The horror of the 1970s includes some of the greatest, most iconic movies ever made. The decade is considered a golden age for the genre. The films of this era became cultural reference points that would be quoted, imitated, and parodied ad nauseum for decades. These films announced many of the most respected auteurs to ever work in film, some of whom remained in horror and others who would go onto other genres. At least for the Western canon, it is hard to overstate how influential and impactful this decade was for horror and modern cinema in general.

Below are 30 of the most seminal, respected, and beloved movies of the decade. They comprise a survey of films that continue to inspire. Several spawned franchises. Many have been remade. They remain largely unsurpassed by their imitators, sequels, prequels, requels, reboots, or homages. This century’s horror movements – from torture porn to elevated horror – are indebted to the films below, and even filmmakers work well beyond genre confines celebrate these films for the impact they’ve had. Even at 30, this list is not long enough. An angry, indignant comments section would be a welcome way to flesh it out. If you hate the word ‘iconic’, this list will terrify you.

The 30 best horror movies of the 1970s:

1. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

Dario Argento’s debut is an apt place to begin a survey of 1970s horror considering the role Argento, and Italian cinema, would have on the genre. This was Argento’s debut feature, and displayed many of the hallmark flourishes that would make him such a legend of the genre. Giallo movies existed before him, but no director is as synonymous with the genre as he is.

By now, Argento’s plot beats might be familiar, but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was where he tested the concept. American writer Sam is on holiday in Rome when he stops a woman from being attacked at an art gallery. He’s now an important witness in the hunt for a serial killer, and Sam decides to play detective before he falls victim to the killer. Loosely based on a 1940s pulp novel (reportedly introduced to him by none other than Bernardo Bertolucci), Argento’s directorial career was off and running, and the giallo genre reached a wider audience and received critical acclaim that had eluded the genre before.

2. A Bay of Blood (1971)

Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage may have been the movie to popularize giallo among mainstream critics and audiences, but Argento’s fellow countryman Mario Bava is credited with making the first film, 1963’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much. One year after Argento’s debut, he’d release Bay of Blood, a movie that repulsed some viewers with its violence but is now thought of as one of the most influential horror movies ever.

The death of a countess sets in motion a chain of murders as different members of the community try to take control of the titular body of water, hence the title. Bava was already an established director of horror films, but A Bay of Blood’s ghoulish misanthropy was jarring to contemporary audiences (including, allegedly, Christopher Lee). Today, the film is regarded as a proto-slasher, one of the films to presage the 80s trend of body count-as-pacing, with several of its shots either inspiring or being lifted wholesale by a generation of schlocky slashers. Despite the outrage, critics couldn’t help but compliment its composition and the audacity of its gore. Today, it’s arguably Bava’s most influential movie.

3. The Devils (1971)

Many of the films on this list are gory, unnerving, and/or disturbing. Several caused outrage, provoked walkouts or protests, or were reviled by audiences. But only one was publicly condemned by the Vatican. Ken Russell’s The Devils is one of the most controversial movies ever made. It’s been heavily censored and was buried by Warner Bros. for decades with various cuts available on home video and streaming. Now in 2026, an official restoration is hitting cinemas preempted in the US by the dreaded NC-17 rating.

The Devils, however, is more than its notoriety. Director Ken Russell came from a theatrical background, and his baroque retelling of witch trials in the 17th century is as revered as it is notorious. It seems odd to believe now, but Hollywood actually came to Russell with the idea. Detractors more than balked at the combination of explicit sex and violence with religious imagery and themes, but The Devils is as much a story about power and the rawest, ugliest aspects of humanity that weaponize faith to terrorize communities. Sharing many of the same themes as the Unholy Trinity or UK triumvirate of folk horror, The Devils approaches the horrors of superstition and panic with sumptuous craft and a telling look at political opportunism in even the most supposedly selfless of arenas.

4. Punishment Park (1971)

Punishment Park is not often thought of as horror and doesn’t often make it onto lists like these, but Peter Watkins’ pseudo-documentary (mockumentary doesn’t feel like the right word) is jarring, frightening cinema all the more for how realistic and true to life it is.

Punishment Park is set in the 1970s in a near future where the Cold War has gotten quite hot. The United States routinely rounds up dissidents, puts them before tribunals, and gives those convicted (ie all of them), the choice between harsh prison sentences or a chance to survive the titular attraction while hunted by police and the National Guard for three days. The premise has long been mined for genre thrills, but its Watkins approach – not just the naturalism of the filmmaking but the honesty of the storytelling – that makes Punishment Park so disturbing. This might be an alternate reality United States, but the realities it captures remain frightening to this day.

5. Asylum (1972)

The 1970s was a golden age of modern horror, especially so for the horror anthology. The gothic settings, twisty stories, and campy tones still resonate today. While there are many delights from the decade – The House That Dripped Blood, The Vault of Horror, From Beyond the Grave, The Uncanny – often featuring Peter Cushing and/or Christoper Lee, this list spotlights two from 1972. The first is Asylum, directed by Roy Ward Baker for Amicus Productions, a British company that was known for its portmanteau films and largely perfected the model.

Asylum’s premise alone has become a foundational sort of trope. Dr. Martin arrives to take up his new position at a remote asylum. The warden insists that cosmopolitan doctors don’t understand mental illness and their attempts to help patients like his are naïve. Case in point: the last warden was driven insane and is now an inmate. Dr. Martin is invited to interview the patients and deduce which of them is the previous warden. Anthology films are notoriously a mixed bag and Asylum has its schlock, but it benefits from the cohesion of having one writer (Robert Bloch of Psycho fame) and a wicked sense of humor that made this one of Amicus’ most enduring productions.

6. The Last House on the Left (1972)

For his directorial debut, Wes Craven remade Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring stripped of any of the original’s spiritualism or magical realism and replaced with grindhouse aesthetics. The Last House on the Left remains a disturbing crime and revenge film that forgoes the stylistic approaches Craven would bring to his later fare. It continues to unnerve for its graphic depictions of assault and the way it used a counter-culture cautionary tale as an onramp for truly gruesome storytelling.

Mari and Phyllis are teenagers going to a concert who come across a gang of sadistic criminals. The violence and degradation they’re subjected to remains controversial to this day, and The Last House on the Left functions as a diptych: one part hopelessness and one part unrelenting revenge. Craven’s film invited audiences to gasp at violence before reveling in it. It was a notoriously independent shoot sans permits or much of a budget, with a cast of inexperienced actors who’ve since recounted being frightened and upset during filming. The result, for better or worse, is onscreen and in horror lore. Craven would direct another enduring 70s horror, The Hills Have Eyes, before becoming one of the biggest names in horror during the 1980s.

7. Tales from the Crypt (1972)

As mentioned above, this decade had made anthology horror movies that charmed audiences and endure in the hearts of many, often through parodies on animated comedy shows. But none of them went on to become a beloved staple of horror television or featured a wraparound device as elegantly macabre as the Crypt Keeper.

Legendary cinematographer Freddie Francis worked as a director for two decades, often on low-budget fare as well as bouncing between Hammer and Amicus productions. As far as anthologies go, this one had enough tropes to power decades of horror. There’s a Monkey’s Paw tale a la Obsession, murderous spouses, revenge tales from beyond the grave, and moralizing ironies that encourage audiences to savor the worst of humanity getting their comeuppance. Based on various EC comics, it’s hammy horror fun that’s since become a template for ghastly pleasure.

8. Don’t Look Now (1973)

Giallo had broken through, realism was creaking into a famously heightened genre, and Don’t Look Now lurked onto screens. The films thus far are seminal horror classics, but Don’t Look Now might be the first of the bunch that’s roundly considered one of the greatest films ever, genre be damned. From its surprisingly nuanced depiction of grief to its sex scenes that spurred decades of gossip and the notorious twist ending, Don’t Look Now is iconic horror in a year full of it.

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are married couple John and Laura. They’re still mourning the death of their child when John takes a job in Venice. Unstable and emotionally fragile, the couple are beset by strange occurrences and sightings of a mysterious figure in red. Don’t Look Now’s ending was one of the era’s great shockers while its slower, elliptical pace, fragmented editing, and artful lensing marked a departure from the tone of last decade’s horror fare. Its thematic focus on grief and communication would inspire generations of future filmmakers and especially the horror of the 2010s.

9. The Exorcist (1973)

William Friedkin’s classic has become so iconic that it’s hard to believe that it could hold up today. The poster, the shadows, the demon, the pea soup, the crucifix – so much of The Exorcist has been consumed and regurgitated by other, lesser media that those watching TV in the 1980s-2000s essentially saw the movie even if they never sat down and actually watched it. At least a handful of exorcism movies come out every year, and none of them get close to The Exorcist, either in quality of cultural footprint.

To say that Friedkin’s film has never been topped isn’t hyperbole. The first sequel was so notoriously bad that there’s a documentary about it. It had the inverse effect of the first movie. Rather than critical praise, Oscar nominations (best picture) and wins (best adapted screenplay) and lines around the corner, even in winter, it was mercilessly mocked. The third, directed by original novelist William Peter Blatty, has become a cult favorite (with one famously scary scene) that’s an unrelated serial killer story with an exorcism tacked on. The fourth film, a prequel, was made twice because the studio was so unhappy, and a recent 2023 legacy sequel ignoring all the others failed to hit the right mark.

They’re united by a lack of independent vision, studio meddling, and an attempt to recapture a mood as opposed to setting one. Friedkin told the right story at the right time in the right way. The level of craft, care to the material, and a studio system open to different, more nuanced approaches to horror converged to make one of the most beloved horror films of all time.

10. Ganja & Hess (1973)

Of the four films released on this list released in 1973, three of them were instantly successful. Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, unfortunately, took more time to be appreciated. Another example of classic horror coming from constraints forced on it by a low budget, Gunn’s film was unconventional and experimental, making for a dreamlike immersive experience.

Ganja & Hess has as its lead Duane Jones, and Jones’ horror footprint is considerable given he only served as the lead in two pictures: this one and an unassuming picture from 1968 called Night of the Living Dead. Given the chance to direct a “black vampire movie”, Gunn used vampirism as a metaphor for addiction, taking his picture all the way to Cannes. While reviews were positive, the box office wasn’t, and Gunn’s version was cut down by the producers and disowned by Gunn. A testament to its arty approach, when it finally got a remake, it was an equally arty interpretation from Spike Lee. But as befits a film like this – thoughtful, nuanced, and strange – it’s gone from butchered vision to cult classic to part of the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in recognition of its artistic merit and cultural importance.

Gene Hackman was something of an enigma as a leading man. He possessed the commanding presence of a character actor, yet had the star power to headline films with his name above the title, without attracting the glamour and glitz that came with Hollywood stardom. Despite his imposing stature and unmistakable profile, he managed to elude typecasting, moving seamlessly between action heroes, romantic comedies, prestigious dramas and chilling villains. He did it all, leaving behind an extraordinary body of work from a career that rarely seemed to falter once it found its footing.

Raised in a working-class family, largely by his single mother, Hackman served in the Marines before catching the acting bug. Through sheer determination, and with the American film industry beginning to reconsider what constituted a leading man, he gradually made his way through years of television appearances and minor film roles. His breakthrough finally came with Bonnie and Clyde (1967), a film that sent shockwaves through Hollywood and earned him his first Academy Award nomination for a standout supporting performance.

Even so, Hollywood initially seemed uncertain what to do with him. Colourful supporting characters and villains were his bread and butter until he landed “The French Connection” (1971), the quintessential grimy cop thriller that announced his arrival as a bona fide leading man. His portrayal of the abrasive, obsessive Popeye Doyle earned him a Best Actor Oscar and demonstrated that he could not only play a compelling antihero, but also bring remarkable depth and complexity to an otherwise unpleasant character.

