Best Films - American films - Horror

American cinema: Horror (Page 1 of 4)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Wes Craven

Tina and Nancy, two teenagers in a cosy American suburb, experience the same terrifying dream in which they are attacked by a disfigured man in a hat, with razor-sharp knives attached to his fingers. One night, during a sleepover with their boyfriends Rod and Glen, Tina is brutally murdered. The killing is witnessed by Rod, who sees Tina slashed by invisible knives and dragged onto the ceiling... [More...]

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Charles Barton

Chick Young and Wilbur Grey are baggage clerks who, one day, are asked to deliver two crates to a waxworks museum. According to the crates’ owner, these contain the last remains of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Sure enough, as Chick and Wilbur are unpacking the crates, the two horror fiends are revived... [More...]

Alien (1979)

Ridley Scott

Commercial space freighter Nostromo is on its way back to Earth with a cargo of precious mineral ore. When the ship receives a distress call from a nearby planet, the crew - consisting of five men and two women – is revived from stasis and makes ready to investigate, in accordance with company procedure... [More...]

Alien 3 (1992)

David Fincher

When a fire breaks out aboard the Colonial Marine spaceship Sulaco, an escape pod containing the surviving crew members is ejected into space. The pod crashlands on Fiorina 161, a maximum security penal planet inhabited by some of the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy. The prison’s population is entirely male, mostly pathologically hostile to women, and is employed in operating a large metal foundry... [More...]

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

John Landis

David Kessler and Jack Goodman are two American college backpackers who decide to make a tour of Europe. Where better to begin than the bleak, soggy Yorkshire moors? As night falls, they enter an inn named The Slaughtered Lamb, hoping for rest and refreshment. Instead, they receive a deathly cold reception from a sinister collection of locals who, not liking foreign folk, drive them away with a warning not to stray on the moors... [More...]

The Birds (1963)

Alfred Hitchcock

On a whim, bored socialite Melanie Daniels decides to pay a home visit to Mitch Brenner, a lawyer she met by chance in a San Francisco bird shop. Shortly after arriving at Brenner’s home in Bodega Bay, a small coastal town in northern California, Melanie is attacked by a seagull. Mitch invites her to stay at his house, which he shares with his mother and his younger sister Cathy... [More...]

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Daniel Myrick

In 1994, three young film students - Heather, Mike and Josh - head off for the small American town of Burkittsville, Maryland, formerly known as Blair, to make a documentary about the much talked about Blair Witch. The locals offer chilling accounts of hauntings, abductions and murders that have blighted the area for the past few hundred years, all of which are attributed to a notorious witch who lived there in the 1700s... [More...]

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Robert Wise

Edinburgh, 1831. When medical student Donald Fettes tells his tutor Dr MacFarlane that he no longer has the money to continue his studies, the latter generously appoints him his assistant. Among Fettes’s less attractive duties is to pay grave robber John Gray for the corpses he steals from the city’s cemeteries... [More...]

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

James Whale

Prompted by Lord Byron and her husband one stormy night in 1817, Mary Shelley tells the second part of her story about Dr Frankenstein and his unearthly creation. Surviving the conflagration at the windmill, the monster goes on a rampage across the Bavarian countryside. He encounters a blind hermit, who gives him food and shelter, and teaches him the rudiments of speech... [More...]

Cat People (1942)

Jacques Tourneur

During a visit to the zoo, Oliver Reed meets Irena Dubrovna, an East European immigrant who works as a fashion designer in New York. Oliver is drawn to the mysterious woman and a short while later the couple are married. However, the marriage remains unconsummated. Irena is traumatised by an ancient Serbian legend in which women are transformed into wild cats when aroused by jealousy... [More...]

The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Robert Wise

Concerned that his daughter Amy is living in a world of her own, Oliver Reed tries to persuade the six-year-old girl to make some new friends. This Amy is incapable of doing, until one day someone slips a ring onto her finger when she visits a dark old house in her neighbourhood. She soon realises that the ring was given to her by the house’s owner, a reclusive former actress who lives alone with a grown-up daughter she refuses to acknowledge as her own... [More...]

Dance of the Vampires (1967)

Roman Polanski

After a long journey across Eastern Europe, Professor Abronsius and his faithful apprentice Alfred finally succeed in finding solid evidence for the existence of vampires. In the snowy mountains of Transylvania, they come across a remote inn which is decorated with garlic and where the locals live in fear of some unseen evil presence... [More...]

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

George A. Romero

The world is in the grip of an unexplained pandemic. The bodies of the dead have become reanimated and are preying on the flesh of the living, creating worldwide pandemonium. Believing that this zombie threat is confined to the United States, Stephen, an employee at a television studio in Philadelphia decides to escape to Canada in a helicopter with his girlfriend Francine... [More...]

Day of the Dead (1985)

George A. Romero

Human civilization is virtually at an end, obliterated by a mysterious plague that is animating the dead, turning them into flesh-eating zombies with disgusting table manners. A small group of scientists and military men are holed up in a former missile silo, hoping to come up with a way to defeat the zombies and save the world... [More...]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

John S. Robertson

Dr Henry Jekyll is a man of flawless repute, a philanthropist who divides his time between treating the sick poor of London and conducting scientific research in his laboratory. So preoccupied is Jekyll with his good works that he neglects his fiancée, Millicent, prompting his prospective father-in-law, Sir George Carew, to mock his unstinting selflessness... [More...]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Rouben Mamoulian

Dr Henry Jekyll, a renowned medical practitioner and philanthropist, is anxious to marry the woman he loves, Muriel Carew, but the latter’s father insists that he must wait awhile yet for decorum’s sake. To distract himself, Jekyll immerses himself in his scientific research, convinced that he can develop a potion which will separate the two opposing sides in man’s nature, the good and the evil... [More...]

Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

Lambert Hillyer

Arrested by Scotland Yard for the murder of Count Dracula, Professor Van Helsing contacts one of his former students, the psychiatrist Dr Jeffrey Garth, to defend him in his impending trial. Meanwhile, Dracula’s body has been stolen by a mysterious young woman named Countess Marya Zaleska, who is in fact the vampire’s daughter... [More...]

Duel (1971)

Steven Spielberg

David Mann is driving his red Plymouth Valiant through the California desert on his way to a business meeting. The only other vehicle on the otherwise empty highway is a lumbering tanker truck which is expelling noxious black exhaust fumes in his direction. When Mann overtakes the truck, he is surprised when it suddenly accelerates and overtakes him, before slowing down again... [More...]

The Evil Dead (1981)

Sam Raimi

Five young college students decide to spend their vacation in an isolated cabin in the Tennessee mountains. On reaching the cabin, they sense a ghostly presence and are surprised when they find a collection of strange artefacts in the cellar. These include an ancient book, bound in human skin, and a disturbing collection of objects decorated with human skulls... [More...]

The Exorcist (1973)

William Friedkin

Whilst making a film in Georgetown, Washington DC, the actress Chris MacNeil becomes increasingly concerned over her 12-year-old daughter, Regan, who is exhibiting strange psychological and physical changes. When doctors fail to come up with a medical explanation for what is happening, Chris consults Father Karras, a psychiatric counsellor at the university, and asks him to perform an exorcism on her daughter... [More...]

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