top ten scary movies – GringoPotpourri

And Yet Still Another Ten Good Horror Movies (#41-50)

I noticed something weird when re-reading last year’s blog post on this subject. I was ranking the 31^st–40^th-best horror movies when I realized that some of my rankings were way off. “Get Out,” which I ranked as #32, went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay – a first for the genre. Surely it deserved a higher slot than #32. The film before it on this list, “It Follows,” though just three years old, remains wholly re-watchable, and its stylistic and tonal similarities to 1978’s “Halloween” make it, like “Get Out,” a high-water mark in horror cinema during the genre’s recent quality resurgence.

In hindsight, surely both of these movies should rank higher on this first-part list than, say, “The Cabin in the Woods,” a meta-horror comedy from 2012 that, while equally original, likely won’t age as well. I will posit that they should even rank higher than “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” which I enjoyed in the 1980’s but which rarely comes up anymore in discussions about great horror movies. And yet I ranked “Cabin” at #10 and “Nightmare” at #18. Of course, I hadn’t seen “It Follows” when I compiled the first two posts on the subject; and “Get Out” hadn’t even been made at that point.

What can I say? Like every other post on my site, I leave the written content as is (grammatical corrections notwithstanding). The content is what it is, and I’m certainly not the only critic – amateur or otherwise – to rethink a movie’s rank or rating after voicing his or her initial opinion about the film. With that being said, below is my latest list – the fifth in a series – of great horror movies:

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Still Another Ten Great Horror Movies (#31-40)

I love movies from all decades, and the fact that a movie was filmed in black-and-white is not enough to prevent me from seeing it. Those old Universal monster movies, starring Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, and others, are especially re-watchable. Favorites include “Bride of Frankenstein” and “The Mummy,” the latter of which is leagues better than this past summer’s Tom Cruise misfire of the same name. It wasn’t long ago that TCM aired the original “The Invisible Man,” starring Claude Rains as the title character. The special effects during the moments when Rains removes the bandages over his now-transparent face are phenomenal, and I can only imagine how horrifying that must have been to see on the big screen in 1933.

Of course, “The Invisible Man” is tame by today’s standards. Few horror films made before 1970 hold up today as viable scary movies, which makes it interesting that, when I published my first top ten list on this subject four years ago, I declared Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” released in 1960, to be the genre’s all-time best. I did make sure to include a couple of old movies in my latest top ten list, although the oldest one, 1973’s “The Wicker Man,” is still four decades newer than “The Invisible Man.” On a more contemporary note, one of the entries, “Get Out,” was released just seven months ago!

Enough explaining! Below is my latest list – the fourth in a series – of great horror movies, ten at a time:

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Even More Great Horror Movies (#21-30)

I love top ten lists! I have, in fact, already published two top ten lists related to scary movies. “Psycho,” “Halloween,” “The Shining,” “Friday the 13^th,” and “The Sixth Sense” are just five of my favorites, and they each appeared somewhere in the (thus far) Top 20. My original lists are here and here.

It is a funny thing about horror movies, though. They seem rife not just for sequels but for remakes as well. Four of the five films mentioned above have been remade (with the original remaining superior in each instance). As I continued the list for this Halloween season with ten more scary movies, I noticed that four of those films have also been, or are currently being, remade. Additionally, one of them is the sequel to a film that was remade, while another one is a remake!

What else can be said, except to remark about the genre’s durability and profitability…and for me to share my list of ten more great scary movies:

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Ten More Horror Movies (11-20)

Another spring and summer have come and gone and autumn is already upon us. My second-favorite holiday, Halloween, is just three weeks away. Although AMC Network isn’t repeating last October’s 31 days of horror movies, other cable networks are doing their part – SyFy, TBS, even ABC Family! This, of course, pleases me (as it does for many other night owls too, I suspect). Over the last several days I’ve watched “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “John Carpenter’s The Thing,” and “April Fool’s Day,” to name just a few.

Last fall I published the ranking of my top ten horror movies. That list ran the gamut from vampire art house flick to slasher movie to black-and-white Alfred Hitchcock thriller. I had fun compiling said list, however I know that it barely scratched the genre’s surface. As such, I thought I’d pad it by writing about ten more genre films that I like or at least respect.

Without any further ado, here are another ten horror movies that I love:

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Top Ten Horror Movies

Halloween is just around the corner and cinemas are filled with scary movies of varying degrees of quality. (My local cineplex is showing the “Conjuring” sequel “Annabelle.”) I started thinking about some of my favorite scary movies. Of course, there are sub-genres within the greater “horror” category. The last 15 years have been especially kind in this regard, with new categories emerging such as “found footage” (“The Blair Witch Project,” “Paranormal Activity”), “torture porn” (“Hostel,” “Saw”), even “horror comedy” (“Zombieland,” “This is the End”).

I tried to come up with a list that encompasses several sub-genres. Slasher, zombie, vampire, haunted house, serial killer…I covered most of the bases. You will see that after each film on my list, I’ve also recommended similar movies that you might want to check out – they could be by the same director, of the same genre, or with a similar narrative/visual style.

Enough babbling. Here are my top ten favorite horror movies:

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