Native German director, Robert Siodmak, emerged as a major talent in the 1930s German film industry during the late Weimar era. His claim to fame was co-directing 1930’s “People on Sunday” (alongside other future iconic filmmakers such as Edgar. G. Ulmer, Billy Wilder, and Fred Zinnemann), but due to his Jewish heritage, and the unrest of the rising Nazi party, he uprooted across Europe before settling in the Hollywood film industry at the beginning of the 1940s, where his career really started to thrive.

He had a talent for wringing strong, dramatic performances from young actors, visual storytelling and nail-biting suspense, and a true fascination with dream-like narratives. He turned his hand successfully to several genres across his American career, from swashbucklers (The Crimson Pirate) to horror (Son of Dracula) and screwball comedy (Fly-by-Night), but where he really found his foothold was in fatalistic crime movies and gripping psychological thrillers, which would later be grouped under the banner of film noir.

Coined by French film critics after World War 2, film noir was a term used to describe a cycle of American films from 1941 to 1958 that held bleak atmosphere, downbeat endings, smoky sets, and stark lighting, with morally challenged protagonists and manipulative sirens at their centre. It was more a mood than a genre, but its impact is still felt in cinema today…

This arena was no doubt Siodmak’s playground, with him having cranked out milestone examples of the genre, some iconically remembered, some forgotten by time, but all worth a look for those fascinated with the sub-genre. Here are the ten best examples…

10. The Dark Mirror (1946)

At this point in his career, Siodmak had worked his way up the ladder from a steady hand at B-movies to landing a gig directing one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Olivia de Havilland (Gone with the Wind). Together, they created a psychological noir with Freudian undertones that made an impression at the time, although it isn’t remembered amongst his celebrated noirs.

The shocking murder of a doctor creates ripples in a middle-class neighbourhood. The main suspect is a pair of twins (both played by De Havilland). With the police getting stumped due to their identical profile, Lew Ayres ‘ psychologist is brought in to get to the truth.

This murder mystery played with several interesting topics for its time, with an emphasis on how almost identical personalities can vary on opposite sides of the spectrum. Behind the camera, however, Siodmak is surprisingly subdued, considering how much he visually thrives when staging a group of people in a room with nefarious intentions. Perhaps the demanding effects work of making both twins appear on screen in tandem stilted his stylish flourishes.

What really shows, though, is Siodmak’s impressive work with young performers, as de Havilland’s dual performance is spellbinding, perfectly encapsulating the dynamic of opposite characters with the same face; one seemingly vulnerable and compassionate, the other guarded, confrontational, and possibly homicidal. The latter twins scenes really make the film come alive with a series of tense interrogations, where the audience is never sure of the intentions she is hiding.

It results in a lower-key example of what the noir filmmaker could do with a thriller with psychological thematics, although it holds up due to the interesting discussions of the duality of the human psyche and De Havilland’s main performance.

9. The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945)

A year before “The Dark Mirror,” Siodmak created a button-downed drama that only gradually descends into noir territory. It showcased his deft handle on dramatic plot, while wringing suspense out of a middle-class setting, even though it was received fairly lukewarm on release.

George Sanders plays a textile exec living a quaint life in a New England town with his two matriarchal sisters (Geraldine Fitzgerald and Moyna McGill). His existence is upended when he falls in love with a new arrival (Siodmak muse Ella Raines), with their romance upsetting the fragile family dynamic and leading to murder.

Sanders does well in the main role, the timid man who gets a new lease on life through love, although he soon heads down the wrong path, but it’s really Fitzgerald who commands the movie. She plays a complex figure, one whose possessive devotion to her brother is crushing. It’s a dynamic performance, and her final moments, as she prefers to face death rather than give Sanders a chance at redemption, is one of the film’s most memorable. Raines does fine in her role, the photography loves her, but she isn’t utilised as strongly as in her earlier Siodmak collaborations, even though she brings a strength to her character not on the page.

Siodmak displayed how to execute the nuances of small-town drama well, but of course, it really comes alive when the film twists into a murder plot, the handiling of a set-piece set around a poisoned teacup rings suspense and clever editing, and it is then that the film really kicks into gear.

And that likely is why the film isn’t as fondly remembered, the household tension only bears fruit by the end, and then is saddled by a bizarre, happy ending final scene (one forced on Siodmak by the studio), a move that undercuts the more delicious darkness that came before it, but still is worthy of a watch.

8. The File on Thelma Jordon (1950)

As the decade moved out of the 40s, Siodmak had almost finished his tenure in Hollywood before returning to Europe. He had knocked out a series of noir classics at this point and was at the peak of his power, which led to him finally collaborating with genre stalwart Barbara Stanwyck in a potboiler feature that delivers the expected goods.

Wendell Corey’s assistant district attorney is stuck in an unhappy marriage, coasting along with life. Enter Stanwyck’s femme fatale, an exciting but troubled woman who predictably leads the average Joe into a spiral of deception, corruption, and, of course, murder.

When it comes to noir territory, there really isn’t anyone better to have as a femme fatale than Stanwyck; in fact, she pretty much defined the archetype. Here she doesn’t disappoint, at once fascinating, sympathetic, fierce, and unhinged, sometimes all in the same scene. It’s the type of role she excelled at, and the film is a great example of her gift for it. Corey is the straight man of the dynamic, and whilst his hapless drunk routine in the first act feels more out of a screwball comedy, when the film takes a dark turn down a twisty road, he makes for an involving protagonist that hides his turmoil under a middle-class profile.

Siodmak knew how to ratchet up tension via atmospheric lighting and sharp angles, and from the second act onwards, handles the escalating stakes like a pro, even imbuing the less exciting courtroom section with a palpable suspense.

‘Thelma Jordon’ results in a combination of two noir greats, delivering the type of film you would want them to make. Perhaps its biggest con factor is the shadow cast by “Double Indemnity”, Stanwyck’s iconic turn in a similar plot-line that remains a milestone; this movie is still a strong example of a latter period noir regardless, if less memorable.

7. The Suspect (1944)

Set in historical London, this tale is an impressive noir adjacent thriller that focuses less on the whodunnit aspect and more on if the main character can live with the guilt of the crimes committed, made during a time when Siodmak was beginning to really show his prowess with that type of subject matter.

Charles Laughton plays an English shopkeeper, trapped in a toxic marriage with a wife (a fierce Rosalind Ivan) who won’t let him divorce. When he becomes enraptured by a friendly young lady (Ella Raines again), he sees the only chance at a new life is via murder, naturally.

Laughton was at the time one of Hollywood’s biggest scene stealers, playing larger-than-life characters in classic films (Mutiny on the Bounty), yet this thriller sees him restrained, as a relatable man who struggles with maintaining the perfect crime. More subdued than we’re used to, regardless, he owns the screen in a series of set-pieces that involve hiding a blackmailer’s body from guests, or being confronted with the murder plot by a stern investigator; his expression tells a million tales, and our sympathies cling to him.

Raines holds the role well of the sympathetic object of affection; she’s no conniving manipulator who has pulled the protagonist down the wrong path, only a believable catalyst for the man wanting to grasp at freedom. From the rest of the colourful supporting cast, Henry Daniell, as the spineless neighbour who sees an opportunity for cash, is the standout. He chews up the scenes he’s in, giving Laughton a worthy foil, even though his time on screen is brief.

Siodmak absolutely relishes the setting and thematics, extracting maximum tension out of the scenario, where even a brief scene that has Laughton believing he’s being followed on the streets becoming a gripping spectacle of thick smog and surreal light, told all visually.

The result is one of the director’s most underrated, featuring a fresh spin on a familiar noir convention, anchored by an engaging performance by Laughton, successfully playing against type.

6. Christmas Holiday (1944)

With a title like “Christmas Holiday” and a cast headlined by Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly, the natural assumption is it’s a festive musical to rival Bing Crosby’s output. Instead, the viewer will be subjected to a dark and moody noir that examines the tragedy of mourning a loved one, hellbent on a destructive end.

Starting with Dean Harens’ heartbroken soldier stranded in a stormy New Orleans during the Christmas season. He befriends Durbin’s troubled singer, the narrative shifts to her story, as she gradually unveils the sad tale of marrying Kelly’s charming gambler, who was imprisoned for murder and escaped custody, with her hoping he will return to her life.

Durbin at the time was Universal’s sweetheart in musical comedies; this was a vehicle for her to show her dramatic prowess, and whilst at the time her performance didn’t succeed with critics, it remains an impressive feat. She embodies a traumatised figure that holds unrequited love for a bad man and believably plays the suffocating weight that presses on her. Kelly surprisngly plays that bad man, cast against type, but holds his own; charming one moment, roaring with fury the next. His shadow looms over proceedings, and as he emerges in the third act sporting a trench coat and sinister glint, one feels like a shame he didn’t try these types of parts more often in his iconic career.

Several of Siodmak’s obsessions are at play here: the shifts in protagonists, the plot being unravelled via lengthy flashback, and a dark dreamlike ambience. His stylings work at full force making several scenes more haunting than likely described on the page; from Harens’ meeting of Durbin in silhouette within a shadowed church, to Durbin dwelling in her husbands Gothic-tinged homestead, to the final moments where Wagner’s “Liebstraub” takes over the soundtrack and Durbin’s guilt is lifted as she stares to the night sky, it’s a visual marvel, and one that needs to be recognised as one of the director’s strongest noir films.

