Hey, just for fun I thought I would share a series of posts I've been making on Facebook about which basically nobody pretty much cares but I have doing it. I'm a huge horror fan across all media, be it literature, film, television, video games, comics, or what have you, and to celebrate Spooky Season I came up with my personal list of the 25 Greatest Horror Films and have been making a series of posts about each one. #s 25 through 11 are presented in chronological order of release, and then the last 10 will be a countdown by ranking to the best. I just posted #21 earlier today, so I'll present the text of my intro post here and then share the text of the first 4 films after that, just for fun.

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To celebrate my favorite holiday, Halloween, and my favorite season, autumn, I'm going to use my status as The Biggest Horror Film Fan You Know to create the single most definitive, non-controversial list of The 25 Greatest Horror Films of All Time, based entirely on the thoroughly measured scientific basis of it being my subjective but inarguable opinion which will not be questioned. In a series of posts over the rest of the month, I'll devote one entry to each film, with the bottom 15 being presented in chronological order of release and then the top 10---the greatest of the great, according to me---appearing in a countdown.

In coming up with my list, I decided that I wasn't going to consider any films that aren't at least 10 years old, because they all need to have stood the test of time. This eliminates some really great films, including but not limited to James Wan's THE CONJURING (2013), Jennifer Kent's THE BABADOOK (2014), Robert Eggers' THE WITCH (2015), and Jordan Peele's GET OUT (2017), each of which would have merited serious consideration.

After the countdown of the top 10 is complete, I'll also include, just for fun, a list of my own most painful omissions as well as the ones horror film scholars/historians would consider the most controversial omissions, because there are a few noteworthy ones.

A couple other notes before I get started.

Not all the films in my list are "spooky season" ones. Most are, but a small handful don't really go with the whole autumn/Halloween vibe, for reasons which will become clear when they come.

Some of the horror movies on the list are about monsters, but not all monster movies are horror movies, so as much as I love giant monster movies like KING KONG or the original GOJIRA (GODZILLA to us Yanks), you won't find them here. You also will not find any horror comedies or parodies, which eliminates classics like YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, GHOSTBUSTERS, and SHAUN OF THE DEAD, or any animated films like THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, CORALINE, or CORPSE BRIDE, no matter how macabre they may be.

Lastly, I'm uncomfortably aware that the 25 films on my list are very white male-centric. The casts of the films are almost entirely Caucasian, and all 25 are directed by men, and only one by a non-white man, even though there are a handful of foreign-language films on the list. For that, I can blame my own cultural experience, which of course is pretty white American-centric, but also the fact that until relatively recently, there have not been the opportunities for filmmakers who are not white men to make their mark in the genre in the United States. That is changing, thankfully, but I just wanted to point out that I'm aware how "white male"-skewed my list is.

All right, that's it. I will hopefully have my first entry ready to post later today, or tomorrow morning at the latest!

Here we go, with a reminder that #25 through #11 are not ranked but presented in chronological order of release.

#25

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920)

Director: Robert Wiene
Writers: Hans Janowitz/Carl Mayer

The first couple of passes I took at coming up with my "25 greatest horror films list" left off this film, an omission about which I never felt good. It was only on compiling my final list that I'm going with here that I finally decided that I couldn't leave it off, it had to be part of the list, and so here it is. Which film ended up getting cut from the Top 25 for it? Maybe I'll answer that at some point, for the benefit of the 1 or 2 people who actually a) read this, and b) care.

I first learned of CALIGARI thanks to a scary picture of it in a Clark Elementary School Library book called "Great Monsters of the Movies" which I must have read a half-dozen times over the course of my grade school days. It wasn't until the late 90s when I was finally able to watch it after finding a copy on VHS at the long-gone Media Play store in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It was released by one of those low-rent outfits that only put out public domain films on cheap videocassettes that didn't even have the little tab removed that prevented you from recording over it. But hey, I had a copy! Nowadays, I have a beautifully restored copy of the film on a Blu-ray set from Kino Lorber that feels like an unofficial Criterion Collection release. For a film over a century old, it looks GORGEOUS.

