1FF's Top 100 Horror Films

[Cas]

Ten Pointers

The Haunting (The good one, 1963)
Dr. John Markway, an anthropologist with an interest in psychic phenomena, takes two specially selected women to Hill House, a reportedly haunted mansion. Eleanor (Julie Harris), a lonely, eccentric woman with a supernatural event in her past, and the bold Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has ESP, join John and the mansion's heir, cynical Luke (Russ Tamblyn). They are immediately overwhelmed by strange sounds and events, and Eleanor comes to believe the house is alive and speaking directly to her.

The Dark Tower
Carolyn Page (Jenny Agutter) is a well-known architect, busy working on the most ambitious skyscraper of her career. Things are running smoothly until a window washer mysteriously falls to his death in front of the building. Other accidents follow, and soon the tower is enveloped in rumors of ghosts and evil spirits. As Carolyn desperately tries to keep the construction going, security officer Dennis Randall (Michael Moriarty) reaches out to a paranormal expert (Theodore Bikel) for help.

Freaks
When trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) learns that circus midget Hans (Harry Earles) has an inheritance, she marries the lovesick, diminutive performer, all the while planning to steal his fortune and run off with her lover, strong man Hercules (Henry Victor). When Hans' friends and fellow performers discover what is going on, they band together and carry out a brutal revenge that leaves Hercules and Cleopatra knowing what it truly means to be a "freak."

Vacancy
When David (Luke Wilson) and Amy's (Kate Beckinsale) car breaks down, they have little choice but to spend the night at a remote hotel. The couple entertain themselves by watching low-budget slasher movies on TV -- until they realize that the horrifying images they see were recorded in the room in which they are staying. With hidden cameras capturing their every move, David and Amy must find a way out before they become the latest stars in another film in the series of snuff films.

Dracula (1958)
On a search for his missing friend Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen), vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is led to Count Dracula's (Christopher Lee) castle. Upon arriving, Van Helsing finds an undead Harker in Dracula's crypt and discovers that the count's next target is Harker's ailing fiancée, Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh). With the help of her brother, Arthur (Michael Gough), Van Helsing struggles to protect Lucy and put an end to Count Dracula's parasitic reign of terror.

 

[Cas]

11 pointers next. Go get snacks and shit.

 

[Cas]

Eleven Pointers

Cat People (1942)
Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), a New York City--based fashion designer who hails from Serbia, begins a romance with marine engineer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). After the couple gets married, Oliver becomes concerned about Irena's notion that she is cursed and may transform into a large cat in the heat of passion. Confiding in his beautiful assistant, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph), about his marital issues, Oliver unwittingly triggers Irena's curse, with tragic results.

Blood and Black Lace
A masked man with a metal-claw glove stalks models at a couple's (Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok) fashion salon in Rome.

The Grudge
Matthew Williams (William Mapother), his wife, Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and mother, Emma (Grace Zabriskie), are Americans making a new life in Tokyo. Together they move into a house that has been the site of supernatural occurrences in the past, and it isn't long before their new home begins terrorizing the Williams family as well. The house, as it turns out, is the site of a curse that lingers in a specific place and claims the lives of anyone that comes near.

Hostel
Best friends Josh (Derek Richardson) and Paxton (Jay Hernandez) decide to spend the summer after college graduation on an all-out backpacking trip across Europe. While stopping in Amsterdam to indulge their tastes for drugs and sex, they meet Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), a like-minded traveler from Iceland. When the three bachelors set off to investigate enticing rumors of a Slovakian hostel in a city populated by lusty women, they find themselves drawn unwittingly into a deadly game.

The Orphan
Devastated by the loss of their unborn baby, Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard) decide to adopt a child. At the orphanage, both feel drawn to a little girl (Isabelle Fuhrman) named Esther, and soon the couple take their new daughter home. But when a dangerous series of events unfolds, Kate begins to suspect that there is something evil lurking behind the child's angelic exterior.