Paul Greengrass is one of the most distinctive British filmmakers of his generation, a director whose handheld camera work, documentary- style realism and visceral approach to action have influenced an entire generation of cinema. From the political turmoil of Bloody Sunday (20020 to the high-octane thrills of the Bourne franchise, Greengrass has constantly battered audiences with engrossing and quite astonishing filmmaking.

Almost any cinematic release of a real life tale that’s not quite up to snuff now carries the question “what would Greengrass have done?” There’s almost no doubt, for example, that he’s the man who has transposed the horrors of the 9/11 attacks most effectively, with 2006’s harrowing yet astonishing United 93.

From his roots in hard-hitting dramas, his transition into Hollywood action filmmaking demonstrated that his distinctive style could deliver spectacular entertainment, and when he took on the challenge of helming the second film in the Bourne franchise, 2004’s brutal and brilliant The Bourne Supremacy, he changed the face of action cinema forever.

With his release of The Uprising recently, we look back and rank every feature film Greengrass has ever directed, analysing the work of one of modern cinema’s most compelling and influential film makers.

13. The Theory of Flight (1998)

It’s hard to pick any film to put at the bottom of this list, because Greengrass hasn’t made a bad film. But The Theory of Flight is perhaps his least accomplished. Starring Kenneth Branagh as Richard, an eccentric artist obsessed with the idea of human flight. After an attempt to launch himself from a building using homemade wings ends in disaster, he is sentenced to community service, and this brings him into the life of Jane (Helena Bonham Carter), an independent woman living with motor neurone disease.

The pair strike up a relationship without falling into a conventional romantic fantasy, built around two memorable performances and a very strange storyline. But this is a tale of independence, friendship, and most notably the desire to live life to the full. Greengrass has never been afraid to explore uncomfortable subjects as we know it, and this is a fascinating document into a film he made before he hit the big time.

It’s a distinctive early entry into his filmography and may lack some of the urgency of his later work, but there’s no doubting that this is still a very solid piece of work.

12. News of the World (2020)

Paul Greengrass delves into the American Civil War in News of the World, with former Confederate captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks) travelling across Texas, making a living by reading newspaper stories aloud to paying audiences. When he encounters Johanna (Helena Zengel), a young girl raised by the Kiowa people who has been left orphaned, he reluctantly agrees to escort her to relatives hundreds of miles away.

The film is a notable departure from the handheld style of previous Greengrass works, and in some ways this is proof that he can swing between genres with ease. News of the World is a measured and effective Western, with Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel both on excellent form as the central pairing.

While the film isn’t up there with his finest work, it proves the many strings to Greengrass’s bow, with News of the World also flagging an interesting subtext about misinformation and the power of storytelling. It’s undoubtedly one of the safer and arguably the most conventional films on this list, yet it’s still solid.

11. The Uprising (2026)

Greengrass’s latest film is another example of him expanding his scope, this time using the Peasants’ revolt of 1381 as the background. The Uprising stars Andrew Garfield as a grieving English ploughman who joins a rebellion against the oppressive taxation and entrenched power of King Richard II’s government. As the uprising spreads towards London, the rebels find themselves divided over their aims while the Crown attempts to regain control.

Greengrass reimagines a pivotal moment in English history, exploring the struggle between ordinary people and the ruling class, and unsurprisingly, the result is engrossing and visually impressive. While the restless visual style can become slightly distracting here, the shaky camerawork is especially effective in the battle sequences, but elsewhere it feels a tad unnecessary and leads to a film that while certainly impressive, sometimes feels slightly out of kilter with itself.

The ending itself, without giving anything away, has attracted criticism, who feel the connection the film is trying to make is awkward to the point of taking you out of what you’ve just witnessed. But for the most part, The Uprising is another example of Greengrass’s extraordinary power of storytelling, putting you right there at the centre of a hugely important historic event.

10. Jason Bourne (2016)

After the astonishing work on Supremacy (2004) and Ultimatum (2007), Greengrass and Matt Damon told us that was the end of the Bourne saga, and that there would only ever be another chapter if the right storyline could be spun. Almost a decade after Ultimatum, apparently they’d found it, with the plot involving Julia Stiles’s Nicky Parsons uncovering information about the CIA’s past surveillance programmes and Bourne’s own past.

Sound familiar? Well, that’s because Jason Bourne is quite literally what its title suggests: a Jason Bourne film. This time we welcome Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Riz Ahmed and Vincent Cassel, all of them having an absolute blast with Damon’s Bourne, who has barely a handful of lines to say for the entire film. Thankfully, with Greengrass behind the camera, Jason Bourne proves to be an absolute blast, and a perfect example of how to make a fourth film in a franchise work so well.

It might be nothing we haven’t seen before, yet the set pieces are still phenomenal, culminating in a metal shredding car chase down the Las Vegas strip. It might be the least essential of the Bournes, but it’s still thrillingly entertaining.

9. Resurrected (1989)

One of the most important films in the Greengrass catalogue, not just because it was his debut feature but for the subject matter. Institutional failure and the manipulation of public opinion were major themes that would go on to be a pillar in future Greengrass films, and the fact that The Uprising deals in such issues has brought his career full circle in some ways.

Resurrected tells the story of David Thewlis’s Kevin Deakin, a British soldier who was presumed dead during the Falklands War, only to return home weeks later. He survives an explosion and is left behind on the battlefield, and after making his way back to Britain, he initially receives a hero’s welcome. But suspicion soon turns to hostility as rumours spread that he deserted his comrades.

A story that focuses on soldiers returning from war is one that has permeated cinemas for decades, but Greengrass manages to produce something that feels truly original here. Thewlis is superb, giving one of the best performances of his career as a man whose actual story becomes seemingly irrelevant after people have decided that their own opinions are more important. Although some of the film retains a somewhat televisual style, Resurrected is a superb blueprint for a film-maker who would go on to become one of the world’s best.

8. Green Zone (2010)

Arguably the most underrated Greengrass film, this Iraq war set thriller came hot on the heels of what we thought was the completion of the Bourne trilogy the year before. Starring Matt Damon once more, Green Zone was dubbed ‘Bourne in Iraq’, and although that does the film a disservice, there’s more positive parallels to draw from that summation than you might think. Damon plays US Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, whose unit is tasked with locating the weapons of mass destruction supposedly stockpiled across the country. After repeatedly finding empty sites, Miller begins questioning the intelligence behind the mission, and with Brendon Gleeson’s Martin Brown offering a different account of events, Miller investigates a possible cover-up.

The handheld camerawork does wonders in the setting of Iraq, with the rapid editing giving the military operations a real intensity, just as effectively as it does in the Bourne films. Damon is in fine form, and he’s joined by Gleeson, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdall and Jason Isaacs (who is particularly enjoyable), who round off a cast all at the top of their game.

There have been many fine movies made about the Iraq war (and many bad ones), but Greengrass’s style offers something different to a portrayal of the conflict, and it remains an under-appreciated film that is deserving of reassessment.

The 1990s produced some excellent neo-noir films, but plenty of them never received the recognition they deserved. While classics such as The Usual Suspects (1995) or L.A Confidential (1997) are still rightly held up as some of the best offerings the genre has ever seen, many had no box-office success whatsoever, and even struggled to find an audience on home video.

Some of these took familiar crime stories in unexpected directions, while others created the kind of grimy atmosphere and deeply flawed characters that make the neo-noir so compelling. Such a concept can be traced back to the early days of cinema, and in the golden age of Hollywood there was a plethora of such films, some widely known as well as those that are still being discovered and restored to this day. As for the 90s, it was an excellent decade for neo-noir film, and in this list we take a look at ten of the most underrated of them.

1. After Dark, My Sweet (1990)

Starring Jason Patric, Rachel Ward and Bruce Dern, James Foley’s After Dark, My Sweet is a lean and unsettling piece of neo-noir that does a great job of getting under your skin without ever approaching anything particularly complex. Patric’s former boxer Collie drifts through the desert until he crosses paths with Fay Anderson (Ward), a lonely widow, and Uncle Bud (Dern), a man with a plan to make money through kidnapping. Collie is drawn into the scheme, but what initially looks like a straightforward job soon becomes anything but, and we’re witness to the familiar genre tropes of manipulation, mistrust, and poor decisions.

But while it may sound overly familiar, what makes the film work is the trio of characters at its centre. The three leads are excellent, drawing you into their desperation and paranoia, with the Arizona setting playing a role in itself, providing a glorious backdrop and giving the film real atmosphere.

The film is a brooding, psychological piece, and sadly never achieved the lasting reputation of some of its more celebrated peers. Foley’s film is a far better piece of work than it’s given credit for, and the real draw is the three performances that anchor it.

2. The Grifters (1990)

Stephen Frears’s The Grifters will be one of the more well-known films on this list, but that doesn’t mean it’s not underrated. John Cusack plays a small-time con artist who makes a living swindling unsuspecting victims without attracting attention. His life becomes somewhat more complicated when his mother (Anjelica Huston) and his girlfriend (Annette Benning) become entangled in his affairs.

Indeed, there are plenty of similarities to draw with After Dark, My Sweet, with Frears’s film also being very much a three-hander. The Grifters is an excellent adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel, and once again the film is made by its three central performances. Their conflicting approaches to the central themes of the film are what drive the story, but it’s also a film that portrays a fascinating relationship between mother and son, something that Cusack and Huston do rather brilliantly. It builds and builds before it fully unleashes itself on you, and it’s worth every minute of screen time Frears gives you.