A masterpiece of German Expressionist horror, CALIGARI is set in the German village of Holstenwall and tells the story of a villainous figure, the titular Dr. Caligari, with a strange exhibit at the town fair, a somnambulist named Cesare who is displayed for the crowd in a large cabinet and is subsequently awakened to a trancelike state to answer the crowd's questions. Cesare is portrayed by Conrad Veidt, who perhaps most famously appeared as the German soldier Strasser over 2 decades later in CASABLANCA and whose character Gwynplaine was also the visual inspiration for the Joker in the 1928 film THE MAN WHO LAUGHS. Veidt's Cesare is long and lank, and dressed entirely in black---think Mike Myers as Dieter on "Saturday Night Live"---with a face painted entirely white except for black highlights around the eyes for a ghoulish-looking effect.

The real scheme going on, though, is Cesare going out at night under Caligari's hypnotic spell and committing murders of the townspeople. However, in one scene which clearly inspired a similar scene in the Boris Karloff-starring adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN a decade later, Cesare cannot bring himself to kill Jane, the beautiful love interest of the film's protagonist, Francis, and abducts her instead. In another bit that foreshadows FRANKENSTEIN, Cesare is then chased by an angry mob until he collapses and dies from exhaustion (there is also a scene involving Danny DeVito's Penguin in 1992's BATMAN RETURNS that seems to homage this). Francis investigates Caligari's case and, in a shocking twist, learns that he is the director of an insane asylum who claimed the name "Caligari" from a medieval magician who likewise used a somnambulist to do his evil bidding.

However, in a twist ending provided by a framing device that was forced on the filmmakers against their will which completely subverted their story's theme and meaning, it is revealed that the "real" Caligari is a kind and benevolent figure and all the other main characters are actually asylum patients living in their own mindscapes. To put it perhaps a bit too simplistically, the film's anti-authoritarianism bent is totally contradicted. Dear Leader is the one who actually loves you, and you should mindlessly do his bidding.

Veidt's performance aside, Cesare admittedly isn't that compelling of an antagonist compared to, say, Karloff's sympathetic Frankenstein monster, even stipulating that he is merely the tool of the real villain, Caligari. But CABINET is remembered far less for its actual story than for its visuals. The film is set in a completely surreal Dali-esque world of strange and unnatural angles, with shadows actually painted onto the sets for a dreamlike effect. As Roger Ebert once wrote about CALIGARI for his "Great Films" series, the characters literally exist at right angles to reality. The film is a feast to look at.

The iconic shot of Caligari displaying Cesare in the titular cabinet has been homaged many times on film over the years, most memorably, at least for me, by Brian De Palma in his 1974 film PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE.

(Note: I did remove one political reference in order for this post to abide by IMWAN's "no politics" rules)

#24

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925)

Director: Rupert Julian (credited) Lon Chaney/Edward Sedgwick/Ernst Laemmle (uncredited)
Writers (all uncredited): Walter Anthony/Elliott J. Clawson/Bernard McConville/Frank M. McCormack/Tom Reed/Raymond L. Schrock/Richard Wallace/Jasper Spearing

I have loved the original Universal Studios silent film adaptation of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA since I first received it as a gift from my Uncle Mutt for my 14th birthday. As best I can recall, it was actually the first full horror film I ever saw (although I can remember seeing bits and pieces of other ones on TV here and there), and therefore it was the first horror film I ever loved. In fact, to this day it's my 2nd favorite film of all time, after David Fincher's ZODIAC. The tale of Erik, the Opera Ghost who lurks in the shadows amidst and deep below the Paris Opera House became pretty much my favorite story, period.

The film was my gateway into the original Gaston Leroux novel as well as the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical phenomenon which hit America a year later, not to mention all the other film, television, and stage adaptations I could find. I own over a half dozen different copies of the Leroux book alone, including one in French, plus a handful of unauthorized sequels, all of which are entertaining in their own ways and one of which, Susan Kay's "Phantom" is superior to the original book. I have copies of every Phantom screen adaptation that are possible to own in America (the sole exception being a 1983 TV movie starring Jane Seymour and Maximilian Schell that at least is sometimes available on YouTube).

I love the story so much that I even wrote my high school English senior paper on "The Phantom of the Opera" and even got praise for writing one of my teacher's "most unique" such papers she'd ever received (hi, Mrs. Thoreson!), and it all comes from my love of this film, my favorite horror film ever.

