Richard Crouse

A: A Quiet Place: Imagine living in complete silence. Never raising your voice over the level of a faint whisper. No music. No heavy footsteps. You can’t even sneeze. Silence. Then imagine your life depends on staying completely noiseless. That’s the situation for the Abbott family—and the rest of the world—in the effective thriller A Quiet Place. Uncluttered and low key, it’s a unique and unsettling horror film.

B: Black Christmas: Without this groundbreaking 1974 Canadian horror film there might never have been a Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. Between them the gruesome threesome has sliced and diced their way through at least two dozen movies, but the mayhem they imposed on promiscuous college girls and studly teens owes much to one film made in Toronto, a movie Film Threat magazine calls “the first modern slasher movie.”

C: Candyman (2021): Candyman is a movie that succeeds on two levels, as a comment on the echoes of historical racism that can be heard today and as a horror film that’ll scare the pants off of you. A study of trauma in the Black community, “Candyman” expands the scope of the original to suggest that the Candyman isn’t singular. In the 2021 film William says, “Candyman’s the whole damn hive,” representing all Black men who have been lost to race-based violence.

D: The Descent: The Descent is scary. Run home to your Momma scary. Scream like a little girl scary. Close your eyes and think of something else scary. “Hold me, I’m scared” scary. There are gory moments, but it isn’t the blood and guts that terrifies. It is the hopeless situation, the unrelenting air of menace that really plays on the viewer’s fears.

E: The Exorcist: This one so traumatized audiences with shots of the possessed Regan MacNeil’s 360-degree head spinning that in the U.K. the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade were on-call at screenings to tend to fainters. Star Linda Blair says she wasn’t traumatized by the film but admits there has been one long lasting side effect. “You wouldn’t believe how often people ask me to make my head spin around,” she says.

F: Freaks: Set in the world of a funfair sideshow, it features a cast primarily made up of actual carnival performers—like Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman and Prince Randian a.k.a. the Human Torso—to tell the story of a beautiful trapeze artist who agrees to marry a deformed sideshow performer for his money. As a young man, director Tod Browning (who also helmed Dracula) had been a member of a travelling circus and that experience brought such a horrifying realism to the story that one woman threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage.

G: Ginger Snaps: From 2000, and directed by John Fawcett, this is a great reinvention of the werewolf myth that mixes and matches a werewolf tale with a coming-of-age story.

H: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person: Atmospheric and gothic though it may be, the movie is actually a tender-hearted story that uses the undead to celebrate life. It breathes some of the same fetid air as What We Do In The Shadows, Let the Right One In and Only Lovers Left Alive in its creation of a vampire world that intersects with our own. Quebec filmmaker Ariane Louis-Seize builds a world for reluctant vampire Sasha to inhabit that feels familiar, like our reality, only filtered through a Tim Burton lens.

I: It Follows: It Follows is a hybrid of genres. It’s a scary film through and through, but it’s the dual horror of teenage boredom and ennui coupled with a strange and terrifying supernatural virus that is transmitted sexually. Coming of age and body/mind horror steeped together in an unholy mix and it is an effective brew.

J: Jennifer’s Body: A bloody story about demonic transference and a cheerleading succubus who feeds on the intestines of teenage boys, Jennifer’s Body breathes the same air as the great Canadian horror film Ginger Snaps. Both are inventive takes on established horror mythology—in Ginger’s case it was the werewolf legend here it is demonic possession—and both feature humor and lots of blood and guts.

K: Killer Klowns from Outer Space: Killer Klowns from Outer Space will scare the heck out of coulrophobics. The alien Klowns are beautifully realized creations, reminiscent of the outrageous puppets form the British television satire Spitting Image. Beneath large painted-on grins are rows of yellowed sharp teeth, topped off with beady jaundiced eyes, oversized ears and wildly colored hair. Every feature is madly exaggerated until you have a living caricature of a clown—something funny, but weird and scary at the same time. That feeling is the film’s greatest asset. The creative minds behind Killer Klowns, the Chiodo Brothers—Charles, Edward and Stephen—manage to strike a balance between camp and seriousness by playing it straight. The situation is bizarre and some of the dialogue is downright cheesy, but the actors never wink at the camera. Hamming it up would have made Killer Klowns just another jokey sci-fi take-off, a self-conscious look at a genre that is easy to poke fun at.

L: Late Night with the Devil: Late Night with the Devil is a Faustian show biz satire about the price of success, that contains enough genuinely disturbing images and ideas to become a found footage favorite. The film’s production value and attention to detail makes it seem like we’re watching a suppressed tape of an actual broadcast, like “War of the Worlds,” only real. The skillful filmmaking builds up the tension to an exciting and eye-popping payoff.

M: Monster Squad: A 1987 teenage horror comedy that owes a big nod to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein with a side order of The Goonies thrown in for good measure.

