Classic Horror Movies

"I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness. Many horror movies also include a central villain.
Horror films have been dismissed as violent, low budget B movies and exploitation films. Nonetheless, all the major studios and many respected directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, William Friedkin, Sam Raimi, Richard Donner, and Francis Ford Coppola have made forays into the genre. Serious critics have analyzed horror films through the prisms of genre theory and the auteur theory. Some horror films incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, mockumentary, black comedy, and thrillers.

The greatest horror film of all time


Army of Darkness

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Army of Darkness
Army of Darkness is a 1993 comedy horror/adventure film and the third installment in the Evil Dead series. Bruce Campbell stars as protagonist Ash Williams who finds himself in the Middle Ages where he must battle the undead in his quest to return home. The film was directed by Sam Raimi, and written by Raimi and his brother Ivan, and produced by Rob Tapert.


Friday the 13th (1980)

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Friday the 13th (1980)
The film then moves forward to Friday, June 13, in the present day; a young woman named Annie (Robbi Morgan) enters a small diner and asks for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, much to the shock of the restaurant's patrons and staff. A strange old man named Ralph (Walt Gorney) reacts to the news of the camp's reopening by warning Annie that they are "all doomed". Enos (Rex Everhart), a truck driver from the diner, agrees to give Annie a lift halfway to the camp. During the drive, he warns her about the camp, informing her that a young boy drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957, one year before the double murders occurred. After Enos lets her out, Annie hitches another ride in a Jeep. The second driver, whose face is never seen, murders Annie by slashing her throat with a large hunting knife...


A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A fifteen-year-old girl named Tina Grey has a disturbing nightmare in which she is stalked through a dark boiler room by a figure with distinctive razor-sharp knives for fingers on his right hand. Just as he catches her, however, she wakes up screaming, only to discover four razor cuts in her nightdress identical to the cuts in her dream.
The next day, she finds out that her friend Nancy Thompson experienced the same dream. That night, Tina, Nancy and her boyfriend Glenn Lantz have a sleep-over to make a distraught Tina feel better. Tina's rebellious boyfriend, Rod Lane, crashes the party and goes to bed with Tina in her mother's bedroom. However, Tina has another nightmare, and this time the killer catches her and brutally murders her. Rod wakes up to find Tina being cut open by invisible knives and then dragged across the ceiling. Rod, being the only other person in the room at the time, is suspected of the killing and is arrested the next day...


Jaws

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Jaws
Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, the father of the summer blockbuster movie and one of the first "high concept" films. Due to the film's success in advance screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release than ever before.

Based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916. The police chief of Amity Island, a summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town council, which wants the beach to remain open to draw a profit from tourists. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter. Roy Scheider stars as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint, Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife Ellen and Murray Hamilton as Mayor Vaughn.


Bram Stoker's Dracula

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Bram Stoker's Dracula
The film begins in a prologue, where Vlad III the Impaler defeats an overwhelming Turkish invasion in 1462. Upon returning home, he finds his beloved wife Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) dead, having committed suicide upon hearing the false reports of Vlad's death in battle. Enraged at his wife being eternally damned as a suicide, the former devout Christian Dracula desecrates his chapel and renounces God, declaring that he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness.

Four centuries later, Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves), an assistant real estate agent, travels to Transylvania to arrange the transfer of Carfax Abbey in London, Count Dracula's (Gary Oldman) newest real estate acquisition. At the castle, full of bizarre, unnatural features and shadows that move by themselves, Harker meets Dracula, a wrinkled, pale old man in brilliant red robes. During the final signing of the real estate papers, the Count caresses a picture of Harker's fiancée Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray (Winona Ryder), the reincarnation of his long dead wife, Elisabeta. Dracula then sets sail on the ship Demeter to England, leaving Harker captive by Dracula's insatiable and bloodthirsty Brides, who systematically drink his blood, leaving him weak and unable to escape.


Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

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Interview with the Vampire
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles is a 1994 film, based on the 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. The film was directed by Neil Jordan, and stars Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Kirsten Dunst.

In present time San Francisco a reporter, Daniel, is sitting in a room with a man named Louis, who claims to be a vampire. Daniel is unconvinced until Louis turns on the light and instantly appears in front of him using extremely fast movement. Daniel agrees to interview Louis, who recalls his previous life and his turn to darkness.


Poltergeist 1982

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Poltergeist 1982
In the first and most successful film (released on June 4 1982), a group of seemingly benign ghosts begin communicating with five-year-old Carol Anne Freeling in her parents' suburban California home via static on the television. Eventually they use the TV as their path into the house itself. They kidnap Carol Anne, and most of the film involves the family's efforts to rescue her. Eventually they do, but then the spirits, led by a demon known only as The Beast, go on a rampage.


