The films

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Blood Rites

Andy Milligan shooting in Staten Island with a hand-held Auricon. An acquired taste nobody acquires.

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Tigers Are Not Afraid

Children orphaned by the Mexican drug war, three wishes, and the dead following them through the streets.

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At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

Brazil's first horror film, made by a man who invented himself as a character and played him for fifty years.

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The Front Room

A pregnant woman is forced to care for her husband's monstrous, dying, evangelical stepmother.

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Lisa and the Devil

Bava given complete freedom, and the film is a dream nobody can escape, including the producer.

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Kill, Baby... Kill!

A Carpathian village, a dead girl with a white ball, and Fellini borrowed the image wholesale.

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Daughters of Darkness

Elizabeth Báthory in an empty Ostend hotel out of season, and it is the most elegant vampire film ever made.

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Tales from the Crypt

Amicus adapting the EC Comics, with Joan Collins menaced by a killer Santa and Peter Cushing as a wronged dustman.

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The Uninvited

The first Hollywood ghost film to play it entirely straight. Almost nothing has aged.

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La Llorona

A Guatemalan dictator on trial for genocide is haunted in his own home. The weeping woman as historical reckoning.

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Theatre of Blood

Vincent Price as a hammy actor murdering the critics who denied him an award, each death staged from Shakespeare.

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The House That Dripped Blood

Four stories tied to one house, written by Robert Bloch, with Christopher Lee and a very young Jon Pertwee joke.

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The Sentinel

A model moves into a Brooklyn brownstone that turns out to be the gateway to Hell, guarded by a blind priest.

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Tumbbad

An Indian folk horror about greed, a hidden god, and a womb in the earth, spanning three generations.

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Vampire Circus

A plague-quarantined village visited by a travelling circus, and it is the strangest film Hammer made.

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Flesh for Frankenstein

Shot in 3D with Udo Kier and a spleen. Warhol's name on it, Paul Morrissey's film.

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In Fabric

A haunted red dress moves from customer to customer through a nightmarish department store.

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The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Vincent Price murders the surgeons who let his wife die, each death based on the plagues of Egypt. A gorgeous, deranged art deco comedy.

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The Curse of the Werewolf

Hammer's only werewolf film, Oliver Reed's first lead, and the transformation is largely his face.

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Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

A Czech surrealist film about a thirteen-year-old girl, vampires and menstruation, and it is not what that sounds like.

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Dead of Night

The British portmanteau that every anthology since has copied, and the ventriloquist episode has never been bettered.

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Black Sabbath

Three Bava stories introduced by Boris Karloff, and the middle one is the most frightening thing Bava shot.

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The Masque of the Red Death

The best of Corman's Poe cycle, shot by Nicolas Roeg on sets left over from Becket.

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A Chinese Ghost Story

A tax collector shelters in a haunted temple and falls in love with a ghost enslaved by a tree demon with a very long tongue.

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A Tale of Two Sisters

The highest-grossing Korean horror film ever, and it is really a family drama with a haunting in it.

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I Walked with a Zombie

Jane Eyre relocated to a Caribbean sugar plantation, and it is the most beautiful film in this category.

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The Innocents

The Turn of the Screw done perfectly, and it never once tells you whether the ghosts are real.

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The Old Dark House

James Whale between the two Frankensteins, having a wonderful time, and Karloff is the least of it.

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Black Sunday

Bava could not afford colour and made the best-looking gothic ever shot. Barbara Steele's face did the rest.

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Kwaidan

Four ghost stories on hand-painted sound stages, three hours long, and among the most beautiful films ever made.

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White Zombie

The first zombie film, made independently, with Lugosi controlling the dead on a Haitian sugar plantation.

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Phantasm

A tall undertaker, a flying silver sphere, and a film that runs entirely on dream logic. Don Coscarelli was 23.

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Creepshow

Romero and King doing EC Comics, with panel borders, primary lighting and a story about a cake.

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Immaculate

Nunsploitation with a real budget. The last shot is a single unbroken take and it is the reason to watch.

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The Curse of Frankenstein

The film that made Hammer, made in colour, with blood that looks like blood.

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The Devil's Backbone

Del Toro's other Spanish Civil War film, and he has called it the companion to Pan's Labyrinth.