Despite the fact that it received four Academy Award nominations, The Grifters has somewhat faded into the shadows over the decades, and is well overdue for something of a reappraisal. It’s terrific.

3. State of Grace (1990)

Released only a few months after Goodfellas, Phil Joanou’s film never stood a chance commercially or critically. Despite a formidable cast including Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Robin Wright, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly and John Turturro, State of Grace is very much seen as a poor man’s Goodfellas, which is a deeply unfair description.

Penn’s Terry Noonan returns to New York’s Hell’s Kitchen after years away, reconnecting with his childhood friend Jackie (Oldman) and Jackie’s sister Kathleen (Wright), with whom he once had a relationship. What they don’t know is that Terry is an undercover police officer tasked with infiltrating the Flannery family’s Irish-American criminal organisation, led by Jackie’s older brother Frankie (Harris).

While the undercover/gangster plot line might seem familiar, State of Grace captures a neighbourhood where family loyalty and criminal ambition go hand in hand, not to mention the tightly bound together old friendships. Penn and Oldman are terrific- Oldman especially is at his explosive best as a hot-headed criminal. While the comparisons with Scorsese’s Goodfellas might be fair in terms of thematic structure and story, Joanou’s State of Grace remains one of the most underappreciated films of the decade, and if it’s passed you by, now’s the time to rectify that.

4. Unlawful Entry (1992)

This is one of those hugely enjoyable forgotten thrillers from the nineties that is frequently forgotten about. Michael (Kurt Russell) and his wife Karen (Madeline Stowe) have their house broken into, and the intruder threatens Karen with a knife before escaping. The break-in is investigated by Ray Liotta’s Officer Pete Davies and his partner, and initially Pete seems very helpful in helping the couple set up a security system, and slowly becomes a good friend to the couple, even taking Michael out on a patrol and appearing as a guest at Karen’s primary school.

Unsurprisingly, Pete slowly becomes obsessive with Karen, and takes it upon himself to attempt to remove Michael from the equation. It’s an excellent performance from Liotta, one of the late man’s finest, and the way he, Russell, and Stowe bounce off each other is very effective.

The idea that authority figures we’re supposed to be able to trust aren’t always what they seem is far from an original idea, but looking back now, Unlawful Entry is an even more interesting film. It might not be the most subtle film ever released, but director Jonathan Kaplan gives us a warped sense of entertainment that always stays on the right side of silly.

5. Romeo is Bleeding (1993)

Another film on this list that’s raised by a Gary Oldman performance, Peter Medak’s noir thriller is grimy, grotty, and deliberately excessive. Oldman stars as corrupt New York police officer Jack Grimaldi, who adds to his standard income by selling information about protected witnesses to the Mafia, whilst juggling a wife and a mistress. But his life begins to unravel when he’s ordered to deal with a ruthless Russian hitwoman, and his world begins to fall apart.

Oldman makes Jack compellingly rotten; he’s selfish, unfaithful and absolutely corrupt, and the character brings to mind Harvey Keitel’s character in Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992). This is a film that embraces its excess, and it’s frequently brutal but always watchable. It’s at its finest when we watch Oldman and Lena Olin as Russian hitwoman Mona; when they’re on screen together, you simply can’t look away.

Ultimately, Romeo is Bleeding is a bleak yet blackly comic take on the femme fatale tradition, and while it might well be uncomfortable at times, this is a noir piece that’s often discarded.

The 1990s isn’t usually considered a good era for horror. The 70s were the golden era, the 80s had slashers and body horror, and the 90s were a bridge between the formulaic embers of the previous decades and more psychological and self-aware films. This is also the decade when the line between horror and thriller was at its blurriest, with several so straddling the line that debate persists to this day.

But that transitional period isn’t without its gems. Compared to our surveys of the 70s and 80s, the films here are more genre and tonally agnostic, smatterings of anarchic mashups that bridged comedy and humor. There are old masters and burgeoning auteurs. True to the 90s film industry, change was in the air. But this is also a decade when horror felt ever more like a commodity, one studios shamelessly milked until the well seemingly ran dry before an injection of talent, filmmaking tools, and scares shook up the genre.

The 90s weren’t so much bad for horror as they were different – chaotic, and couched within other genres, especially but not exclusively the thriller. Some long-debated blends made this list. Others didn’t. Both Jurassic Park and Terminator 2: Judgment Day have horror sidings with action-adventure bones. Last decade’s horror MVP David Cronenberg continued making excellent films – Naked Lunch, Crash, eXistenZ – that weren’t horror. Finally, some films came close, but just missed it. Family-friendly creature feature Tremors lost out to films with more bite. Similarly, respected chillers The Lost Highway, Sleepy Hollow, and Todd Haynes’ output (Poison and Safe) missed slots to more outright horror films. While the 90s had no shortage of anthology features – Tales from the Hood, Body Bags, Campfire Tales – the best anthologies were on TV.

Still, this decade has enough classics to rival most other decades, and these are best the horror films of the 1990s.

1. Arachnophobia (1990)

The first year of the decade had a host of family-friendly creature features that endeared themselves to (and traumatized) a generation. Tremors very nearly took this spot, and it is its own kind of horror-comedy institution, but, ultimately, the ultra-creepy Arachnophobia won out. Tremors’ knowing update of 1950s monster films is a fun jaunt in the desert, but Arachnophobia found a way to creep out everyone by taking an everyday fear and blowing it up into an existential threat.

Director Frank Marshall and his filmmaking team set out to do for spiders what Hitchcock had done for The Birds, and it’s not surprising that this is Steven Spielberg’s production team. Returning to Jaws territory for a film that was less dread and more skin-tingling, Arachnophobia puts John Goodman’s exterminator and Jeff Daniel’s physician against a swarm of spiders that infest a sleep California enclave. Arachnophobia is emblematic of one kind, the gentlest, of horror this decade. There would be pitch-dark psychological horror, terror clothed in thriller procedurals, splatter, slashers, and more than a few satires that made their point through ultra-violence, but this offering was one the whole family could watch together before searching the house for cobwebs.

2. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

True to 90s horror, a sequel helps open this list. Gremlins 2: The New Batch is not particularly scary, but it has to be here if only for how anarchic, ridiculous, and biting it is. Family entertainment crossed with corporate satire, Gremlins 2 is what you get when the studio needs a sequel and the director really resents the system. No film other than Joker: Folie a Deux has been as much of an obscene gesture to Hollywood greed and its insatiable need for more successful IP. Unlike that film, Gremlins 2 is a blast that’s only gotten better with time.

Joe Dante had established himself as a successful helmer of horror in the 1980s with The Howling and the first Gremlins when the sequel machine came roaring. Dante initially turned it down, only accepting on the condition that he have complete creative control (and triple the budget). What results is a scathing satire where loveable Gizmo is captured by greedy corporate interests who let his evil counterparts take over a New York skyscraper. Madness breaks out, and Gremlins 2 is now infamous (see the Key & Peele skit) for how insane it is. Among many horror-comedy satires, Gremlins 2 is special for the sheer gall and the anarchic joy it wrings from every moment. May Joe Dante be forever remained as the patron saint of directors eating their cake and having it too.

3. Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

The psychological horror of Jacob’s Ladder is still haunting today, and its influence is widely felt across genres and mediums. The Silent Hill video game series famously borrowed from it, and it laid the template for much of the next decade’s reality benders like Fight Club and Donnie Darko. Having spearheaded or at least perfected certain horror/thriller tropes, it remains a satisfying watch and a thoroughly disturbing experience.

Jacob (Tim Robbins) returns from fighting in Vietnam with PTSD. Whether or not the tentacles and blurred faces he keeps seeing are part of that trauma provides the movie with much of its narrative thrust. Needless to say, Jacob’s Ladder is an unnerving dive into mania that fuses the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s with the body horror of the 1980s. Adrian Lyne’s previous film was social phenomenon Fatal Attraction, and Jacob’s Ladder was a more cerebral offering, an enduring classic of hallucinatory madness that plays just right even with material that feels gimmicky in other films. Lyne’s career would steer him back towards erotic thrillers, but he delivered one of the decade’s seminal scares with this one.

4. Misery (1990)

Stephen King adaptations were all over the 1990s: Oscar-nominated dramas, limited TV series, and, of course, horror films. The IT miniseries from 1990 is as iconic as any film from this decade. His horror movie adaptations, however, were cheap, hurried affairs just as likely to go straight to video as they were to theaters. The exception, and one of the best King adaptations ever, is Misery.

Misery is one of the best, most iconic horror movies of the 1990s, and it telegraphed much of the 1990s horror template: a soon-to-be-iconic villain, scary but not supernatural, dark humor, atmosphere and isolation. James Caan plays King stand-in Paul Sheldon, a successful novelist left in the care of superfan Annie Wilkes, played by Kathy Bates in a performance that’s echoed for ages. Bates rightly won the Oscar, but Misery is top-tier filmmaking at all levels. Rob Reiner was in the middle of his hot streak. William Goldman delivered one of his best scripts. Barry Sonnenfield was behind the camera, and James Caan channeled his sneering ass. It’s since been adapted into a stage play, and the Wilkes character featured into King tie-in series Castle Rock with Lizzy Caplan in the role, but even these are mere derivatives. Misery is unsurpassable.

