Here are some classic scary movies that are still terrifying today.
If you’re looking for a spooky season classic that still keeps you up at night — or afraid of the beach — these won’t disappoint.
Have fun sleeping with the lights on.
The Exorcist (1973)
Profoundly chilling even before Linda Blair’s head starts spinning, The Exorcist did for unearthing ancient demons what Jaws did for going in the water.
The franchise returned recently with David Gordon Green’s Exorcist: Believer, in which Ellen Burstyn reprised the role of Chris MacNeil for the first time in 50 years.
But nothing can match the horror of the original.
Carrie (1976)
Based on the first Stephen King novel, Carrie remains anxiety-inducing not because of the literal bucket of blood, but because of the high-school cruelty that still rings in the souls of anyone who experienced it.
The casual bullying, from a time when it was much more tolerated than it is today, is as upsetting to watch as it ever was.
It was the breakthrough mainstream film for Brian De Palma, who went on to make many classic movies in several genres.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Everyone today talks about gaslighting all the time, but Rosemary’s Baby takes us inside a Manhattan apartment building that has perfected it to terrifying extremes.
When Rosemary (Mia Farrow) becomes pregnant, everyone around her attributes her well-founded fears to hormones and paranoia. But just because you’re paranoid, as the saying goes, doesn’t mean they’re not after you.
Or your baby.
Jaws (1975)
A perfect movie that deploys its doll-eyed villain with impeccable skill, Jaws made everyone who has ever seen it think about sharks at least a little bit every single time we went to the beach for the rest of our lives.
It’s still every bit as scary now as it was 50 years ago — when it changed movies forever.
It also inspired a slew of other scary animal movies, and provides a great cinematic lesson in when to show the monster… and when told keep it below the surface.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
This low-budget George Romero masterpiece retains an eerie, simple power that makes it more frightening than The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, or any of the other countless zombie stories and other scary movies it inspired.
It’s a success on every level, and even sneaks in some wise social commentary.
And it’s also one of the most profitable movies ever made, racking in more than 100 times its budget.
Psycho (1960)
The Alfred Hitchcock classic implied more than it showed, but implied it quite effectively.
Psycho spawned the slasher genre, made horror respectable, and made lots of people feel a lot less safe in the shower.
It also contains, for all money, at least one of the all-time greatest movie twists.
Suspiria (1977)
A giallo masterpiece worth watching for the lurid colors alone, Dario Argento’s beautiful, haunting and terrifying story follows an American (Jessica Harper, above) at an elite German ballet academy who realizes, via some very creatively presented murders, that the school is hotbed of witchcraft.
The very confusing sequel, Inferno, released in 1980, is also very worth a watch. Don’t try to sort out the plot. Just let yourself be hypnotized in a wash of blood, color and fire.
Like them or not, Argento makes the most visually stunning horror movies.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
You’re creeped out just reading that title. The film’s relentlessly menacing atmospherics — buzzing flies, animal sounds — make it one of the creepiest things ever committed to film. The chainsaw stuff pushes it far over the top. But Tobe Hooper’s very smart direction also lifts it far above its many imitators.
Despite the ominous title, the film implies more than it shows — like all the best horror movies.
Also: Grainy ’70s film stock makes everything scarier.
Alien (1979)
After the hopefulness of Star Wars, Alien provided a very downbeat rebuttal, focusing on a creature driven by a parasitic, unrelenting drive to survive and reproduce — with help from unwilling human hosts.
What makes it truly scary is it’s many analogies to sexual assault, though it flips the usual horror movie script by making men the main victims.
It also has thoughful insights into artificial intelligence that director Ridley Scott expanded on three years later with Blade Runner, and that countless sequels and spinoffs — including the new TV series Alien: Earth — have continued to explore.
What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)
This giallo thriller has a straightforward premise: a private school teacher becomes a murder suspect when he can’t provide an alibi for a killing — because he was in the arms of one of his students. The manner of death remains gasp-inducing, all these years later.
Please note that all the other scary movies on this list are quite tame compared to the next two scary movies.
Last House on the Left (1972)
The directorial debut of future Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street icon Wes Craven, Last House on the Left is a difficult-to-watch story of two young women who are terrorized by escaped convicts.
Eventually, parents seek vengeance. But before that you have to sit though a deeply unpleasant scene where the convicts treat the women horribly, and one walks hopelessly into water to die, rather than let it go on any longer.
It’s loosely based on Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, and carried the infamous tagline, “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, ‘It’s only a movie … Only a movie … Only a movie …'”
This is, for our money, the scariest movie ever made. Because it could all happen, and has.
Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
Based on a 1939 Dalton Trumbo novel, and adapted into a film by Trumbo during the Vietnam War, this powerful and deeply affecting anti-war story follows a young man named Joe who suffers battlefield injuries that cost him his arms, legs, sight and ability to see and hear. He’s left trapped in his own mind.
Long after Vietnam, the movie managed to terrify Gen X audiences thanks to Metallica, who featured clips of it prominently in their 1988 video for “One.”
Its entire ambiance is unsettling, even before we get to the scenes of Joe in his hospital bed. It’s not even technically a horror movie, but it’s one of the most resonant scary movies we’ve ever seen.
Main image: Last House on the Left. Hallmark Releasing