Top 50 Classic Horror Movies & Where to Watch Them This Halloween
As Halloween looms on the horizon, the writers of ReMIND counted down the top 50 classic horror movies of the 20th century — in order — featuring killers, chillers, thrillers, and blood-spillers, plus where you can watch them right now. Get in a state of mind for the season, with Gothic tales, evil creatures, vicious sharks, vengeful ghosts, and a man with mommy issues and a very, very sharp knife.
Happy haunting — and let us know if we missed your favorite knife-wielding maniac or haunted house tale!
Rob Edelstein, Damian Holbrook, Ryan A. Berenz, Jeff Pfeiffer, and Barb Oates were all contributing writers.
Top 50 Horror Movies
October 2025
The films in this issue have scared the living daylights out of us all for decades, what made #?
Buy This IssuePhantasm
Creepy mausoleum. Alien morticians. Killer silver spheres that drill into your brain. This low-budget, cult-classic creepshow has it all! When sexual exploits in the cemetery go awry, a group of teenagers discover the local undertaker, known as the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), is reanimating shrunken corpses to use as mini slaves in another dimension. This simply will not stand, so the teens set out to defeat the Tall Man in a most ineffectual way.
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The Changeling
George C. Scott stars in this gothic horror tale as a composer who tries to flee from past tragedy by moving into a cavernous Seattle mansion. Things go bump in the night, apparitions are seen, secret rooms are revealed, seances are held and the murder of a 6-year-old boy in 1906 is brought to light. At a time when the genre was bending toward slasher films, a cantankerous Scott and a specter-driven wheelchair proved that there’s still plenty to enjoy in a old-fashioned haunted house story.
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Some 100 years ago, moviegoers had never seen anything quite like Lon Chaney’s Erik, the title character, whose unmasking still makes one catch their breath. “The Man of a Thousand Faces” surely chose a good one here, creating a skeletal visage.
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Creepshow
An anthology of terrifying tales, starring the likes of Ted Danson, Ed Harris, and The Fog cohorts Adrienne Barbeau and Hal Holbrook, written by horror-meister Stephen King and directed by Night of the Living Dead legend George A. Romero? No notes.
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Stay clear of the moors and beware the full moon! Two American students don’t heed that advice, which sets John Landis‘ comic horror in motion that’s made quite special by Rick Baker, whose transformative work earned him the first ever annual Oscar for makeup.
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Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, director John Carpenter assembled this mind-bending tale of an insurance investigator (Sam Neill) and his search for a missing horror novelist (Jürgen Prochnow). It’s a surreal, hallucinogenic quest that leaves the main character and audience unable to trust their senses.
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He’s half-man, half-fish and all creepy stalker. Gill-man, one of the great Universal Monsters, makes a scientific expedition deep into the Amazon a real nightmare for the explorers — and their very attractive female colleague (Julie Adams).
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Superior to both the novel and its 1956 predecessor, this remake marked one of Donald Sutherland’s most iconic film moments when he horrifically pointed at Nancy (Veronica Cartwright) and let out that pig squeal scream, ultimately outing that she was still human.
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The Blob
In the late ’50s, the only thing more terrifying than an alien gelatinous mass consuming everything in sight might’ve been the global spread of communism. Steve McQueen’s first starring role was in this classic horror gem that still oozes its presence in pop culture.
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Jaws
No ghouls. No slashers. Just the terrifying force of one hangry Carcharodon carcharias and the incompetence of Amity Island’s public officials. Steven Spielberg’s cinematic masterpiece and John Williams‘ unmistakable score continue to chomp into the hearts of movie fans 50 years later.
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Dead Ringers
Jeremy Irons and Jeremy Irons are fascinatingly creepy as twin brother gynecologists with vastly different personalities and moral codes in David Cronenberg’s fright fest. The brothers’ sordid, nearly Siamese bond leads to very bad behavior indeed.
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Audition
Not for the faint of heart (or weak of stomach), this Japanese import about a widower (Ryo Ishibashi) who stages a fake casting call to find a new wife goes from psychological thriller to straight up torture-porn faster than a wire saw can … you know what? Don’t ask.
