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The 100 Greatest Horror/Thriller Films of All Time

posted 13 years ago by TheFilmFreak1
5 replies | jump to latest

My personal selection, listed chronologically, is as follows:

1. Blackmail (1929)
2. M (1931)
3. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
4. Gaslight (1940)
5. Rebecca (1940)
6. Gaslight (1944)
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
8. Notorious (1946)
9. Rope (1948)
10. A Place in the Sun (1951)
11. Strangers on a Train (1951)
12. I Confess (1953)
13. Dial M for Murder (1954)
14. Rear Window (1954)
15. Les Diaboliques (1955)
16. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
17. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
18. The Wrong Man (1956)
19. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
20. The Seventh Seal (1957)
21. Vertigo (1958)
22. Psycho (1960)
23. Village of the Damned (1960)
24. Purple Noon (1960)
25. The Innocents (1961)
26. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
27. Cape Fear (1962)
28. Knife in the Water (1962)
29. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)
30. The Birds (1963)
31. The Haunting (1963)
32. Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
33. Repulsion (1965)
34. Blow Up (1966)
35. Cul-De-Sac (1966)
36. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
37. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
38. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
39. Z (1969)
40. Topaz (1969)
41. The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
42. Wake in Fright (1971)
43. Duel (1971)
44. Klute (1971)
45. Frenzy (1972)
46. Sleuth (1972)
47. Don’t Look Now (1973)
48. The Exorcist (1973)
49. The Wicker Man (1973)
50. The Conversation (1974)
51. The Parallax View (1974)
52. The Stepford Wives (1975)
53. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
54. The Omen (1976)
55. The Tenant (1976)
56. All the President's Men (1976)
57. Suspiria (1977)
58. Halloween (1978)
59. Long Weekend (1978)
60. Coma (1978)
61. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
62. The Shining (1980)
63. Missing (1982)
64. Witness (1985)
65. The Name of the Rose (1986)
66. The Vanishing (1988)
67. Frantic (1988)
68. Misery (1990)
69. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
70. JFK (1991)
71. The Pelican Brief (1993)
72. Se7en (1995)
73. Copycat (1995)
74. Insomnia (1997)
75. The Game (1997)
76. The Sixth Sense (1999)
77. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
78. Memento (2000)
79. American Psycho (2000)
80. The Others (2001)
81. Insomnia (2002)
82. Signs (2002)
83. The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
84. Secret Window (2004)
85. Saw (2004)
86. The Machinist (2004)
87. Hidden (2005)
88. Red Eye (2005)
89. Match Point (2005)
90. The Da Vinci Code (2006)
91. Funny Games US (2007)
92. No Country for Old Men (2007)
93. Zodiac (2007)
94. 1408 (2007)
95. Angels and Demons (2009)
96. The Lovely Bones (2009)
97. Antichrist (2009)
98. The White Ribbon (2009)
99. Shutter Island (2010)
100. The Ghost Writer (2010)

Would you agree? What are some of your favourite horror/thriller films?

[–] suz-mal 13 years ago

Good one... I think you just named every well known horror movie made in the last 80 years, from the incredibly bad (Angels and Demons, Red Eye, Saw) to the incredibly good (The Tenant, M, Wicker Man, Hanging Rock etc.). Bit of a pointless list if it's chronological, though. Waste of time really...
I noticed you pretty well skipped over the 80s. There were a lot of crappy teen horror movies coming out then, but many of the best horror films were in that period. Haven't seen 65 or 66, but the rest of your 80s are all some of my favourites. I'd definitely add Altered States (1980), The Thing (1982)... for some reason I'm struggling to think of any more. I'm going to bed.

[–] TheFilmFreak1 13 years ago

I was originally intending to list the films in order of preference, but experienced great difficulty in determining the places after reaching the number twenty-one.

Note: I generally hate 1980's horror films.

[–] suz-mal 13 years ago

Fair enough. It can be hard with so many greats to pick from.

I've found that most of the best "horror" films from the 80s aren't actually marketed as horror, and are pretty far from the mainstream. It's just that the 80s was sort of the boom of modern Hollywood, when they began churning out so much cliched crap that all the great movies fell into obscurity (most, anyway). Also, a lot of good foreign horror (even unintentional horror) was coming out in that era.

Good to see a lot of Polanski on your list, though. So many people hated Frantic but it's one of my faves (although the payoff was a little weak... terrorists?)

[–] TheFilmFreak1 13 years ago

Meh... it was an adequate MacGuffin.

Note: I have substituted 1998's 'The Siege' for David Fincher's 'The Game'.

[–] kackc3 8 years ago

The most frightening movie ever: Fail Safe