The Zombie
George Romero’s 1968 classic, Night Of The Living Dead, started it all and remains the best all-around zombie movie. What does that mean? Well, Night Of The Living Dead has real dead zombies (yeah, they’re pretty messed-up), it’s shot in creepy black and white, and it features the first honest-to-goodness zombie apocalypse, a theme we can’t seem to stop filming.
28 Days Later kicked off the latest love affair with the walking dead and probably ranks as the most well-made and thoughtful zombie movie. And if you want to argue that the film features no actual zombies, your point is well-taken but misguided. Dead or not, 28 Days Later certainly functions as a zombie movie and also manages to give great zombie apocalypse in the middle of London.
Honorable mention goes to Dawn of the Dead. Which one? Take your pick. Romero’s 1978 sequel to Night Of The Living Dead is an undead tour de force, while Zack Snyder’s excellent 2004 version introduced the terrifying and always-controversial running zombie.
The Monster
It wasn’t the first, but it was the best. James Whale’s Bride Of Frankenstein was a sensation in 1935 and hasn’t lost any of its charms or scares. What old school horror movies did was make an atmosphere that was scary because the monster would always suffer from bad make-up or bad acting or any number of technical faults. The monster you thought was chasing you, not the one you could see, was the scariest. Bride Of Frankenstein had the creepiest atmosphere of any horror movie. Ever. There, I said it.
Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is the modern contender for the best horror atmosphere. This is pretty much dark, foggy London streets in space (of course the fog comes from all the steam vents that spaceships in the ‘70s had). Do I need to mention the scene where the chest-burster does what it does? I thought not. I also credit this movie with beginning the trend of cats jumping out of shadows at people (or being thrown at the actors by their off-camera wranglers).
Honorable mention goes to a much more recent film, The Descent (2005). Spelunkers and monsters trapped underground? You can’t make that movie without coming up with a really creepy atmosphere.
The Vampire
Vampires are the new zombies, right? Actually, vampires never go out of style; they just get recycled every few years. Let The Right One In (2008) is not Twilight and it’s not True Blood. It does not make the vampire your dream boyfriend. What it does is recreate the vampire myth as a nostalgic dirge to all the childhoods of the 1980s. Too much? Okay, it’s really freakin’ creepy, too.
If you want to go old school, you don’t need to go as far back as Bela Lugosi. Terence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula (1958) has you covered. Here’s the Count as blood-sucking English aristocracy, but better yet, here’s a suave Christopher Lee vamping it up in bloody Technicolor. Whereas Lugosi was weird and, let’s face it, charmless, Lee gives Dracula the sexual allure he was said to have. Apart from that, the Hammer Studio horror films are flat-out gorgeous.
Honorable mention goes to…Dracula? Yeah, I know I just trashed it, but the beginning set pieces with all the cobwebs and the ruined castle and “The children of the night” speech and all that Gothic camp are not to be missed. What is to be missed is when everyone starts standing around and talking for the rest of the film.