3) A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Another exquisite gem that helped to propel the teen-slasher subgenre forward was Wes Craven’s dream-shattering monster myth which focused on a knife-handed serial killer who preyed on the young adolescents within the titular street of a town named Madstop. The twist, however, is that Freddy Krueger (played by the creepy Robert Englund) isn’t a mere human being, but is a ghost-like entity that stalks the dreams of his victims, where he kills them in bloody and gruesome fashion.
Not only did the movie catapult the late and great Wes Craven (AKA the Master of Horror) into the limelight, but it was also the breakout hit for the now famous Johnny Depp (who played central character Glen Lantz) and was also the beginning of another truly iconic villain who would go on to grace our screens in a further eight films, whilst spawning an assortment of comics, video games, books and even a TV show. Blimey.
Whatever you do… DON’T… FALL… ASLEEP…
2) The Shining (1980)
Legendary director Stanley Kubrick had just come off something of a box office and critical flop with his 1975 aristocratic period drama Barry Lyndon. In light of this, he set out to craft a motion picture that was not only a commercial success, but was also artistically fulfilling, too, by adapting and putting his own unique spin on Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel.
With such a notoriously fraught production and with King declaring the film as a “misogynistic” misinterpretation of the source material, it’s truly amazing that The Shining has not only endured and weathered the storm, but has gone on to become an outright masterpiece in the horror genre.
It’s a deeply disturbing piece of psychological terror that revels in its allegorical open-endedness; it’s filled to the brim with artful, poetic symbolism and its cold, stark portrayal of a mind unravelling in a haunted, isolated hotel in the midst of winter is eerily unsettling stuff. Add to this a phenomenal turn from a barmy Jack Nicholson (who ad-libbed a lot of his iconic lines), some of the most memorable and phenomenal cinematography in the genre, a skillfully crafted score that resounds with ominous dread, and imagery that will linger with you long after the credits have rolled, and you’re left with a show-stopping masterpiece that helped to cement Kubrick’s stellar reputation as one of the finest auteurs in Hollywood.