Eraserhead
Henry (John Nance) resides alone in a bleak apartment surrounded by industrial gloom. When he discovers that an earlier fling with Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) left her pregnant, he marries the expectant mother and has her move in with him. Things take a decidedly strange turn when the couple's baby turns out to be a bizarre lizard-like creature that won't stop wailing. Other characters, including a disfigured lady who lives inside a radiator, inhabit the building and add to Henry's troubles.

Eyes Without a Face
Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane (Edith Scob), who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise (Alida Valli), kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.

 

[Gilly?]

Nice to see a few people have chosen Freaks.

 

[Smudge]

I love the Faculty. The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And its got Robert Patrick and a boss soundtrack, so all kinds of win.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Vampyr
A drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire. Vampyr is a german-French horror film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Mine #14. 1932. OG vampire movie, half way between silent and talkie. Like a lot of great horror films it's much less concerned with narrative than atmosphere and stimmung. There's a tremendous visual inventiveness to it, but it's a low key sort of affair... gloomy, austere, unsettling, surreal, oneiric. An strange and uniqye film on which the label "horror" rests a little uneasily, and not without flaws (it rather bogs down in intertitle hell at points), but its best moments are high watermarks of cinema as tone poem...

 

[Cheese & Biscuits]

Mine #14. 1932. OG vampire movie, half way between silent and talkie. Like a lot of great horror films it's much less concerned with narrative than atmosphere and stimmung. There's a tremendous visual inventiveness to it, but it's a low key sort of affair... gloomy, austere, unsettling, surreal, oneiric. An strange and uniqye film on which the label "horror" rests a little uneasily, and not without flaws (it rather bogs down in intertitle hell at points), but its best moments are high watermarks of cinema as tone poem...

Never heard of it, sounds good. May have to try and dig that out.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Eleven Pointers

Cat People (1942)

Spoiler: tldr

Mine #13. Brilliant (if not entirely 'right on') portrait of female sexuality. I like cheap films better than expensive ones. I'm always fascinated by film-makers who can wheedle great things from meagre means. Horror cinema is fertile ground for that sort of thing, but there aren't many better examples than this. 10p budget, left over bits of set from The Magnificent Ambersons, everything conjured out of shadow and suggestion.

Blood and Black Lace

A masked man with a metal-claw glove stalks models at a couple's (Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok) fashion salon in Rome.

Spoiler: tldr

Mine #10. Arguably the first pukka giallo, the point at which the style and the set-pieces usurp the nuts and bolts of the narrative. Bava was a master in colour and B&W, but i probs just about about prefer his films in the former. Pools of primary colour, baroque sets, light and shadow. More style in 90s mins than most directors manage in a career, and a blueprint for zillions and zillions of films that followed.

Eyes Without a Face
Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane (Edith Scob), who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise (Alida Valli), kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.

I think you've missed this one, Cas. I've got it near the top of me list under the French title....

Ten Pointers
The Dark Tower
Carolyn Page (Jenny Agutter) is a well-known architect, busy working on the most ambitious skyscraper of her career. Things are running smoothly until a window washer mysteriously falls to his death in front of the building. Other accidents follow, and soon the tower is enveloped in rumors of ghosts and evil spirits. As Carolyn desperately tries to keep the construction going, security officer Dennis Randall (Michael Moriarty) reaches out to a paranormal expert (Theodore Bikel) for help.

Spoiler: tldr

Pretty sure this is mine and i've fecked up and given you the wrong title. Mine #11 if so. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125016/reference

John Smith is a one man rebuttal of the idea that avant garde/formalist cinema has to by dry, austere, impenetrable. He's concerned with problematising and subverting cinematic image and grammar, but he does it with wit and humour (often very cheesy - entire things constructed around a single appalling pun for a pay-off). Anyways in this one the humour is mordant, a fella being stalked by a strange, spectral structure, a grim omen, voiceover used to construct narrative from mostly still images, happenstance stitched together. There's quite a bit of Patrick Keillor/Iain Sinclair sort of a vibe to it too, London as locus of eldritch possibility. A pastiche of horror more than actual horror perhaps, but strangely affecting in the end too.

Nine Pointers
Threads
Documentary-style account of a nuclear holocaust and its effect on the working class city of Sheffield, England, and the eventual long-term effects of nuclear war on civilization.