Halloween 1978

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Halloween 1978
Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film set in the fictional suburban midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween. John Carpenter directed the film, which stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle, Tony Moran and Tommy Lee Wallace sharing the role of Michael Myers. The central theme of the film is Myers' escape from a psychiatric hospital and his subsequent murder of a number of teenagers, whilst Dr. Loomis' attempts to track and stop him. Halloween is widely regarded as a classic among horror films, and as one of the most influential horror films of its era. In 2006 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 American independent horror film directed by Tobe Hooper and written collaboratively by Hooper and Kim Henkel. The film stars Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, Teri McMinn, William Vail, Edwin Neal and Paul A. Partain. While presented as a true story involving the ambush and murder of a group of friends on a road trip in rural Texas by a family of cannibals, the film is completely fictional. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre started the six films of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise revolving around the character of Leatherface, portrayed by Hansen in this film.

This is the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre film and it revolves primarily around a group of friends on a road trip in rural Texas. The purpose of the road trip is to visit the hometown of Sally and Franklin's father in order to check on their grandfather's grave after reports of grave robbing. After their van runs low on gas, the group of friends visits the childhood home of Sally and Franklin's father where they are attacked by a family of cannibalistic men, including the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface.


From Dusk Till Dawn

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From Dusk Till Dawn
From Dusk till Dawn is a 1996 action-horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino. The movie stars George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Quentin Tarantino and Juliette Lewis.

Fugitive Gecko brothers Seth (George Clooney) and Richie (Quentin Tarantino) fleeing the F.B.I. and Texas police after Richie has broken Seth out of prison in a bloody shootout. Seth Gecko is a cold, tough anti-hero, while his younger brother Richie is a delusional, homicidal serial rapist.


Kalifornia

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Kalifornia
The movie is about a road trip that goes horribly wrong. Brian Kessler (David Duchovny) is a journalist determined to make a book about serial killers, and also wants to move to California with his photographer girlfriend Carrie Laughlin (Michelle Forbes). They decide to do both at once, by driving to California and visiting infamous murder sites on the way. To subsidize the trip, they take on a pair of travelling companions - Southerner Early Grayce (Brad Pitt) and his child-like girlfriend Adele Corners (Juliette Lewis). While the two couples at first attempt to get over their obvious differences with each other, their trips to murder sites become progressively more eerie, particularly when it is revealed that one of the four is in fact a serial killer.


Carrie

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Carrie
Carrie is a 1976 American horror film directed by Brian De Palma and written by Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel Carrie by Stephen King. The film and the novel deal with a socially outcast teenage girl, Carrie White, who discovers she possesses psionic power. Carrie's powers become apparent after her humiliation by her peers, teachers, and abusive mother. The film stars Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, William Katt, John Travolta, and Priscilla Pointer.

Carrie White is a shy young girl who doesn't make friends easily. After her class mates taunt her about her horrified reaction to her totally unexpected first period one of them takes pity on her and gets Tommy Ross, her boyfriend and class hunk to invite Carrie to the senior prom. Meanwhile another girl who has been banned from the prom for her continued aggressive behaviour is not as forgiving and plans a trick to embarrass Carrie in front of the whole school. What she doesn't realise is that Carrie is ... gifted, and you really don't want to get her angry.


The Omen 1976

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The Omen 1976
Set in Fulham, England; the premise of The Omen comes from the end times prophecies of Christianity. The story tells of the childhood of Damien Thorn, who was switched at birth with the stillborn child of a wealthy American diplomat. Damien's family is unaware that he is actually the offspring of Satan and destined to become the Antichrist.

The premise of The Omen comes from the end times prophecies of Christianity. The story, set in Fulham, England, tells of the childhood of Damien Thorn, who was switched at birth with the supposedly stillborn child of a wealthy American diplomat with only the husband's knowledge, in order to keep it from affecting his wife. Damien's family is unaware that he is actually the offspring of Satan and destined to become the Antichrist. His father, Robert Thorn (named Jeremy Thorn in the original book), eventually begins to realize this with the help of a photographer named Keith Jennings, after numerous people connected to Damien die in tragic accidents. After Damien's first nanny hangs herself at Damien's fifth birthday party, a new nanny, Mrs. Baylock, arrives to tend to him. A priest who knows about Damien begins stalking Robert, and is eventually the one to first point out that Damien is the Antichrist, and that he intends to kill everyone in his way. The priest later dies in a bizarre accident (he is impaled by a church spire hit by lightning), and Katherine Thorn, Damien's mother, suffers a fall after being knocked over a railing by Damien.