5. Cape Fear (1991)

Martin Scorsese doesn’t dabble much in horror, but Cape Fear is him delivering one at the peak of his powers. Yes, the logline usually touts it as psychological thriller and crime drama, but Scorsese’s handling of it – the suffocating dread, the score, Max Cady as an indefatigable boogeyman – is all horror. The truth is movies like Cape Fear were (like several others on this list that inspire genre griping) labelled as thrillers because horror had become associated with the silly and the supernatural. Now severed from those connotations, we can appreciate Cape Fear for what it is.

Cape Fear is a Gothic horror, remade out of the 1962 Gregory Peck/Robert Mitchum classic. The dream team of Scorsese and De Niro had just come off Goodfellas and brought on cinematographer Freddie Francise because of his work on Gothic horror like The Innocents and the Hammer films. De Niro’s character Max Cady quickly became cultural shorthand for the modern unhinged psycho: abrasive, mercurial, covered in tattoos, menacingly intelligent. Here was a force of nature, with insanity and rage coming to wreak revenge on the public defender he blamed for getting him convicted. Cape Fear was cited as a stylish genre exercise with a terrifying (and Oscar-nominated) performance by De Niro, but it’s also a film that revels in complicated characters. De Niro’s psycho is the icon, but the film’s unflinching brutality is its own horror.

6. The People Under the Stairs (1991)

Each decade has the directors that define it through seminal entries and prolific outputs. The 1970s have Dario Argento and George Romero. Cronenberg and Carpenter largely rule the 80s. For the 90s, there’s one name that really stands alone: Wes Craven. Craven directed seven films in the decade (including one for TV), six of them horror (the other one featured Meryl Streep as an inner-city music teacher because this was the 90s). His name was synonymous with horror, largely due to A Nightmare on Elm Street, the 90s installment of which bore his name: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.

That film, in its meta approach, has appreciated with time, but one of Craven’s most beloved 90s project was a standalone feature that’s aged even better. The People Under the Stairs was well-received upon release, but its stature has grown for its odd but largely successful blend of horror and comedy as well as its social satire of themes that’ve only become more relevant. Two thieves and a young kid break into the home of the neighborhood’s cantankerous, gentrifying landlords to steal rare coins. As per the title, the house holds its own horrors. Despite its success, The People Under the Stairs is one of Craven’s less well-known titles. His 90s work tends to be overshadowed by a certain franchise, but this film stands as a reminder that he had more going on than just slashers.

7. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The horror/thriller debate may go on, but the horror community doesn’t care. The Silence of the Lambs has been thoroughly claimed. And the nice thing about a chronological list of 1990s horror is that no one has to act surprised about what would be in the top spot. The Silence of the Lambs is simply iconic. As successful and fundamental as the best of the 70s or 80s, an unprecedented success story anchored by iconic characters, an Oscar sweep of the top categories, and a place in the zeitgeist that hasn’t dampened despite a slew of subpar sequels and pop culture’s attempt to cannibalize every ounce of its good will, Jonathan Demme’s classic is simply thrilling, unnerving, and delicious.

The story for those somehow unfamiliar: when serial killer Buffalo Bill kidnaps a senator’s daughter, the FBI sends young cadet Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to interview incarcerated psychopath Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in the hopes of unraveling Bill’s identity and whereabouts. Their game of intellectual cat-and-mouse yielded some of the decade’s most quoted lines and most imitated set pieces. Demme’s direction and Ted Tally’s screenplay of the novel by Thomas Harris are surgical in their precision and effortless in how they elevate the standard procedural beats into something that hums along. Expertly paced with memorable characters and performances, The Silence of the Lambs has become synonymous with cinematic near-perfection.

8. Army of Darkness (1992)

Sam Raimi had envisioned the next chapter of The Evil Dead as a medieval-set sequel. But when sophomore feature Crimewave fizzled and budget restraints hemmed him in, Evil Dead 2 was reimagined more in line with its predecessor. When that film turned a success, Army of Darkness rode in to complete Raimi’s vision. Coming off of the success of Darkman, Raimi returned to the world of the Deadites with a bigger budget – though not so big that Raimi and crew didn’t have to curb some of their ambitions.

Originally titled Medieval Dead, Army of Darkness does indeed transplant Ash to the Middle Ages with nothing but a shotgun and a chainsaw. The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis is rumored to have the ability to send him back, and so he embarks on a quest to close-out the trilogy. Raimi reportedly enjoyed considerable freedom during shooting, but less so during post-production. Most notably, the original ending was excised in favor of something more uplifting. Raimi’s original cut was an NC-17 aiming for PG-13, so the studio brought in an outside team who got it down to an R. Like its predecessors, respectable box office and reviews gave way to cult classic status.

The franchise sat dormant for 20 years, save for comics and video games, until a 2013 reboot with new characters. A television show, Ash vs Evil Dead, continued Ash’s campaign against the Deadites and his own foolishness. Now, it’s likely that the Raimi-Campbell chapter of the Necronomicon has closed, but what a saga it was. Ash is still a cultural icon, and the original trilogy is among cinema’s most beloved.

9. Braindead (1992)

Braindead, or Dead Alive as it was called in the States, is one of the wettest, splooshiest splatter films, a mishmash of unhinged zombie and body horror crossed with a comedy of manners that revels in excess. Some horror-comedies tamp down the horror in place of laughs. Director Peter Jackson goes in the other direction. The laughs come from the horror and how disgusting it all is.

Just as his debut Bad Taste was an unofficial prequel to Under the Skin, Braindead is an unofficial sequel to King Kong, telling the story of a Sumatran rat-monkey illegally smuggled off Skull Island that finds its way to a New Zealand zoo. When it bites the stern, unpleasant mother of timid Lionel, all hell gradually breaks loose. First, mother begins acting strangely and then the neighborhood follows suit. As a director, Jackson was known for gore and dark humor, and critics saw Braindead as his most accomplished film yet. For his next film, Jackson would hop over the ocean to Hollywood direct The Frighteners, a more polished horror comedy starring Michael J. Fox. With that, Jackson’s splatter days were firmly behind him as he moved onto a certain movie trilogy.

10. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Truth be told, the films in this slot are here more for their place in the cultural zeitgeist than for personal preference, but vampires were still a hot property in the 90s and two films two films defined that swooning, gothic romanticism. Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a sumptuous epic and, thankfully for the director, a hit. Gary Oldman gave one of his landmark, prosthetic-heavy performances while the rest to the cast fared less well. While the film is somewhat staid and doesn’t much reinvent the plot so much as execute it well, its production values – particularly the sets and costumes – are beautifully done. This was one of the world’s most respected directors making arguably his last culture-grabbing hit.

Two years later, Neil Jordan’s Interview with a Vampire, adapted by Anne Rice from her own book, would debut with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as sexy vampires. Like Coppola’s film, it was a swooning, beautifully-shot, romantic affair. Unlike Coppola’s film, it brought a more modern, edgy approach to the vampire story, showing them as excessive, swaggering, sophisticated rock stars and globe trotters as opposed to tortured, hermetic men. The decade featured other takes on vampire lore. Dracula: Dead and Loving It and A Vampire in Brooklyn went for laughs. Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction and Nadja both transposed vampire tropes over a more grounded canvas. As far as Gothic horror, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow also offered rich atmosphere and production to rival Coppola and Jordan’s sumptuous works.

2026 has been a year of horrors so far. Barring The Odyssey and maybe the fervor around You Can See Everything, most of the films consuming conversations have been genre offerings, and horror fans have been spoiled for choice. Since January, a steady stream of films ranging from worthy to excellent have dropped into cinemas. Some fared better with critics than audiences. Some have become huge hits, leveraging low budgets into massive profitability.

Since our last ranking of this year’s horror offerings in the summer, the genre has turned in more than a few memorable entries. As Halloween approaches, we look back at the best of what the genre’s offered this year so far. New films have come out, old ones have been reassessed, and a few buzzing festival hits have reached wider audiences.

A few honorable mentions: Honey Bunch, They Will Kill You, and Undertone cracked our last top ten, but were just edged out; similarly, Faces of Death, It Ends, Leviticus, Marama, Obex, Onslaught, and Saccharine would be stand-out entries in another year, but the competition was just too fierce.

Here are the 15 best horror movies of the year, just in time for Halloween.

15. Clayface

One of the most recent horror offerings to hit cinemas, Clayface is what happens when a major studio machine fully embraces horror. James Gunn’s DCU made space for writers Mike Flanage and Hossein Amini and director James Watkins to turn a lesser-known Batman villain into proper body horror. Clayface is set in Gotham City, but Batman is nowhere in sight. Reviews are mixed, but make no mistake, Clayface commits to the genre.

Tom Rhys plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose career is on the rise until he brushes up against Gothan’s seedy underbelly and ends up horribly disfigured. His quest to reclaim his spot involves an experimental treatment, and the film offers numerous grisly set pieces of sliced skin and pulpy flesh. While some of its beats are rote, Clayface’s body horror provides a comic book take on the decay to become a twisted mash-up of The Substance and The Fly. Even if it doesn’t reach as high as those films, it offers a tight, unflinching descent into monstrous texture that happily sits in the upper echelon of this year’s offerings.

14. Exit 8

In addition to horror, 2026 has been a notably good year for video game adaptations. Minecraft, Mortal Kombat II, Street Fighter, and the Super Mario sequel all scored at the box office, and this year has also seen the release of two of the most critically acclaimed video game adaptations ever. The first is Exit 8, which, in addition to being a video game adaptation is also one of the year’s great liminal horror films (more on the other one later).

