Top 1. 0 horror movies Film. Peter Bradshaw on horror. Horror crashes through boundaries and challenges the prohibitions of taste and thinkability in a way few other genres can match. Classics of the genre were produced in cinemas very earliest days the vampire nightmare Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari from the world of German Expressionism. Later, Universal Pictures had smash hits with iconic versions of Dracula, The Wolf Man and Frankenstein. Roger Cormans movies would demonstrate the sheer trashy power of horror, and Hitchcock tapped into this B picture aesthetic with his own low budget masterpiece, Psycho, which popularised the psychological horror film, taking the genre away from its supernatural roots although William Friedkins masterpiece, The Exorcist, took it right back there again. Horror has potently mixed with other genres and Halloween and Nightmare On Elm Street showed how horror can be a cash cow franchise, a lesson demonstrated once again by the stomach turning Saw series. Horror demonstrates the Guignol potential of cinema and the brutal way it can toy with the viewer. Peeping Tom film still. Fifty years ago, Michael Powell was the darling of British cinema, thanks to the movies he directed with Emeric Pressburger, including A Matter of Life and Death, and The Red Shoes. And then he made Peeping Tom. The film has since been reappraised, but in 1. Hitchcock released Psycho it was greeted with distaste strong enough to derail Powells career. The Observers CA Lejeune wrote Its a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom. It tells the story of Mark Carl Boehm, an unassuming focus puller at a film studio who spends his free time working on what he calls his documentary. Cult Horror Movies Strange Magic ' title='Cult Horror Movies Strange Magic ' />Chillingly, it entails filming women with a camera that has a spike concealed in the leg of the tripod, and a mirror in which the victims are forced to watch their own contorted faces as they are stabbed to death. Afterwards, Mark obsessively reviews the film. His voyeurism hinges on the need to see the fear on the womens faces as they realise theyre about to die. The film still shocks today, so its easy to see why people were so deeply upset at the time. One of Marks victims is played by Moira Shearer, the much loved star of The Red Shoes. The upset was compounded by Powells own presence in the film. It turns out that Marks pathology is related to his dominating father, a psychologist who subjected his son to experiments in fear from an early age. Sorry jack, Chuckys backagain. Ive been keeping very close tabs on the next installment in the Childs Play franchise, which has been in preproduction for. Sometimes bad horror movies are even more fun to watch than great ones. Here are 15 sobadtheyre good horror films that you have to see to believe. A woman is seduced by and cast aside by a fickle lover. When the lover marries another woman who starts hallucinating during their wedding, she is accused of being a. Suspiria pronounced suspi. Latin for sighs is a 1977 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento, cowritten by Argento and Daria Nicolodi based on. In the home movies documenting these terrifying experiments, Powell himself plays the father, while the young Mark is played by Powells nine year old son Columba. The truly upsetting element in Peeping Tom is, of course, what it says about the cinema, in which we are all voyeurs. Not just the audience transfixed by images of other peoples lives, but also the director who orchestrates the action from behind the camera. All this filming isnt healthy, Mark is warned at one point, and Powell, contrary to the critics at the time, understood this very well. There is some irony in the fact that his critique of cinematic voyeurism is now regarded as a horror classic. Killian Fox Vampyr Photograph Ronald Grant Archive. I wanted to create a waking dream on screen and show that horror is not to be found in the things around us but in our own subconscious, said Danish film maker Carl Theodor Dreyer, whose loose adaptation of two stories from Sheridan Le Fanu Carmilla and The Room in the Dragon Volant was initially conceived as a silent movie. Sound was added during production, but the films trance like images could stand on their own as a visual poem in which the action seems to take place on the cusp of dreams and reality. Apart from German actress Sybille Schmitz, who plays the vampires chief victim, and French actor Maurice Schutz, who plays her father, the cast was non professional. Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg, who provided finance for the film, also took the leading role under the pseudonym Julian West. He plays a roving occult investigator called Allan Grey David in some versions who arrives at an old inn by the side of a river and explores a nearby castle where an evil doctor appears to be helping a vampire prey on the lords two daughters one of whom is bedridden, suffering from a strange sickness, while the other is being held captive. Grey reads a book on vampirism and acts as our surrogate in this curious realm of crooked staircases, off kilter corridors and Freudian keys and doors, a world where mens shadows take on a life of their own and skeletal hands grasp bottles of poison. Dreyer shrugs off conventional linear narrative and takes an experimental approach, plunging us into a waking nightmare that isnt so much black and white as it is misty grey. When cinematographer Rudolph Mat who would later direct films such as the noir thriller DOA showed Dreyer some frames made hazy by accidental exposure to light, the director had him place a layer of gauze in front of the lens to replicate the effect for the rest of the film. Many of the images from this movie have passed into horror iconography an old man standing by the river tolling a bell with a scythe over his shoulder Greys dream of being buried alive the evil doctor suffocating in flour dropped from the mill above. Its hard to spot where nightmares end and reality begins. This really is a film that exemplifies the idea of dreaming with our eyes open. Pda Formats Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2 Review Film. Anne Billson Lina Leandersson in Let the Right One In. Photograph c. MagnoliaEverettRex Featurec. MagnoliaEverett Rex Feature. The snow whirls, the nights draw in and a gloomy Swedish housing estate becomes a pocket murderesss hunting ground. Let the Right One In is based on a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist and directed by Tomas Alfredson. Here is a vampire story born out of the shadows a film of whispered secrets. But dont lean too close it may well pull out your throat. Oskar Kre Hedebrant is a bullied 1. Eli Lina Leandersson, who is pale of skin and dark of eye and wise beyond her years Ive been 1. Eli has recently moved into the estate with a man who may possibly be her father, or a paedophile as he was in the novel, or a lover who has grown old while she remains young. She needs constant feeding and her blundering, alcoholic neighbours provide easy pickings. Yet it would be too easy to file Let the Right One In as a tale of a hunter and her prey, or of light and dark, good and evil. Most of its inhabitants are victims of one stripe or another. They are the marginalised and the dispossessed, living their lives below the parapet and sustaining themselves with blood and alcohol. And while these people may, at times, be able to help each other, and even love each other, the transaction comes with a terrible price. Eli helps Oskar confront the bullies and so Oskar helps Eli when she is left abandoned in her decaying apartment. But the films finale does not quite offer the happy resolution weve been wishing for. We are left wondering just where these characters go from here. On its release in 2. Let the Right One In which has since been subjected to an American remake found itself billed as the antidote to the Twilight pictures, a movie that brought a little mystery and magic back to the hoary old bloodsucker yarn. Perhaps it gave it some red meat as well. The Twilight kids would presumably never be caught scaling the walls of a hospital to feast on a patient, or snuffling spilt blood from a dirty stone floor, as Eli does. Alfredsons heroine is sensitive and sympathetic. But we are never allowed to forget that she is also a stone cold killer the embodiment of the old adage about the snake that winds up biting the cowboy who gives it shelter Because Im a snake, stupid. Its what I do. Earlier this year, the horror author Stephen King bemoaned the way in which the vampire genre has recently been hijacked by lovelorn southern gentlemen and boy toys with big, dewy eyes. Horror Movies With Creepy Dolls. Dolls are found in just about every household in the world, whether it is little girls, little boys, or adults who own them. Maybe its that fact that makes the concept of these little beings made of stuffing or porcelain so damn scary. Who knows what these little monsters do while their owners are tucked peacefully in their beds horror movies have an idea In honor of those frightening little toys weve put together 3. Horror Movies with Creepy Dolls. From dirty little teddy bears to seemingly harmless possessed clowns, dolls are the source of much murder and mayhem, given the right circumstances. Perhaps the best thing to do is gather up every doll in the house and set them around the living room in chairs and on couches, and watch a few of these creepy doll horror movies to get in the mood then burn the lot of them. Thats what Im going to do. I already did that. On then to the HFN list of 3. Creepy Horror Movie Dolls. Let us know in the comments below about the creepiest horror movie doll youve ever come across, and any particularly creepy stuffed little tykes we may have missed. Amityville Dollhouse 1. A childrens doll house, which is a miniature of the infamous haunted Long Island house, is given to a young girl where the demonic evil soon comes out to cause more terror. Attack of the Puppet People 1. Lonely, deranged puppet master designs a machine that shrinks people. Asylum 1. 97. 