The Shining

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The Shining
The Shining is based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. Former teacher and recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance (Nicholson) interviews for a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel in an effort to rebuild his life after his volatile temper lost him a teaching position. The hotel manager, Mr. Ullman, warns Jack that he and his family will be snowbound through most of the winter and of the potential for cabin fever. He further reinforces his point by recounting a season when the caretaker, Charles Grady, went crazy and brutally killed his wife, his two girls (ages eight and ten), and finally himself. Given his own desperation and the opportunity to pursue his true passion, writing, Jack acknowledges the warning, but accepts the job.


Misery

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Misery
Paul Sheldon is the writer of the very successful Misery series of romance novels. When he is injured in a car accident, his legs are broken and he cannot walk. He is taken in by Annie Wilkes, who says she is a nurse. She brings him painkillers, feeds and clothes him and rants on about how she is "his number one fan", even introducing Paul to her pet pig named Misery. Annie reveals to Paul that she was following him the day he got in his car accident, which is how she came to be his caretaker.


The Fly

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The Fly
At a meet-the-press party held by Bartok Science Industries, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), a brilliant, but eccentric scientist, meets Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), a journalist for Particle magazine. Bartok Science Industries provides the funding for Brundle's work, and he tells Veronica that he's working on a project that will change the world. Intrigued, Veronica accompanies Brundle back to his warehouse laboratory (where he also lives) so that he can show her his invention: a set of "Telepods" that allows instantaneous teleportation of an object from one pod to another. Veronica is highly impressed and eventually agrees to document Seth's work. Although the telepods can transport inanimate objects perfectly, they do not work correctly on living things. Seth unintentionally experiences this horrific fact when he attempts to teleport a baboon, which is killed when it is reintegrated inside-out. Shortly thereafter, Brundle and Veronica begin a romantic relationship, and their first sexual encounter provides inspiration for Seth. He realizes that the machine is not perfectly reassembling living objects, but is rather "interpreting" them, and sets about reprogramming the telepod computer to cope with living flesh...


Psycho

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Psycho
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The novel was based on the crimes of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein.
The film depicts the encounter between a secretary, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who is in hiding at a motel after embezzling from her employer, and the motel's owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), and the aftermath of their encounter.


White Zombie

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White Zombie
White Zombie was one of the first blockbuster horror films of its day. Released in 1932, and starring Bela Lugosi, who was a huge box office hit from 1931 with Dracula, Lugosi plays the evil Murder Legendre, who can control people with a little white powder, a hand clench, and a nasty glare. A young couple goes to get married at a rich friend's Haitian plantation , but the rich friend, named Beaumont wants Madeleine for himself, and teams up with Legendre to make Madeleine his Zombie slave.


Mimic

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Mimic
A disease carried by common cockroaches is killing children in Manhattan. In an effort to stop the epidemic, entomologist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) creates a mutant breed of insect that secretes a fluid to kill the roaches. This mutant breed was engineered to die after one generation, but three years later Susan finds out that the species has survived and evolved into a large, gruesome monster that can mimic human form.


Leprechaun

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Jennifer Aniston: Leprechaun
Leprechaun is a 1993 horror film directed by Mark Jones. It features one of the first roles played by a young Jennifer Aniston.

When a single father, his daughter, and three painters discover a pot of gold hidden near a house that the family is moving into, a vengefully violent leprechaun stalks them and uses his magical powers to frighten them into returning his gold. Although they are more than willing to meet his desires, one of the painters, while biting it to determine its authenticity, accidentally swallows it, complicating matters and leading to a night of terror.


Cannibal Girls

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Cannibal Girls
They do exactly what you think they do! A Canuxploitation classic, Ivan Reitmans Cannibal Girls is being resurrected for another bloody go-round by filmswelike! Second City TV regulars Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin star in this Canadian horror spoof as a couple on a romantic holiday who settle into a quaint little bed-and-breakfast run by a trio of flesh-eating ladies who fancy them for tomorrow's menu. Clifford Sturges (Eugene Levy) and Gloria Wellaby (Andrea Martin) are a happy new couple on vacation. When they take an unexpected stop in the quiet and secluded town of Farnhamville, they encounter a horrific world of blood and bed-and-breakfasts.


The Exorcist

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The Exorcist
The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her daughter through an exorcism conducted by two priests. The film features Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, Kitty Winn, Lee J. Cobb, Jason Miller and Mercedes McCambridge. The film became one of the most profitable horror films of all time, grossing $440,000,000 worldwide, and proved to have a profound effect on popular culture. The film earned ten Academy Award nominations—winning two, one for Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay.


