My list:
1. Psycho
2. Alien
3. King Kong (1933)
4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
5. Repulsion
6. Don't Look Now
7. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
8. Rosemary's Baby
9. Frankenstein
10. Dawn of the Dead (1979)
Honorable mentions: The Shining, Halloween (1978)
How about you?
Just some observations and queries.
1. No The Exorcist? No Texas Chainsaw? Really?
2. I tend to think of Horror even more than other genres as broken down into fairly well-defined sub-genres: vampires, ghosts/haunted house, zombies, monsters, religious supernatural, slashers, sci-fi horror, meta-horror (Scream), horror-comedy, home-invasion, and so on, as well as perhaps national and regional categories liek J-horror, Giallo, New French Extreme, etc.. Any top x list that doesn't touch essentially all the key sub-genres is going to be criticizable, so, rather than start by *assuming* that x=10 gets you anything of interest, I'd recommend that you start by thinking of all the sub-genres that almost any horror fan would like to see represented on a list summarizing the best in Horror/the potential of Horror. You might find that by the time you list all the important sub-genres and allow that some categories have been especially fertile and will need several entries on any final list, that it'll be clear that, say, an x around 20-25 is what you need.
3. Complaints building on point 2. One of the big sub-genres I'd like to see represented: Cronenberg-style body-horror. I don't think Alien quite covers it. Similarly, I want a true ghost/haunted house tale - maybe The Innocents or The Haunting. The Shining is ultimately just too eccentric, too much a Kubrick film - Kubrick is his own genre (studies in over-design!) - to stand for any wider sub-genre.
1. Correct. As influential as The Exorcist and Chainsaw continue to be to this day, I would only rate them 8/10 and 7/10, respectively. If someone was looking to build a thorough appreciation and understanding of the OVERALL horror genre, I would say it would be incomplete if those films weren't viewed. That isn't the point of my topic, however.
2.
Any top x list that doesn't touch essentially all the key sub-genres is going to be criticizable, so, rather than start by *assuming* that x=10 gets you anything of interest, I'd recommend that you start by thinking of all the sub-genres that almost any horror fan would like to see represented on a list summarizing the best in Horror/the potential of Horror.Please criticize my selections all you want, but I don't necessarily agree with your reasoning. Specifically, my highest rated J-horror film (probably Audition) has no place on my top ten horror film list, and certainly not at the expense of the films listed in terms of overall outstanding quality.
@J-No. Good replies. I guess my own interests in Horror (and in most everything else now I think about it) are so broadly historical and systematic that I find it hard to separate out the intrinsic worth of something from its importance to film history, to how a genre developed, etc..
There's not too much to criticize tho'. Everything you list is terrific (and, for example, you implicitly rate Frankenstein over Bride of Frankenstein which I very much agree with, but which is probably a minority view among professional critics). One can point to omissions - and, e.g., I *think* I'd rank at least The Ex and Texas Chain and The Innocents and Wicker Man and The Fly (1986), The Thing (1982), Eyes Without A Face (1960), and maybe Martyrs (2007) ahead of Dawn of the Dead (1979) - but really it's a longer, more inclusive list that I'd be happiest arguing for.
Please criticize my selections all you want
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Top 11
1. Scream
2. Halloween(78)
3. A Nightmare on Elm Street(84)
4. Friday the 13th part 2
5. Psycho(60)
6. Alien
7. Friday the 13th(80)
8. Carrie(76)
9. A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.
10. Halloween II(81)
11. Psycho II
1.) Jaws (1975)
2.) Alien (1979)
3.) Carrie (1976)
4.) Suspiria (1977)
5.) The Exorcist (1973)
6.) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
7.) Psycho (1960)
8.) Halloween (1978)
9.) Friday The 13th (1980)
10.)Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Two seats in the back of the cinema, hazy. Ah yeah, you're forgettin' it and all the mad *beep* we did
These are in no order
1. Halloween
2. Halloween II
3. Halloween IV
4. Psycho
5. Psycho II
6. The Exorcist
7. The Blair Witch Project
8. Carrie
9. Rosemary's Baby
10. The Descent
a good list
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