From there, Hackman became one of the most in-demand actors of the 1970s, moving from the big-budget spectacle of “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972) to the haunting paranoia of “The Conversation” (1974) and the deliciously hammy scene-stealing of “Superman” (1978). His passion for acting dipped somewhat during the 1980s, although by the middle of the decade, his career had been reinvigorated by remarkable films such as “Hoosiers” (1986), “No Way Out” (1987) and “Mississippi Burning” (1988). He arguably entered the peak of his powers in the 1990s, delivering powerful turns in “Unforgiven” (1992), “Crimson Tide” (1995) and “Enemy of the State” (1998), while enjoying colourful diversions in “Get Shorty” (1995) and “The Birdcage” (1996). He briefly worked in the 2000s, delivering one of his finest performances in “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), before retiring in 2004, and spent much of his retirement writing novels and enjoying a quieter life until his passing in 2025.

We’re all human, and Hackman was hardly above taking the occasional paycheque, but even when the material fell short of his talents, few actors possessed his ability to make a scene come alive, transforming even stale dialogue into something compelling and making his characters feel like living, breathing people. He was infamous for butting heads with directors at times, yet it wasn’t always down to diva demands; often, it came from fighting for a better movie. It was a gift that served him throughout a remarkably consistent career. Yet amidst his big-budget hits and award-winning milestones are several intriguing genre ventures scattered across his four decades on screen, films that deserve to have the spotlight shone on them.

Honourable mentions for those that just missed the list include “Company Business” (1991), a Cold War thriller with a remarkably strong first half that runs out of steam midway through; “Target”(1985), which boasts a strong central duo in Hackman and Matt Dillon but ultimately boils down to something rather forgettable; and “Marooned” (1969), a stranded-spaceship thriller featuring a standout performance from Hackman, but let down by filmmaking techniques that have dated considerably.

1. The Split (1968)

Shortly after his career gained momentum with “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), Hackman made two back-to-back films alongside former NFL star Jim Brown. One was “Riot” (1969), a lukewarm prison-break thriller that squanders much of its potential until its chaotic third act. Their other collaboration, however, is gripping from the opening frame, a hard-edged crime caper with a fiery ensemble cast. Hackman only appears in the final half-hour, but the film is so watchable that it earns a spot on this list regardless.

Brown’s career criminal assembles a crew for a daring heist at a packed football stadium. Against all odds, they pull it off, but when fate throws a spanner in the works, the criminals begin turning on one another, setting off a chain of betrayals that escalates towards a violent and bloody conclusion.

Based on Donald E. Westlake’s pulp novel “The Seventh” featuring his nihilistic criminal Parker (see also Point Blank and The Outfit), Brown does fine work as the film’s variation on the character, here named McClain. He’s a bull in a china shop, barrelling forward, quick to resort to violence and equally quick on his feet as everyone around him threatens to betray him. Hackman’s corrupt cop and sole ally is tightly wound and confrontational, contrasting nicely with Brown’s cool, controlled demeanour, and their chemistry works wonderfully. As the duo gear up for the explosive finale, you wish they had been given more time to play off one another.

Filling out the heist crew is a scenery-chewing collection of character actors, including Donald Sutherland, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates and Jack Klugman. The ensemble is every bit as good on screen as it sounds on paper, each actor bringing their individual knack for making a scene their own while deliciously playing up the scuzzy criminal underbelly in which the film operates.

British director Gordon Flemyng makes his Hollywood debut here and dives headfirst into the opportunity. Sequences such as the white-knuckle heist unfold through a series of impressively sweaty close-ups and sweeping camera movements, while the crew’s eventual descent into mutual suspicion and betrayal gives way to fierce, unpredictable violence. It’s no surprise that the movie holds the distinction of being the first film released with an R rating.

Often overlooked in the pantheon of Parker adaptations, it also leaves one wondering what Hackman himself might have done with the character of Parker himself, a role that fit him like a glove but sadly this is as close as he got to it. Regardless, Brown makes it his own, easily sitting amongst Robert Duvall, Lee Marvin, and Mel Gibson’s iconic takes on the character.

2. The Hunting Party (1971)

As Hackman entered the 1970s, he was still finding his footing in the industry and was quick to take on villainous roles to pay the bills. This was one of his earliest forays into the Western genre, and saw him deliver what might still rank among his most vicious portrayals of a bad guy.

Candice Bergen plays a kindly schoolteacher married to Hackman’s brutal cattle baron, a man with a penchant for sadism. Our heroine suddenly finds herself captured by a crew of outlaws led by a brooding, lustful Oliver Reed. Hackman saddles up on a rescue mission, yet when Reed and his captive begin to grow close, the situation descends into a torturous tale of revenge.

From the film’s opening moments, depicting the skinning of cattle cross-cut with Hackman’s character violently forcing himself on Bergen’s, it becomes clear that this will not be light viewing. Director Don Medford presents a dirty, unforgiving West reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah’s work, a ruthless world populated by spineless criminals and corrupt officials, where decent people are routinely trampled underfoot, and several die in a shower of red paint squibs.

Bergen is particularly impressive as a schoolteacher thrown into a horrific situation who somehow manages to retain her dignity and fight for survival. In a role that could easily have felt exploitative in lesser hands, she gives her character a strength and resilience that makes her easy to root for. Reed, meanwhile, is all glaring eyes and charismatic silences, playing a hardened outlaw who conceals a surprisingly sensitive side that Bergen believably coaxes out of him. Their developing romance is rough and tumble, but ultimately rather endearing despite its scuzzy beginnings.

Hackman, however, steals his scenes as a figure of almost unrelenting evil, a man of wealth and authority who revels in the suffering of others, and is chilling with the casual cruelty he brings to the role. Armed with his trademark long rifle, which consistently blows bloody holes through its targets, he revels in being the most repulsive character in a film already overflowing with unpleasant individuals.

The film builds towards a bleak, deeply sad finale, and it’s quite a ride getting there. Dirty, uncompromising and shockingly violent, The Hunting Party nevertheless boasts an incredible trio of central performances that elevate its relentlessly grim material. It’s a difficult film to stomach at times, but certainly not one you’ll be quick to forget.

3. Prime Cut (1972)

This movie was made the year right after the “The French Connection” catapulted Hackman into the most exciting leading men of the era, and ultimately drew a close to his run of supporting/villian roles, although, he still had one in the can; of all the hard-edged crime thrillers emerging from the early 1970s, few feel quite as wild or distinctive as this Lee Marvin vehicle, which takes his trademark persona as a cool, suited enforcer and pits him against a pack of ruthless rednecks in a scenario that increasingly resembles survival horror.

Marvin’s Chicago mob enforcer goes with a crew to Kansas to collect a debt from Hackman’s crooked meatpacking boss, after previous collectors have been sent back in pieces. In a strange new world, things get stranger still, as it’s revealed the entire operation actually specialises in selling humans like cattle, leading to a blistering and bloody finale.

Marvin plays his archetypal character, a hard-headed thug who solves his problems with a gun and asks questions later, yet it’s fascinating to watch him get in over his head as things almost veers into horror territory, in a film that’s best summarised as ‘Point Blank meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’. Hackman more than delivers his side of the bargain, playing a sweaty, mean-spirited former city gangster who has carved out his own little kingdom to rule over. He makes for a fearsome adversary, standing tall against the usually infallible Marvin and matching his imposing screen presence with a particularly nasty streak of his own.

Director Michael Ritchie, previously known for dramas and comedies (Downhill Racer, The Candidate), takes a sharp turn into pulpy genre territory and proves remarkably adept at it. From the early sequence following a crew of Mafia thugs as they journey from the grimy city into the increasingly bizarre rural landscape, to a gripping chase involving a combine harvester and a stunning final shootout in a field of sunflowers, the filmmaker delivers a visually striking ride. He provides all the hard-hitting action expected of the genre while continually subverting expectations in strange, almost surreal ways.

It’s a wild, frequently grotesque movie that seems to take genuine pleasure in shaking up the conventions of the gritty crime thrillers of its era, marking a fine send off for Hackman’s early period.

4. Night Moves (1975)

By the mid-1970s, Hackman had firmly established himself as a true powerhouse. He possessed a remarkable ability to take an otherwise alienating character and imbue them with enough humanity to draw audiences in, while keeping the other characters at arm’s length. Here, reuniting with “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) director Arthur Penn, he once again knocks this type of role out of the park, even though it’s rarely championed in retrospect.

Hackman plays a former professional football player turned private detective, hired by a washed-up actress to locate her missing daughter (a Lolita-esque Melanie Griffith). As his own marriage begins to fall apart, the case grows increasingly complex, drawing him into a tangled web of deception, murder and dirty dealings.

The archetype of a shaggy-dog detective is a great fit for Hackman, who sports a distinctly 1970s moustache and short shorts, his easy-going demeanour concealing a deeply troubled man. Much of the film simply follows him observing, listening or quietly processing events, often with barely a word of dialogue. Yet, as always, Hackman makes every moment on screen involving, revealing small nuances that gradually build into a fascinatingly complex character. Strong support comes from Jennifer Warren as a conflicted love interest who finds herself drawn to him. Both share the weary disposition of people whom life has gradually worn down, and their electric chemistry, alongside Warren’s endearingly brittle persona, remains a highlight.

In some ways, the story feels like a sister film to Hackman’s iconic turn in “The Conversation”, itself a deeply introspective character study disguised as a paranoid thriller. Penn and Hackman seem to be operating with a similar mandate here, constructing a neo-noir that ostensibly concerns a detective investigating a missing person and, eventually, a murder, but is ultimately far more interested in examining a man haunted by his own shortcomings.

Harry is an underachiever whose guilt over past failures, both personal and professional, clouds his judgement and increasingly drives him towards a doom-laden fate, culminating in the kind of dark, bleak ending that American cinema of the 1970s excelled at, in a movie that stands alongside Hackman’s finest character studies.

5. The Domino Principle (1977)

Hackman’s remarkable run through the 1970s hit something of a stumbling block with this critical and commercial failure, a paranoid conspiracy thriller from veteran director Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones) that frequently borders on the nonsensical. Yet it features Hackman as one of his most humourless and brutal antiheroes, making the endeavour rather fascinating for fans of his work and 70s thrillers.

Hackman plays a convicted murderer serving a lengthy prison sentence. When a mysterious organisation offers him a chance at freedom and a reunion with his waiting wife, all in exchange for carrying out an unspecified assignment, he accepts. However, as his new puppet masters gradually reveal their nefarious intentions, he decides to fight back.

As the exciting premise unveils, its unfortunately unnecessarily myriad, with Kramer throwing several big ideas at the audience without them ever sticking in interesting ways, an unusual misstep for a filmmaker that handles big subjects with ease. Nevertheless, the film possesses a dangerous, unpredictable energy, with violence erupting seemingly out of nowhere and plot twists arriving at a breakneck, if frequently bewildering, pace.

From an early scene in which Hackman brutally beats a fellow prisoner over a seemingly innocuous exchange, to a later confrontation where he turns the tables on his puppet masters with a jagged bottle, the man commands the screen. The actor was reportedly miserable during production and frequently clashed with Kramer, and that grumpiness seems to have enticingly seeped into the final product. Hackman has a chip on his shoulder both on and off screen, and there’s something immensely entertaining about watching him bulldoze his way through the convoluted plot with a take-no-prisoners attitude.