Like the game on which it’s based, Exit 8 is simple. Genki Kawamura’s adaptation of the game of the same name follows an unnamed man (Kazunari Ninomiya) who finds himself trapped in an unending subway station. As in the game, he must deduce his way out, and his missteps lead him to horrifying creatures, frightening events, and menacing strangers. Exit 8 largely succeeds by embracing its gaming origins to immerse the audience in its eerie liminal setting and communicate a sterile sense of dread. The characterization is light and the guiding emotional beats are simple (and very similar to a certain other game adaptation from this year), but even this sparseness works to create an uncanny sense of unease.

13. Colony

Director Yeon Sang-ho may never top his zombie classic Train to Busan, but damn if he isn’t set on trying. Colony may not have earned the same fervor (at least not yet), but the director’s latest is another creative, distinctive take on zombie horror that’s smarter than the average brain eater.

A pharmaceutical conference highlighting developments in cell regeneration and collective intelligence becomes the site of a bioterrorism attack. Victims transform into rabid members of of a human hive, and the few survivors are left to figure out how to escape. If that wasn’t enough, the hive can adapt. The zombie genre has come a long way from Haitian voodoo and Romero’s lumberers, but Yeon has found another angle to make them frightening and distinct. Colony offers a twisting, contorting, chortling threat and a propulsive pace that makes Colony one of the year’s more exciting offerings.

12. Send Help

Sam Raimi’s latest, written by Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, might be more of a thriller, but we’re still keeping it here if only for its wicked, mischievous tone and the horror beats – from the plane crash to its jump scares – that reek of the genre’s macabre delights. This eat-the-rich comedy is a blast with scares that go beyond its central cat-and-mouse game.

Rachel McAdams is a dowdy corporate drone who’s passed over for a deserved promotion after the CEO’s son, played by Dylan O’Brien, assumes leadership. A plane crash strands them alone on an island where McAdams’ Survivor aficionado is no longer the underling, and a game of wits begins. Its premise is broad and some beats may be obvious, but Send Help is a wild ride bolstered by McAdams’ expert performance and Raimi’s ability to seamlessly blend gross-out gore, visceral scares, and humor. The comedy is pitch black, the morals are gray, and the tone is gleefully macabre.

11. Touch Me

Touch Me is perhaps less polished than the other films on this list, but it’s a surprisingly lingering bit of psychosexual cosmic horror comedy that’s bizarre, biting, and very strange. Addison Heimann’s film riffs on themes of codependence, toxic relationships, and addiction. Its graphic nature and irreverent tone may have turned off some, but Touch Me is a welcome blend of the wacky, weird, and monstrous.

The film begins with Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) in close-up describing a troubling experience. When her monologue and stare break, we see she’s talking to best friend Craig (Jordan Gavaris). Both are still carrying around the trauma of the childhoods when financial precarity leads them back to Joey’s ex, an alien named Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci). Brian says he’s here to save the world. His touch also induces euphoria. If the reviews are any indication, then Touch Me is half-baked, but the film’s mishmash of tones and genres is what makes it so much fun. Sure to disappoint anyone who watches horror for sensitive metaphors about pain, Touch Me has more on its mind than the notices admit, and its horror, when it comes down to it, is brutal, ghastly, and different. A movie worth celebrating for how wild and different it is.

10. Ghost in the Cell

Joko Anwar is one of the genre’s most beloved working directors, and Ghost in the Cell goes a long way towards explaining why. A socially-conscious splatter horror comedy, Ghost in the Cell has something for everybody assuming they can handle the gore. Anwar’s film is both broad and extreme. This is a film where murders are staged like art pieces, and it still features dance scenes over the end credits.

We open with journalist Dimas rushing to submit an article about mysterious deaths at a nickel mine to the fury of his boss before transitioning to a prison where a group of inmates including decent man Anggoro and ghost-sensitive Six try to survive the other inmates and the corrupt guards. Shortly after a new prisoner’s arrival, grisly murders staged as elaborate art installations start to occur, and Anwar has a ball throwing multiple tones at the wall. Screwball comedy makes way for social critique which makes way for martial arts and brutal, violent set pieces. This is a hangout comedy, a ghost story, a prison drama, and a social issue movie, and it wraps all of its seemingly disparate elements into a riotous package that sits right even when it’s bouncing off the walls.

9. Buddy

Casper Kelly made his theatrical film debut after crafting various pieces of nightmare fuel for Adult Swim (“Too Many Cooks”, The Fireplace) and the V/H/S series (Fun Size!). Now, here’s Buddy, a horror take on children’s show Barney & Friends that swaps out the purple dinosaur for an orange unicorn who is less “I love you” and more “You love me”.

Voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, Buddy is the star of It’s Buddy!, a retro kids show populated with child actors and sentient objects. But Buddy’s wholesome demeanor hides a dark streak that becomes clearer as each episode ends and another begins. Buddy (the film) isn’t afraid to get grotesque, and it channels 1990s nostalgia into ominous, somewhat liminal terror. Twisting the tropes of kids’ TV – happy music, colorful settings, wholesome tones – into something sinister, Buddy makes for a decidedly unique brand of horror. And a shout-out to Mr. Monkey’s Magic Merry-Go-Round, another film from this year that takes the form of a children’s TV show to harvest real horror from the mash-up of the wholesome and the grotesque. Together, these two films make for a disarming and disturbing retro double bill.

No genre has exploded like found footage. Mockumentaries, pseudo-documentaries, and discovered lost tapes have flooded screens from cinemas to smartphones. Any given year offers a deluge of new entries that range from shamelessly cheap to shockingly clever. Among a populace that craves authenticity and gobbles up true crime, found footage movies scratch an itch.

They aren’t new. By the time This Is Spinal Tap made a splash, there’d already been dozens. A pseudo-documentary had even won an Oscar in the doc category. But they picked up in the 1990s and exploded in the new century. The Blair Witch Project played a large part in popularizing the format, but it was burgeoning tech that really made the difference. Digital cameras and home-editing software increasingly made filmmaking more accessible while the genre offered something studios and distributors craved: low-budget productions without known actors that were supposed to look amateurish and cheap.

The films here chart the evolution of found footage in horror. In addition to found footage, this list includes mockumentaries, pseudo-documentaries, screenlife, shockumentaries, hybrid, channel surfing recreations, livestreamed influencer horror, fake news, and fake media. Unlike our surveys of body and folk horror, this list isn’t split evenly between centuries and because the sub-genre really took off in the new century. Given the constant stream of films, some newer classics may be overlooked. Drop them in the comments.

1. The War Game (1966)

This list opens with two seminal pseudo-documentaries from Peter Watkins. 1971’s Punishment Park is an amazing, prescient, and unnervingly relevant view of a dystopian US that’s chilling in its casual fascism and naturalism. It appeared on our best 1970s horror list and demands to be watched, preferably with a crowd. But the title nod goes to Watkins’ earlier pseudo-documentary The War Game, a searingly disturbing work of speculative fiction that proved too shocking for audiences of the time.

Clocking in at under an hour, The War Game is a little film with big impact. Watkins was commissioned by the BBC to make a film about the aftermath of a potential nuclear war. The BBC didn’t air his final product as they found it “too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting”. The network did, however, understand that what they’d commissioned was powerful filmmaking. It toured film festivals and won the Academy Award for best documentary. The War Game has since been shown as a double feature with that other generation-scarring British nuclear horror Threads, and its eye-melting horror remains jarring to this day. It is the only film on this list to be taken that seriously and to win a documentary award despite clearly being a work of fiction.

2. The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

The Legend of Boggy Creek isn’t one of the best-known fake docudramas, but it’s here for its sheer influence. An obvious inspiration for The Blair Witch Project, this independent film carries many of the touchstones of the genre: a mythical creature, a rural community, staged interviews with locals, a shoestring budget, claims that it’s based on a true story.

The titular legend is the Fouke Monster, a tall Sasquatch-esque creature reportedly hanging out in the Arkansas backwoods that’s blamed for the death of local critters. Many of the early found footage movies were products of guerrilla filmmaking that are as controversial for how they were made as for what’s onscreen. Reports of unethical filming conditions have dogged The Legend of Boggy Creek, but the film was initially praised for naturalist cinematography and the persuasiveness of the narrative. As much a love letter to the American landscape as a creature feature, Boggy Creek is one of the earliest entries in the found footage canon.

3. Faces of Death (1978)

The world has caught up to 1978’s Faces of Death and the VHS-collecting weirdos that made it an underground sensation. As far as movies go, Faces of Death may not be good, but – as far as found footage is concerned – it is seminal. Faces of Death is a mash-up of mondo film (ie exploitative documentaries or shockumenaries) and fiction. It’s a hybrid film that invokes horror tropes, particularly the anthology film format, and captured the macabre imagination of audiences.

Faces of Death is essentially footage of deaths, real and staged, framed by a wraparound story from fake pathologist Francis B. Gröss. Gröss essentially acts like a crypt keeper introducing real footage the filmmakers purchased from news stations, medical researchers, and other grisly sources. But it also featured recreations and scripted moments that are among its most notorious scenes. Faces of Death appealed to audiences’ macabre interests at a time when such content was rare. Critics drubbed it, but audiences responded in droves. Faces of Death had multiple straight-to-video sequels and remained notorious for decades. In today’s content climate, the appeal and outrage of Faces of Death is undeniably quaint, and it’s more interesting as a time capsule than as a narrative or attempt at documentary. A 2026 horror film based on the property offered a clever perspective into how the film is perceived today.

4. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

There are better found footage films and there are more famous ones, but there is no found footage film as notorious as Cannibal Holocaust, and there probably never will be. Ruggero Deodato’s hybrid is a bit of a cheat. It’s not totally a found footage film: only half of the film is presented in the format. Still, it’s such a fundamental part of the genre that it’s impossible to leave off. Even if only half of it is found footage, its influence on the format and the horror genre in general is undeniable.

Deodato’s film starts as a conventional narrative in which an anthropology expedition set outs into the Amazon rainforest to find a missing film crew. They come across the film crew’s gear and remains before uncovering their lost footage. Those tapes reveal a series of horrors that led to the filmmakers being convicted of obscenity. Its graphic violence and actual animal violence led to bans in several countries. Its marketing presented the film as an actual documentary, and the filmmakers were forced to summon the cast to court to prove that the murders in the film weren’t in fact real. Cannibal Holocaust is controversial to this day for its explicit content, record of animal abuse, and its gaze which is still criticized for being exploitative even as it meant to send-up the exploitative mondo shockumentaries of the era.

5. The McPherson Tape (1989)

Also known as UFO Abduction, The McPherson Tape is another early example of what the medium would become. Focusing on a family gathering in the mountains, The McPherson Tape convincingly used hand-held camera footage to present the last sighting of a family as a realistic home video recording.

In 1983, the Van Heese family reportedly gathered at their Connecticut mountain home to celebrate the birthday of five-year-old Michelle while son Michael films on a camcorder. After blowing out the candles, the lights won’t come back on, and members of the family step out to investigate. Shot on a micro-budget, The McPherson Tape had a very limited release, and it gave way to an era of alien conspiracy stories like the schlocky Alien Autopsy TV specials and The X-Files, which combined interest in aliens with distrust of the government to present authenticity-coded narratives. Director Dean Alioto would remake it in 1998 as Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, but the original stands out as one of the earlier imaginations of the genre.

6. Ghostwatch (1992)

Ghostwatch is one of the most famous instances of literal fake news, possibly the most famous example after Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast. First broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween in 1992, it was presented as live television. It was only aired once. As a hoax, it benefited from its unassuming presentation – it ran after the news and featured actual, trusted news personalities including Michael Parkinson. The ruse worked. The BBC was besieged by complaints, and several viewers believed they were watching an actual news broadcast.

Based on the legend of the Enfield poltergeist, Ghostwatch depicts a live broadcast where a BBC film crew investigates reports of a haunted London home. The crew reports on location back to a real BBC studio where real-life TV presenters Parkinson and Mike Smith interviewed a fictional paranormal expert and took calls from the audience. The BBC even provided a standard call-in number. The ensuing outrage meant that Ghostwatch was never shown again on the BBC, and the initial complaints have segued into one of the most beloved, and infamous, viewing experiences for a generation.

7. Man Bites Dog (1992)

Man Bites Dog was ahead of its time. Written, directed, and produced by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde (who also handled camera, editing, and onscreen duties), Man Bites Dog is a pitch-black comedy mockumentary that doubles as a commentary of violence in the media.

The film is about a filmmaking crew making a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a serial killer. While they initially are just following and recording psychopath Ben, they gradually become party to his narcissistic charm. The film crew starts out complicit before devolving into outright accomplices and sadists in their own right. The camera records it all with a distinct lack of sentimentality, and this dispassion made the film widely controversial, influential, and disturbing. Despite the controversy, critics hailed the film for its audacity and its subtle but firm implication of the audience. In addition to inspiring filmmakers like Tarantino, Haneke, and Noe, it set the template for future horror mockumentaries, some of which feature later on this list.

8. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

It wasn’t the first found footage film, but The Blair Witch Project has come to be known as the quintessential example of the format and the film credited with popularizing it. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s film had competition – Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County and The Last Broadcast had both come out the year before – but it was the found footage film that captured the zeitgeist and most effectively displayed the potential of the format.

University students Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard are shooting a documentary about the Appalachian myth of the Blair Witch. After interviewing locals, they venture into the woods never to be seen again. Only their footage was found. The Blair Witch Project would turn out to be proof of concept for the format moving forward. No film other than Cannibal Holocaust (and maybe Fargo) has made such use of the “based on a true story” claim. Like Cannibal Holocaust, the film’s marketing hinged on framing the movie as a real documentary. The actors used their real names, and marketing listed them as missing or deceased. Cinemas warned viewers that the shaky camera work could cause motion sickness. It used a website, one of the first movies to have one, to further sell its lore as real.

Decades removed from the hype, The Blair Witch Project is a seminal part of the found footage canon and perhaps the most well-known example of the format. It’s one of the most successful independent films of all time, no film has so come close to blurring the lines between fact and fiction, and the franchise has never recaptured the fervor the first film wrought onscreen.

9. Series 7: The Contenders (2001)

Many of the films on this list are products of their time, films that benefited from the format’s quick production to comment on changing media and public tastes. Series 7: The Contenders isn’t particularly subtle in its send-up of reality TV and audience’s increasingly insatiable appetites for salacious authenticity, but it was one of the sharpest and earliest entries to seize on the trend and heighten the absurdity of institutional bloodlust.

Daniel Minahan’s film presents itself as the seventh season (or series for non-US audiences) of The Contenders, a show where six people are chosen at random and compete to kill each other. Set in an alternate reality US, the film largely focuses on Dawn (Brooke Smith), the reigning champion who’s now eight-months pregnant. Essentially a found footage season of The Running Man, Minahan’s film is shown as a binge watch of the entire seventh season/series, itself presaging the trend of analog and channel-surfing horror that’s now enjoying its own sort of off-kilter glory era. The film is, by design, deeply cynical and spot-on, but these features – as well as immersive, knowing production values and strong acting – have helped it endure and become more relevant given how non-scripted entertainment has come to gobble up conventional narratives.

10. Noroi: The Curse (2005)

And we come to what might be the best found footage movie ever. Kōji Shiraishi has become known as a master of the found footage horror genre. His seminal entries include Occult (2009), Cult (2013), A Record of Sweet Murder (2014) and several TV or video series that also play in the format, but it’s his first exercise in the format that’s become the most beloved and a mainstay on lists like these.

Noroi: The Curse is ostensibly a lost documentary compiled from found footage, TV programs, and user-generated content tracking a local myth and a paranormal researcher’s investigation into a series of strange events. Featuring real celebrities and news personalities and blending different non-fiction formats, Noroi initially stood out for how it expanded the found footage format beyond just a tape discovered in the woods. Unlike many of the found footage films of its era, it is immediately eerie and escalates the dread until its breaking point. It’s a searing, unnerving film that showed that the format had more to offer than shaky camera work and amateurish acting with a third-act paranormal reveal. Shiraishi has directed other horror films, including horror icon crossover Sadako vs. Kayako, but his found footage work stands as the best of the genre.

The 1970s are considered the golden age of modern horror, and the 1980s were a sort of hangover. The decade saw multiple iconic releases from some of the greatest directors to ever work in the genre. A handful of these releases are regularly tapped as the best horror film of all time. The beginning of the decade is particularly frontloaded with classics, with gems popping onto screens within months of each other.

But the decade was also one of financial consolidation, an era where the risk-taking, auteur-led approach was replaced by risk-averse, derivative-happy productions. The film industry has always been profit-focused and horror has always been an arena for cheap, salacious cash-ins, but the 1980s was when horror became the domain of rushed, off-brand slashers, sequel franchises of barely-there effort, and even stiffer acting. It’s a time of hot bodies stripping off before getting stabbed. Studio heads bet that people would trade intelligence and craft for tits, ass, and gore, and they were right. The decade would end with the genre bifurcated between entries that were painfully derivative and wildly experimental.

Some inclusions on this list might be controversial, but they embody the horror tics of the decade. Still, there were some films that were too genre-adjacent but deserve an explanation. Both The Terminator (1984) and Predator (1987) are horror premises, but the Schwarzenegger of them tips them too far into straight action. Blue Velvet (1986) is endlessly eerie but its grammar is different. It’s wonderful, just not quite horror. Finally, the most horrifying film of the decade is widely accepted to be Elem Klimov’s Come and See, but it belongs to another canon where its viscerality and horror are not plot beats.

The best, most notorious, or seminal horror of the 1980s:

1. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Love it, hate it, admire it, or avoid it, there’s no denying the notoriety and impact of Cannibal Holocaust. It remains controversial for its depiction of actual animal slaughter. It is a brutal piece of filmmaking wrapped in notoriety and irony. It may be more infamous than it is great, but Ruggero Deodato’s impact on the genre cannot be overlooked. An anthropologist leads an expedition into the Amazon to locate a missing documentary crew. Their trek into the jungle turns up the crew’s possessions, including their lost footage, and more. That lost footage makes up the second half of the film, and it’s still shocking today.

But Cannibal Holocaust is perhaps best known for the alleged hoax around its release. The actors were rumored to have agreed to avoid appearing in any media for a year after Cannibal Holocaust’s release, adding to the film’s realism. This led to allegations that Cannibal Holocaust was a snuff film, and Deodata was summoned to court. Cannibal Holocaust is one of the most controversial and widely banned movies ever released, but, despite its extremity and animal cruelty, it also makes valid, important points about moral hypocrisy and how staged documentaries like Nanook of the North falsely perpetuated stereotypes about Indigenous cultures for the benefit of Western superiority.