Yet, even so, I have a hard time justifying my inclusion of it on a list of what are supposed to be all masterpieces, because admittedly it's not. Lon Chaney's performance as the titular Phantom most certainly is, make no mistake. And the spectacle can't be topped. But PHANTOM is, at best, a good film, and as dearly as I love it, I certainly couldn't justify putting it in the top 10, so here in the top 25 it sits instead. Even on my 2-disc Collector's Edition DVD set of the movie, the film historian who provides a commentary track doesn't even bother to hide his general disdain for what he considers to be a mediocre film outside the aforementioned spectacle and lead performance by Chaney, which kind of makes one wonder why he was chosen to provide a commentary track for what at the time was a fairly expensive DVD set. On the other hand, the late great Roger Ebert chose to include PHANTOM in his "Great Movies" series of essays, so I do feel at least a bit validated there.

The film's production was fairly chaotic, to the point where it's admittedly a minor miracle the result is watchable at all. The original (and sole credited) director, Rupert Julian, was soon revealed to be in over his head and was sacked. The studio tinkered with the film, including writing and inserting several comedy scenes which were later subsequently removed, and the released film is a compilation of scenes shot by Julian before his departure along with Edward Sedgwick, Chaney himself, and Ernst Laemmle, the nephew of Universal Studios owner Carl Laemmle.

But somehow...it all works. Or, at least, it works well enough. The spectacle is amazing, as are the massive sets for the Opera House and the Phantom's labyrinth deep down below. My favorite sequence of the film, a masquerade ball held inside the Opera House, was even shot in an early technicolor format to show off the Phantom's own "costume".....the terrifying "Red Death" from the Edgar Allen Poe story.

Still, ultimately, the main reason PHANTOM works is because of Lon Chaney, the legendary Man of 1,000 Faces. What Chaney did in this film, he did entirely without a mask, and one simply cannot see a single trace of Chaney's real face in his self-created Phantom visage, which he achieved entirely with make-up and equipment. He's phenomenal, even more so for having played the Phantom in near-constant pain from his get-up.

And the scene where the Phantom is suddenly unmasked by Christine, the object of his murderous obsession, to reveal his real face, remains unsurpassed to this day, and was reportedly so shocking back in the day it caused some moviegoers to faint. That may be apocryphal, but even more terrifying to me has always been the immediate aftermath, as the furious Erik whirls on Christine and, seething with rage, points at her and menacingly steps towards her (actually moving to the camera) as his frightening visage moves in and out of focus like we are experiencing a fever dream. Just great stuff.

It's worth pointing out that even with a few liberties taken, this remains the most faithful adaptation of the Leroux novel, and until the Lloyd Webber musical in the 1980s, over 60 years later, remained the only adaptation of "Phantom" that had the character born disfigured instead of suffering his impairment later in life, usually by being scarred with acid, in ways that fundamentally changed the natures of both the character and the story (and I love many of those adaptations, mind you).

But, for all of it, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA remains my first love when it comes to horror movies, and you never forget your first love, right?

You won't believe who's at number eleven!!!

#23

THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)

Director: Paul Leni
Writers: Alfred A. Cohn/Walter Anthony/Robert F. Hill

Like PHANTOM in my previous entry, this is a Universal Studios release, and this film is basically the progenitor of all the "old dark house" films that so many of us have come to know and love and also shares some common DNA with other murder mysteries set in old dark houses. Fans of CLUE (I'm one!) and MURDER BY DEATH will find much to love here.

An eccentric millionaire named Cyrus West has come to resent the members of his extended family, whom he says surround him and his fortune like cats waiting to pounce on a canary. When West passes on, the legal terms of his will state that it will not be read until 20 years after his death.

And so, his family members (many of whom admittedly seem too young to have been waiting for 2 decades) arrive one by one at West's mansion, to have the will read at midnight by West's attorney, Crosby, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Max Von Sydow's Father Merrin in THE EXORCIST, on what is, of course, a dark and stormy night.

Most of the family members are varying degrees of loathsome, although my favorite character in the film is the ironically named Mammy Pleasant, the mansion's sole remaining occupant and housekeeper who makes not the slightest effort to mask her utter contempt for each of the guests.

To everyone's shock, the named beneficiary turns out to be West's most distant relation, a niece named Annabelle, but it comes with a catch. Knowing that his family believed him to be insane, West stipulates that Annabelle must be examined by a doctor (also named in the will) and certified to be of sound mind. If she is not, then the fortune will pass to another family member whose name remains secret inside a sealed envelope.