It certainly helps that he’s surrounded by an excellent supporting cast, with Mickey Rooney as his enjoyable partner in crime, Richard Widmark and Eli Wallach as sinister authority figures, and the ever-reliable Candice Bergen, in her third and final collaboration with Hackman, as his long-suffering wife.

In summary, it’s hardly one of Hackman’s greats, yet for admirers of the actor, it remains an intriguing curiosity, if only to imagine what his take on Westlake’s Parker might have been; his protagonist possesses much of the same mean-spirited ruthlessness and barely contained hostility as the pulp icon, making this otherwise muddled thriller a surprisingly compelling showpiece.

Folk horror is one of the most potent of all of horror’s many sub-genres, but it can be hard to define and even harder to execute. Of all the sub-genres, the borders of folk might be the most porous. It’s also one of the oldest, existing almost as long as the medium has. It’s the realm of lore, rural settings, and archaic traditions.

These films invoke the old ways and are typically the domain of paganism, witchcraft, and superstition. They aren’t necessarily set in the past, but they often involve an outsider coming into a closed, ritual community or urban dwellers finding themselves lost in a different system defined by its commune with nature and tradition. Some define it as a clash of the new and the old, but not every movie where a trendy city slicker encounters ol’ fashioned folk qualifies. True folk horror, and the best of it, has an eerie, uncanny feel that ties the story to a sense of place, time, and the folklore that either guides the horror or protects the characters from it.

This list isn’t a ranking of the best horror films so much as it is a survey of the most influential and celebrated titles, split between this century and the last one. Some films often discussed in the same breadth aren’t included simply because they just don’t cross the threshold. Ken Russell’s The Devils was released in the same era as the genre-defining (at least for Western cinema) UK triumvirate, but it’s less folk than psychological horror mixed with historical fact. Hereditary is sometimes spoken of in the same breadth, but it lacks the tone, setting, or mood of the films here. Where possible, we’ve tried to highlight similar films, but anyone looking for a more complete folk horror compendium should check out Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror.

With that, a brief survey of best folk horror films:

1. Häxan (1922)

The first great folk horror movie is also a hybrid work mixing documentary and dramatization that still resonates more than a hundred years later. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages pre-empts a century of storytelling, mixing fact and fiction to conjure both scares and a meaningful discussion of how so much horror imagery may have been the product of social stigma around mental disorders.

Written, directed by, and starring Benjamin Christensen, the film is divided into seven parts that intersperse dramatic vignettes with a documentarian’s lens to how demons, witches, and other phenomena were viewed in medieval cultures. Christensen stages these superstitions, which include love potions and Satanic seductions before moving on to show how these superstitions were invoked by inquisitors and religious authorities to terrorize citizens. Beating nearly every other film to the punch and also displaying the power of cinema, Häxan is folk horror, a dissection of it, and a display of how humans’ belief in said horrors actually begot them.

2. The White Reindeer (1953)

The White Reindeer is one of the earliest examples of folk horror in the modern era. Erik Blomberg’s film debut, set in Lapland and drawing on Finnish mythology and Sami spiritualism, wowed audiences across its staggered release. It competed at Cannes and took home a special jury award (“best fairy tale film”). It wouldn’t be released in the States for five more years, but when it did, it took home a Golden Globe.

A fairy tale rooted in animism, The White Reindeer tells the story of Pirita, a child born of prophesy. When she’s older, she falls in love with a reindeer herder whose frequent absences often leave her lonely. To alleviate her heartache, she turns to a local shaman who offers a potion and calls for a sacrifice. With this, The White Reindeer invokes many of the tropes and motifs that would define folk horror in the post-war period. It was notably praised for its atmosphere and imagery as well as for how it approached fantastical storytelling with neorealist approaches. One of the earliest exemplars of the genre, it stands as an early folk horror classic.

3. The Virgin Spring (1960)

Ingmar Bergman’s classic isn’t always thought of as folk horror, but the trappings are there: an isolated landscape, insular, tension between paganism and encroaching Christianity, and violence that speaks to ritual and karmic justice. The Virgin Spring is based on the 13th-century folk ballad “Töre’s Daughters in Vänge”, and its violence was shocking enough to prompt censorship in the States. It was even remade as the equally shocking (for its respective contemporary audience) The Last House on the Left by Wes Craven.

In medieval Sweden, devout Christian parents send their daughter to church to deliver candles. She is attacked and killed by two goatherds who inadvertently take refuge in her family’s home. When father Töre (Max von Sydow) discovers what happened, revenge and ritual are unleashed. The Virgin Spring was an artful adaptation of folklore used to explore timeless themes that were particularly clawing at the minds of postwar audiences. It’s one of Bergman’s seminal classics (netting the Oscar for foreign film among a slew of other honors), and while it’s not always associated with folk horror, it’s one of the best distillations of the genre.

4. Kwaidan (1964)

At least in the West, folk horror is largely defined by a triumvirate of UK classics, but film industries farther east have long drawn on folklore for big-screen scares. Japan has a notable tradition, with classic Ugetsu (1953) held up a proto-folk horror film. One of the most famous examples of Japanese folk horror is Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan. Written by Yoko Mizuki based on a collection of Japanese folktales, Kwaidan is more than just a collection of tales of vengeful spirits. It’s a classic of postwar Japanese cinema roundly considered one of the greatest films of all time, one of the greatest horror films of all time, and possibly the best horror anthology of all time.

Kwaidan consists of four separate stories, each with their own cast, and they’re united by a shared sensibility by which immorality is paid in kind by paranormal vengeance. An impoverished swordsman leaves his wife for another. Two woodcutters seek refuge in the wrong hut. A blind musician’s talent appeals to the spirits, and an author recounts a story within a story. Despite bankrupting its studio and underperforming in Japan, Kwaidan was critically hailed by domestic critics and was popular abroad, going to Cannes and finding success in the United States, where it was edited down considerably with one segment removed. Today, the full 183-minute cut has been restored, and Kwaidan sits comfortably in the canon of folk horror as a masterwork of storytelling.

5. Onibaba (1964)

Released in the same year as fellow horror classic Kwaidan, Onibaba was a controversial offering that shocked Western audiences with its frank depictions of sexuality and violence. Kaneto Shindō wrote and directed this tale of two women in 14th-century Japan who make their bones by killing soldiers and stealing their armor before dropping them in a pit. When neighbor Hachi returns from war, his presence comes between the two women just as their past sins resurface.

Inspired by a Shin Buddhist parable, Onibaba evokes many of the familiar devices of a folk horror. A rural setting that allows its characters to first commit great misdeeds and then be punished for them, it draws on tradition and morality in ways that were shocking for the time. Onibaba had to be substantially edited (or censored) before it could be released in the UK, and while critics balked at its extremes, it is now one of the fundamental depictions of Japanese folk horror. A film described as equally chilling and beautiful, Onibaba captures a sense of apocalypse enabled by war and desperation that serves as fodder for spirits to feast on.

6. Viy (1967)

Like many of the films on this list, especially those from the 20th century, Viy is based on a pre-existing story. Except in Viy’s case, it’s Gogol (who admittedly based it on traditional lore). Also, like many of the movies on this list, Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov’s film (cowritten with Aleksandr Ptushko) had to have its ending toned down both for technical reasons and to meet officials’ standards. Regardless, its effects were heralded as being ahead of their time.

Novice monk Khoma must watch over and pray for a dead woman whose presence summons the otherworldly. It’s an ordeal that tests his faith and drives him to the edge of sanity as he’s taunted by the souls of hell. Its nightmarish visuals have become the stuff of legend (and, obviously, nightmares), but its blending of cinematic technique and the mastery of Gogol’s tale have helped it endure across decades. There have been remakes and attempts to top it, a 2014 remake and a 1990 Serbian version, but Viy remains largely unsurpassed for how it visualized the region’s rich literary tradition and enduring folklore with innovative cinematic flourish.

7. Witchfinder General (1968)

Folk horror – or the modern Western interpretation of it – is defined by the UK triumvirate or the Unholy Trinity, three films of similar aesthetics and themes made and released within six years of each other. The first is Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General starring Vincent Price as a ghoul of a man who terrorizes the English countryside under the pretense of hunting witches.

The story behind Witchfinder General is rooted in truth. During the English Civil War, Matthew Hopkins (Price) claimed (falsely) that Parliament had appointed him the titular role. Witchfinder General was a low-budget production that sought to capitalize on Price’s successful Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Reeves and Price were said to clash on the film, the film was rewritten and recut because financiers and censors thought it was too sadistic, and audiences were still aghast at the violence. But Price thought the final product included one of his best performances. Despite the uproar, some critics championed the film as it quickly became a cult favorite. It’s now hailed as a seminal piece of folk horror.

8. Kuroneko (1968)

After Onibaba, Kaneto Shindō delivered another folk horror classic where vengeful spirits take revenge when the world of the living forgoes justice. When claims of a black cat ripping out the throats of samurai resound from the countryside, a military hero is sent to investigate claims of vengeful spirits and deal with the threat.

Kuroneko is typically described with phrases like “hauntingly beautiful” and “darkly seductive”. Its cinematography was particularly lauded, and while some critics noted a languishing tone more akin to a mood piece, this was also what made it such an eerie experience for so many. Today, even quibbles about the final act’s pacing have dwindled. Kuroneko is considered a masterpiece that’s hailed for its atmosphere and style. It’s also appreciated for its depth and social commentary, particularly in how it adapted the ghost revenge trope into an exploration of the treatment of women and the predatory approach of the samurai to the peasantry.

9. Witchhammer (1970)

Witches are as much a staple of folk horror as werewolves are to body horror, and folk horror has long been a powerful vehicle to explore how witch trials were a way of using superstition to oppress local populations. Witchhammer is one of the most acclaimed of these entries to herald from Eastern Europe. This entry from Czeckoslovakia was directed by Otakar Vávra based on the Northern Moravian witch trials of the 1670s, and it remains a classic of the folk horror genre.

After an elderly beggar hides a communion wafer rather than consume it, inquisitors descend on the village to wreak terror. The focus on institutional cruelty couldn’t help but be taken as an allegory, and the brutality of Witchhammer, named after the notorious guide for inquisitors, made it a notorious entry into the folk horror canon. Of course, not every film about witch trials is folk horror. Witchhammer’s remote, isolated community torn apart by the tension of local superstition and official religion provides the evocative setting and insularity that often defines folk horror. Its depiction of how that local identity is subsumed by institutional opportunism and stoked by local paranoia reflects the genre’s core themes.

10. The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)

The Blood on Satan’s Claw is the second of the UK triumvirate or Unholy Trinity to define the classic folk horror aesthetic in British cinema. It was originally written as an anthology film before being repurposed as a single narrative, and producers inserted references to Witchfinder General. Upon release, reviews were mixed. As is typical with folk horror, time has been kind, and The Blood on Satan’s Claw has gone from cult classic to just straight classic.

In 17th century England, a farmhand digs up a deformed, fur-covered skull. Strange things in rural home beget his discovery. The local youth skip church to perform antiquated rituals. Soon, body parts and skin are being harvested. Some people even start growing fur. Director Piers Haggard worked with original writer Robert Wynne-Simmons to repurpose the script into one narrative about how modernity tries to snuff out superstition only for it to creep back into the enlightened world. The film was held up for its monstrous horror sequences, with the crew taking inspiration from Ingmar Bergman’s work, including The Virgin Spring. Even when it was described as bizarre, meandering, convoluted, a Hammer winnable, and a Witchfinder General rehash, many critics meant those things as a compliment.

The 1980s gave us a decade of fascinating horror cinema, arguably one of the best in horror history. From David Cronenberg’s body horror and David Lynch’s surreal nightmares to John Carpenter’s supernatural terror, the 80s produced an extraordinary variety of films that still influence the genre today.

