1. Psycho (1960) – Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller. ‘A young woman steals $40,000 from her employer’s client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother.’
2. Alien (1979) – ‘A mining ship, investigating a suspected SOS, lands on a distant planet. The crew discovers some strange creatures and investigates’.
3. The Shining (1980) – ‘A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future’.
4. Aliens (1986) – ‘The planet from Alien (1979) has been colonized, but contact is lost. This time, the rescue team has impressive firepower, enough?’
5. Les diaboliques (1955) – Suspenseful French thriller. ‘The wife of a cruel headmaster and his mistress conspire to kill him, but after the murder is committed, his body disappears, and strange events begin to plague the two women’.
6. Spalovac mrtvol (1969) – Gothic Czechoslovakian film. ‘Kopfrkingl enjoys his job at a crematorium in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. He likes reading the Tibetan book of the dead’.
7. Låt den rätte komma in (2008) – (Let the Right One In) Acclaimed Swedish horror set in the 1980’s. ‘Oscar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl who turns out to be a vampire’.
8. The Thing (1982) – A John Carpenter classic. ‘Man is The Warmest Place to Hide’.
9. Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage (1926) – ‘God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist…’
10. Frankenstein (1931) – ‘A Monster Science Created – But Could Not Destroy!’
A truly eclectic mix made up mostly of golden oldies with a good smattering of non-English titles in there too.
Surprisingly the only recent film to make the list is the Swedish ‘Låt den rätte komma in’ which received rave reviews and like so many other good foreign horror movies is set to be remade for the English speaking market and will be directed by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves.
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Reeves said: “The film is now officially titled ‘Let Me In’, which is a more accurate English language translation of John Ajvide Lindgvist’s original novel”.
The Americanised story is set in the snow covered mountains of a Ronald Regan-era Colorado and expected to be available for release sometime in 2010.
Popularity: 29% [?]