20 Favorite Horror Films

[collisionwork]

Stacie Ponder, at the excellent Final Girl blog, asked her readers for their 20 Favorite Horror Films -- apparently thinking she'd wind up with a list of around 50 films, and she'd write a bit about the top 31 this month.

Of course, Ms. Ponder's fine fine superfine readership responded with a total of 732 movies, which she's been listing off and discussing in brief as Halloween approaches.

I sent in my own Top 20. I was actually a bit surprised by what wound up on mine, or more exactly, what didn't wind up there (no Universal classics, for example). Oddly, to look at a list of my favorite films, there seems to be a few "horror" films on there that didn't wind up on my Top 20 Horror Film list . . . there's just some kind of difference when thinking about them as actual horror movies as opposed to as all-around movies.

I wish I had the full list I made up at first, as there were only about 27 movies I would count as "Favorite Horror Films" (I know Bride of Frankenstein and The Tenant were on the list) and I could list them all here, and seeing many of the names that have shown up on Stacie's master list have shown me how many I didn't even think of that could be here, but I'll stick to the list I sent her -- which is indeed pretty much a list of unsurprising classics, but so it goes.

Here's my 20 Favorites, with YouTube videos of their trailers (or in the case of #s 1, 5, and 9, the entire movie) - which you won't see if you're reading this on Facebook, so if you're interested in them - and there's some great trailers here - read it over on LiveJournal:

1. Nosferatu (1922)

2. I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

3. Isle of the Dead (1945)

4. Night of the Demon (1957)

5. Carnival of Souls (1962)

6. The Haunting (1963)

7. Black Sabbath (1963)

8. Hour of the Wolf (1968)

9. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

10. Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971)

11. The Wicker Man (1973)

12. The Exorcist (1973)

13. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

14. Black Christmas (1974)

15. Halloween (1978)

16. Alien (1979)

17. Dawn of the Dead (1979)

18. The Brood (1979)

19. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

20. Candyman (1992)

Pretty scary, huh kids? How about that Bergman, huh? Real classic horror director there . . . as Count Floyd would agree . . .

Comments

[daveroguesf.livejournal.com]

We have three films in common - http://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/2010/09/simple-list.html

I must have gotten my list in at the tail end of the process, because the films for which I cast the only vote were at the bottom of the list. I'm surprised no one else listed C.H.U.D.

[collisionwork]

Wow, I missed that C.H.U.D. only got one vote. I don't think I was the sole vote on any of these.

Three in common, and four more you have that were on the shortlist of 27 I started with -- The Fog, Creepshow, The Bride of Frankenstein and Suspiria were all in there. *sigh* I miss all of those from the final list.

[daveroguesf.livejournal.com]

I know a bunch of people spent a fair amount of time on their lists, but I think mine took me about fifteen minutes. After sliding on my very favorites from the top of my head, I set some hard criteria and went about representing some favorite filmmakers on Stacie's big ol' list (for example, every list of films in the fantastic genre needs Melies, so I threw my favorite Melies film on there). I tried to stick to one film per director and found that Romero had slid by with two.

Whether or not the list I submitted is really my all-time top 20 remains open to debate, but it's a more than adequate (and perfectly accurate) reflection of my tastes.

Did you come of age in the 1970s? (I realize that I've no idea how old you are.) I forwarded the Rosenbaum theory that one's favorite films tend to pull from when one came of age, and found my own list slanted toward 80s horror (or earlier films I first encountered in my teenage years, including SUSPIRIA and DAWN OF THE DEAD).