Adding to the complications is the arrival of a guard from a nearby insane asylum who warns that no one can leave. Like from so many of the best urban legends, a murderous lunatic has escaped from the asylum and been tracked to the grounds surrounding the estate...and he may already be inside. Convenient to the film's titular metaphor, the mental patient believes himself to be a cat...and he may already be inside the house.

Mysteries abound, not all of which will be answered during the film. West's safe containing the will, which has been locked since the night of his death, contains a living moth inside it when opened up. A clock which has not worked since West's death suddenly chimes again. A picture of West mysteriously falls off the wall after the reading of the will, which all involved consider to be an omen of death. And, of course, West's ghost is said to roam the halls of his old Gothic mansion.

Can poor Annabelle survive the night with both her life and her sanity intact? Or will she fall victim to either her family or the escaped lunatic?

And if Annabelle is the new canary...who is the new cat?

THE CAT AND THE CANARY is marvelously entertaining, and besides all the suspense and horror, is leavened with considerable dollops of (intentional) humor. This film is pretty friggin' funny. The mansion is also a wonder of design---I would gladly have a print of one of the mansion's establishing shots hanging on my wall, its Gothic spires raising towards the endless night.

Director Leni also makes creative use of the dialogue cards found in silent films, for both humorous and suspenseful purposes. The film also has a far, far more fluid camera than I've seen in pretty much any other silent movie, including a wonderful tracking shot pushing through the dark hallways of the West mansion. And the interiors....Leni's film has the most oppressive and all-encompassing use of darkness and shadows in a horror film that I can remember until NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, over 40 years later. This is a DARK looking film, which makes its high entertainment value even more of a wonder.

CAT was based on a stage play and has been adapted several other times, the most famous remake starring Bob Hope. I've not seen any of them, but my understanding is that the remakes all prioritize the comedy over the horror instead of the mix Leni achieves.

As an aside, I will add that it's a bit frustrating that the silent-era Universal Studios horror releases like this, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, tend to be excluded from talk about the great Universal Monsters era, and are never included in any box sets of the same. In fact, all 3 of these films have been in the public domain for a long time and deserve to get the special treatment on disc from the studio.

The film admittedly drags just a little bit in its middle third, but still...if you can appreciate silent movies, you can do a lot worse for your Halloween night spooky movie marathon than THE CAT AND THE CANARY.

#22

FRANKENSTEIN (1931)

Director: James Whale
Writers: (credited) Garrett Fort/Francis Edward Faragogh/John Balderston
(uncredited) Robert Florey/John Russell

Pound for pound, James Whale may be the single greatest horror film director ever, a distinction I'm not sure he would have wanted. Whale only contributed 4 films to the genre, the first two films in the Universal Studios FRANKENSTEIN cycle (this film and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN) along with THE INVISIBLE MAN, the adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, and the horror-comedy THE OLD DARK HOUSE. This first FRANKENSTEIN isn't quite up to the level of THE BRIDE which, spoiler alert: will be found later in my list, but it's a fine work.

And yet, if I'm being honest, I was pretty disappointed on my first viewing of it back in the day. I'd saved up my allowance money to buy it on VHS in the early 90s when Universal began releasing most of their classic monster movies in absolutely GORGEOUS VHS editions (all those cases are still works of art), and I bought FRANKENSTEIN first because it was the one I was most desperate to see, even more than DRACULA or THE WOLF MAN. I'd been reading about these movies for years, in my own books and the ones on the shelves of the school libraries, and so I was overjoyed to finally have the chance to see them after a decade.

But on first viewing, my response to the original FRANKENSTEIN was just "...oh." It was fine, and I could appreciate the performance of Boris Karloff as the Monster (as my friend Sarah could tell you, "Frankenstein" is the name of the creator, not the creation) as well as the production design, even though I was still a year or two away from knowing what that was. But it wasn't the sweeping Gothic masterpiece I was expecting, and pretty much every single scene in the film, even most of the exteriors, was obviously filmed on a set...even the opening graveyard scene! It couldn't help but pull me out of the movie a little bit. I mean, 3 years earlier, my innocent and naive 14-year-old self could be completely swept into the magic of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and its world, but obviously my more sophisticated and worldly 17-year-old self was a bit more cynical.

