Top 100 Horror Films

In August of this year, the UN Climate Report stated 'Code Red for Humanity'. The world is likely to hit 1.5 degrees celsius in the next 20 years. California was literally on fire. Louisiana went through mass flooding. Each summer follows up the next as 'hottest summer on record.' In his book, The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells argues we could lose half of our agriculture yields because of temperature increases alone. Oceans will acidify. The disappearance of fresh water leads one to a conclusion that water will become the new oil. Because of the water scarcity, conflict between nations will increase considerably. 

So, what is the point of horror when confronted with the oncoming ecological collapse of society? To have something so existentially large cast a shadow over any boogeyman these directors and writers throw at us? 

To put it in a scientific way, seeking out what scares us provides a counterbalance to life's stresses. Some say it's a type of exposure therapy. The more we experience anxiety triggers in a controlled way, the thinking goes, the more we're able to deal with our anxiety responses in the world. Another theory was developed by Margee Kerr, a "sociologist who studies fear". Her explanation was that watching scary movies temporarily floods the nervous system with a cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones, from dopamine to adrenaline, yielding mood boosting euphoria. The effect is not unlike riding a rollercoaster. 

Horror through the years has been born out of our anxieties with society at that point in time. 

Postwar horror dealt with fallout of atomic radiation. Giant ants and godzilla. The monsters were out there. Paranoia- fueled McCarthyism only dumped gasoline on this fire. Then came the 60s with Psycho, Peeping Tom and Black Sunday. Horror started to take itself seriously again. This seriousness only metastisized into what became the late 60s and 70s. Where the images of Vietnam were on news channels across the nation. John Carpenter mentioned there are two kinds of horror. Imagine a tribe sitting around a campfire and the chief of the tribe stands up and says the beast is out there. This is right wing horror. Now imagine sitting around that same campfire and the chief gets up and says the beast is in us. That is left wing horror. It is the latter that dominated the 70s. 

Then came Reagan. 

It's no mystery the 80s saw the rise of Jason and Freddy, the return (and revenge) of Michael, and introduced us to Chucky. External horror. Or as Carpenter points out- 'right-wing horror'. 

The two months exclusively watching horror movies had me come to terms with what I like. Gothic castles joined my other hot button words like witches, and cults. Delivered in a variety of flavors of course: Hammer horror always felt like stuffy British movies to showcase costumes and sets. AMC's FearFest always played Horror of Dracula in their marathons and it was always a chance to flip channels or go to the kitchen and whip up something to eat. Me being an immature shit, I pined for more Jason, less Dracula. "It's not nearly gory enough and the body count isn't high." It wasn't until later I got bored of visiting the same campsite, the same house on Haddonfield or checking in on 1428 Elm Street. None of these franchises were actually scary. But their ill received follow ups offered unique antidotes to the poisons they carried: A New Beginning, Freddy's Revenge, Season of the Witch.

And yet, I digress. The classics like Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Dracula and Creature For the Black Lagoon should be no more vulnerable from criticism than Halloween. In fact, nothing should be off the table. That's not the problem. The problem I see with horror geekdom is that it's a "one or the other". There is either a rejection of anything past 1970 or a rejection of anything after 1970. This can be whittled down to a generational thing. 

Mood, atmosphere and gothic storytelling have overtaken the slasher film for me. Witches, cults, demons, exorcism and haunted houses are just more interesting. If we're talking aesthetics, Dracula's castle will always be sexier than Crystal Lake. Frankenstein's lab is more ominous than the streets of Haddonfield. 

The Frankenstein series from Hammer is the perfect entry point for people who struggle getting into Hammer. Don't let them fool you with their uptight British reputation. There's vile shit going on in them. They set a mood that is the heartbeat of October. 

The American International Pictures Corman/Price Poe cycle is another movie series I've tackled this season. Tomb of Ligeia and The Masque of the Red Death in particular. Two more examples of why Vincent Price might be the greatest human being to ever live. 

Hangin' with the boys during spooky season has become a tradition. 

I started on the wild and crazy road to Paul Naschy with Inquisition and Horror Rises From the Tomb. The Untold Story stopped me in my tracks with it's cobination of vicious brutality and keystone cops humor. Evil Dead Trap, a film I always heard about but never watched, was finally ticked off the list and was well worth the wait. Xtro blew my mind in it's feverish, batshit, throw-narrative-out-the-window creativity. A Woman's Torment, Robert Findlay's take on Repulsion, helped bridge a gap to genres I didn't think of having a bridge: hardcore sex films and psychological thrillers. Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass, well...It's safe to say it's in the top 3 pieces of media of the 20's. 

Between all these discoveries, September/October 2021 will go down as one of my favorite Halloween seasons precisely because of this. To answer the question posed at the beginning, "what is the point of horror given the climate change crisis?" If it means coming to terms with the dystopian hellscape we're living in, then so be it. Once upon a time, I watched horror to get scared. What I found out is that the more I watched, the less afraid I became. Call it desensitization. Call it a lack of trying on part of the director/write. Hell, it can be both. Maybe the science is right: the dopamine and adrenaline is flowing. Every once in a while I'll come across a movie that's special and actually does give me goosebumps. A couple years ago, the other two writers on this blog pressed me to watch Savageland. A movie I never heard of. So I watched it and was left rattled. Here was a movie not even on my radar.

We have our collective backs up against a wall of shit and there doesn't seem to be any opening in it. Watching a movie isn't burying your head in the sand or 'ignoring the problem'. The problem is bigger than any one person. So lock the doors, turn out the lights and watch a scary movie. It's good for ya! 

Enough of my yammering. Now onto the list. 

The one thing I would want anyone to take away from any list I make, is a movie they never saw before. To turn someone onto a film you love is a high I always chase. There's nothing wrong with wanting to watch The Exorcist for the 1,739th time. But to simply sit back and say "I've hit a ceiling with what I like and don't feel the need to explore the genre" is the type of thing that makes me run the other way. As horror fans, or fans of any genre, we should always be digging through the mines of the past to see what shiny new gems we can come up with. The kind that make us scream "Holy shit I'm gonna cum!". 

Or you can just complain how your favorite movie isn't included. Whatever. 

Below are a list of films that have either rotated in and out of the list through the years or just missed the cut. 

The Phantom Carriage (1921), Haxan: Witchcraft For the Ages (1924), The Seventh Victim (1943), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Blood and Black Lace (1964), All the Colors of the Dark (1972), Tales From the Crypt (1972),  Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973), Sisters (1973), A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973), Deathdream (1974), The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue (1974), Lips of Blood (1975), The House With Laughing Windows (1976), Alucarda (1977), Beyond the Darkness (1979), Don't Go In the House (1980), Dead and Buried (1981), Der Fan (1982), The Entity (1982), Halloween: Season of the Witch (1982), Next of Kin (1982), Xtro (1982), Sole Survivor (1984), Friday the 13th Pt. V: A New Beginning (1985), Phenomena (1985), The Fly (1986), From Beyond (1986), Anguish (1987), Blood Rage (1987), The Gate (1987), Near Dark (1987), A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), Prince of Darkness (1987), Slugs (1988), Misery (1990), Cemetery Man (1994), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), Ringu (1998), The Mist (2007), REC (2007), Trick R Treat (2007), Lake Mungo (2008), The House of the Devil (2009), The Innkeepers (2011), Lords of Salem (2012), The Babadook (2014), It Follows (2014), The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), The Wailing (2016), Gerald's Game (2017), Terrified (2017), Suspiria (2018), Doctor Sleep (2019), The Empty Man (2020), Barbarian (2022), Nope (2022), Pearl (2022)