2 A young psychiatrist interviews four inmates in a mental asylum to satisfy a requirement for employment. Black Devil Doll from Hell 1. A woman buys a doll at a magic shop. Unbeknownst to her, the doll is possessed by an evil spirit, and it proceeds to take her over. Blood Dolls 1. 99. Virgil, an eccentric freak billionaire, spends his days being a biological inventor. The blood dolls, his newest creation, aid him in getting revenge on those who betrayed him. Childs Play 1. 98. A single mother gives her son a beloved doll for his birthday, only to discover that it is possessed with the soul of a serial killer. The Conjuring 2. Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. Dead of Night 1. An architect senses impending doom as his half remembered recurring dream turns into reality. The guests at the country house encourage him to stay as they take turns telling supernatural tales. Dead Silence 2. 00. A widower returns to his hometown to search for answers to his wifes murder, which may be linked to the ghost of a murdered ventriloquist. Death Doll 1. 98. With each terror comes a death, with each death comes a doll. The Death Doll Demonic Toys 1. A policewoman, her quarry and an innocent delivery boy become trapped in a haunted toy warehouse. Devil Doll 1. 96. An evil hyponotistventriloquist plots to gain an heiress millions. Dollman vs. Demonic Toys 1. Judith Grey teams with Brick Bardo Dollman and his girlfriend Ginger to face the evil Demonic Toys for one final battle. Dolls 1. 98. 7 A group of people stop by a mansion during a storm and discover two magical toy makers, and their haunted collection of dolls. Dolly Dearest 1. An American family moves to Mexico to fabricate dolls, but their toy factory happens to be next to a Sanzian grave and the toys come into possession of an old, malicious spirit. Doll Graveyard 2. Its 1. 90. 5 when 1. Sophia plays all by herself in her big, creepy house with only four handmade dolls as friends. The Dummy 2. 00. A ventriloquists dummy with a mind of its own cant resist its homicidal impulses and cuts a bloody swath through a peaceful suburb. The Pit 1. 98. 1 A young outcast befriends a dirty stuffed bear, who leads him to a pit in a field containing a hungry monster, that he must feed by luring unsuspecting victims to the spot. The Teddy is quite evil, and convinces the younger to do all sorts of unsavory things. Gingerdead Man Vs. Evil Bong 2. 01. The Gingerdead Man seeks revenge against Sarah Leigh for causing him to live his life in the body of a gingerbread man. Her only hope is to team up with Larnell who has problems of his own in the form of a magical talking bong named Eebee. May 2. 00. 2 Psychological horror about a lonely young woman traumatized by a difficult childhood, and her increasingly desperate attempts to connect with the people around her. Magic 1. 97. 8 A ventriloquist is at the mercy of his vicious dummy while he tries to renew a romance with his high school sweetheart. Ooga Booga 2. 01. Ooga Booga follows an innocent African American boy who is brutally murdered by dirty cops, but his soul is magically transferred into an action figure named Ooga Booga. PIN 1. 98. 8 A doctor has a lifelike, anatomically correct medical dummy, with muscles and organs visible through its clear skin, named Pin after Pinocchio. Via ventriloquism, Pin explains bodily functions in a way kids can relate to. When the over strict doctor and his wife are killed in a car crash, his son Leon transfers his alter ego into Pin, whom he always believed was alive. He starts using Pin as an excuse to over protect his sister Ursula from admirers and deflect unwanted intrusions, even to the extent of committing murder. Pinocchios Revenge 1. Defense attorney Jennifer Garrick acquires a Pinocchio puppet from a condemned serial killer. Her pre teen daughter, Zoe, mistakes the puppet as a birthday present and grows really attached to her new doll friend. Suddenly, accidents begin to happen to those who cross Zoe. Zoe claims its her Pinocchio doll. Zoes therapist thinks otherwise. Soon Pinocchio and Zoe are conversing about his bad behavior. Pinnochio promises hell behave if Zoe will cut his strings. Zoe complies, and the mysterious murders beginPoltergeist 1. A familys home is haunted by a host of ghosts. Puppet. Master 1. Neil Gallagher found the secret to Toulons puppets who come to life and then killed himself. Alex and his psychic friends come to investigate and are stalked by Toulons puppets who have a variety of strange traits including a drill for a head and the ability to spit up leeches. Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 The Toy Maker 1. An old toy maker and his son make killer toys designed to kill their owners, kids. Tales from the Hood 1. A strange funeral director tells four strange tales of horror with an African American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business. Three bizarre horror stories all of which star Karen Black in four different roles playing tormented women. Twlight Zone Living Doll Christie is eager to show off her new present, a talking doll called Talky Tina, which repeats My name is Talky Tina and I love you very much.