In fact, none of the Universal Monster movies (save for the original PHANTOM) were what I'd imagined them to be---the movie that actually came the closest to what I always saw in my head for the Universal Monsters was the Mel Brooks spoof YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. But I did come to appreciate them and have love for even the weakest entries...well, most of them, anyway. I don't love FRANKENSTEIN quite as much as I do the original Mary Shelley novel from which it is VERY loosely adapted, or the film's direct sequel 4 years later, but it's a very well-done film, and if Colin Clive tends to overact just a bit as Dr. Frankenstein (whose first name is changed to "Henry" from the original novel's "Victor" for some inexplicable reason), it's more than made up for by the sympathetic pathos of Karloff as the Monster. And of course, Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant is named Fritz, NOT Igor, who belongs up there with "Play it again, Sam" and "Beam me up, Scotty" as things that were never actually a part of what they are mistakenly associated with.

I can't end this without mentioning two production elements which remain stellar almost a century later. One, that iconic Jack Pierce make-up design for the Monster is just phenomenal. Karloff's Monster bears little resemblance to the description of the novel's creation, but it is perfect for this film. Second, the electrical lab equipment designed by Kenneth Strickfaden is so memorable and visually stunning that it's no wonder that Mel Brooks arranged to use it again 40 years later for YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.

Also, for all the brilliance of Karloff's performance, my single favorite moment of the film actually comes early on in the opening graveyard scene where Frankenstein and Fritz are digging up a corpse, and Frankenstein inadvertently tosses a shovelful of dirt into the face of a nearby statue of Death.

Absolutely perfect.

Eek...sorry for the size of the first CAT AND THE CANARY photo. It appeared regular size on Facebook. I don't know how to resize it here, my apologies.

DON'T SKIP AHEAD, DOOT!!!

Instead of using img, use thumb to post the picture. It will automatically resize it and make it clickable to see the original size.

Also, really enjoying this thread. Thanks!

An October Plum thread is always cause for celebration!

I tried using thumb and it didn't resize the picture at all, so I must be doing it wrong. Do I still run the original picture through Imgur to get the share link?

And thanks for the kind words!

I've never seen THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI but I've often read references to it. I need to get around to watching it.

Yeah, and just replace the [ img ] and [ /img ] tags with. [ thumb ] and [ /thumb ] , but with no spaces after/before the brackets.
But that just shrinks them down so people don't have to scroll horizontally with their Web browser. It may not shrink down the
graphic as much as you'd like. Size the image before you upload it to IMGUR if you want a specific size.

VAMPYR (1932)

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Writers: Carl Theodor Dreyer/ Christen Jul

If David Lynch had ever wanted to make a vampire movie (and had also been born about 50 years earlier), the resulting film would look a lot like VAMPYR.

The German film VAMPYR was the Danish director Dreyer's first sound film (albeit barely) and his follow-up to his masterpiece THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, which remains on the short list for the greatest films of all time and is certainly the most emotional film viewing experience I've ever had. Amusingly, at least if you've seen the actual film, VAMPYR was Dreyer's attempt to create a more mainstream entertainment for the masses who he realized really liked lowly tales of ghosts and vampires.

The film is verrrrrrrrry loosely based on a novella called "Carmilla" by J.S. Le Fanu, with one major scene inspired by one from another Le Fanu story called "The Room in the Dragon Volant" (I have read "Carmilla" a few times but never the latter story). Most of the actors in the film were not really actors at all, or had no professional experience. Lead actor "Julian West" was in actuality Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, a French nobleman who agreed to finance Dreyer's film in exchange for being allowed to play the main character. It was the sole acting credit for Gunzburg, who later emigrated to the United States and became an editor for Vogue magazine.

Like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, VAMPYR IS less about its story than how its about its story, to borrow a phrase from Roger Ebert. The story is fairly simple and straightforward. A traveler named Allen Gray comes to the small French village of Courtempierre and experiences a series of supernatural happenings, eventually coming to realize that the town in general and a young woman in particular are suffering under the rotting influence of a vampire, eventually revealed to be an elderly woman named Marguerite Chopin. The vampire is killed by a metal stake, and the local doctor, who acted as her pawn, is also gruesomely killed in a flour mill at the story's end. Nothing too special there.

But what makes VAMPYR such a masterpiece is its visuals and mood, which Dreyer achieved partly by filming most scenes through a thin gauze to give the film a dreamlike property. The most striking scene (besides the horrifying death of the doctor) comes when Gray explores an old castle and sees a group of shadows on the wall of people dancing. Another horrifyingly surreal moment comes when Gray has an out-of-body experience and sees a vision of himself being buried alive by Marguerite and the evil doctor.