N: Night of the Living Dead: The movie premiered on October 1,1968 earning a rave from Roger Ebert and that other mark of success for a horror film, condemnation from fundamentalist Christian groups. These days it doesn’t take a lot of braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains to see the legacy of Night of the Living Dead. The ghoulish story is considered a classic, has spawned comedies like the box office hit Zombieland and serious television shows like The Walking Dead and was even selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

O: Orphan: There are a couple of lines necessary for the success of every Creepy Kid movie. Chief among them: “I have a surprise for you, Mommy!” Why is the line so successful? Because the surprise is never good. A close second is the old, “I don’t think Mommy likes me very much” gag. These lines work because of the juxtaposition of innocence against a malevolent backdrop. In other words, evil children are scary. As Orphan’s resident creepy kid, Isabelle Fuhrman is particularly good, just other-worldly looking enough to be freaky but able to turn on the charm when she needs to. She is a stern mistress who I could see inspiring a drinking game. How about a shot of Jäger every time she gives someone the creepy kid stink eye? You’d be on your butt before the forty-minute mark.

P: Psycho: If Alfred Hitchcock had any doubts about the effectiveness of the shower sequence in Psycho they must have been put to bed when he received an angry letter from the father whose daughter stopped bathing after seeing the bathtub murder scene in Les Diaboliques and then, more distressingly, refused to shower after seeing Psycho. Hitch’s response to the concerned dad? “Send her to the dry cleaners.”

Q: Q: The Winged Serpent: In a career filled with gonzo movies, exploitation director Larry Cohen outdid himself with his big monster opus Q: The Winged Serpent. The story of a petty thief, played by Law & Order’s Michael Moriarty, who comes across the nest of winged, reptilian Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. “It couldn’t have been an egg,” he says. “There are no eggs that big!” His discovery unwittingly unleashes “the fantastic flying forces of a lost age” on New York City. It’s called Quetzalcoatl, the trailer tells us,” but just call it Q because that’s all you’ll have time to say before it tears you apart.” Shot in just 18 days, this is a creature feature unlike any other. The cut rate special effects reveal its bottom-of the-barrel-budget, but fun performances from Moriarty, Candy Clark, David Carradine and Richard Roundtree and Cohen ‘s energetic work breathe life into the film, about which critic Colin Greenland noted, “It is not often that a film is enjoyable as a monster movie, a character study and a satire, but Q: The Winged Serpent scores on every one.”

R: Ready or Not: This film is a bloody satire with sly commentary about the lengths the 1% will do to keep their cash. The surprisingly nasty third act gives “Ready or Not” the feel of a future cult classic, a crowd-pleaser with some laughs and a giddily gory climax.

S: Sleepaway Camp: This gory slasher flick is most notable for a wild twist ending that has been called a “jaw-dropping, tape-rewinding, pause-and-stare-and-call-your-friends-over-to-stare” moment. Ignore the sequels, although the number two’s title Unhappy Campers is pretty great.

T: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: An atmospheric gem, a white-knuckle movie that made Leatherface the first icon of modern horror. It’s an unforgettable movie. An atmospheric gem that, combined with other transgressive films like “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Last House on the Left,” initiated a modern age of horror in the 1970s.

U: Us: Inspired by an episode of the Eisenhower-era Twilight Zone series called “Mirror Image,” Us is a gory take on class structure, on the chasm between rich and poor, between those with power and advantages and those without. It’s an outlandish story but the powerful message resonates loudly.

V: Viva La Muerte (Long Live Death): Risky and upsetting viewing, but in the avant-garde descriptions is a beautifully crafted — although completely gonzo — portrait of a young person in mental anguish.

W: The Witch: The Witch is the kind of horror film that is not content to simply say “Boo!” There are few, if any, jump scares in the film. Instead, it’s the kind of puritanical folk tale that slowly burrows itself into your brain, leaving you queasy and uneasy. It won’t be for everyone, and certainly not for casual horror fans. There’s no Freddys or Jasons in sight, just pure terror.

X: X: X is a throwback to the horror of Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, but with a sensibility that simultaneously feels like a tribute and an update.

Y: You’re Next: Disturbing, violent and without any redeeming social value, this home invasion survivalist film, doesn’t offer anything new in terms of motive for the killing, but the ruthless efficiency with which the killing is done is chilling. Morals or feelings need not apply. So even though there isn’t a lot of blood—it is mostly implied—the film still packs a grisly punch.

Z: Zombieland: Making a horror comedy is tricky business. Do it right and you get a classic like “Sean of the Dead,” a movie whose body count is offset by just the right amount of laughs. Do it wrong and you’ll wind up with “Repossessed,” a movie that is neither funny nor scary, just dull. “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer understands that horror comedies are neither fish nor fowl—they are both. For every decapitation you must have a giggle and Zombieland delivers on both counts.