40 favorite classic horror films
by luzdegas | created - 14 Feb 2012 | updated - 14 Feb 2012 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Nosferatu (1922)
Not Rated | 94 min | Fantasy, Horror
Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new residence and real estate agent Hutter's wife.
Director: F.W. Murnau | Stars: Max Schreck, Alexander Granach, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder
Votes: 105,394
2. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Not Rated | 67 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Hypnotist Dr. Caligari uses a somnambulist, Cesare, to commit murders.
Director: Robert Wiene | Stars: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover
Votes: 70,039
3. It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958)
97 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
Having doubts about the guilt of the obvious suspect in the murder of an eight year old girl, a police detective decides to investigate the case on his own.
Director: Ladislao Vajda | Stars: Heinz Rühmann, Sigfrit Steiner, Siegfried Lowitz, Michel Simon
Votes: 5,583
4. The Fly (1986)
R | 96 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel
Votes: 201,826 | Gross: $40.46M
5. Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)
R | 112 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A couple of English tourists arrive on an island where all the children have gone crazy and are murdering the adults.
Director: Narciso Ibáñez Serrador | Stars: Lewis Fiander, Prunella Ransome, Antonio Iranzo, Miguel Narros
Votes: 8,025
6. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Not Rated | 92 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A self-proclaimed preacher marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real dad hid the $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery.
Director: Charles Laughton | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason
Votes: 97,308 | Gross: $0.65M
7. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Approved | 80 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.
Director: Don Siegel | Stars: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan
Votes: 54,730
8. Duel (1971 TV Movie)
PG | 90 min | Action, Thriller
A business commuter is pursued and terrorized by the malevolent driver of a massive tractor-trailer.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell
Votes: 78,362
9. The Changeling (1980)
R | 107 min | Horror, Mystery
After the death of his wife and daughter in a car crash, a music professor staying at a long-vacant Seattle mansion is dragged into a decades-old mystery by an inexplicable presence in the mansion's attic.
Director: Peter Medak | Stars: George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, Jean Marsh
Votes: 39,990
10. The Haunting (1963)
G | 112 min | Horror
Hill House has stood for about 90 years and appears haunted: its inhabitants have always met strange, tragic ends. Now Dr. John Markway has assembled a team of people who he thinks will prove whether or not the house is haunted.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn
Votes: 42,483 | Gross: $2.62M
11. Village of the Damned (1960)
Not Rated | 77 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
In the English village of Midwich, the blonde-haired, glowing-eyed children of uncertain paternity prove to have frightening powers.
Director: Wolf Rilla | Stars: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens, Michael Gwynn
Votes: 19,127
12. The Blob (1958)
Approved | 86 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
An alien lifeform consumes everything in its path as it grows and grows.
Directors: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., Russell S. Doughten Jr. | Stars: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland
Votes: 29,369
13. Deep Red (1975)
R | 127 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A jazz pianist and a wisecracking journalist are pulled into a complex web of mystery after the former witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic.
Director: Dario Argento | Stars: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia, Macha Méril
Votes: 42,618
14. Psycho (1960)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin
Votes: 718,062 | Gross: $32.00M
15. The Exorcist (1973)
R | 122 min | Horror
When a young girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb
Votes: 454,791 | Gross: $232.91M
16. The Shining (1980)
R | 146 min | Drama, Horror
A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
Votes: 1,106,138 | Gross: $44.02M
17. Carrie (1976)
R | 98 min | Horror, Mystery
Carrie White, a shy, friendless teenage girl who is sheltered by her domineering, religious mother, unleashes her telekinetic powers after being humiliated by her classmates at her senior prom.
Director: Brian De Palma | Stars: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, John Travolta
Votes: 206,596 | Gross: $33.80M
18. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
R | 83 min | Horror
Five friends head out to rural Texas to visit the grave of a grandfather. On the way they stumble across what appears to be a deserted house, only to discover something sinister within. Something armed with a chainsaw.
Director: Tobe Hooper | Stars: Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain
Votes: 183,548 | Gross: $30.86M
19. Hellraiser (1987)
R | 94 min | Horror, Thriller
A woman discovers the newly resurrected, partially formed, body of her brother-in-law and lover. She starts killing for him to revitalize his body and escape the demonic beings that are pursuing him after he escaped their underworld.
Director: Clive Barker | Stars: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman
Votes: 140,468 | Gross: $14.56M
20. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
R | 90 min | Horror, Thriller
On the way to California, a family has the misfortune to have their car break down in an area closed to the public, and inhabited by violent savages ready to attack.
Director: Wes Craven | Stars: Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, John Steadman, Janus Blythe
Votes: 39,220 | Gross: $25.00M
21. Jacob's Ladder (I) (1990)
R | 113 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
Mourning his dead child, a haunted Vietnam War veteran attempts to uncover his past while suffering from a severe case of dissociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusions, and perceptions of death.