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Hellraiser
British director Clive Barker’s first feature film was this nightmarishly weird tale of sadomasochism, bloodletting, hidden desire, poor life choices and a mysterious antique puzzle box from Morocco. Solving the puzzle gets one rewarded with eternal torture from the Cenobites, interdimensional goth/steampunk hedonists.
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Near Dark
Instead of castles and capes, this stylish and intense vampire tale gives us a dirty, gritty road movie set in the southern United States, where the vampires feel more like outlaws than monsters. The cast is killer — especially Bill Paxton — and the moody soundtrack sets the perfect tone.
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Dracula
In the decades since this bloody-good OG vampire film was released, many victims have gone down for the Count, but here, it’s the scary light shining across Bela Lugosi’s eyes that entrances us, and the horrors have been left to our very vivid imaginations.
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The Howling
Often forgotten among 1981’s other werewolf flicks — An American Werewolf in London and Wolfen — there’s a howl of a lot to love about the practical effects and bonkers twists that ensue after L.A. newswoman Karen White (Dee Wallace) uncovers the lycanthropic habits of the guests at a therapeutic resort. Her final broadcast is one for the books!
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Rosemary’s Baby
“This is no dream! This is really happening!” Young wife Rosemary (Mia Farrow) suspects her eccentric Manhattan neighbors are part of a Satanic cult plotting against her unborn child, and it’s not just paranoia. Director Roman Polanski keeps the atmospheric dread simmering until the whole movie boils over with the revelation of the child’s true father and Rosemary accepting her role as mother of the Antichrist.
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Frankenstein
Frankenstein is still the definitive classic-era monster movie. The first appearance of Boris Karloff’s creature — slowly turning around in shadow, dead-looking eyes, bolts in his neck — remains a nightmarish image. But the way he’s badgered is a whole other horror.
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Those flies! The noises. The smell. The paranormal happenings. The Lutz family still maintains that the house that originally had the address of 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, is no hoax. Get out!
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Candyman
Say his name five times in front of a mirror … and say farewell to the flesh! The rare horror film with a Black villain, this take on Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden” is a grisly mix of folklore, social commentary and true scares triggered by a grad student (Virginia Madsen) who unwittingly invokes the urban-mythical hook-handed killer (a perfect Tony Todd).
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Scream
What’s your favorite scary movie? Because we love Wes Craven’s cheeky, meta homage to horror classics that revitalized the genre by arming Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her crew with enough pop-culture savvy about Michael Myers, Leatherface and Jason to give Ghostface a run for his money.
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Burnt Offerings
Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Burgess Meredith and Bette Davis starred in this book adaptation about a family whose vacation rental comes with an odd accessory — the homeowners’ mom, who lives in the attic and requires daily meals. But it’s Anthony James‘ sinister smile as the chauffeur that will remain in your nightmares.
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The Haunting
We still love The Haunting (1963) because it’s a masterpiece of how to scare without showing much at all. Robert Wise directs with a slow, creeping dread that gets under your skin, and the house itself starts to feel alive — oppressive, cold and always watching. Julie Harris gives a stellar performance as Eleanor, a woman slowly unraveling, and we’re never quite sure if what she’s experiencing is real or in her mind. That uncertainty is part of what makes the film so effective. It treats the audience with respect, letting it draw its own conclusions, which somehow makes everything more terrifying. In a genre that often leans on spectacle, The Haunting proves that sometimes, less is more, and that the scariest things are the ones we imagine ourselves.
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Directed by Jacques Tourneur (of Cat People fame), this British slow-burn horror masterfully plays with the idea of psychological vs. supernatural — do you believe what you’re seeing or is it all in your head? Tourneur didn’t want to show the demon at all, believing the power of suggestion was scarier than any rubber monster. But the producers insisted on showing the creature, and while it divided critics, that roaring, smoke-belching demon became one of the film’s most memorable (and meme-able) features.
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Child’s Play
“I’m your friend to the end …” This 37-year-old franchise made toys a source of terror as we were introduced to the killer Chucky, a 2-foot-tall, freckled, redheaded doll in overalls who was equally frightening and funny. Animatronics was in its infancy at the time of filming, and it took three people just to work Chucky’s face.