2. The Changeling (1980)

An old soul echoes through Peter Medak’s The Changeling, a film decidedly different from much of what the rest of the decade would yield. Playwright Russell Hunter claimed that much of it was true and had happened to him during his time in Denver. Those accounts are widely disputed, but the import of this haunted mansion story has only grown with time.

After losing his family in a car accident, composer John Russell (George C. Scott) relocates to a mansion in Seattle. It’s not long before strange occurrences plague his quest for quiet, and John soon starts inquiring as to the property’s history. The Changeling was a success at the box office and with critics. Scott’s performance was widely praised while the haunted elements were found to be well done, if a tad predictable. While it was overshadowed by the decade’s showier fare, The Changeling has seeped back into the conversation around 80s horror greats, largely due to Scott’s and the film’s tracking of grief with scares. This nuanced, emotion-laden approach would resurge with the 2010s elevated horror.

3. Friday the 13th (1980)

This is where a list like this gets tricky because the 1980s are full of horror films that are influential and enduring but perhaps not objectively good. As this year’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma showed us, some movies come around to being classics for how they impacted a generation. As such, it’s hard not to mention Summer Camp Horror, a little slasher sub-genre associated with cheap thrills, T&A, and wooden acting that nonetheless has helped define horror for modern audiences and remains beloved. Sean Cunningham’s 1980 slasher Friday the 13th is the most well-known, largely because of its iconic hockey mask sporting villain (who doesn’t show up until the second film).

The box office was amazing but critics pegged it as a Halloween ripoff. Its legacy is complicated. On one hand, it has Tom Savini’s make-up effects and inadvertently spearheaded years of analysis on the symbolism of sex and gender in horror. On the other hand, its low production values, unintentional camp, and shameless (but successful) attempt to cash-in on the slasher boom. But even those negative qualities have endeared themselves to audiences today. Amy Holden Jones’ Slumber Party Massacre (1982) meant to parody movies like this before becoming its own version of them while Sleepaway Camp, released a year later, would yield a franchise that was derivative of Friday the 13th but has become equally, if not more, beloved for its wooden acting and graphic violence. Like a folly that later becomes an actual ruin, these franchises born out of cynicism and greed have become their own form of art.

4. The Shining (1980)

The Shining is probably the most iconic and the best horror movie of the 1980s. Stanley Kubrick’s Stephen King adaptation has its detractors (including, notably, King), but it’s hard to argue with the legacy. The Shining is, simply, one iconic, parodied-to-death scene after another, a cascade of mood and ominous dread that overtakes the film like the madness inherent in the story. King might be right about Jack Nicholson’s casting or how he doesn’t really transition to crazy, but it doesn’t matter. Kubrick’s working on vibes, and they’ve been hovering in the air for decades now.

It’s hard to say anything new about The Shining. Even its Raspberry Award nominations and the mental toll Kubrick’s methods took of Shelley Duvall and Scatman Crothers are well-known. The only derivative – including the sequel’s book and movie and King’s own directed mini-series – that doesn’t summer in its shadow is The Simpsons parody. It is a masterwork of dread, a masterpiece from a director whose filmography is more comprised of them than not, and a beacon of the genre. Some of the films here are on this list because they’re influential, some because they’re masterpieces. The Shining is both.

5. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

An American Werewolf in London is many things: monster movie, body horror, buddy comedy, romcom. It’s a swirl of tones and atmosphere that most thought wouldn’t work. Director John Landis proved them wrong. An American Werewolf in London still engenders enough goodwill for viewers to overlook the real-life horrors that John Landis would bear responsibility for later in the decade.

Two American tourists are backpacking in the English countryside when they’re attacked. One of them, Jack (Griffin Dunne) is horrifically mauled and dies. The other, David (David Naughton), survives albeit with changes. In addition to its sharp mix of comedy and horror, An American Werewolf in London is a triumph of effects and a showcase for Rick Baker’s make-up craft. The werewolf transformation was groundbreaking while Jack’s decomposing body provided ghastly humor via body horror. It was the third werewolf movie to be released in the span of a few months after The Howling and Wolfen, but it was a box office success and inspired everyone from Michael Jackson to Edgar Wright.

6. The Beyond (1981)

Lucio Fulci had a storied career across genres, but he’s best known for his giallo pictures and his use of graphic violence. With Argento and Mario Bava (who passed a year before this movie’s release), he’s one of the seminal Italian genre filmmakers of the postwar era. His films Don’t Torture a Duckling and Zombi 2 (so-called because it was a direct sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, released as Zombi in Italy) just missed the 70s list, but his 1981 feature The Beyond is one of the 80s seminal and most discombobulating offerings.

Fulci fused giallo with Southern Gothic for this story of a woman who inherits a hotel in rural Louisiana with a grisly history, only to find out that its horrors weren’t just a thing of the past. Despite being shot in the States, it wouldn’t be released there for another two years and only then recut with a different score and title. It was a polarizing offering that played a bit like a Rorschach – either its inconsistencies and lack of cohesion are narrative failures or another aspect of its surrealist, immersive storytelling. Cult classic status awaited it, and it’s now widely accepted as one of the most important horror films of the 1980s.

7. The Evil Dead (1981) & Evil Dead 2 (1987)

This might be a bit of a cheat, but this spot is going to celebrate both of the decade’s Evil Dead offerings. The Evil Dead was the birth of a franchise and a filmmaking team – writer/director Sam Raimi, producer Robert Tapert, and star Bruce Campbell – but it was a scrappy production with a tortuous shoot that yielded big returns. The film was a success financially and with critics, boosted by an enthusiastic endorsement from Stephen King.

When Raimi’s next film, Crimewave co-written with the Coen brothers, failed, the original team went back to the cabin in the woods for a similar retelling that was more comedic and gorier with a bigger budget. From the visual gags to the over-the-top violence and visual tone, Evil Dead 2 was part remake and part sequel, with many preferring it to the original. Due to the splatter, the Evil Deads happily ruled the cult classic roost for decades before more mainstream audiences hailed its tonal mashup. Today, it’s one of horror’s most reliable and lucrative franchises that’s moved beyond Raimi, Campbell, and their iconic ass of a hero Ash. Evil Dead is now a polished, major studio project but it was never better than when it was at its scrappiest.

8. Possession (1981)

Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession is a film that’s increasingly inching up best horror lists, even sometimes being mentioned as the best. Its journey to audiences has been embattled. The French/West German production was not initially successful. For US audiences, it was recut into what was essentially a creature feature. This fact alone is strange because Possession’s exact genre still spurs debate. There’s enough body horror to qualify for our list in addition to divorce drama, psychological horror, and even supernatural horror. Its elusiveness only adds to the horror.

That intrigue is apt for a film centering around a spy (Sam Niell) who’s left by his wife (Isabelle Adjani) who’s unraveling in spectacular, horrific ways. Possession was a product of Żuławski’s own divorce and exile from his native Poland. Set in a divided Berlin with doppelgangers lurking throughout, Possession is far from a straightforward narrative. Depression and disintegration hang over the entire production. In the States, it was an art house film marketed to grindhouse audiences and critics dismissed it as confusing, self-serious, and outlandish. Today, it has become one of horror’s most acclaimed distillations of disquiet, a visceral swirl of hysteria. Hollywood’s now rushing to remake it.

9. The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter cemented his status as a legendary director in the 1980s, and not just of horror. After ending the 1970s with a made-for-TV Elvis biopic (starring Kurt Russell) his non-horror work included iconic adventure films Escape from New York, Starman, and Big Trouble in Little China. But this was decade where he made the bulk of his horror movies. He started off the decade with The Fog, closed it out with They Live, and had success with Prince of Darkness (commercial) and Christine (critical and commercial). The one horror film of his from the decade that didn’t land is also the only Carpenter on this list, and it’s so good it eclipses all of them.

The Thing might be one of the only films of its decade to compare to The Shining in terms of quality and cultural imprint. It is now an undeniable classic, contender for the best horror movie of all time, and a stone-cold reminder of just how wrong critics and audiences can be. Anchored by a charismatic Kurt Russell performance, immersed in an ominous and barren setting, and punctuated by practical effects that still hold up today, it was lambasted for all the things we now celebrate: its repulsive effects, the violence, the subtle characterization revealed through dialogue, the score.

Competing against ET at the box office and negatively compared to Alien, critics considered it uneven at best. Ennio Morricone’s score was nominated for a Razzie. Even those that recognized the quality of the creature effects criticized them for being too repulsive. A prequel was released and numerous attempts at sequels and remakes have been undertaken. With all due respect to Halloween, it is probably Carpenter’s best film and the peak of his career.

10. Creepshow (1982)

The gothic, atmospheric anthology movies of the 1970s gave way to more urban splatter in the 80s, but the tradition continued. Night Train to Terror is a campy time capsule. Shake, Rattle & Roll showcased Filipino horror. From a Whisper to a Scream offered up more Vincent Price. Twilight Zone: The Movie was more horrific for what happened on set, and Stephen King was all over the medium. Cat’s Eye used the titular animal as a throughline for adaptations of different King stories, but it’s Creepshow, his collaboration with George Romero, that stands out.

Romero directed and King wrote five segments in an homage to EC comics like Tales from the Crypt. The result was a beloved horror comedy that stands as one of the best and most consistent of the portmanteau format. The Creep keeps things humming along, and the heightened, pulpy tone smoothed over the inevitable unevenness. A sequel followed five years later. A TV revival premiered in 2019 and ran for four seasons, expanding the stories to include adaptations of King, other authors, and original stories written for the show, all emulating the original’s tone and comic book feel. The collaboration of two horror masters continues to inspire goodwill in macabre hearts decades later.

