. Dorothy McGuire is superb in the title role of Helen, a mute woman who is stalked by a mysterious killer over the course of one night. Given the limited environment and time frame, it is tense and effective; it’s also easy to see how a genre has (slowly) grown out of it: a starring cast, cinematography that puts us in the killer’s point of view, and even some jump scares make the film quite modern in some ways.
Where to watch: Flix (also available on YouTube)
Night of the Hunter (1955)
Actor Charles Laughton has made exactly one film, and it was his classic. Robert Mitchum plays the respectable Harry Powell, a true religious fanatic who stalks and kills women who have the courage to arouse him – the film was way ahead of its time in its themes. He gets away with it because his sermons are very convincing, and his latest target is the widow Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) and her rather skeptical young son. Reverend Powell is an all-time cinematic great (inspiring cinematic devils for decades), and The Night of the Hunter is as frightening as it is tense; it also boasts visuals that are some of the most beautiful and unsettling in a thriller.
Where to watch: MGM+, The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
The Fly (1958)
As we learned when it was remade in 1986, a silly-sounding idea can produce real horror. “The Fly” begins with the scientist’s wife confessing that she killed him by smashing his head to pulp with a hydraulic press. In a flashback, we learn that the scientist was working on a matter transporter, which he first tests on the ill-fated cat before trying it out on himself… which you shouldn’t do unless you’re absolutely sure there’s no fly. got into the matrix. There are shades of 1950s monster features here, but it’s also body horror before there was any, full of jump scares and an absolutely thrilling final act.
Where to watch: digital rental
Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Wanting to avoid problems with European and local censors, French director Georges Franju was warned against all the blood and gore the story might otherwise require. It’s for the best. After an accident disfigures his daughter, a plastic surgeon is determined to give her a face transplant that will restore her to his idea of beauty. The problem, as you can imagine, is where to get the face (hint: it’s about murder). The tone here is sly and suggestive (we might call it sublime in the parlance of modern horror films) with effective flashes of gore, but the hints of violence are even more effective.
Where to watch: Max , The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
Peeping Tom (1960)
A formative film in the slasher and serial killer subgenres, many now-familiar tropes appear here for the first time. Director Michael Powell, who with Emeric Pressburger made some of the most stunningly clever and beautiful films of Britain’s golden age, is hardly known for potboilers, which is why audiences were shocked in 1960 when he nearly abandoned his career with this handsome but garish shocker. . The story of a serial killer who is obsessed with his victims’ dying expressions and films them with a direct-view camera contains many of the dark thrills we’ve come to expect from slasher films, but at the same time it works as a commentary on our own voyeuristic interest in death and murder. However, it is this visual perspective that remains effective, creating the feeling, at least for a moment, that you are the one being killed.
Where to watch: The Criterion Channel, Tubi, digital rental.
Ghosts (1963)
Based on Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House , the film begins with a fairly standard premise: a scientist invites a disparate group of visitors to spend the night at the reputedly haunted Hill House, a beautiful but strangely designed mansion. “House on Haunted Hill” has a similar layout but a completely different execution). As in Jackson’s novel, director Robert Wise creates a character drama from a terrifying night, exploring each character in turn but focusing on the shy and awkward Eleanor, who has spent much of her adult life caring for her mother. Now that her mother has died, Eleanor feels free for the first time in a long time, but has no idea how to live in the real world. The tone is consistently chilling and melancholic, while also adding a couple of the most heartbreaking scenes in horror history. It becomes a film about two lost souls who unexpectedly find each other and have no plans to ever be apart again.
Where to watch: Tubi, MGM+, digital rental.
Kuroneko (1968)
The horrifying and creepy story follows two women, a mother and her daughter-in-law, who are sexually assaulted and then killed by a squad of samurai, only to be brought back from the dead (with the help of a black cat, naturally) with the goal of brutally exacting revenge on any samurai foolish enough to succumb to their charm. Having thought about it, the task of destroying the spirits is entrusted to a young warrior – a man who, by the will of fate, is the son and husband of two murdered women. It may be the original rape-revenge film, one of the most unsettling subgenres of horror, but it’s done in suitably unsettling style. The revenge of the two women is truly terrible, and all the more disturbing because it is justified.
Where to watch: The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
Don’t Torment the Duckling (1972)
Dario Argento (Suspiria) remains perhaps the most popular name in Italian giallo, but Lucio Fulci comes in second in a triumvirate that also includes Mario Bava. While Argento’s films of the 1970s were more like stylish murder mysteries, Fulci was already making full-on, very gory horror films. Don’t Torture a Duckling is one of his first and best films, set in a confined and isolated Italian village where a serial killer is killing children. The very religious villagers start pointing fingers at anyone who doesn’t really fit in, and the result is a morally gray film that makes a lot of sense about the Catholic Church, but also includes some intense and incredibly violent scenes of violence.
Where to watch: Tubi, The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
Black Christmas (1974)
An early triumph of the slasher film and the best use of the line “The call is coming from inside the house!” Trope: When a Stranger Calls would have handled this quite well a few years later, but it’s a much more uneven film. Here, a group of sorority sisters (led by Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder) receive several obscene phone calls at the house as winter break begins. The film’s isolated and lonely setting is incredibly effective (the campus is almost empty) and the killer is unashamed of his methods. Even better, and like Halloween a few years later, the film (directed by A Christmas Story ‘s Bob Clark) invests in its mostly female cast, even the drunken party girls, so that when the killing begins, the stakes become very real.
Where to watch: Prime Video , Peacock , Tubi, Shudder, Crackle
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
It’s not a very visual picture by today’s standards, but it seems intuitive, even if you don’t see as much as you think. Even after decades of slasher films and the full rise of torture horror, TCM is still deeply unsettling when it isn’t truly exciting. For viewers who want to talk about the visual advantages of modern digital filmmaking, here’s a great example of a film whose old-school film grain and budget constraints are strengths rather than weaknesses; The finished product can at times resemble a snuff box. It’s the granddaddy of a certain type of gritty horror, and it remains effective even if it’s dubbed over and over again.
Where to watch: Prime Video , Tubi, Peacock