Director: Adrian Lyne | Stars: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello, Matt Craven
Votes: 117,841 | Gross: $26.12M
22. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Approved | 137 min | Drama, Horror
A young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.
Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer
Votes: 235,060
23. Poltergeist (1982)
PG | 114 min | Horror, Thriller
A family's home is haunted by a host of demonic ghosts.
Director: Tobe Hooper | Stars: JoBeth Williams, Heather O'Rourke, Craig T. Nelson, Beatrice Straight
Votes: 179,513 | Gross: $76.61M
24. The Thing (1982)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Richard Masur
Votes: 466,429 | Gross: $13.78M
25. Jaws (1975)
PG | 124 min | Adventure, Mystery, Thriller
When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
Votes: 659,242 | Gross: $260.00M
26. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
R | 91 min | Horror
Teenager Nancy Thompson must uncover the dark truth concealed by her parents after she and her friends become targets of the spirit of a serial killer with a bladed glove in their dreams, in which if they die, it kills them in real life.
Director: Wes Craven | Stars: Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund, John Saxon
Votes: 262,384 | Gross: $25.50M
27. Candyman (1992)
R | 99 min | Horror, Thriller
The Candyman, a murderous soul with a hook for a hand, is accidentally summoned to reality by a skeptic grad student researching the monster's myth.
Director: Bernard Rose | Stars: Virginia Madsen, Xander Berkeley, Tony Todd, Kasi Lemmons
Votes: 100,133 | Gross: $25.79M
28. Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
R | 91 min | Fantasy, Horror
When Cyrus Kriticos, a very rich collector of unique things, dies, he leaves his house, fortune, and his prized collection of ghosts.
Director: Steve Beck | Stars: Tony Shalhoub, Shannon Elizabeth, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard
Votes: 93,795 | Gross: $41.87M
29. Children of the Corn (1984)
R | 92 min | Horror, Thriller
A young couple is trapped in a remote town where a dangerous religious cult of children believes that everyone over age 18 must be killed.
Director: Fritz Kiersch | Stars: Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong, John Franklin
Votes: 57,316 | Gross: $14.57M
30. The Others (2001)
PG-13 | 104 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
In 1945, immediately following the end of Second World War, a woman who lives with her two photosensitive children on her darkened old family estate in the Channel Islands becomes convinced that the home is haunted.
Director: Alejandro Amenábar | Stars: Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan, Alakina Mann
Votes: 393,122 | Gross: $96.52M
31. Ju-on: The Grudge (2002)
R | 92 min | Horror
A mysterious and vengeful spirit marks and pursues anybody who dares enter the house in which it resides.
Director: Takashi Shimizu | Stars: Megumi Okina, Misaki Itô, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa
Votes: 48,045 | Gross: $0.33M
32. Audrey Rose (1977)
PG | 113 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
A stranger attempts to convince a happily married couple that their daughter is actually his daughter reincarnated.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Marsha Mason, John Beck, Susan Swift
Votes: 6,684
33. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 950,074 | Gross: $78.90M
34. The Lawnmower Man (1992)
R | 108 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A simple man is turned into a genius through the application of computer science.
Director: Brett Leonard | Stars: Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan, Jenny Wright, Mark Bringelson
Votes: 39,021 | Gross: $32.10M
35. The Entity (1982)
R | 125 min | Drama, Horror
A woman is tormented by an invisible being.
Director: Sidney J. Furie | Stars: Barbara Hershey, Ron Silver, David Labiosa, George Coe
Votes: 18,261 | Gross: $13.28M
36. Saw (2004)
R | 103 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Two strangers awaken in a room with no recollection of how they got there, and soon discover they're pawns in a deadly game perpetrated by a notorious serial killer.
Director: James Wan | Stars: Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover, Ken Leung
Votes: 466,551 | Gross: $56.00M
37. Let the Right One In (2008)
R | 114 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Oskar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl.
Director: Tomas Alfredson | Stars: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl
Votes: 226,725 | Gross: $2.12M
38. The Descent (2005)
R | 99 min | Adventure, Horror, Thriller
A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.
Director: Neil Marshall | Stars: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder
Votes: 246,847 | Gross: $26.02M
39. The Evil Dead (1981)
NC-17 | 85 min | Horror
Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons.
Director: Sam Raimi | Stars: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker
Votes: 232,335 | Gross: $2.40M
40. The Omen (1976)
R | 111 min | Horror, Mystery
Mysterious deaths surround an American ambassador. Could the child that he is raising actually be the Antichrist? The Devil's own son?
Director: Richard Donner | Stars: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Harvey Stephens, David Warner
Votes: 132,388 | Gross: $4.27M
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