There’s no doubt religion and horror have always made natural bedfellows. The concept of faith deals with such a wide range of cinematic themes: salvation, damnation, sin, and the existence of forces beyond our understanding, while horror has spent over a century turning these ideas into nightmares before our very eyes. Satanic cults, demonic possessions, religious persecutions; these are things that the cinema-going public feeds off, while the genre of horror has such a deep following that it goes far beyond anything that I could possibly sum up in a paragraph.

For many, what makes the subgenre of religious horror so effective is the possibility that the terrifying thing at the centre of the story might actually be real. From gothic classics and Satanic nightmares to possession movies, stories of religious fanaticism and deeply unsettling examinations of faith, these are the best religious horror films ever made.

1. Häxan (1922)

Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan is one of the early forays into the sub genre, exploring witchcraft, demonology and religious superstition whilst blending documentary, historical reconstruction and horror. Its depiction of witch trials, Satanism and accusations of possession reveals how fear and religious belief could turn ordinary people into victims and persecutors.

Over a century after its release, the film still feels unnerving, showing how dangerous things could be in a time when many didn’t have the means to know any better than blind faith or belief. The lack of understanding or available knowledge bred constant fear, and the images Christensen conjures on screen feel like some sort of nightmarish tableaux that still feel worryingly modern.

Häxan remains a bizarre, disturbing and hugely impressive piece of work, laying down a statement for horror that would follow. It’s also an excellent starting point for a history of religious horror, and if you’ve never seen it, this halloween would be the perfect time to do so.

2. The Seventh Victim (1943)

When Kim Hunter’s Mary Gibson travels to New York to find her missing sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), she discovers that Jacqueline has become involved with a mysterious Satanic cult, and her search leads her into a horrifying world of blackmail, suicide and occult rituals.

Mark Robson’s film remains a rather bleak piece of 1940s horror, with very little interest in conventional shocks. Instead, he creates an atmosphere of dread around a group of people who appear to have completely lost their grip on reality. Brooks is terrific, offering a performance that gives real authenticity to her character’s spiral, and the Satanic cult itself is somewhat understated, making the whole thing even more terrifying.

The Seventh Victim feels like an extremely pessimistic film in terms of a studio horror film of its time, and there’s something genuinely haunting about it; not simply because of the Satanic cult at its centre. It’s unnerving, it’s effective, and it’s quite excellent.

3. Black Sunday (1960)

Mario Bava’s first feature as director is an astonishingly atmospheric piece of gothic horror, using black-and-white photography to underline the constant feeling of dread that permeates the film. Set in 17th-century Moldavia, the film tells the story of accused witch Princess Asa Vadja (Barbara Steele), who is executed by her brother after being condemned for Satanism. Two centuries later, she’s accidentally resurrected and sets out to take her revenge on her descendants.

Steele is magnificent, playing both Asa and her innocent descendant Katia, two completely different characters. The religious horror is there from the very outset of the film, as Asa is burned as a witch, while Satanic imagery is embedded from then on. There’s no explanation for the supernatural at play in Black Sunday, and that’s what gives it such an unnerving feel; it’s simply happening.

Black Sunday still sticks out today as a remarkably confident debut feature from Bava, who went on to direct The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) as well as Danger: Diabolik (1968) amongst many others.

4. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

There’s not much left to say about Polanski’s horror, and while it might not be his best film, it’s certainly one of his most important. Telling the tale of Rosemary (Mia Farrow), who moves into a New York apartment with her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), the film swiftly descends into a creepy occult horror show, with Rosemary falling pregnant and the couple’s elderly neighbours Minne (Ruth Gordon) and Roman (Sidney Blackmer) having terrifying plans for the unborn child.

The film works so well because Polanski keeps the Devil almost entirely out of sight, with everything happening around Rosemary; the strange neighbours, her husband’s increasingly unsettling behaviour, and the peculiar doctors. She knows something is off about the pregnancy, but no one will take her seriously.

We all know it must surely end badly, with Satanism having entered Rosemary’s home and settled down. Rosemary’s Baby came five years before The Exorcist, and while William Friedkin’s film is the superior piece, there’s no doubting the influence of Polanski’s film.

5. Witchfinder General (1968)

Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder General remains one of the great British horror films of the 1960s, with the terror coming from the exploitation of religious fear and superstition rather than anything supernatural. Starring Vincent Price as witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, the film follows him as he travels through the countryside accusing innocent people of witchcraft, while young soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) sets out to stop him after Hopkins targets his fiancée Sara (Hilary Dwyer).

Price is sensational, ensuring that the character isn’t played as a theatrical monster; rather, this is a calm, understated man who’s completely convinced of his own authority and confidence. It makes his cruelty even more disturbing, and is a terrifying portrayal of what can happen when belief in the Devil becomes an excuse to destroy other human beings.

Witchfinder General remains a remarkably grim film, and its violence still packs quite a punch to this day. There’s nothing over the top here, just pure belief causing all sorts of terror and bloodshed, and it leaves you with a horrible picture of what life used to look like for some.

6. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)

When farmer Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews) discovers a strange object buried in the ground, the discovery unleashes a sinister supernatural force over an isolated 18th-century village. As the local children become increasingly obsessed with the Devil, the Judge (Patrick Wymark) tries to uncover what is happening before the community is consumed.

Piers Haggard directs a film in which he turns rural settings into terrifying beasts. Not literally, but the sense of atmosphere he manages to create from muddy fields and ancient woods is horrifying, giving us the sense that something truly evil has been unleashed.

Once again, this is a film that builds on the idea of growing belief in Satan amongst the locals, and their fascination develops into something highly dangerous. Children become involved in disturbing rituals, and Satanism is rife; Blood on Satan’s Claw remains one of the most unsettling films ever put to screen.

7. The Devils (1971)

After decades of hoping we’d one day see the original uncut version of The Devils, we’re finally getting Ken Russell’s original vision fully restored in 4K. Oliver Reed is magnificent as priest Father Urbain Grandier, who becomes the target of a political and religious conspiracy after Ursuline nun Sister Jeanne des Anges (a stunning Vanessa Redgrave) claims he has possessed her. As accusations of demonic possession spread through the convent, Grandier finds himself facing the full force of the Church and the state.

The Devils itself felt the full force of the censors on its release, with the BBFC immediately concerned about its combination of religious imagery, sexual content and extreme violence. The most notorious sequence, unseen in any version until this new 4K release, is the “Rape of Christ”, in which a group of nuns sexually abuse a statue of Christ. Russell himself initially removed it in an attempt to get the film through the BBFC, while further cuts were imposed or negotiated elsewhere.

But we’re finally getting the release that’s been denied to us for over half a century; not only is The Devils one of the most outrageous films ever made about religion, it’s also easily one of the best. It’s uncomfortable, visually astonishing, and sometimes impossible to believe it was made by a major British studio. It’s astonishing.

8. The Exorcist (1973)

William Friedkin’s masterpiece is hardly a film that needs any more championing. It’s still a tricky watch today, and holds some truly incredible performances from Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller and Max von Sydow. The religious horror is completely central to the story, yet it’s more about every character within the house rather than Blair’s Regan.

Friedkin makes the possession of Regan horribly physical, while her bedroom becomes a battlefield of blood, vomit, violence and blasphemy, while everything around it remains deadly serious and never veers into anything other than pure terror.

It’s also interesting to see what came after: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). William Peter Blatty, who wrote the original novel, co-wrote the screenplay for Friedkin’s film and produced it- but had nothing whatsoever to do with the sequel. It’s widely considered one of the worst films ever made, and all the numerous sequels since are also considered rather dreadful. Except, of course, for Exorcist III (1990), but more on that shortly.

9. The Wicker Man (1973)

Robin Hardy’s film is one of those in which everything happening around you feels slightly wrong. When Edward Woodward’s Christian police officer Neil Howie travels to the remote Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, he is confounded by the islander’s strange pagan beliefs and increasingly disturbing behaviour.

We all know how it goes from there, ending with one of cinema’s most harrowing climaxes, one that heavily influenced the music video of Radiohead’s Burn the Witch (2016). Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle remains one of his great performances, completely in control of all he sees, including the arriving Neil who he baffles with his religious beliefs.

This is a horror film that doesn’t need demons or conventional monsters; it simply takes the idea of an entire community believing in something so different from your own ideals to the point that they’ll happily kill for them. The Wicker Man is just as harrowing today as it was on its release; just don’t bother with the 2006 remake.

10. The Omen (1976)

Another film that spawned increasingly lesser sequels, Richard Donner’s original is still a truly harrowing affair. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick are terrific as Robert and Katherine Thorn, a couple whose child almost instantly dies as he is born. Katherine is unaware of the fact, and the hospital chaplain persuades Robert to secretly adopt another baby whose mother also died in childbirth that night. Robert doesn’t tell his wife what’s happened, and they name the baby Damien.

The rest, as they say, is history. When a series of unexplained deaths and increasingly disturbing events lead Thorn to suspect that Damien may be the Antichrist, he begins a desperate investigation into his son’s true identity. Donner turns the arrival of the Antichrist into a chilling conspiracy thriller, making the apocalypse feel horribly close to home.

The idea of evil arriving in the form of a child is absolutely terrifying, and The Omen takes that idea and runs with it without faltering. The film contains some of the most infamous scenes in horror cinema, and while the first sequel isn’t at all bad, the original remains one of the true horror greats.

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.