Total Film has created the definitive list of scary movies – the judging panel was a who’s who list, including directors John Carpenter, Wes Craven, John Landis, George Romero, Guillermo del Toro and Eli Roth, and actors who have played horror’s most iconic monsters, such as Robert Englund (Freddy), Kane Hodder (Jason), Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface) and Doug Bradley (Pinhead).
Narrowly beating The Exorcist to the title of the Greatest Horror Movie Ever Made, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is a low-budget masterpiece from director Tobe Hooper. It records the ‘true life’ tale of five young Americans travelling through rural Texas only to stumble into the dilapidated house of Leatherface and his family of cannibals. Both The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist were banned by censors in the UK, until 1999.
Also in the Top 10 were Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Ridley Scott’s iconic sci-fi horror Alien and two John Carpenter movies, Halloween and The Thing. Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone was the only film from the last 20 years to make the Top 25.
Total Film’s Greatest Horror Movies Ever Made:
1) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
2) The Exorcist
3) Psycho
4) The Shining
5) The Thing
6) Halloween
7) Alien
8) Jaws
9) Dawn Of The Dead
10) Suspiria
Jamie Graham, Deputy Editor of Total Film, said: “Total Film approached everyone who’s anyone in horror and together we compiled the definitive list of the greatest horror movies. This is the final chapter – there is no room for a sequel!
“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is essentially an old dark house tale fitted with mallets, meat hooks and power tools. We see nothing, feel everything, the aggressive camera, brutal editing, clanging sound design and grainy, grubby visuals striking home like a sledgehammer to the skull.”
The full list of the 25 Greatest Horror Movies Ever Made appears in the latest issue of Total Film magazine, on sale now across the UK – and online.