VAMPYR was not a success critically or commercially upon release but has come to be well regarded. It was already considered to be a masterpiece by the time I first learned about it in high school. The film ended up being my first ever Criterion Collection purchase, a beautiful set that also came with a full-length book containing the film's shooting script along with the "Carmilla" novella. It is still in print today.

thanks for posting this list!

Thanks for checking it out!

#20

THE CITY OF THE DEAD (1960)

Director: John Moxey
Writers: George Baxt (screenplay)/Milton Subotsky (story)

In 2006, I purchased a DVD box set called "Fright Fest: Nightmare in a Box". It came in a metal case and contained 10 old black and white horror movies that were all in the public domain, such as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE TERROR, and DEMENTIA 13 (Francis Ford Coppola's first film!), along with a CD of horror sound effects like ghostly wails, wolf howls, creaking doors, and fiendish laughs, the kind of thing that people played in the background at their Halloween parties in the 90s. The movie I was least interested in based on its title was on the first disc, something called HORROR HOTEL, which sounded like a schlocky piece of crap, but it at least had the legendary Chrisopher Lee in it, so that alone would hopefully make it worth watching.

It was. I LOVED IT.

The title did not reflect what the movie was about at all. Despite the schlock factor the title suggested, the film was a classy, elegant work that was absolutely dripping with atmosphere, and of all the films in that box set that were new to me, it was the one I ended up enjoying the most. It was only later that I learned it was actually a British film originally released under the title THE CITY OF THE DEAD, but it was inexplicably changed for its American release to HORROR HOTEL, which is a horrible title. If it were a more recent film, I could understand changing the title since the "OF THE DEAD" part might suggest it's a zombie movie.

Instead, the film opens in 1600s New England, with a witch named Elizabeth Selwyn being burned at the stake for practicing the Satanic arts. In modern times, a college student named Nan Barlow is writing a paper on witchcraft and, at her professor's suggestion, travels to the small Massachusetts town of Whitewood, Selwyn's hometown, to interview the residents and study the history there. We are shocked to find that the innkeeper where she stays bears more than a passing resemblance to Selwyn (not a surprise, since they are played by the same actress) and even more shocked when, shall we say, Nan meets the same fate as a certain other pretty blonde who travelled to a lonely, isolated motel in an early 1960s horror movie. Just as in that other film, her sibling and her love interest team up to investigate her disappearance, and more spooky doings are afoot.

The film, which despite being set in America is 100% British to the core, is absolutely flooded in atmosphere and is gorgeously shot. The town of Whitewood is awash in fog at all times. There are cultists in hooded robes, dark shadows, and Satanic chanting. In a nice touch, the townspeople that the protagonists walk past will stop once they are in the background to turn and watch the main characters, and the effect is unnerving.

Despite the darkness of its subject matter, the film is actually a ton of fun. Patricia Jessel is marvelous as both Elizabeth Selwyn and her modern incarnation, Mrs. Newless (try spelling her name backwards), and of course, Christopher Lee, who plays Nan's professor, is Christopher Lee. He makes everything better.

I found a copy of THE CITY OF THE DEAD, its original British version which is 2 minutes longer, on Blu-ray last year, and it is the only version I'll ever watch again, although I believe HORROR HOTEL at least is available on YouTube for anyone who might be interested. Just don't hold the title against it.

I can't state enough how much I absolutely love this film.

#19

CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)

Director: Herk Harvey
Writers: John Clifford (credited)/Herk Harvey (uncredited)

There's really no excuse for CARNIVAL OF SOULS to be as good as it is.

It's made on a budget of apparently about $15, the sole feature film directing credit by a filmmaker who made exclusively educational and industrial films. But it retains a spectral power and was an undeniable visual influence on George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and is reportedly beloved by David Lynch as well.

The film tells the story of a young Kansas woman named Mary who is the sole survivor of a deadly car accident when the vehicle plunges off a bridge into the river. Mary emerges from the water hours later with no memory of the accident or how she survived it.

Sometime later, Mary moves to Utah, where she has taken a position as a church organist despite not being religious. She becomes obsessed with the existence of an abandoned pavilion outside of Salt Lake City, a place that once was, in order, a bathhouse, a dance hall, and the film's titular carnival. More disturbingly, she begins to see visions of a pale ghoulish figure, played by director Harvey and listed in the credits only as "The Man." Soon Mary becomes haunted by other ghouls as well and experiences disturbing periods where the rest of the world cannot seem to see or sense her.