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Carrie
Based on a Stephen King novel, director Brian De Palma’s Carrie is a spellbinding revenge fantasy wrapped in teenage angst and pigs’ blood. Sissy Spacek earned an Oscar nomination as bullied Carrie White, whose wide-eyed innocence and telekinetic powers curdle into pure, operatic fury after the cruelest prom prank in horror history. From its slow-motion terror to that jump-scare ending, Carrie proved prom queens can indeed kill it on the dance floor.
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The Fog
John Carpenter followed up his 1978 classic slasher Halloween with a few TV films before releasing the atmospheric The Fog. Rather than relying on sheer gore, the film builds tension through the quiet, creeping dread of this supernatural threat. Set in a picturesque fishing town in Northern California, exactly 100 years ago — on April 21, 1880 — a ship’s crew mistakenly thought a campfire was a lighthouse and crashed into the shoreline killing everyone aboard. Or so the tale goes … The truth behind the ship’s crash is what unleashes this eerie dense fog and its vengeful ghosts. Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter’s wife at the time, was cast as the lead in her first major role. Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh help add to the terror. Scenes like the ghostly figures suddenly emerging from the fog are psychologically unsettling. The narrative, rooted in a town’s buried guilt and betrayal, gives this horror film its true weight. The past is never truly buried.
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The Evil Dead
Director Sam Raimi only needed a 13-member crew and a paltry $375,000 budget to make this cult fave starring brick-chinned leading man (and Raimi’s childhood bestie) Bruce Campbell. And years later, we can’t help but revisit the cabin in the woods where Campbell’s Ash and his vacationing pals battle the Deadites they mistakenly conjure by reading from a flesh-covered Necronomicon. But now we know to bring our “Boomstick.”
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This sequel may be, alongside The Godfather Part II, the only film that arguably surpassed its original. Boris Karloff returns as the still-undead Monster, with Colin Clive creating a mate (Elsa Lanchester) who, as the dating apps suggest, swipes left with a vengeance. Alongside the horrors of the Monster’s killings, and director James Whale’s Gothic touches, it is the Monster’s yearning and loss that propel the frights. And Karloff’s performance is remarkable.
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George A. Romero’s landmark shocker redefined the zombie genre, blending relentless suspense with biting social commentary and setting the stage for modern franchises like The Walking Dead. A wave of the undead sweeps across rural Pennsylvania, trapping a group of strangers in an isolated farmhouse. In this nightmare, survival means more than just fending off the hungry dead — it means confronting the monsters we become under pressure.
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Poltergeist
“They’re here …” That lullaby opening music, the playful family banter … it was all a setup from the start. We related to this everyday American family led by Steve and Diane Freeling (Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams), and fell in love with their adorable 5-year-old, blond daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), but we had no idea what some weird TV was about to unleash. That tree! The swimming pool! And how about the amazing Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein, who filmed her part in six days), who left us with her infamous “Cross over, children …” And just when we thought things resolved, they were back with more goo, eewws, skeletons, monsters and more. It was supernatural terror meeting suburban normalcy, making the horror hit way too close to home.
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In the 1950s, Herk Harvey was making industrial and educational films when he spotted an abandoned pavilion in Utah and got the idea (and setting) for what became the most low-budget/high scare count film in cinema history. This Twilight Zone-esque indie movie about Mary (Candace Hilligoss), a mysterious woman who escapes a car wreck and is followed by zombies, gets its biggest scares from Harvey himself, who plays “The Man,” a grinning ghoul who haunts and taunts Mary.
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Ringu
“Seven days.” Before this Japanese horror flick, VHS tapes were just things you forgot to rewind. With its tale of a cursed videocassette that gave viewers a week to live, this masterwork made you terrified of your own VCR and sparked a global J-horror craze. Director Hideo Nakata crafted a slow-burn horror that creeps under the skin like the iconic and very flexible ghost of Sadako (Rie Ino’o) crawling from the TV screen.
