10 Most Influential Horror Movies Of All Time
10 Most Influential Horror Movies Of All Time
In honor of Horror-Movies.ca’s forthcoming Most Influential Horror Movies timeline we have asked our team of volunteer bloggers to put together a list of what they feel are the most influential horror films of all time. In the very near future we will be including your ideas and suggestions in this list as we launch our Official timeline.
Vetting films was no easy feat, and I had to omit some of my very favorite titles (oh, woe be Leatherface). Even so, this is mostly a matter of opinion–and of course, a bit of film history to back up each entry–so I encourage everyone to add their lists of most influential horror movies to the comments at the end of this article. As always, the more horror, the merrier.
Jaws
Jaws wasn’t the first film to use a giant monster or underwater scares, but short of Godzilla, no force of nature in horror ever seeped into popular culture quite like this finned menace. While Bruce the Shark is the obvious star, the story is driven by its characters without bogging down the audience with too much back story–thereby proving you can have terror sans the usual cardboard characters. In terms of changing the genre in subtler ways, Spielberg broke the then-cardinal rule never to kill kids or animals (RIP Alex Kintner and Pippet) yet never delved into maudlin territory with the dangerous narrative maneuver. But his 1975 sharkfest was influential beyond horror. Widely considered the first summer blockbuster, Jaws paved the way for every June to August big budget bonanza to follow. You’re gonna need a bigger marquee.
Horror of Dracula
Hammer Films ushered in a new era of horror cinema, one in which the color was more saturated and the women more buxom. With a sense of swashbuckling adventure, Horror of Dracula is like a bloodier Adventures of Robin Hood. The baddies might seem insurmountable, but our heroes come through in a grand finale. Like a Victorian MacGyver, Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing utilizes what he’s got available–in this case, a curtain and a couple candlesticks–and defeats the world’s greatest bloodsucker. One of the first pairings of Cushing and Christopher Lee, Horror of Dracula was not the first vampire film–or the first effort to come out of Bray Studios–but it marked a moment when the horror paradigm shifted from old school restraint to unrepentant gore and sex. From Bava to grindhouse, everyone owes this film a macabre debt of gratitude.
Ringu
A complaint that many level against horror is its Eurocentric focus. Watch as white teens frolic and canoodle and get chopped into ribbons. Even the foreign films that fans long ago accepted into the fold–those of Bava and Argento, for example–still reflect Western sensibilities. But in the late 1990s, so-called conventional horror got a taste of how Eastern cultures do terror. Though in no way the first Japanese horror film, Ringu was the breakaway hit that forced American audiences to look beyond the typical continental settings for scares. And what scares they are. The unstoppable nature of J-Horror’s villains make Jason Voorhees look like a fleeting nuisance. Ringu‘s television scene alone is one of the most iconic moments in horror history. The remake did it well but still can’t quite compare.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Some people don’t think of this one as horror, even though the word is literally in the title. But it’s a genre film if ever there was one. There’s mayhem. There’s murder. Heck, there’s even cannibalism. Sure, Rocky Horror has comedy too, but it blends the laughs with the violence to incredibly gruesome, not slapstick, effect. Undoubtedly, this is the longest running horror film of all-time, still playing in places like the Hollywood Theater near Pittsburgh to this day. Back in the 1970s, the midnight movie was a honored tradition among genre fans. Everything from Eraserhead and Night of the Living Dead to El Topo and Pink Flamingos cemented legacies during the witching hour. Sadly, those titles have faded from the marquee, but thanks to Rocky Horror, the midnight movie remains alive and well.
Scream
One of my personal favorites from horror’s last twenty years, this 1996 slasher rebooted the murderous man in the mask trope, all while employing a decisive sense of style and wit. To obliterate expectations, Wes Craven eschewed the usual no-names and cast a group of actors that included several familiar, if not A-List, stars. And scribe Kevin Williamson’s recent Twitter tantrums notwithstanding, Scream manages to hit–and skewer–the usual horror marks with tongue firmly planted in cheek and a self-awareness unlike anything before it. Since then, the imitators have been many–the entire Scary Movie franchise, for one–but this is where a modern generation of horror fans first discovered the genre. If that’s not influence, then nothing is.