Think that's the film anyway. Probably wrong.

Spoiler: tldr

Mine #12. Grim as fuck, Sheffield-set 'what-if' nuclear war docudrama (written by Barry 'Kes' Hines wot pegged it last week). It's one thing to watch a spooky ghost story, or summat that makes you jump by having a bus drive past, or whatever, but an unblinking portrayal of global holocaust produced in an era when such an eventuality did not exactly require great flights of vaulting imagination is something else. Harrowing viewing now, so presumably thoroughly pant browning in 1984.

 

[KevinMcallister]

Mine #14. 1932. OG vampire movie, half way between silent and talkie. Like a lot of great horror films it's much less concerned with narrative than atmosphere and stimmung. There's a tremendous visual inventiveness to it, but it's a low key sort of affair... gloomy, austere, unsettling, surreal, oneiric. An strange and uniqye film on which the label "horror" rests a little uneasily, and not without flaws (it rather bogs down in intertitle hell at points), but its best moments are high watermarks of cinema as tone poem...

and Vampyr is spelled correctly too, stupid modern age Vampire fans pfft

 

[Craig]

Dumbass

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

and Vampyr is spelled correctly too, stupid modern age Vampire fans pfft

The archetype of the vampire is almost infinitely malleable, of course, to the degree that claims that one true, authentic expression of the form exists beyond the basal mytheme are necessarily dubious. But it _is_ interesting that Vampyr is one of the very few big screen vampire tales that owes little or nothing to Stoker, and instead draws inspiration from Le Fanu's earlier writing, absent which Dracula might never have been penned...

 

[Craig]

Dracula (1958)
On a search for his missing friend Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen), vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is led to Count Dracula's (Christopher Lee) castle. Upon arriving, Van Helsing finds an undead Harker in Dracula's crypt and discovers that the count's next target is Harker's ailing fiancée, Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh). With the help of her brother, Arthur (Michael Gough), Van Helsing struggles to protect Lucy and put an end to Count Dracula's parasitic reign of terror.

Mine. One of Hammer horror's early successes, not the first or last telling of the story, but the best imho. Creepy gothic sets, slightly ott performances from genre stalwarts and surprisingly graphic for the time. There are a whole bunch of vampire flicks I love, some more than this, however this was probably the first one I saw, and still very much up there as one of my faves, a decision down in no small part to its influence on the genre as a whole, the many sequels it spawned becoming a regular occurrence within the horror genre since. As I limited myself to a certain amount of selections from each sub-genre I remain pretty happy I forwarded this one as my vampire selection.

 

[Son of Cod]

The Blood on Satan's Claw was the one I mentioned earlier that I bumped Witchfinder General for. Both two of the best British films that I have seen on the satanic/occult. Both by the same studio from around the same time. Both were films that were alerted to me by that Mark Gatiss BBC series from a few years ago. While both some of the dialogue and the final confrontation in The Blood on Satan's Claw haven't really stood the test of time, there are several elements that have. Linda Hayden is immense in her role as ringleader of the eerie adolescents. The creepy supernatural rural ongoings are satisfyingly left unexplained. The pacing doesn't seem to necessarily fit a film of its time and ilk. Everything is significantly unnerving.

Spoiler

Bay of Blood is one of two Bava films on my list, but I had a hard time nailing down those from a couple more. When I made my list, I was almost definitely planning on using the phrase "blueprint for the slasher" in relation to Bay of Blood. However, Carel basically said that about Blood and Black Lace which was one of the aforementioned couple more. He also said something about primary colours, which I was also going to say but to be fair I think I probably saved that in my brain from something he said in that Mark Gatiss series thread on TFF. Hopefully I can think of something interesting to say about the other Bava on my list.

Also, to backtrack a little who voted for the US versions of The Grudge/Dark Water and also Dog Soldiers?! Own up.

 

[Smudge]

http://www.timeout.com/london/film/best-horror-films

Sorry everyone, Time Out beat us to it.

 

[Cas]

Will do a few more tonight during the footy.

Carel: Sorry, didn't realise you'd given me the French title

 

[Cheese & Biscuits]

http://www.timeout.com/london/film/best-horror-films

Sorry everyone, Time Out beat us to it.