Slashers, creature features, psychological horror, supernatural stories and increasingly extreme forms of body horror all made their presence explicitly known in our cinemas, with classics like The Thing (1982), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or The Fly (1986) all making a mark on the genre.

But hundreds of horror films have been largely forgotten, many overshadowed by bigger releases, while others were simply ignored or failed to find an audience on release. That’s what makes the decade so rewarding to explore, and with the rise of home video in VHS and Betamax especially, video shops were packed with horror films for fans to explore. Many were low-budget, controversial, or simply too strange to attract much attention at the box office, creating an entirely new world for people to explore.

Here we look back beyond the obvious classics and find ten underappreciated films of horror cinema from the 1980s.

1. Fade to Black (1980)

Focusing on a lonely film obsessive, Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher), Vernon Zimmerman’s terrific little chiller is fascinating in its core plot. Eric is a man who spends his days working for a film services company and his nights immersed in classic movies, and after years of bullying and humiliation, his fascination begins to consume his reality and he begins to recreate scenes from his favourite films as he takes revenge on those who have tormented him.

Fade to Black has plenty of fun with its movie references, with the recreations becoming increasingly elaborate as Eric’s grip on reality deteriorates rapidly. These references aren’t simply parody or pastiche; they’ve become his own reality, giving the film a chilling undertone. Christopher is excellent in the main role, selling us his descent into unreality with haunting authenticity.

This is exactly the kind of strange horror film that can get buried beneath better known releases, and its mash up of slasher, black comedy and obsessive cinephilia might not work for everyone. But this is something of a hidden horror gem, and if you’ve not seen it, Zimmerman’s film is well worth your time.

2. The Appointment (1981)

Lindsay C. Vickers’s The Appointment is quite an astonishing exercise in constant terror. Three years after a schoolgirl disappears in mysterious circumstances, a teenager (Samantha Weysom) is preparing for an important violin recital. When her father, Ian (Edward Woodward), has to miss the performance because of a business appointment, strange dreams and increasingly terrifying supernatural events begin to suggest that something is coming back to haunt the family.

But such a simple set-up doesn’t even begin to describe the unbridled and sustained sense of terror that permeates The Appointment. This is all about what could be about to happen, and it makes for chilling viewing. It’s a film that barely resembles any of the familiar horror films of its period, instead opting for something that’s all about suggestion, and it’s all the more terrifying for it.

It’s a film that has finally found some sort of audience with the BFI’s restoration in 2022, and it remains one of the greatest horror films of all time.

3. The Burning (1981)

Tony Maylam’s summer camp chiller remains something of an obscure film over forty years after its release. After a cruel prank goes horribly wrong, summer-camp caretaker Cropsy (Lou David) is left horribly burned and presumed dead, but five years later, he returns to a new summer camp armed with a pair of shears and begins stalking the teenagers responsible for his suffering.

The Burning is one of those horror films that offers a setting that has a convincing sense of place, and the film makes an effort to actually establish the camp before Cropsy arrives to unleash hell. There’s no doubt his shears were a put-off to many who dismissed it as a Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) knock off, but Maylam’s film is far better than that, and is deserving of more recognition.

This is a film that doesn’t reinvent the slasher, nor does it claim to, but it has a memorable villain, a convincing setting, and a surprisingly likeable group of characters; add to that some impressive practical effects from Tom Savini, and you’ve got a film that warrants a far bigger reputation than the one it has as a scratchy irrelevant video nasty.

4. The Sender (1982)

The Sender is a strange and frequently unsettling piece of supernatural horror that toes the line between psychological thriller and nightmare. Roger Christian’s film stars Željko Ivanek as a young amnesiac who’s admitted to a psychiatric hospital and given the name Jone Doe No.83. His psychiatrist (Kathryn Harrold) soon begins experiencing terrifying visions that appear to be transmitted directly from her patient’s disturbed mind.

Ivanek is terrific as the extremely troubled young man, someone who has no idea of what’s happening to him, giving the whole atmosphere of the film a troubling edge. What makes it particularly interesting is the fact that Harold’s Gail can never be sure whether what she’s seeing is real or a hallucination, an idea that has been cited as an influence on A Nightmare on Elm Street (1982).

It’s a film that deserves far more attention than its obscurity suggests, and it is genuinely unnerving for its brief runtime. The performances keep it grounded in reality despite the increasingly bizarre events unfurling around them, and in the end, Christian’s film is really something of a forgotten gem.

5. Xtro (1982)

This is one of the best British horror films of the 1980s, yet it always feels as if it gets somewhat forgotten. It’s also a genuinely bizarre piece, with director Harry Bromley Davenport taking the familiar alien-abduction story and turning it into something much stranger, mixing science fiction with body horror and supernatural imagery. At points it feels like something David Cronenberg would have made.

Xtro stars Philip Sayer as Sam Phillips, a man who suddenly returns home to his family, three years after being abducted by a mysterious light. His wife has moved on, but their young son Tony remains fascinated by his father’s disappearance- and when Sam’s return begins to have disturbing effects on Tony, it becomes clear that whatever came back from the sky might not be entirely human.

Sure, it might feel like we’ve been here before, but nothing about Xtro is conventional. It’s far too strange to simply be dismissed as just another alien-abduction film, and it always toys with the idea of what it means to be human, something that Blade Runner – which was released the same year- also explored to much wider acclaim. The practical effects are impressive, the performances are great, and Xtro remains one of the weirdest yet most impressive horror films of the era.

Body horror reflects our most intimate, basic fears. Horror has always reflected broader anxieties, tensions, and disquiet, often wrapping those serious feelings in a protective layer of pulpy, low-brow, over-the-top blood and guts so audiences could digest their scares at a safe distance. Body horror cuts through by visualizing the most personal degradation.

Body horror has always been part of storytelling, but on film there is one name above all that’s synonymous with it. David Cronenberg’s filmography shaped the concept of body horror so much so that his name is adjective to describe it. He’s continued to make films into the 2020s, and his children have made their own substantial entries into it. A list of Cronenberg films could populate an entire list, but we’ve limited it to a couple to shine a light on some of his contemporaries and the many horrifying works that he’s inspired.

As with all lists charting genre, blurred boundaries between sub-genres and the subjective nature of the exercise qualify what is and isn’t on here. The body – specifically its transformation, mutilation, and violation – needs to be the central, pervasive device of the movie. Some movies – notably Aliens and Martyrs – have great body horror sequences without being straight body horror. Some movies center the body – The Skin I Live In, Invasion of the Body Snatchers – but focus less on textured, fleshy horror. Gore isn’t mandatory, but it helps.

With those caveats, this is a survey of the best of body horror from this century and the last:

1. Eyes Without a Face (1960)

Eyes Without a Face is sometimes described as proto-body horror, but all the hallmarks are there. It involves a creepy surgeon. It was decried upon release and had to be edited for gore. A squeamish public largely kept away at first, only to be gradually lured back until it achieved classic status. While it certainly has its share of gothic and psychological horror, Eyes Without a Face remains one of the greatest early exercises in body horror.

Georges Franju’s classic focuses on a guilt-ridden plastic surgeon who will do anything to right the wrong he’s caused daughter Edith. Edith’s face was horribly disfigured during a car accident, and her father has sworn to find her a new one. Eyes Without a Face is an exercise in the unapologetically ghastly, one that inspired horror greats like John Carpenter, George Romero, and Guillermo del Toro. Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live is a sumptuous melodramatic riff on it. Even Billy Idol turned it into a hit song. Franju’s film might’ve needed some time to make its mark, but it continues to inspire and horrify today.

2. Eraserhead (1977)

One of the first titles on this list comes from that other David who debuted in the 1970s with a transgressive, off-putting work of body horror. By the time David Lynch’s Eraserhead came out, Cronenberg’s Shivers and Rabid were out in the world, and it’s not hard to see why the world took the two directors, with similar coifs and visceral stylings, as peas in a pod. Lynch had already cut his teeth on short films, and he filmed Eraserhead over several years as he scraped together funding. The result is one of the most notorious debuts of its era, a film with a reputation that would come to precede it as its assured, visceral approach contrasted with the director’s folksy, wholesome demeanor.

Eraserhead is the story of an unassuming man named Henry who’s asked over for dinner by his neighbor Mary and her family for what turns out to be a nightmare date. Henry and Mary soon shack up as he’s tasked to care for the nightmare spawn that Mary has wrought. While that spawn firmly roots Eraserhead in body horror, the rest of the film is awash with horrific imagery and transmutations of form, from a grotesque poultry carcass to skin sores and worst. Eraserhead is a slow burn that is riddled with terrors of texture and flesh as it builds to its horrifying conclusion. Lynch’s work would rarely be as outright horrific as this, but the director made a name for himself by using horror to speak to primal fears through a twisted vision of the human condition.

3. Altered States (1980)

Ken Russell may be last century’s most unheralded auteur, a director whose work in the 1970s yielded seminal works that are often discussed without much mention for his name (Tommy). Russell’s masterwork The Devils was buried for years due to religious censorship so much so that it’s only becoming more available this year. Another of his seminal works is this surrealist science fiction piece that’s nonetheless a mainstay of body of horror. But even Altered States has its offscreen drama. Cowriter Paddy Chayefsky was unhappy enough with the project to use a pseudonym. Still, Altered States was a genre work that impressed critics, garnered some Oscar nods, and remains one of the most respected works of the body horror canon.

William Hurt made his debut as a man who participates in a medical experiment studying schizophrenia, using a sensory deprivation tank. After a time jump, Hurt’s character is having marital trouble when he hears of a hallucinatory ritual deep in Mexico. Naturally, he’s curious and embarks on a physical and psychological transformation that’s cerebral but still decidedly horrific. Body horror tends to overlap quite heavily with sci fi, and Altered States even pioneered new rotoscope technology to achieve its transformatory effects in addition to having an impressive pedigree (even Bob Fosse was involved in the brainstorming stage). It was also Russell’s first go in Hollywood. All of that makes for a rare body horror entry not made by a David that was given the resources and care needed to make something special.

4. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

An American Werewolf in London is routinely thought of as a horror comedy and a creature feature, but its body horror elements made such an impact that it won (and possibly necessitated) the first Oscar for best makeup. John Landis wrote and directed, David Naughton and Griffin Dunne play the leads, but the real star is Rick Baker, whose practical effects would usher forth a new generation of splatter (and get him and Landis the Thriller gig).

David (Naughton) and Jack (Dunne) are backpacking around England when they run afoul of a full moon. Werewolf stories tend to include a set piece of body horror in the transformation, but audiences had never seen anything like David’s change (even Landis was so fascinated he’s admitted that it probably went on for too long). But there’s more: a recurring corpse of a character continues hounding David, with several gross-out, grotesque moments played for laughs and horror. An American Werewolf in London was a landmark hybrid of genres, one that many believed wouldn’t work until it did.

5. Possession (1981)

Of all the films on this list, Possession might be the most debatable. Andrzej Żuławski’s film is one of a handful of titles occasionally cited as the best horror film ever, and while it’s held up as a shining example of psychological horror, the physical indignities that accompany one woman’s mental breakdown are ultimately the stuff of true body horror.

Possession is an obtuse, elliptical narrative that follows the deteriorating relationship between spy Mark (Sam Neill) and wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani). Anna’s turned unfaithful and wants a divorce. Mark doesn’t take it well, but Anna also begins experiencing changes. Possession was written as Żuławski went through a divorce, and while the film is a symbolic representation of those mental and emotional struggles, it’s also held up as the one of the most unnerving and intense horror films ever made. That reputation took some time to accrue. Possession wasn’t initially well received, and a US edit cut much of the drama into a straight horror feature. Today, audiences experience Żuławski’s film as a foundational combination of psychological and body horror that’s become known as one of the best genre films ever made for how it entangles both.