Candyman

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Candyman
Folklorics graduate student Helen Lyle's (Virginia Madsen) thesis research leads her into the urban underworld of Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing projects, whose residents are genuinely terrified of "Candyman" (Tony Todd), a legendary figure with a hook for a hand. Skeptical, she "summons" him in front of a mirror and discovers with horror that he's real and wants her to join him in his mythic world; when she refuses, he murders those in her wake, leaving her to be charged with the crimes. She tries to explain who the real culprit is, but her efforts fail, and authorities commit her to a mental hospital.


King Kong 1933

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King Kong 1933
King Kong is a 1933 American monster film directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling gorilla called Kong who falls in love with a young woman and dies in an attempt to protect her from what he perceives as danger. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot, and opened in New York City's Radio City Music Hall on March 2, 1933 to good reviews. The film is notable for its stop-motion animation and its musical score, has been released to video and DVD, and has been computer colorized In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.


Cape Fear

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Cape Fear
Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) is a former Atlanta public defender who seeks to start a life in corporateCape Fear Movie law for him and his family in the quiet resort town of New Essex, North Carolina. Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is a client Sam defended 14 years prior to the setting of the movie. Cady, who was being tried for the rape and battery of a 16-year-old girl, was illiterate at the time of the trial and was unable to read a report Sam kept hidden from him and the court that could have lightened his sentence or acquitted him. The report stated that the victim was promiscuous, a decisive fact in a rape case because the intercourse must have been non-consensual for a conviction to occur. Now a well-read, recently-released ex-convict, Cady stalks Bowden and plans to seek vengeance for his imprisonment. The movie's climax has the two men engaging in a showdown during a severe thunderstorm on Cape Fear.


The Crow

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The Crow
A poetic guitarist Eric Draven (Lee) is brought back to life by a crow a year after he and his fiancée are murdered on the eve of their wedding. The crow guides him through the land of the living, and leads him to his despicable killers. One by one, Eric gives these thugs a taste of their own medicine. However their leader Top-Dollar (Michael Wincott), a world-class crime lord, will soon learn the legend of the crow and the secret to the vigilante's invincibility.


Alligator

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Alligator
The film opens with a teenaged girl purchasing a baby alligator while on vacation with her family at a tourist trap in Florida. After the family returns home to Chicago, the alligator, named Ramón by the girl, is promptly flushed down the family's toilet by her surly, animal-phobic father and ends up in the city's sewers. Twelve years go by, during which the alligator not only survives, but eventually feeds on covertly discarded pet corpses that are spiked with an experimental growth formula, causing it to grow into a 36-foot (11 m)-long behemoth with an almost impenetrable hide.

The alligator begins picking off humans in the sewer, and the resulting flow of body parts draws in world-weary police officer David Madison who, after a horribly botched case in St. Louis, has gained a reputation for being lethally unlucky for his assigned partners. As Madison works on this new case, his boss Chief Clark brings him into contact with reptile expert Marisa Kendall, who years earlier was the girl who bought the alligator. The two of them edge into a prickly romantic relationship, and during a visit to Kendall's house, Madison bonds with her motormouthed mother.

Madison's reputation as a partner-killer is "confirmed" when the gator snags the young cop who accompanies Madison into the sewer searching for clues. No one believes Madison's story, partly due to a lack of a body, and partly because of Slade, the influential local tycoon who sponsored the illegal growth experiments and therefore doesn't want the truth to come out. This changes when an obnoxious tabloid reporter, Thomas Kemp, goes snooping in the sewers and supplies graphic and indisputable photographic evidence of the beast at the cost of his own life. Ironically, Kemp had, up until that point, been one of the banes of Madison's existence.

An attempt by the police to flush out Ramón comes up empty, and Madison is put on suspension, but then the gator literally smashes his own way out of the sewers and comes to the surface, killing a young boy who gets tossed into a swimming pool during a party. The ensuing city-wide hunt turns into a media circus, including the hiring of pompous big-game hunter Colonel Brock to track the animal. Once again, the effort fails: Brock is killed, the police trip over each other in confusion and Ramón goes on a rampage through a high-society wedding party; among his victims is the tycoon who helped to create him. The alligator also devours the groom. With only Kendall to help him, Madison finally lures the alligator into a trap back in the sewers and destroys the beast with a massive charge of explosives, barely escaping with his own life. As the film ends with Madison and Kendall walking away after the explosion, a drain in the sewer spits out another baby alligator.

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