There's a couple that I can't believe I missed off my list.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Will do a few more tonight during the footy.

Carel: Sorry, didn't realise you'd given me the French title

No harm, no foul; daddio.

 

[Cas]

Twelve Pointers

Opera
A hooded figure forces a young diva (Cristina Marsillach) to watch as he murders performers in a production of Verdi's opera "Macbeth."

Onibaba
While her son, Kichi, is away at war, a woman (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) survive by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, then selling whatever valuables they find. Both are devastated when they learn that Kichi has died, but his wife soon begins an affair with a neighbor who survived the war, Hachi (Kei Satô). The mother disapproves and, when she can't steal Hachi for herself, tries to scare her daughter-in-law with a mysterious mask from a dead samurai

 

[Cas]

Thirteen Pointers

Event Horizon
When the Event Horizon, a spacecraft that vanished years earlier, suddenly reappears, a team is dispatched to investigate the ship. Accompanied by the Event Horizon's creator, William Weir (Sam Neill), the crew of the Lewis and Clark, led by Capt. Miller (Laurence Fishburne), begins to explore the seemingly abandoned vessel. However, it soon becomes evident that something sinister resides in its corridors, and that the horrors that befell the Event Horizon's previous journey are still present.

The Lost Boys
Teenage brothers Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim) move with their mother (Dianne Wiest) to a small town in northern California. While the younger Sam meets a pair of kindred spirits in geeky comic-book nerds Edward (Corey Feldman) and Alan (Jamison Newlander), the angst-ridden Michael soon falls for Star (Jami Gertz) -- who turns out to be in thrall to David (Kiefer Sutherland), leader of a local gang of vampires. Sam and his new friends must save Michael and Star from the undead.

Braindead
Overprotective mother Vera Cosgrove (Elizabeth Moody), spying on her grown son, Lionel (Timothy Balme), as he visits the zoo with the lovely Paquita (Diana Penalver), is accidentally bitten by the fearsome Sumatran rat-monkey. When the bite turns his beloved mother into a zombie, Lionel tries to keep her locked safely in the basement, but her repeated escapes turn most of the neighbors into the walking dead, who then crash a high-society party thrown by Lionel's boorish Uncle Les (Ian Watkin).

Troll 2
When young Joshua (Michael Stephenson) learns that he will be going on vacation with his family to a small town called Nilbog, he protests adamantly. He is warned by the spirit of his deceased grandfather that goblins populate the town. His parents, Michael (George Hardy) and Diana (Margo Prey), dismiss his apprehensions, but soon learn to appreciate their son's warnings. Guided by his grandfather's ghost, will Joshua and his family stand a chance in fighting off these evil beings?

 

[Gilly?]

Some good choices here. Opera was very good. Delighted to see Braindead get a solid mention.

 

[voltage]

http://www.timeout.com/london/film/best-horror-films

Sorry everyone, Time Out beat us to it.

That's definitely a very nice list. 'Come and See' is listed, never had the courage to watch it. This list made me remember and want to watch/re-watch a lot of stuff as well the list from here, 1FF's list is also being full of great indications.

 

[Son of Cod]

Event Horizon was on my list, but at 17 so I'm assuming someone else voted for it? Yeah, it's basically a gratuitously violent amalgamation of several other space horror encounters and the script/plot is a bit suspect. However, those flashes of the hell orgies are grizzly as fuck and hit the viewer like a brick. Sprinkle the awesome looking sets with a moderate dose of death by vivisection and you're in for some genuine shocks and jumps. Also has a ridiculously low score on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes me like it more.

Carel: Sorry, didn't realise you'd given me the French title

Assuming it's gonna get re-entered with English name and French name combined vote count later on?

 

[Craig]

Event Horizon was on my list, but at 17 so I'm assuming someone else voted for it?

