Halloween Countdown: The Top 50 Classic Horror Movies (#50–41)
As Halloween looms on the horizon, the writers of ReMIND are counting 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.
We’ll be revealing 10 more of our picks each Friday, with the final top 10 arriving on Halloween morning.
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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Be sure to come back on Friday, October 10, as we release 10 more of our classic film horro ranking.