In one of the movie's most memorable sequences, Mary tries to flee town in a bus after losing her job (when her organ playing ends up sounding more....unnatural than holy, to say the least), only to see that all of her fellow passengers are ghouls. In the movie's most famous scene, the pavilion is full of ghouls dancing together.....with Mary paired up with The Man. Shortly after, all the pale ghouls pursue Mary onto a beach. It's disturbing imagery, and again, clearly influenced the zombies in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Is Mary shifting back and forth between realities? Who are The Man and the other ghouls? What is going on? Readers of a certain Ambrose Bierce story (which was adapted into a 1-act play in which I played a small role in high school) may suspect the truth, but as with many of the other films I've already covered in this list, the movie's power comes not from its story but from its dreamlike atmosphere and visuals. The movie is technically weak---much of the dialogue clearly does not match up with the actors' lip movements---but even there its limitations add to its effect, arguably.

Due to its accidentally being released without a copyright notice, CARNIVAL OF SOULS has long been in the public domain and thus has been compiled in 1,000 collections of such films. It's also available on YouTube, but the single best way to watch it is the Criterion Collection edition.

I'm kind of amazed that I've never heard of "City of the Dead" before. That top still looks fantastic.

It's worth checking out!

#18

THE HAUNTING (1963)

Director: Robert Wise
Writer: Nelson Gidding

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut.; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

Oof. Still hard to do better than the opening paragraph of Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House", which remains on the short list of greatest American horror novels. Jackson's novel was published in 1959, and director Robert Wise's film adaptation appeared just a short 4 years later. Wise had quite the eclectic career going. Just 2 years earlier, Wise had won the Academy Award for Best Director for the adaptation of WEST SIDE STORY, and 2 years after THE HAUNTING would do so again with THE SOUND OF MUSIC (both musicals also won Best Picture). Wise also directed one of the most iconic science fiction films in the early 1950s with THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, and in the late 70s would helm the first cinematic adventure of the Enterprise crew in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Wise was so good at handling so many different genres of film that his career ended up being a little underrated because of it. 

Filmed in gorgeous black and white (we still haven't come to a color picture yet in this list!), THE HAUNTING remains one of the greatest haunted house films, and was picked by none other than Martin Scorcese as the scariest film of all time--not bad for a film released with a "G" rating! 

A plot synopsis makes it sound unfortunately similar to the enjoyable but schlocky horror pictures created by the likes of William Castle at the time like 13 GHOSTS or HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (the title of which sounds like a rip-off of Jackson's novel, although in this case the movie appeared first), but the film is so much more. A man named Dr. Markway assembles a team to investigate the old, empty Hill House, a mansion in Massachusetts with a history of tragedy and the prerequisite reputation for being haunted. Among his team are 2 women with paranormal connections:  Eleanor, who was surrounded by alleged poltergeist activity as a girl, and Theodora, who claims to have psychic abilities. Rounding out the team is a young man named Luke, included at the insistence of the mansion's current owner Mrs. Sanderson as a condition of allowing the investigation.

Hill House is, as Jackson's novel says, "not sane." The rooms are built at unnatural angles, and unlike most films shot on sets, the ceiling of each room is visible to create a claustrophobic feeling. A massive circular staircase on which a previous resident once committed suicide provides an ominous visual and is the setting of a creepy scene. Perhaps the most memorable moment comes during a terrifying night when a pounding bedroom door visibly bends inward, a moment created solely through practical effects 3 decades before CGI.

Despite the paranormal elements, THE HAUNTING is much more a story of a woman's mental breakdown, the Eleanor character, and Wise wisely (ahem) plays up that element. It remains uncertain at the end if Hill House was ever actually haunted or if all the seemingly paranormal events took place solely in Eleanor's mind.

THE HAUNTING was remade in 1999 by director Jan de Bont of SPEED and TWISTER fame, an effort which could best be described as "unfortunate". I've not seen it since its theatrical release. Much better received was a 10-episode Netflix adaptation a few years back by horror maestro Mike Flanagan, the best thing going in modern horror. The Netflix series used the full title of Jackson's novel and other than having it set in modern times (which is a detriment to me but your mileage may vary) is a sublime creative work.