Me. Genuinely creepy as hell space horror from a director who is well known for the crap he churns out. This is a rare high point on his CV I reckon. The story is great, a state of the art space craft experimenting in travel by creating a black hole disappears only to resurface years later, cue Hellraiser type mayhem in space. Uses all manner of set pieces to scare from being ejected into space to aforementioned graphic depiction of vivisection. There are obvious examples of space horror that are superior, but they don't have tunes by The Prodigy on the soundtrack. Glad someone else voted it.

 

[Cheese & Biscuits]

I tried watching Event Horizon once, gave up very early in. Perhaps I should try again.

 

[KevinMcallister]

never seen Event Horizon but I like the look of the description, gonna watch it tonight now

 

[Cas]

SoC: Yes.

Gonna do plenty of these tonight. Hopefully crack the top 25. Wohooo.

 

[Cas]

Fourteen Pointers

Fright Night
Teenage Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is a horror-film junkie, so it's no surprise that, when a reclusive new neighbor named Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) moves next-door, Brewster becomes convinced he is a vampire. It's also no surprise when nobody believes him. However, after strange events begin to occur, Charlie has no choice but to turn to the only person who could possibly help: washed-up television vampire killer Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall).

Dark Skies
Lacy (Keri Russell) and Daniel Barrett (Josh Hamilton) share a peaceful life in the suburbs with their sons, Jesse (Dakota Goyo) and Sam (Kadan Rockett). However, that peace soon shatters with a series of disturbing events that escalate. When it becomes clear that their family is being targeted by an unimaginably terrifying, deadly -- and possibly alien -- threat, Daniel and Lacy draw on their courage and determination to protect their family and identify what is after them.

28 Days Later
A group of misguided animal rights activists free a caged chimp infected with the "Rage" virus from a medical research lab. When London bike courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma a month after, he finds his city all but deserted. On the run from the zombie-like victims of the Rage, Jim stumbles upon a group of survivors, including Selena (Naomie Harris) and cab driver Frank (Brendan Gleeson), and joins them on a perilous journey to what he hopes will be safety.

Re-animator
A medical student (Jeffrey Combs) brings his headless professor back from the dead with a special serum.

Lost Highway
From this inventory of imagery, Lynch fashions two separate but intersecting stories, one about a jazz musician (Bill Pullman), tortured by the notion that his wife is having an affair, who suddenly finds himself accused of her murder. The other is a young mechanic (Balthazar Getty) drawn into a web of deceit by a temptress who is cheating on her gangster boyfriend. These two tales are linked by the fact that the women in both are played by the same actress (Patricia Arquette).

Friday the 13th
Crystal Lake's history of murder doesn't deter counselors from setting up a summer camp in the woodsy area. Superstitious locals warn against it, but the fresh-faced young people -- Jack (Kevin Bacon), Alice (Adrienne King), Bill (Harry Crosby), Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) and Ned (Mark Nelson) -- pay little heed to the old-timers. Then they find themselves stalked by a brutal killer. As they're slashed, shot and stabbed, the counselors struggle to stay alive against a merciless opponent.

The Amityville Horror
Chiller about a family who is terrorized by supernatural forces when they move into a new house in New York State which was the scene of a recent mass killing and the home of an 18th-century satanist. When swarms of flies appear from nowhere and the pipes and walls begin to ooze slime and blood, they call on a local priest to exorcise the evil

Noroi: The Curse
The Curse is a 2005 Japanese epic found footage film in the form of a documentary. The movie was directed by Kôji Shiraishi.

 

[KevinMcallister]

shit I forgot Fright Night, I actually knew I had forgotten a few big names too

 

[Cheese & Biscuits]

28 Days Later
A group of misguided animal rights activists free a caged chimp infected with the "Rage" virus from a medical research lab. When London bike courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma a month after, he finds his city all but deserted. On the run from the zombie-like victims of the Rage, Jim stumbles upon a group of survivors, including Selena (Naomie Harris) and cab driver Frank (Brendan Gleeson), and joins them on a perilous journey to what he hopes will be safety.

One that would have been placed high on my list if I'd remembered about it. Love that film and probably my favourite "zombie" film.

 

[KevinMcallister]

the majority of mine must be top 25 because I've seen roughly 4-5 of mine so far?

Friday the 13th was one of mine, surprised it hasn't made top 25 tbh