What else would you call something like Color Out of Space? I'd definitely put it in the horror category, it's just more focused on existential, nihilistic dread, and utter despair, as well as (for lack of a better term) "crimes against nature", and these strange abominations that mock what it is to be human - what makes life precious. That's terrifying in its own way, even if it's not "horror classic".
Revolting is not completely what I mean. I mean "upsetting", just this miasma of unease. That's what I mean.
Human Centipede is a subgenre (body horror), but is that not part of the pantheon of horror films as well? Are slasher movies?
I think animals could be scary; it depends what's done with them. We don't overpower them when unarmed. You ever see what a bear is capable of? A crocodile? These are terrifying monsters. Thematically speaking, they're just as horror-inducing as a xenomorph, if not moreso, because they remind us of our precarious position in Nature and how we might just snuff it at any moment anyway. They also remind us of our primal reality - that we are part of nature, too, and we can have all the airs we want to put on, but at the end of the day, we're part of this bigger thing. That can make us feel small and scared. I'm not saying your average Sharknado movie can make us feel that dread, but the potential is there.
It's not "their" habitat any more than it's "ours". You can't "intrude" on nature - it's just there. And as for motive, I feel the chaos and terror of battle in movies like Saving Private Ryan even though those soldiers are fighting in self-defense. That's the same "kill or be killed". That's even putting aside the fact that many man v. nature horror movies explicitly create animals that go above and beyond that search for food. The man-eater in Jaws could go eat fish. It doesn't.
Evil intentions can be scary. So can random violence, inexplicable anarchy, our alone-ness in the universe, or being reminded of our potential place on the food chain. So, I agree with you insofar as a sinister psychology adds a lot of horror to a horror film, it's not the only way to do so. Other fears can be invoked (or, as with Alien, almost all of them at once).
Frankenstein is scary because he is a magnified human. His motives are this rage at his place in the universe (or lack thereof), and his railing against his parent (or Creator), and that scares us as much as the violent psychopath. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre features characters (so I've read - I haven't actually seen this one) that are basically Frankenstein-ian: they don't have the mental processes to qualify, do they? Yet the idea of somebody with so little regard for humanity is truly frightening. If you don't feel fear, that's fine; I'm not sure I'm scared of Frankenstein in those films, either. But I definitely understand the horror aspect.
I can understand a monster and still fear it because the threat is still there, whether that threat is physical or existential. In fact, in the latter case, understanding the monster makes it scarier. Back to the Wolfman: what's really scary about a werewolf isn't the idea that a wolf-monster might show up and rip us to shreds, it's that we contain that primal, animal aggression and destructive side. The best Wolfman movie wouldn't (just) make us afraid that there might be a monster out there, but that there is one *in here*.
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