6. The Thing (1982)

The Thing is sometimes shunted off as pseudo-body horror or something adjacent to the sub-genre. Obviously, this list doesn’t agree. Other creature features like Alien might have a great body horror set piece, but The Thing is centered around the anxiety of being taken over by something monstrous as well as all the violations of flesh one must endure to prove they’re not the Thing. John Carpenter’s classic is widely considered one of the best (if not the best) horror films ever made, but it was a flop on release. Nearly everything about it that is celebrated today was lampooned when it came out.

Audiences and critics have since caught up. Set on a remote arctic station, Kurt Russell anchors this adaptation of The Thing from Another World (and the story Who Goes There?), and while Carpenter had success adapting other 1950s horror films, he outdid himself with this classic. The visuals were criticized for being repulsive. The characters were said to be underwritten. Flip-side alien saga ET ate its lunch at the box office. But The Thing endures for how well it realized its premise – a group of men stranded at a remote outpost being picked off one-by-one – and the monstrosity of its threat. The Thing is a masterful blend of tension and visceral, onscreen scares layered with atmosphere, an iconic performance from Russell, and a fully-realized execution that remains unsurpassed by any remakes or prequels. It might’ve been ahead of its time, but the world caught up.

7. Videodrome (1983)

David Cronenberg had already established his brand of body horror with Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, and Scanners by the time Videodrome came out. Scanners’ iconic head-popping climax would be hard to top. But then came the new flesh. Videodrome was actually one of two Cronenberg releases that year along with Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone. That film became a zeitgeist fixture and spawned a TV series, but it’s quite staid set next to this classic of body horror that also happened to be Cronenberg’s entry into the Hollywood studio system.

It’s fitting then that Videodrome is such a brutal, unrelenting commentary on mass media that communicates its theme through disgust rather than moralizing. James Woods channeled his dirtbag self to play the CEO of a small TV network who stumbles on a broadcast signal that, to paraphrase the tagline, first controls your mind then destroys your body. The signal is arousing, inciting, and mutating, and Videodrome uses practical makeup effects to depict the transformation of flesh and the warping of the mind. Videodrome is indeed an experience, one that replicates the bizarre changes its characters are going through its craft elements. Even today, its griminess and expert conveyance of texture set it apart. There’s been no shortage of media commentary or knockoffs in the decades that’ve followed, but nothing has come close to touching Videodrome’s madness. It put Cronenberg on a bigger stage with wonder as to how he’d top the terrors of texture and tone.

8. Re-Animator (1985)

Because Cronenberg’s influence on body horror is so outsized, it’s easy to forget some of the other directors whose work emboldened the sub-genre. Case in point is Stuard Gordon, who bounced between body horror, gothic horror, and even family-friendly sci fi, directing two body horror classics back-to-back. Gordon made his name with loose adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft short stories, and Re-Animator is arguably his most famous entry.

Re-Animator is a Lovecraft adaptation that crosses Frankenstein with zombies. Medical student Herbert West believes he’s invented something that can re-animate the dead. West insists that he’s giving the dead life, but not their old ones, and his unscrupulous nature ropes in fellow student Dan, West’s wife, and an even more unscrupulous professor. Re-Animator features mutations, laser lobotomies, and grotesque neo-gothic horrors all wrapped up in science fiction comedy package that mines laughs from how over-the-top the violence gets. Gordon would work with the same team, including producer Brian Yuzna, on follow-up From Beyond (another body horror classic), and Re-Animator itself would spawn two sequels, but the original is still hard to get ahead of.

9. The Fly (1986)

Perhaps no film is more synonymous with body horror than The Fly. Cronenberg’s follow-up to Videodrome and The Dead Zone is the quintessential body horror experience and maybe the best remake ever. Taking the premise and little else from the 1957 short story and 1958 film, Cronenberg with a game lead assist from Jeff Goldblum made a horror classic that builds and builds into tragedy. Less about scares than the horror of physical decay, The Fly has rarely if ever been surpassed as a pure distillation of body horror.

Goldblum plays scientist Seth Brundle, who is experimenting with teleportation. When a fly gets mixed in with his experiment, Brundle changes. The Fly charts those changes from the initial positive ones to the nightmarish deterioration that’s now become so iconic and synonymous with body horror that there’s nothing left to say other than that it needs to be watched. There are traditional scares, particularly a dream sequence where love interest Geena Davis imagines their offspring, but The Fly’s true horror is in the gradual change from Brundle to Brundlefly. The decay – fingernails and more – is as disturbing as the mania and desperation that the monster refuses to accept. Cronenberg would make more body horror classics in the decade. Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, the highly controversial Crash, and eXistenZ, but The Fly serves as the centerpiece of body horror as we know it.

10. Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser is one of those 1980s horror franchises that was sequel-ed to death and afterlife, beaten like a dead horse until it was a parody of itself. It’s hard to remember that the first entry, the only one directed and written by author Clive Barker, was actually a smashing success despite being initially banned in Canada. It received good notes from critics, with tone and craft that were notably different from the less serious horror films of the time. Its centerpiece Pinhead was also only one of its horrors though he would come to define the franchise.

The original Hellraiser was also firmly focused on the body. It’s an exploration of the boundaries between pleasure and pain, given over to ghastly imagery of flesh, blood, and the transgressive. Larry Cotton is struggling in his marriage when he moves into the same house as brother Frank. Unbeknownst to Larry, hedonist Frank picked up a puzzle box on his travels after being told it could lead him to otherworldly pleasures. Those pleasures lead to the Cenobites and their realm of sadomasochism. Hellraiser is steeped in iconic imagery that has since permeated pop culture. Its aesthetic of jet-black leather against deep red defined BDSM imagery for an entire generation, many of whom likely were introduced to it through this film. But Hellraiser was a serious, unapologetically horrific saga from an author tired of seeing the genre bumbled, and it remains a formidable work of body horror.

The road movie seems like a simple concept, yet when you look at its cinematic history, it’s often something that taps into humanity in its purest form. Whether it’s simply friends on a road trip, a holiday, or a crime thriller, the genre is as much about the physical journey as it is about the emotional one.

The journey is rarely about the destination, and almost always about everything going on in between the start and end of the trip. It’s not just the locations that are ever changing in a road movie; it’s the characters themselves. From the very best of them, like Five Easy Pieces (1970) or Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) to the downright dreadful (the 2005 Ice Cube fronted Are We There Yet?), this is a genre that will always be with us.

In this list we look at ten films that traverse the wide scope of what could constitute a road movie, some of which you may have seen, and others that have either passed you by or have been previously discarded.

1. Detour (1945)

This early noir feature was fully restored only a few years ago and released on Blu-ray in 2019. The extremely well-cobbled-together film is just sixty-eight minutes long, but it is wonderful for every minute of its running time. Al Roberts (a terrific Tom Neal) decides to travel to California, following his girlfriend Sue, who left for Hollywood. After becoming depressed after Sue’s departure, he decides the only way to achieve happiness is to wed her, so he embarks on his journey, hitchhiking across the country with little money to his name.

Without giving too much away, Al is picked up by a man who then drops dead at the wheel. Panicking, Al takes the dead man’s identity, his car, and his money before picking up Ann Savage’s Vera shortly after. What unfurls is a classic example of noir at its finest, yet on release, it was ignored by critics completely, considered something of a shabby B-movie without any star power behind it.

Shot in roughly six days on a staggeringly low budget, Edgar G. Ulmer’s film can now be viewed for what it is, a nearly lost brilliant piece of shoestring filmmaking, and should really be considered amongst the greats of the noir genre, let alone one of the classic early road movies.

2. The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Ida Lupino’s superb serial killer piece is one that has been mimicked almost to death by Hollywood over the years. Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy are two friends who set off on a fishing trip to Mexico, picking up William Talman’s hitchhiker on the way. It turns out to be a terrible mistake, with Emmett Talman having killed several people before he gets picked up. He holds the two friends hostage and forces them to drive to the Mexico border.

It’s simple yet highly effective, one of the tightest and most economical thrillers ever put to screen. The basic setup ensures the tension runs from minute one, and the performances of the three main players sell you the story rather brilliantly.

Lupino was essentially the only woman directing in 1950’s Hollywood, and this sadly might be one of the reasons it was never as successful as it should have been. Just like Detour, it suffered from having no big Hollywood names in front of the camera, but make no mistake, The Hitch-Hiker is a wonderful piece of filmmaking, directed by a woman who should have been a household name at the time.

3. Scarecrow (1973)

The plot of Jerry Schatzberg’s terrific buddy drama, if you want to find one, is as straightforward as it comes. Gene Hackman’s ex-con Max is just out of prison and travelling up the coast with dreams of opening his own car washing business; Lionel ‘Lion’ (Al Pacino) is returning from a long time away at sea to meet his child that he’s never met.

Scarecrow brought Hackman and Pacino together at a time when they were arguably at the peak of their powers, and the way they riff off each other here is proof of that. Despite being frequently amusing, Schatzberg’s film is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at times, with these two characters providing audiences with one of the most underrated screen friendships.

Scarecrow shared the Palme d’Or at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, splitting the gong with The Hireling, but it’s not a winner that’s often remembered. It’s only recently become available on Blu-ray, and if you’ve never seen this rather beautiful film, now’s the time to correct that.

4. Fill ‘Er Up with Super (1976)

An absolutely hilarious French road movie directed by Alain Cavalier, Fill ‘Er Up with Super has only recently become available on Blu-ray. A young auto salesman is forced to cancel a holiday with his wife to drive a car to its new owner, who lives on the Riviera. He gets his friend to ride along with him, and on the way, they pick up another two men who also want to head south. That’s it.

It might sound like a bizarre setup, yet this wonderful film is the gift that just keeps giving. This isn’t simply four blokes who bounce off each other well; there’s constant friction between them as we slowly find out more about each of them. Most of the time is spent within the confines of the car, and it feels like a breath of fresh air when they stop at motorway services for coffee (or to attempt to ditch certain passengers). You begin to feel part of the journey yourself, and you get to know each of them at the same rate as the characters themselves do.

As the film progresses, things become increasingly heartfelt and touching, yet concomitantly more amusing. This is a film that uses some of its crass humour to wonderful effect, and by the film’s ending, you don’t want to leave these people.

5. Something Wild (1986)

Jonathan Demme is perhaps best known for his Oscar-winning Thomas Harris adaptation The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but that didn’t come from nowhere. Demme’s background was mainly in music videos, and he directed the excellent Talking Heads live film Stop Making Sense in 1984.

But Something Wild is often only mentioned in the shadow of The Silence of the Lambs, yet it’s one of his finest achievements. Starring Jeff Daniels as a Manhattan tax consultant, he’s spotted doing a dine-and-dash by Lulu (Melanie Griffith), a free-spirited young woman who drags him into her car and subsequently takes him on a spontaneous road trip through small-town America.

What begins as a rather light-hearted road movie suddenly takes a much darker turn when Lulu’s violent ex-husband (Ray Liotta) shows up at a high school reunion, and the film’s second half becomes something else entirely. The tonal shift is dealt with expertly, and the performances across the board are sensational. Demme uses a soundtrack of bands he’s previously worked with, and it’s a highly effective strategy.

Something Wild might be an oddity, but it’s one that uses its two differing halves to provide us with something truly excellent.

