The 25 Best Horror Films Of The 1970s

10. “Suspiria” (1977)
Real talk: a lot of Italian giallo films are not that great, outside of the top tier of Mario Bava and Dario Argento’s work. But “Suspiria,” perhaps the best known of Argento’s films and the best known giallo full stop, is indisputably great. Soon to get a Chloe Grace Moretz-starring remake from Luca Guadagnino, the film follows ballet student Suzy (Jessica Harper), who comes to Munich to train at the legendary Tanz Dance Academy, only to discover something deeply sinister inside. Loosely plotted and grim in its gender politics, it’s also staggeringly stylish and beautiful, awash in bright primary colors and boasts an unforgettable score by Goblin. And every set piece (it’s a film made up almost entirely of set pieces) sees Argento crank up the maximum possible suspense. Giallo revivalist films like “Amer” and “The Neon Demon” have done a pretty good job, but “Suspiria” remains the peak of the sub-genre for sure.

9. “The Devils” (1971)
It’s as far from genre horror as you can get, but Ken Russell‘s incredible, shocking, provocative and ridiculously beautiful film (goggle at Derek Jarman’s spectacular set design), is one of the most insidiously discomfiting and triumphantly appalling ever made. In the fortress city of Loudon, which is under attack by the King’s men, the charismatic and priapic priest Grandier (peak Oliver Reed) becomes the object of erotic fixation for the town’s nuns. Hunchbacked Sister Jeanne (a fearless Vanessa Redgrave) is in a frenzy of sexual jealousy and accuses him of bewitching her, so the witchfinder (a berserk Michael Gothard) is called in and it all devolves into a series of astonishingly staged torture/rape/orgy scenes. Immensely blasphemous, utterly depraved and often very funny, its X-rated outrageousness can’t obscure its chilling, incisive indictment of religious hypocrisy and mob mentality, nor can it lessen its queasily, eerily hallucinogenic effects. 8. “Carrie” (1976)
Introducing the work of Stephen King to the silver screen for the first time and helping to usher the horror genre out of the B-movie ghetto and into mainstream success and prestige (both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie were Academy-award nominated for their performances), Brian De Palma’s solid gold teen horror classic “Carrie” walks the line between artfulness and pulp perfectly. Telling the story of the titular teenage girl (Spacek), bullied both by her peers and by her tyrannical religious maniac of a mother (Laurie), who develops psychokinetic power, it’s De Palma approaching the peak of his stylistic powers (the final prom sequence is one of his finest set pieces). But amidst that, and even a slightly campy vibe in places, there’s also a humanity here that’s sometimes lacking from the director’s work, with Spacek bringing a desperately sad quality that really elevates the film.

7. ”Dawn of the Dead” (1978)
With “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968, George Romero gave us zombies, but it wasn’t until a decade later that he gave us the apotheosis of the zombie film. Combining the malevolent, ravenous, shuffling undead of his debut with more sophisticated filmmaking, as well as an undercurrent of social critique amid the context of the turbulent 1970s, Romero’s ‘Dawn’ remains probably the best zombie film ever made, and the one to which all subsequent incarnations owe the steepest debt. Operating on a more grandly apocalyptic scale than before, and tackling societal collapse alongside satirizing consumerism (especially in its famously inspired shopping mall setting), it’s still, even in these days overrun with zombies fast and slow on screens small and big, a tremendously enjoyable, energetic film bristling with ideas. And Zack Snyder‘s remake, while hardly essential, is probably his best film to date, which just goes to prove the robust nature of Romero’s classic original.

6. ”Halloween” (1978)
It really should have been just another low-budget quickie in which cheap scares are the payoff for shoddy production values, but instead it became a landmark: John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” only his third theatrical feature, established a new formula for horror and consolidated in one stroke Carpenter’s legacy as one of the genre’s most influential and important directors. But here’s the thing: it’s also good. The craftsmanship of those long Steadicam shots amplifies the otherworldly tension, the arrhythmic editing never lets you quite settle in, and the iconic score remains a high watermark for the the art of scaring via stark, simple, repetitive motifs. And with all of this collected around Jamie Lee Curtis‘ jaggedly unvarnished performance (the first Final Girl was also one of the realest), it really feels like “Halloween” is a good candidate for the survivor horror movie, the one that will remain standing long after others crumble (certainly, if it can survive its own sequels, it can survive anything).