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The Lost Boys
Before Scream, Joel Schumacher’s salute to hair-metal vampires gave horror an injection of comedy and we were hooked. Maybe it was the pinup appeal of Jason Patric’s Michael, an L.A. beach-town transplant targeted by a bloodsucking biker gang led by the eerily charismatic Kiefer Sutherland’s David. Maybe it was the goofy heroics of Michael’s brother (Corey Haim) and his nerdy pals, the Frog brothers (Corey Feldman, Jamison Newlander). Or maybe it was the oiled-up sax player on the beach. Whatever it was, the poster didn’t lie: Being a vampire is fun.
The Birds
What begins as a flirtatious seaside weekend spirals into an avian apocalypse in which seagulls, crows and sparrows are hell-bent on taking over humanity’s top spot in nature’s pecking order. With no explanation, no musical score and no happy ending, Alfred Hitchcock hatched a masterclass in escalating dread as crows gathered outside the school waiting to release their feathered fury on fleeing children. The Birds still makes us wonder if that pigeon is looking at us funny.
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Pet Sematary
Based on the Stephen King novel, this supernatural horror film follows the Creed family, who move to a quiet Maine (of course!) town. They discover a burial ground hidden in the woods, except this place brings the dead back to murderously evil life. The death of the family’s cat, Church, leads them to try out this cursed graveyard. As an ancient malevolence stirs, their home becomes a nightmare where love, loss and death twist together.
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The Sixth Sense
A child psychologist (Bruce Willis) does his best to help 9-year-old Cole (Haley Joel Osment), who claims he can speak to the dead. Aside from the film’s shocking ending, it is these ghostly visits that remain truly frightening, especially when we see the cold smoky chill when Cole breathes out, signaling a sighting. “Hey, come on! I’ll show you where my dad keeps his gun,” one boy says before he turns and we see the hole in the back of his head. AAAAHHH!
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The only horror film to win Best Picture is also the last movie to win the five big Oscars — Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay. The frights in this icy tale of FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) tapping renowned killer Hannibal Lecter’s (Hopkins) knowledge to catch another serial killer are mainly subliminal. But the face-snatching scene of Lecter’s escape, including his operatic joy in killing a guard with a night stick, is something truly horrific.
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Psycho
Real-life villains don’t wear black hats and twirl their mustaches. Alfred Hitchcock gave us Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) — a quiet, polite motel owner with a hobby that doesn’t quite fit on a resumé. The infamous shower scene changed film editing forever, made audiences wary of bathroom curtains, and proved mothers can be terrifying even after death. Its plot twists, screeching score and sheer nerve cement it as the godfather of modern horror — and the reason you always check hotel reviews twice.
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Dawn of the Dead
At the end of the 1970s, Rolling Stone praised this chiller, calling it the “existential film of decade,” adding that the undead wake up and head for the mall. George A. Romero’s follow-up to Night of the Living Dead also became the zombie classic, in part due to the debut of FX master Tom Savini. When the first effect featured a man realistically biting a woman on the shoulder and then the arm, you knew you were in for a dark ride.
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This low-budget, found-footage horror hit scared the camcorder right out of late ’90s audiences. Marketed as “maybe real” before the internet ruined mystery forever, it convinced some people to file missing-persons reports over fictional characters. The movie shows no witch, no gore — just shaky footage, creepy stick art and one guy standing in a corner like he’s in time-out. It’s proof that the human brain is the ultimate special effect … and also that motion sickness can be terrifying.
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The Shining
The sustained dread of a man — Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance — losing his mind in an isolated hotel in the dead of winter is both terrifyingly and claustrophobic. The real horror comes, however, knowing he’s with his wife (Shelley Duvall) and young son (Danny Lloyd), and a whole lot of endless, empty hallways filled with enough jump scares (The twins! The bloody elevator! Room 217!) to send you running. But you’re not watching a horror movie from Stanley Kubrick — you’re trapped in it (along with a hedge maze) and you can’t get out. All work and no play make Jack far from a dull boy!