A disappointing movie isn’t necessarily a bad movie, but the two usually have the same commute. This year has had some huge hits, great surprises, maybe even a few future classics, and its share of duds. To be fair, not every bad movie is a disappointment. Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man got terrible reviews, and Zach Snyder’s The Last Photograph was savaged at Toronto, but these dismal notices weren’t surprising. Similarly, the Desert Warrior was a historic flop and likely disappointed its cast, crew, and financiers, but the lack of anticipation around it was part of the problem.

Thus, this list charts the movies that got hopes up and let them plummet. They were assessed on an axis of quality and buzz. As we enter Oscar season and a new slew of disappointing Oscar bait is ushered forth, here’s the chance to look back on the films that had the juice and spilled it.

10. Supergirl

There’s no way around it. Despite all the goodwill James Gunn cultivated for the DCU, Supergirl couldn’t carry the momentum. It’s the summer’s definitive loser, a box-office flop that didn’t land with critics. To boot, it was criticized for its special effects, a death knell for a tentpole superhero movie where a principal character is entirely CGI. Part of Supergirl’s shame certainly rests with the expectations audiences had coming into cinemas.

Last year’s Superman was a hit, and Milly Alcock’s cameo as Supergirl teed up this film nicely. The premise of Supergirl as the jaded, traumatized flipside to David Corenswet’s earnest Superman was also intriguing. Supergirl was supposed to show what happens when a Kryptonian is raised in a cruel environment rather than on a farm with a loving family. Alas, none of that flew.

Supergirl’s problem became evident from the trailer’s bland action, heavy CGI, and rote use of pop song covers. It looked and felt like any other bland superhero movie. One might be tempted to blame the manosphere trolls who hated on Alcock and the general concept of women. Alcock actually received the film’s best notices, and by-and-large reviews found a movie that wasn’t so much bad as it was underwhelming. In the end, the film just didn’t match the character’s or Alcock’s potential.

9. Disclosure Day

There was a time when a Steven Spielberg summer release was a huge deal. Now is not that time. Disclosure Day had a lot of anticipation around it. Spielberg was again working with a script from David Koepp, who’d penned summer hits Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds. The marketing was cryptic and intriguing but promised another Spielberg alien story a la classics ET and Close Encounters from the Third Kind. After all, this was the director who’d transformed summer into blockbuster season all the way back with Jaws. Heck, even Koepp’s recent run of scripts for another Steven (Soderbergh) added to the excitement.

It turns out that Disclosure Day was also from the team that also brought us The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Which is to say Disclosure Day wasn’t the next Jaws. Not outright bad, or even bad, but somehow slight, off beat, and cloying. Disclosure Day might’ve been a fun diversion for a 1990s summer, but here the urgency and import Spielberg and Koepp injected felt sluggish, predictable, and toothless. A convent-set discussion on spirituality and truth was shallow and out of touch, as if the filmmakers wanted us all to have a conversation that became irrelevant at least a decade ago. In an era when conspiracy theories riddle the mainstream, Disclosure Day’s attempt at throwback entertainment feels naïve and doddy, not nostalgic or interesting.

8. Evil Dead Burn

Another installment might be on the way in 2028, but Evil Dead Burn might be where the franchise finally lost its remaining luster. This might be a surprise to those who joined at the reboot, but the true charm of the Evil Dead franchise was never just its gore, horror, or its humor. Rather, it was how it combined all three, but particularly how the violence and terrors meshed with a particular brand of winking, over-the-top humor.

The modern installments were smart enough to get directors who could inject humor into the ruthless scares. Both Fede Álvarez and Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead reboots had charm, but Evil Dead Burn is far too generic for the franchise. It essentially swaps out all humor for vague hints of…Frenchness. It’s a competent horror film that’s painfully by-the-numbers for this particular franchise, one that ties in with lore but doesn’t seem to understand any of the charm or tone that set Evil Dead apart in the first place. A post-credit scene ties this film to Cronin’s 2023 Evil Dead Rise and flattens the franchise into just another piece of IP linked by lore, easter eggs, and creative laziness. It’s no surprise the next film is reportedly a prequel.

7. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Star Wars movies are essentially in the business of disappointing fans and propping up other aspects of the Disney corporation. The last sequel trilogy is likely the single biggest mismanagement of IP in history, and the only recent undisputed success for the property was Andor, a series with a decidedly different tone and approach from the rest of the series. Even Disney+’s flagship success series, The Mandalorian, had grown stale in subsequent seasons. Disney clearly had a lot of hope that The Mandalorian and Grogu could turn that around and put some distance between Star Wars and the missed opportunity that has come to define the Skywalker saga. No dice. Even its $300+ million box office haul was a disappointment.

Critics and audiences had a lot to enjoy in this movie. The charm of the lead duo and the practical effects that brought to life different species and locales were particularly lauded. Still, the overarching sense was that the film just didn’t do enough. Its plot was entirely recycled. Its flow was episodic, and it was hard to say what differentiated this adventure from the piecemeal ones enjoyed on the corporation’s streamer. The Mandalorian and Grogu was supposed to set a new course for the Star Wars universe. Instead, it became a symbol of the lifeless state that the parent company’s overharvesting has left the franchise in and a reminder that a once devoted, borderline religious fanbase was teetering between done and outright hostile.

6. The Last House

No one will probably blame Wagner Moura and Gretchen Lee for getting that Netflix money, but The Last House is surprisingly disappointing even for that streamer. Covid lockdown vibes are heavy with this one, but it’s surprisingly light on dread or tension despite committing itself to scares for part of its runtime. Therein is part of The Last House’s problem: it tries to be so many things and does none of them well.

The Last House is a small-cast, largely single-location movie that’s somehow effects-heavy. It wants both tense locked-in dread a la Await Further Instructions or Vivarium and 1980s Amblin family adventure as if it almost beat The End of Oak Street to the punch. Very little of what it seeds pays off. The reveals are silly, bland, and poorly explained, leaving the film to rest on the shoulders of two leads who alternate between charismatic and despairing. Given the streamer’s recent stock downgrading, it’s hard not to see The Last House as indicative of Netflix’s problems in a modern mediascape that’s moving beyond its slop. It’s a movie made for everyone and no one that works better as background noise for doomscrolling.

The 70s is arguably the defining decade for the cop thriller. Hollywood’s relationship with the police had become considerably more complicated, and film makers responded with films that were tougher, gritter, and less interested in presenting law enforcements as an uncomplicated force for good, unlike the previous decade’s output within the genre.

This was a decade in which the cop film could be almost anything; there were hard-edged procedurals, bleak psychological dramas, political thrillers and explosive action pictures, all of them adding different strings to the ever expanding bow of the genre and sub-genres.

In this list we take a look at the 20 greatest cop films of the 1970s, while admitting that of course, it’s all subjective.

1. The Cop (1970)

Yves Boissert’s cop thriller is one of the hardest and nastiest of the decade, with a sensational performance at its centre from Michel Bouquet. It holds all the ingredients that would go on to be staples of 70s cop thrillers with its grimy and dark atmosphere, filled to the brim with dirty cops and harsh violence.

Bouquet’s Inspector Favenin returns to duty after being suspended for indiscipline and is soon investigating a murder. The killing is connected to a local crime boss, whose drug operation is protected by corrupt police officers and politicians. The case eventually becomes extremely personal for Favenin, and he’s forced to fight the criminals by stretching the law to its absolute limits.

Bouquet is the beating heart of the film in what is an astonishing display; this is a man whose morals have gone out the window as the case continues, dragging up the much-asked question: do the ends justify the means?

2. Death Occurred Last Night (1970)

Like The Cop, Duccio Tessari’s Death Occurred Last Night is a grimy and unpleasant little crime film, but no less effective. Raf Vallone’s Amanzio Berzaghi arrives in Milan desperately looking for his missing 25-year-old daughter Donatella, who has learning difficulties. Detective Duca Lamberti (Frank Wolff) takes on the investigation, which leads him into the city’s brothels and criminal underworld, and when Donatella’s burned body is discovered, the case becomes a murder investigation.

As you might expect, as Lamberti tries to work out who was responsible, Berzaghi begins pursuing the killer himself. Both Vallone and Wolff are excellent, with Vallone adding much needed emotional punch to a film that is particularly bleak. Death Occurred at Night is part police procedural, part crime thriller, and even part giallo with Gianni Ferrio’s unusual score, which leaps between psychedelic rock, baroque pop, and jazz.

It’s a nasty yet atmospheric cop thriller with a couple of terrific performances at its centre, and it’s only recently become widely available to watch- and it’s well worth shelling out for.

3. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Jean-Pierre Melville’s monumental Le Cercle Rouge stars Alain Delon as Corey, a man released from prison with a jewellery robbery already taking shape in his mind, while escaped prisoner Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté) crosses his path after breaking free from Commissioner Mattei. The two eventually recruit Jansen (Yves Montand), an alcoholic former policeman and expert marksman, and plan an audacious robbery of a Paris jewellery shop as Andre Bourvil’s Mattei closes in.

Le Cercle Rouge takes its cues from Jules Dassin’s 1955 masterpiece Rififi, even boasting a near dialogue-free heist sequence, which is an astonishing piece of cinema. There’s no need to spend time exploring these characters’ back stories; everything you need to know about them is right in front of you on the screen. They’re forced to trust each other, adding extra tension to an already engrossing film, while the cast- especially Delon- pull you into the stress and meticulous planning of the heist.

This is Melville stripping the crime film down to its basic roots: men and the rules they live by. There’s clearly influences taken from Le Cercle Rouge that we can see in much that came after, with Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) being a good example. It’s utterly brilliant.

4. Dirty Harry (1971)

Don Siegel has directed an impressive number of great films, but there’s arguably none more iconic than Dirty Harry. Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan is one of the great cop characters in cinematic history, and he went on to revive him in four separate sequels, many of which are far better than they’re given credit for.

Here, Callahan is assigned to track down Scorpio (Andy Robinson), a sadistic killer who shoots a woman from a rooftop in San Francisco, then sends the city a ransom demand threatening further killings. Callahan’s reputation for ignoring procedure infuriates his rookie partner (and everyone else in his department), but unquestionably gets results. Eastwood puts in one of his finest ever performances, creating a character that is so frequently quoted that you’ll have certainly heard one liners from this film even if you’ve never seen it.

But Siegel’s film is far more than Eastwood pointing a gun at someone and asking them if they feel lucky; it’s a tightly constructed cop thriller built around a terrifying plot, and it remains one of the best cop films ever released.

5. Shaft (1971)

Just like Harry Callahan, Richard Rountree’s John Shaft is one of the defining characters in 70s cinema. Shaft is a private detective who is hired by Harlem crime boss Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) to find his kidnapped daughter Marisol. His investigation takes him through the competing worlds of Harlem’s organised crime, the Black Panthers, and the New York Police Department, with Lieutenant Androzzi (Charles Cioffi) keeping a close eye on him.

This is one of the most important Blaxploitation films of the era, with Roundtree utterly mesmerising in the main role. The film’s racial politics are woven into the story and become part of the film, while Isaac Hayes’s theme song becomes part of the character’s identity.

Shaft remains a terrific thriller because the character becomes the film as much as the mystery itself. Roundtree is brilliant, to the point where he was brought back for two underseen and underrated sequels (and a more recent Netflix film which doesn’t deserve this mention), and Shaft will always be one of the most important films of the 70s.

6. The French Connection (1971)

If The French Connection isn’t your favourite William Friedkin film, it’s going to be in your top five at the very least. Gene Hackman has many iconic roles in cinema, but perhaps none are as defining as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, who, along with fellow narcotics detective Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), stumbles across a possible heroin connection between a Brooklyn businessman, Sal (Tony Lo Bianco) and French drug trafficker Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). This leads to a major investigation as they attempt to establish how Charnier is getting a huge shipment of heroin into New York.

