What is the most influential "Horror" movie...
 

What is the most influential "Horror" movie of each decade, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and 2000 to date? And feel free to let us know why. This can be from a personal or social stand point.

Here are mine..All from a Social stand point. I think all these movies either defined a decade of movies or had a major impact on society.

60's Night of the Living Dead

70's The Exorcist

80's A Nightmare on Elm Street

90's I hate to do this but.. Scream

00's Shaun of the Dead

30's- Dracula

60s- Psycho
70s- Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Halloween*
90s- Sixth Sense


*The 80s were dominated by slashers, Halloween set the bar so imo although it wasn't released in the 80's it had the most influence on them.

60's - NOTLD

70's Tie:
- Last house on the left - This movie really inspired the slasher movies and above the mark violence that was seen in TCM, Friday the 13th and Holloween.
The Exorcist - This movie shocked the world with things Never seen on film before. It is one of the three movies in film history that had an impact on peoples lives - socially/economically and spiritually (along with Jaws and Passion of the Christ).

80's - Holloween - although slasher films were being made prior to Holloween, this one pleased the mainstream movie going public and gave a driving force to multitudes of slasher films and re introduced "The sequals"

90's - not alot to choose from here. I would have3 to say Se7en.

00's - Like it or love it the remake of DOTD re introduced a "new super zombie" this time they ran and attacked viciously.

Nosferatu and Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

20s Metropolis
30s Dracula
50s Invasion of the Body Snatchers- I think the best sci-fi/horror fusion that was happening at the time. It captured the climate of the time brilliantly and stood up to communism and Mc Carthyism alike. That takes vision and balls.
60s Rosemary's Baby-Reminded the moviegoing public that horror could be literate, artistic and thought provoking. I don't like Polanski much, but I give him that.
70s Exorcist
80s Poltergeist- High budget, legitimately scary horror epic. that returned the ghost story to the popular imagination. Showed how good special effects should be serving a film.
90s Natural Born Killers- Yes, I consider this a horror film. Splatpunk morality is examined and called into question and the inmates are shown running the asylum. I don't think such a solid treatise on violence could be called anything but horror.
00s Like it or not, I'd say House of a Thousand Corpses. It's a movie that examined horror movies, how horror is such a part of the American cultural landscape and dared horror movies to return to more stark, raw roots. I don't wanna sound pretentious, but I consider the 8 1/2 of horror movies. It's a much better examination of the genre and American violence than other metacinematic horror movies like Scream. There've been a bunch of pale imitations since.

Nosferatu?

I found that a pretty tough call. I almost said Vampyr, but I can't remember when that was. That's one of the only films from so long ago that gave me a real solid chill. To anyone who hasn't seen it, imagine an entire film that feels like the video from the Ring. Nosferatu paved the way for a lot of horror movies in the future, but when it comes to influencing filmmaking Fritz Lang did a lot more than Murnau.

That maybe true but we're talking about individual films not the filmmakers.

I think Vampyr is '14

Metropolis wasn't a horror movie.

I would have placed "Ringu" in the 90's....

metropolis horror??? maybe for capitalists :D :D :D

for me most influential movie is scream in 90. Freddy in 80. texas chainsaw in 70. NOTLD in 60.

60's Dracula by Hammer, brought the genre back to life
70's Exorcist, no Q, even though there was stiff competition from Omen, TCSM, Alien
80's I' say American Werewolf in london.
90's Ringu
00 - Too early to say yet.

where to start

1958, sequels pale in comparison to the first

1998

he's right

he's right again

i've mentioned this one before but. . . one of my favorite books about horror films talks about exactly this question. the book is titled Projected Fears and the list of most "influential" horror films in american history is:

Dracula (1931)
The Thing (1951)
Psycho (1960)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The Exorcist (1973) & Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 - the book actually talks about these two together)
Halloween (1978)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Scream (1996)
and, The Sixth Sense (1999)

it wouldnt' have been my list, but the book makes a very compelling case for each.

Maybe not the most influential, but Alien was for me because Ripley fought instead of being the victim, and she won. Really really dug that.....................

from the 20's and 30's, I'd mention...

Nosferatu
Phantom of the Opera
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
King Kong
Frankenstein
Freaks

Couldn't really name any movie that was "most" influential because it's a continuum...We wouldn't have NOTLD had not other stuff come before it and paved the way, for example. We wouldn't have had Star Wars without Flash Gordon and King Kong, etc. But it's nice to make lists of things that were ALL influential in their own individual ways...

I guess you're right about Metropolis. I thought Caligari was before the 20's, which is why I hadn't thought of it. I think we can pretty much say Germany in the 20s was changing every genre out there. I can see where the book is coming from on Sixth Sense. It revived PG-13 horror, and that has been something of a force to be reckoned with at the box office in recent years. I don't know if I'd stand behind Scream, though. It states the obvious a lot.

i liked scream

For me it was.....

Nightmare On Elm Street

Evil Dead

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Omen

IT

Dracula and


Halloween

It was 1918 IIRC, but I don't see the point in narrowing it down to 1960's and on if we're talking most influential

60's- Night of the Living dead
70's- Texas Chainsaw Massacre
80's- Nightmare on Elm Street
90's- Silence of the lambs
00's- Dont know yet, but i really like the whole Saw thing.

60's- Night of the Living Dead
70's- The Exorcist
80's- Friday the 13th
90's- Dead Alive (if it even came out in the 90's). If not, then Hellraiser.
00's- Saw

60's - NOTLD
70's - TCM/Halloween
80's - Evil Dead
90's - Blair Witch Project (Scream may have spawned more imitators, but it was backwards referential, whereas Blair Witch was a forward step into the digital era)