Nosferatu
No list of influential horror movies is complete without a nod to one of the first and still among the best vampire flicks. The original imitator–Bram Stoker’s widow was so irked by the rip-off, she ordered every copy destroyed–Nosferatu exudes terror, due in large part to Max Schreck’s uncompromising performance. The rules of bloodsuckers–coffins in crypts, innocent female victims, sunlight sensitivity–debuted on the Silver Screen in this 1922 feature and haven’t left the collective consciousness since. Plus, Nosferatu was a progenitor in terrifying visual effects, including that crazy rat makeup. There’s influential, and then there’s iconoclasm. Count Orlok is the ultimate rebel without a cause, creeper Templeton demeanor and all.
Bride of Frankenstein
The mad scientist laboratory. The tiny figures under glass. That electrifying coif. Virtually every aspect of the Bride of Frankenstein has been repurposed and reimagined in the last eighty years. Heavily influenced by German expressionism–compare the Bride’s movements to Metropolis‘ female robot–James Whale’s 1935 magnum opus is Universal Horror’s most beautiful creation by far. Although not the first horror movie by any means or even the first to star Boris Karloff, Bride of Frankenstein does something to your psyche, twisting you with its lyrical siren song. Modern audiences might find certain moments campy or overwrought, but without this entry into the horror canon, everything from Hammer Films to Young Frankenstein wouldn’t be the same.
Halloween
Truth be told, Black Christmas is probably my favorite of the 1970s slashers. I even named it as the game-changing cut ‘em up in my very first article for this site, much to the chagrin of hardcore Halloween fans. But when it comes to lasting influence, John Carpenter’s Michael Myers has got the edge over Bob Clark’s Billy. Fictional Haddonfield, Illinois is now synonymous with a place you don’t want to spend Samhain as well as the locale for the most beloved massacre that never happened. Since 1978, every single slasher looks to Carpenter’s masterpiece for guidance and rightfully so. The setting, the casting, the music–all of it is spot-on chilling. Who knew a William Shatner mask could ever be so genuinely creepy? (Okay, maybe everyone, but still.)
Night of the Living Dead
My writing perch rotates but almost always involves a Pittsburgh coffee shop. This means at all times, I have an omnipresent reminder of George Romero’s beloved zombies outside my window. Quite the inspiration for a horror writer. Night of the Living Dead is one of those films that’s influenced more than we’ll ever really appreciate. There would be no Walking Dead without it. There’d be no Return of the Living Dead. Horror simply wouldn’t be the same. NotLD was ultra low-budget and out of the Hollywood system in a time when that just wasn’t done, helping to inspire legions of indie filmmakers. Add in the Vietnam War-inspired gore and Civil Rights-era racial undertones, and you’ve got a movie that works on a lot more levels than you’d expect, considering the monsters are literally brain dead. And almost a half century later, film students and critics are still analyzing its subtext.
Psycho / Peeping Tom
Like most of my lists, I’m going to cheat with a twofer. True cinematic doppelgangers, the influence of these two films diverged in very different directions over the years, only to meet up again in modern times. Psycho is remembered as the original slasher, the place where celluloid mastery collided with the lewdest of themes. It even earned Oscar nominations for Hitchcock and actress Janet Leigh. Along with The Exorcist and The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho is the closest horror’s ever come to being fully embraced by mainstream audiences and critics. Peeping Tom, on the other hand, found itself much maligned upon release. Director Michael Powell forces the audience to see murder and mayhem and madness through the perspective of Carl Boehm’s Mark Lewis, leading one critic to call the film more horrible than a colony of lepers. Today, however, Peeping Tom stands tall with Psycho as the twin films that helped usher in an era of slashers, voyeurs, and Freudian devices. Who said you couldn’t intellectualize homicide?
What horror movies do you think have been the most influential?