Friedkin depicts the sheer unpleasantness of its police work, as well as its characters. Popeye is far from a nice individual; indeed, at times he’s actively awful. But he knows how to get the job done, whether that be by legal means or not. Friedkin knows how to stage a car chase, and the one featured here might well be the best he- or anyone else- has put to screen, with Doyle pursuing a train above him while driving underneath it at terrifying speed.

Both Hackman and Scheider are tremendous and bounce off each other incredibly effectively, giving the film an anchor to which you are glued. This is one of the best cop thrillers ever made, and seemingly only gets better with age. Its 1975 sequel is also a far better and darker film than it’s given credit for, and continues the story in a particularly horrifying way. But Friedkin’s original is where it all began, brilliantly adapted from Robin Moore’s novel and is rightfully considered one of the greats.

7. The New Centurions (1972)

Richard Fleischer’s film is another that’s only received a wider home release recently, which is a real shame because it’s something of a forgotten gem. Stacy Keach plays Roy Fehler, who joins the LAPD while studying law, expecting the job to be a temporary education in the system before returning to his studies. But after being partnered with veteran patrolman Andy (George C. Scott), he soon gets a view of what police work actually involves.

The New Centurions is a really interesting case in that it explores the mundane grind of patrol work and how it can engulf the individuals at the centre of the story in this case. Roy slowly finds his life becoming psychologically absorbed by the job, and all the time he’s looking at Andy, whose distinction between work and his identity has long disappeared.

This is a cop thriller that suggests that police don’t learn how to do the job, but rather that the job teaches them how to see the world through the small prism of their location. Both Scott and Keach give the film a really authentic feel, and The New Centurions is one of the most interesting cop thrillers of the decade.

8. Serpico (1973)

Perhaps the peak of police corruption in terms of cinema, Sidney Lumet’s film is a masterpiece in realism, based on the true story of NYPD Frank Serpico, who became famous for exposing widespread corruption within the department in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Al Pacino takes on the role of Serpico in what is a quite brilliant performance: an eccentric, stubborn and increasingly obsessive presence, someone who simply can’t look the other way.

After joining the department, Serpico witnesses the constant bribes and corruption that go on within the department, and reports everything he sees. But he’s cast to one side, becoming increasingly isolated from his colleagues and superiors as he attempts to expose the corruption from within. He’s fighting a culture rather than a specific group or individual, and that’s what makes the story so engrossing.

This is a superb police corruption drama because it offers the idea that institutional corruption doesn’t mean that everyone involved is a horrible person, but rather the fact that most people simply want to protect themselves. Pacino’s astonishing, Lumet’s direction is masterful, and Serpico is one of the all time greats.

9. The Offence (1973)

Sean Connery is a long way from Bond in Sidney Lumet’s The Offence, a film that’s a deeply disturbing and bleak cop thriller with Connery playing Detective Sergeant Johnson, a man who has become damaged by what he’s witnessed over twenty years in the force. When the police investigate the rape of a young girl, suspicion falls on a man named Kenneth Baxter (Ian Bannen), and Johnson takes part in his interrogation. Baxter’s behaviour sets something off in Johnson, and this leads to a brutal assault that leaves Baxter dying.

Johnson is subsequently questioned by the Superintendent, with the film reconstructing the interrogation through a series of increasingly disturbing flashbacks. The Offence is far from an easy watch, and it impressively offers up some eerie sequences that give it an incredibly foreboding atmosphere that grabs you and won’t let you go. At times it almost feels like a horror film, and in some ways it is with its horrific subject matter.

Connery is very impressive in a role that’s far from easy to nail down. It’s arguably one of his best ever on-screen performances, at the centre of a very bleak yet powerful film, with Lumet successfully turning a police thriller into something resembling more of a psychological horror film.

10. The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Two San Francisco police officers are murdered while riding a city bus, along with several other passengers in what initially appears to be a random massacre. Detective Sergeant Jake Martin (Walther Matthau) and his partner Leo (Bruce Dern) are assigned to the case, and Martin soon discovers that one of the dead officers had been investigating an unsolved double murder, leading him to suspect that the bus killings may have been a deliberate attempt to silence someone.

There’s an interesting juxtaposition early on in The Laughing Policeman; after the frantic and horrible opening, the film then retreats into the very real business of police procedural, which works with great effectiveness. Matthau in particular is on fine form, convincing you of his intrigue and frustration at the whole thing, and the central story is approached seriously, never entertaining the idea of exploitation, which it could have easily fallen into.

This is a highly impressive yet downbeat police procedural built around Matthau’s excellent central performance, and the slow quality of real detective work. Its authenticity is to be admired, and although it’s far from flashy, it’s extremely effective.

Zach Cregger returns to our screens just a year after the impressive Weapons (2025), a film that bettered, in almost every way, the hugely frustrating Barbarian (2022), a view that only I seem to take. Barbarian’s set-up was intriguing for about half an hour or so before it succumbed to some rather dull genre tropes and lapsed completely into a final stretch of increasingly overblown silliness. Weapons was a far more interesting beast; a film that kept you hooked with its central premise and sustained an atmosphere of menace right up until its rather foolish ending.

For his latest, Cregger offers up a second reboot of Resident Evil, an adaptation of the video game that has already spawned a six film franchise and the 2021 failed attempt at kick-starting the story once more, Johannes Roberts’s Welcome to Raccoon City. To suggest we don’t need another Resident Evil film seems irrelevant. But there was plenty of reason to be optimistic for Cregger’s arrival behind the camera. He’s a self-professed fan of the games and has expressed his desire to replicate the experience of the game without directly adapting any of its stories, a move that’s certainly sensible in its effort to draw in film fans in general, not just die-hard fans of the games or film franchise.

Cregger’s film is a ninety-minute sojourn into the depths of hell, set mostly on the outskirts of Racoon City. Austin Abrams stars as Bryan, a hapless courier who postpones the end of his night shift and an impending difficult conversation with his girlfriend to take one last night-time run, delivering urgent medical supplies to Raccoon City General Hospital and getting paid double in the process. Naturally, his destination takes him through snow-covered mountains, and once on his way, swearing constantly in irritation at his circumstances like some he hits a woman with his vehicle who appears to be in some bizarre form of rigour mortis yet still alive.

We all know what’s going on, and from this moment on, Resident Evil is a survival horror thriller that doesn’t stop for breath as Bryan frantically tries to make his way to the hospital. Unsurprisingly, the package he’s carrying contains the vital ingredient that will complete the antidote to this horrific virus that we soon see mutating all over the place. The woman who Bryan hits becomes several people joined together as the film goes on, and there’s plenty here for fans of the games to sink their teeth into, quite literally in some cases.

There’s an excellent pulsing score that rampages through Resident Evil, composed by Hays and Ryan Holladay, which is hugely effective and instantly puts you in the mood at the film’s opening, and is consistently effective throughout Resident Evil. Abrams is conflictingly lovable yet progressively vexing, a character who takes the idea of blatant on-screen stupidity and multiplies it by ten. Poor decisions taken by him are deliberate, and they’re initially amusing, but they get tired very quickly and even by a classic horror film’s genre tropes, Resident Evil stretches the point.

The critical response to the film has been mostly positive, and it’s already been something of a box office hit. Which is great for the franchise, and great for Cregger. And it’s hard to argue that this might well be the Resident Evil film that fans have been waiting for. But for everyone else, it’s hard to see what surprises are waiting for you here, beyond the constant jump scares and admittedly formidable gore; there are one or two sequences that are genuinely nasty, and one in a maternity ward is particularly grim.

Cregger cites the Evil Dead franchise as a major touchpoint, and you can see the influence throughout Resident Evil, in particular Evil Dead 2 (1987). Successfully creating the formula to blend horror and comedy in a film is notoriously difficult, and Sam Raimi is arguably the master. Cregger does his best, and for twenty minutes or so, such a combination seems to have found some sort of foothold. But it swiftly becomes a chore to listen to constant quips amid the madness unfolding around you. Of course, we’re not expected to believe anything that’s happening, when Bryan starts complaining about the state of his socks, it’s hard not to roll your eyes.

Some of the monsters on display are effectively gruesome, and Cregger admirably succeeds in creating one of the most video game-inspired cinematic experiences we’ve ever seen in terms of visual aesthetics. If you think of something like Andrzej Bartkowiak’s mostly dreadful Doom (2005), the final stretch of the film was quite literally a CGI video game that audiences watched, slack-jawed, as Karl Urban’s John Grimm shot at monsters from a video game first-person perspective. There are a couple of very brief moments where we get the exact same camera shot from Bryan’s point of view here, and Resident Evil could easily have done without them.

When comparing Cregger’s Resident Evil to previous video game adaptations specifically, things look a whole lot more favourable. It’s scant pickings to find such films that are worth your attention; indeed, the best of the lot remains Duncan Jones’s Warcraft (2016), a genuinely solid and entertaining film that flopped so badly on release that a planned sequel was dead before it got going. And yet we’re likely to see a third film in the Super Mario franchise in the next few years due to the huge success of the desperately dull Super Mario Galaxy Movie earlier this year. But then again, maybe such comparisons are unfair; Resident Evil, perhaps, should only be pitted against previous instalments of its own franchise, and in that respect, it’s impossible to argue that it’s not one of the best.

While Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2002 original film maintains its defenders, and one could put up a good defence that it’s a solid, stripped-back sci-fi B-movie, something that Anderson was already a dab hand at producing, having helmed 1997’s rather terrific Event Horizon. Since the 2002 Resident Evil, the films have ranged from average to dreadful. The odd one out being 2012’s Retribution, which, whilst being far from a great film, demonstrated an interesting exploration of visual style and personal identity, if you looked hard enough beneath the surface.

Cregger’s film certainly upsets the apple cart of distinct averageness that has permeated this franchise since its inception, and that’s likely more than enough to jolt it back into life. Indeed, this will surely do very well amongst fans, and inevitably lead to a sequel. Resident Evil is very well made, well acted, and it’s easy to see why people might have a blast with it. But whether that’s enough is very much down to personal opinion. It’s a frustrating experience.

For about twenty minutes, Resident Evil hints at the promise of its teaser trailer: pure terror pockmarked with moments of genuine comedy. It’s undeniable that this may well work for most. But once you realise that the horror isn’t scary and the comedy stops becoming funny, the whole thing, regrettably, becomes tiresome. Ultimately, for all its positives, Cregger’s Resident Evil is a frustrating experience.

Author Bio: Christian Keane is a film critic who explores overlooked gems, cult classics, and cinema’s hidden corners. He believes it’s great to disagree — everyone’s perspective matters — and shares his thoughts on his website and across his socials at Keane on Film, which you can find here https://linktr.ee/christiankeane7. You can also find him on Tiktok @keane.on.film and Instagram @keaneonfilm.

Does Hollywood love anything more than a world-famous franchise? It’s the gift that keeps on giving: an iconic pop-culture hit leads to a flood of continuous instalments, each one providing a demanding audience with a much-needed fix for their next adventure. From big-tier sci-fi spectacles to iconic horror boogeymen and unstoppable action heroes – if there’s a chance to squeeze several sequels out of an IP, you can bet it will happen.