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The Omen
Damien Thorn was a bad, bad little boy. Well, he was the Antichrist. And any parent who named their kid Damien after this film was released was either crazy, cruel or clueless. Gregory Peck plays a dad who accidentally adopts the spawn of Satan (whoops!), and then spends the rest of the movie slowly realizing his life is being orchestrated by evil forces, demonic dogs and a kid with a 666 birthmark hidden under his hair. Damien just looks at you, and your soul packs a bag and is gone. It’s all for you, Damien!
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Let’s start with the name. Texas. Chain. Saw. Massacre. Like Snakes on a Plane, you get an instant vision of terror that, in 1974, sounded like a nightmare come fully to life. But this early effort that helped establish Tobe Hooper as the horror-film legend he is lands so high on our list in part because it established many fright-fest plotlines. First, there’s the innocent group of kids in a van finding a home out in the woods … and going inside. And what do they each find? Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), the genre’s first masked madman. But this killer — who wore a mask of human skin — didn’t have some psychological reason for killing. He was just … psycho, a ruthless wielder of power tools (another genre first) who meted out punishment the way the shark did in Jaws. One last woman (Marilyn Burns) escapes and Leatherface lives … no doubt part of the reason there have been eight sequels (so far). The violence is brutal and unsentimental, and the horror is iconic.
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Suspiria
Cowriter/director Dario Argento’s classic in the Italian “giallo” horror movie genre stars Jessica Harper as an American dancer who arrives at a prestigious German ballet academy, only to realize, following a series of brutal murders, that the school is merely a front for something more sinister — a witches’ coven headed by its founder, Helena Markos (Lela Svasta), one of the most nightmarishly evil witches in film history. The 2018 remake of Suspiria is intriguing in its own way, but Argento’s masterful use of color and creation of suspense and terror, enhanced by a demonic-sounding musical score by prog rock group Goblin, make this original tough to top for a truly frightening experience that bombards the eyes and ears with gruesomeness from which you cannot turn away.
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Freddy Krueger with his bladed glove, melted face and that red-striped sweater was indeed a real nightmare. Wes Craven wrote and directed this psychological terror, which left us sleepless for weeks worrying that we too could fall victim to Freddy if we fell asleep. Craven once told us that when he wrote this film, everybody had told him that horror was dead and that people don’t want to see blood anymore. “It just takes one studio person, in that case Bob Shaye, to say, ‘No, that’s original. Let’s make it.’” And the rest is history, as Freddy Krueger spawned one of the most successful horror franchises in film history.
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Alien
As Newsweek put it at the time, “Alien will scare the peanuts right out of your M&M’s.” The crew of the starship Nostromo answers a distress call and gets invaded by an organism that attaches itself to one of the crew (John Hurt), hatches, and then exits his body (in one famous, shocking scene) and proceeds to terrorize the ship. Warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) battles the giant-headed alien, lit by director Ridley Scott in a way that only increases the awful tension.
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Friday the 13th
If Halloween is horror’s Rocky Balboa, this gem honoring the calendar’s other ominous date is its Apollo Creed. Splashier, sexier and gorier, the saga of Camp Crystal Lake counselors (including a young Kevin Bacon!) being picked off one by one employed creative kills and an unforgettable sound effect to send us all hiding under the blankets. And while we don’t get the iconic hockey-masked Jason Voorhees until Friday the 13th Part III, his mother’s work in the original still slays.
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The Exorcist
Thanks in large part to 14-year-old Linda Blair’s terrifying transformation from sweet-faced pre-teen to puke-spewing, foul-mouthed demonic vessel, the adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s bestseller became the first horror film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and remains the reason an entire generation knows to avoid Ouija boards. And if you want something that is scary for all the wrong reasons, check out 1977’s sinfully bad Exorcist II: The Heretic.
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Halloween
John Carpenter’s low-fi classic set the bar for slashers with plenty of tricks (jump scares and slow reveals) and treats (that killer score and a star-making turn by perfect final girl Jamie Lee Curtis!) as maniac Michael Myers stalks small-town Illinois babysitters on Oct. 31. The suspense is so gripping, you don’t even notice that the movie was shot in Pasadena during the spring or that the Boogeyman is wearing a Captain Kirk mask.