Come With Us If You Wanna…Eat… (Night of the Living Dead. Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I will take you places you have never been…and I will show you things you have never seen….
Well.
I don’t think I’ve yet done a post on my favorite horror movies, I’m quite surprised to say (though I did touch on some last year)! I was inspired for this post by Chiseled in Rock. Thanks, Gusto!
You’ll also note that not many of my favorites involve more recent fares. There’s a reason for that. I just don’t like most of the recent crop. I know my tastes have changed over the years, perhaps the current horror films are too nasty (like the Saw flicks—just cannot bring myself to see any of them, no matter what people try to tell me about how “psychological” they may be), but nearly ever time I go to a new horror flick, I leave disappointed. So, I pretty much have stopped going to them, unless something really grabs me, like The Woman in Black. There are other films I like, but at the time of writing this, they didn’t come to mind. If I think of them, I’ll add. And I am only talking horror/supernatural films, not SF or anything else, like Village of the Damned, which I also really like.
Curiously, I haven’t seen any of Rob Zombie’s films/remakes. I need to do this…but it just doesn’t seem “to happen.” I love his music, his artistry and imagery in his songs, but have heard some of his work is kinda graphic, and (not to be a wimp…), but graphic isn’t usually my thing, though some of those on my list can be graphic. I think the graphic-ness has to be balanced by story and amount…even humor, however black, like Bill Paxton’s killer bar scene in Near Dark (“Finger lickin’ good!”). And there are undoubtably those films, like Gothika or maybe even Ghost Ship (I give them honorable mentions and links, because I do seem to remember really liking them) that I’d seen and really liked at the time, but I just don’t remember that much about them any more….
Also, I must admit, I haven’t seen most of these movies in years. As of a year or so ago (when I last spent some time looking), some are extremely hard to find, like Nomads. I’ve looked for the movie for years and haven’t been able to find it, and I don’t belong to any movie subscriber services beyond our cable provider, so that may be an issue. I hope as time goes on, more and more of these older films will resurface. I’d love to see some of them again, to see if I would still enjoy them in my current mindset, like The Other (I last saw this film when I was a kid, and though I don’t remember a lot about it, the overall feel of the film has stuck with me all these years!).
So, here, in alphabetical order, are a list of my 20 favorite horror films! I’ve linked their trailers to them. Feel free to mention a few of your own! And since it’s early October, there’s still plenty of time to catch these before Hallowe’en!
Runnin Off at the Mouth.... 
My favorites: The Shining, Sixth Sense, The Ring, and The first Nightmare on Elm Street. I would watch them over a few times and still enjoy them.
Good picks, indeed! And yes, The Ring seemed to be a good, creepy film, too, if I remember right!
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Uh-oh – Frank’s gonna start another list-making frenzy on the blogs! 🙂
Interesting pics – I can’t say that mine mirror yours very much, but a few, yes. I am very squeamish and can’t handle much gore…at all. “Psycho” is about as far as I can take the knife-to-skin – LOVE that one!
“The Mummy” – being a Karloff (Mr. Pratt, mind you) fan, that one would definitely make it on to my list. Nice to see that on here.
I have yet to see “The Woman in Black,” but it’s on my “To See” list.
Ha! And I’m working on my favorite horror novels post, next…. :-]
I find that I’m also not as “unaffected” by gore as I used to be. I just never liked it as a major part to any horror movie, and even less so, now. My motto has always been “less is more,” though I get that it is great for FX people. Unfortunately, when you like supernatural and horror movies, gore is usually gonna be a part of things to some extent [these days]!
Woman in Black has GREAT atmosphere! It’s not a fast paced piece, but an atmospheric one! Hope you enjoy it and come back to my WiB post (or post on your own site) your take on it!
Great list, Frank! I’ve seen nearly all of these. You have some real winners here. I’m a huge fan of “The Sixth Sense”, one of the few scary films with a really GOOD story behind it all (not to mention that TZ-esque twist!). Nice seeing some classic mummy and vampire tales on there as well, along with the original “Halloween” and “Psycho”, both of which prove you don’t need buckets of blood to scare people.
I’ll have to check out WiB, which looks very promising. I would also echo Karen’s fanship of “The Ring”, one of the few films I’ve ever seen that caused me to literally look over my shoulder mid-film. Another non-gory but creepy classic. Watching it in the dark alone? Uh, bad idea.
Yeah, forgot about The Ring. I remember it WAS pretty creepy, and had me looking over my shoulders, too! :-] Yeah, except for “Carrie,” you really don’t need buckets of blood. You kinda do, with “Carrie,” but not for the rest of them! :-]]]
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When I saw The Other in this list I immediately thought about The Others with Nicole Kidman. That was one great movie! And I could definitely agree with The Shining, The Sixth Sense, The Woman In Black and Psycho.
Ha, great point, Jamie! I’d forgotten about that one! Another great film! Thanks for bringing it up—and stopping by!