Yet, for massive, long-running franchises, not every entry will be highly regarded. Quality can dip, the concept can grow oversaturated, or audiences may simply wish to spend their cash elsewhere after Jason Voorhees shows up at Camp Crystal Lake yet again. Certainly, the demand for sequels can result in a product being pumped out with as much care and enthusiasm as a factory-made sheet of ham. But what about those occasions where there was a quality movie that simply got overshadowed by the more iconic or louder entries in its franchise? It’s a common occurrence, and sometimes time itself has simply moved on from worthwhile instalments in a milestone series.

This list aims to shine a light on those oddities that have been glossed over the years, worthy follow-ups that have fallen in the forgotten or underrated categories in some of the most famous movie franchises that still run to this day…

1. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

One of the first explosive pop-culture franchises to take the world by storm, “Planet of the Apes” (1968) was a bona fide sci-fi classic, set in a distant future where apes have evolved and subjugated humans. It packed an iconic role from Charlton Heston, a brainy allegory on human existence and one heck of a twist ending. It was a phenomenon that begged for a sequel, spawning a franchise that continues today and arguably reached its pinnacle with director Matt Reeves’ two emotionally gripping prequel entries, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014) and “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017). However, the several other instalments between those high points have been hit and miss, with some squandering the premise with mediocre results.

“Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” (1972), coming near the end of the original cycle, is a standout story, filled with shocking brutality for a studio production, a compelling central arc and some surprisingly brave examinations of hot-button issues. Yet, it tends to get saddled in with the majority of the franchise’s mid-tier entries.

The story is set in the (then) future of 1991. A pandemic has led humans to house apes as pets, grooming them into servants when they come of age. Roddy McDowall plays Caesar, an ape with superior intelligence, raised by Ricardo Montalban’s kind circus owner, yet their relationship is thrown into turmoil as oppressive forces lean on the ape, to the point where he cannot withstand it anymore.

Journeyman director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) made two ‘Apes’ movies, and this is by far his strongest, not to mention the most individual of the entire series. Production made ingenious use of the (then) newly developed Century City in Los Angeles. Featuring off-kilter concrete-and-glass architecture, it perfectly captured a near-future world that felt gritty and believable, with the polished sci-fi sheen of a modern metropolis. Thompson’s visual style opted for a direct, almost documentary-like aesthetic, giving the sight of talking apes and leather-suited guards an air of reality and brutality. The result is a picture fuelled by seething anger, no doubt informed by the civil unrest and racial tensions clearly prevalent during the era. It’s a genre film that impressively broached a subject that few mainstream dramas had the courage to tackle back then.

2. Rambo III (1988)

For one of the biggest action franchises around, it is remarkable how different each Rambo film feels from the others, considering how most action-classic sequels tend to just repeat the formula for another go. Not with Sylvester Stallone’s iconic IP: “First Blood” (1982) examined the titular veteran’s PTSD via a gritty and gripping survival thriller; the sequel, “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (1985), did a 180 and sent him back into Vietnam as a one-man army in archetypal ’80s bombast; the legacy fourth entry, “Rambo” (2008), subverted the men-on-a-mission formula via horrifying action and surprisingly moving pathos; while the final entry, “Last Blood” (2019), played like ‘Taken meets Sicario’ in a beyond-grim and unnecessary footnote for the beloved character. Smack bang in the middle is “Rambo III” (1988), which is filled with high adventure and rip-roaring set pieces – however, likely due to its awkward politics, it often feels like this one never happened.

The story has Stallone’s Rambo living a simple existence in Thailand, working at a Buddhist monastery as a handyman. Richard Crenna’s Colonel Trautman, his former commander, ends up taking on a mission in Afghanistan, where he is captured by Soviet forces. Our favourite war veteran is pulled into the fray once more, heading into the country to rescue his friend and, naturally, blow lots of things up.

Epic ’80s action director Russell Mulcahy (Highlander) was at the helm before leaving over creative differences. Second-unit director Peter MacDonald took over, although rumours point to Stallone being heavily involved in calling the shots, and his go-for-broke style of the era peers through: every shot is epic, every explosion sizzles, every muscle is bulging. Regardless of the now-awkward historical context of Rambo fighting alongside the Afghan Mujahideen, this movie is likely the closest the series got to outright joyous, mindless fun, with members of the crew reportedly dubbing the film ‘Rambo of Arabia’ during production.

It’s great to get Crenna in on the action for a change as well, instead of having him relegated to a control panel. His and Stallone’s mentor-and-student dynamic comes into full force and gets a chance to jump off the screen. Stallone has never been more one-note as the character, but also never more physically impressive, from his legendary intro in an underground stick-fighting match to his cave-set hunting sequence and the epic horseback finale. They don’t make them like they used to, and this third entry needs to be appreciated as such.

3. Predators (2010)

Arriving with epic bluster, John McTiernan’s “Predator” (1987) placed action superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger and a group of alpha males in the sweaty jungle and flipped the ‘men on a mission’ action trope on its head, as these soldiers met their match battling a fierce, effective and ridiculously cool alien hunter (designed in career-best work from SFX wiz Stan Winston). It was a macho classic, but since then, it’s been a bumpy ride for the franchise. The urban-set “Predator 2” (1990) was initially a disappointment, although it has since been rightfully reevaluated, followed by a muddy few entries that struggled with purpose until the series’ recent renaissance, spearheaded by filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg; the triple releases of “Prey” (2022), “Predator: Killer of Killers” (2025) and “Predator: Badlands” (2025) have reignited the series as one of the top-tier sci-fi franchises of the day.

Amongst its dire period was an attempt at reviving the IP by hiring Robert Rodriguez (Desperado) to produce a new entry, based on an earlier treatment he had written. The result, was a solid instalment that pretty much came and went without much notice.

Its plot kick-starts quite enticingly, like an old-school genre TV episode: random tough guys are airdropped into an off-kilter wilderness, with little clue as to how or why they are there, or even whether they are still on Earth. Soon, it’s revealed that they’re in the middle of an alien hunting game… and they are the sport.

From the opening, the premise grips you, with a colourful and varied cast of tense character actors. Adrien Brody is cast against type as the gravel-voiced mercenary but does surprisingly well, with strong support from Danny Trejo, Mahershala Ali and Walton Goggins (not to mention an enjoyably wild cameo from Laurence Fishburne).

The slight budget hampers the potential of the premise, though; not much is made of the alien planet, and a new species of Predator is basically just a larger, darker class and not much else. Yet, the film’s mandate is to give you a lean and fun experience where stressed macho warriors face off against intimidating beasts, and it launches a series of effective set-pieces that impress, with a likely franchise-best being the exhilarating Yakuza vs. Predator confrontation.

This one has clearly been passed over due to neither hitting the franchise’s heights nor reaching its bottom-tier lows. It sits firmly in the middle, making for a solid, enjoyable watch that needs a little more appreciation.

4. Licence to Kill (1989)

For a series as long-lasting as James Bond, with several recasts along the way, not every entry can be an absolute winner. But every actor who played the role at least has a landmark title linked to their run: Connery had “Goldfinger” (1964) and “From Russia with Love” (1963), Moore had “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977), Brosnan had “GoldenEye” (1995), Craig had “Casino Royale” (2006) and “Skyfall” (2012); even Lazenby’s single-film tenure, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969), is now a retrospective fan-favourite classic. So, what about Timothy Dalton’s run?

The Welsh-born actor had an all-too-brief tenure, turning in only two films before the Bond machine became caught up in an ugly legal battle that put the property on an indefinite hiatus. Neither Dalton entry is typically held up alongside the celebrated classics, although his first turn, “The Living Daylights” (1987), was packed with globe-trotting excitement, a charismatic central performance, not to mention some ridiculously effective action (who can forget Bond’s fistfight while dangling from a cargo plane? “Uncharted” certainly didn’t). His second go, however… is a bit of a black sheep. It is about as dark, gory and nihilistic as the series ever got.

Longstanding supporting character Felix Leiter (David Hedison) is brutally maimed by Robert Davi’s ruthless drug lord, Franz Sanchez. 007 goes rogue and sets out on a revenge mission, infiltrating the cartel undercover and methodically turning its members against each other, aided by a little help from Carey Lowell’s CIA pilot and Talisa Soto’s mistreated cartel girlfriend.

Dalton commands from the jump. He was an actor who wanted to explore the ruthless assassin aspect of the character, and the plot gave him the ideal platform to do it: they’ve fed his best friend to a shark and murdered his new wife – he’s understandably upset. He’s hellbent on his goal and doesn’t flinch much, even when sending henchmen through a meat grinder. On the villainous end, you don’t get much better: Davi was a go-to heavy for the era, and he doesn’t disappoint. Quietly menacing yet unpredictably fierce, he’s a fearsome and believable foil to Bond’s MI6 polish, plus he’s accompanied by an ever-young Benicio del Toro as his sadistic henchman. On the female side, Lowell and Soto are both absolutely stunning and captivating, the former the green but eager all-American sidekick/love interest, whilst the latter smoulders as the glamorous, tainted moll.

Series veteran John Glen knew how to direct a quality Bond movie by this point, and he brings forth the familiar ingredients that work while combining them with the hard-edged aesthetic of that era’s action cinema. It’s not a concoction that works for everyone, but it’s an absolutely fascinating experiment and a much better spectacle than people give it credit for.

5. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

When the slasher film craze took cinemas by storm in the ’80s, there were no bigger names in the realm than Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. The former, a figure literally born from nightmares themselves, grew into a one-liner-spewing, sadistic pop-culture icon, whilst the lumbering, silent zombie figure of hockey-masked Jason quickly took over the mantle from Michael Myers as the murdering brute chasing fleeing cheerleaders. Both franchises had their ups and downs, for Freddy’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” series, Wes Craven’s classic 1984 original and the subversive reboot “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” (1994) and the fan-favourite third entry, “Dream Warriors” (1987) remain highpoints; for Jason’s “Friday the 13th”, it was a rare case of the 1988’s original not even being a bona fide classic, although its profits kept the series chugging forward, with the fourth entry, “The Final Chapter” (1984), eventually delivering a high-quality horror milestone, and arguably the sixth, “Jason Lives” (1986), outdoing it with a sly dark-comedy tinge. Outside of those entries, both franchises are a mixed bag.

Just like with the Universal monster movies, there was hype around pitting these two icons against each other, and once New Line Cinema managed to get both characters under its roof, it dropped a teaser at the end of “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday” (1993) that saw Freddy’s iconic clawed hand pull Jason’s mask into the depths of Hell. For the next decade, the film, ironically, remained in development hell, with bafflingly weird scripts involving everything from cults to a courtroom drama.

When the dust settled in the early 2000s, with horror kicking into high gear in popularity again, New Line managed to get its thumb out and finally pump out a face-off movie; its plot rightfully tries its best not to overcomplicate things, with a group of Elm Street teens (led by the surprisingly decent Jason Ritter and Monica Keena) uncover that their town has been hiding the legacy of Freddy Krueger, only for a resurrected Jason to make those plans go awry, with both monsters preying on the youths before, inevitably, turning on each other.

Slickly directed by Hong Kong maestro Ronny Yu (The Bride with White Hair), he gives the film a gorgeous visual style, a nice sense of suspense and decent bloodletting, but most importantly, delivers when it comes to the titular beatdown, with a midpoint mash-up in Krueger’s dreamworld before an exciting and gory final showdown at Crystal Lake. It’s also Robert Englund’s last turn playing his iconic character, and he predictably steals the show, although Ken Kirzinger as Jason (in his first and only turn as the character) makes a strong impression with a hulking tree of a performance.

Since then, remakes and rights issues have plagued both franchises, so this one should be enjoyed as a final hurrah for both characters’ original runs. It won’t win any Oscars, but it certainly did what it said on the tin for fans of both franchises… although, you would be remiss to even know it existed nowadays.