Horror movies have a funny way of sticking with you. You might not remember what you had for dinner last Tuesday, but you probably remember exactly where you were the first time you saw Psycho or Jaws.
The folks at Reader’s Digest combed through Rotten Tomatoes rankings, audience reviews, and overall scare factor to find the most frightening film for every year from 1950 to 2005. So which one belongs to you?
Find your birth year below and see if your horror twin still holds up today.
The 1950s: Creatures, Science Gone Wrong, and Things That Go Bump
- 1950 — House by the River, directed by Fritz Lang
- 1951 — The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby
- 1952 — The White Reindeer, directed by Erik Blomberg
- 1953 — House of Wax, directed by André De Toth
- 1954 — Them!, directed by Gordon Douglas
- 1955 — Diabolique, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
- 1956 — Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel
- 1957 — Night of the Demon, directed by Jacques Tourneur
- 1958 — The Fly, directed by Kurt Neumann
- 1959 — House on Haunted Hill, directed by William Castle
The 1960s: Horror Comes Home
The sixties brought scary movies much closer to everyday life. Serial killers. Haunted pregnancies. Things hiding in plain sight. It was a decade that changed what horror could be.
- 1960 — Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock
- 1961 — The Innocents, directed by Jack Clayton
- 1962 — Carnival of Souls, directed by Herk Harvey
- 1963 — The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise
- 1964 — Onibaba, directed by Kaneto Shindō
- 1965 — Repulsion, directed by Roman Polanski
- 1966 — Kill, Baby … Kill!, directed by Mario Bava
- 1967 — Viy, directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov
- 1968 — Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A. Romero
- 1969 — The Cremator, directed by Juraj Herz
The 1970s: The Decade That Defined Fear
If you grew up in the seventies, you lived through some of the most legendary horror films ever made. The Exorcist. Jaws. Halloween. These were not just movies; they were events.
- 1970 — The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, directed by Dario Argento
- 1971 — Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, directed by John D. Hancock
- 1972 — The Last House on the Left, directed by Wes Craven
- 1973 — The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin
- 1974 — The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper
- 1975 — Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg
- 1976 — The Omen, directed by Richard Donner
- 1977 — Suspiria, directed by Dario Argento
- 1978 — Halloween, directed by John Carpenter
- 1979 — Alien, directed by Ridley Scott
The 1980s: Slashers, Nightmares, and the Golden Age of Fright
Box offices in the eighties were packed with slasher hits and supernatural scares. Freddy Krueger arrived. Stephen King adaptations multiplied. If you were a teenager back then, you probably snuck into a few of these.
- 1980 — The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick
- 1981 — The Evil Dead, directed by Sam Raimi
- 1982 — The Thing, directed by John Carpenter
- 1983 — The Entity, directed by Sidney J. Furie
- 1984 — A Nightmare on Elm Street, directed by Wes Craven
- 1985 — Day of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero
- 1986 — The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg
- 1987 — Hellraiser, directed by Clive Barker
- 1988 — The Vanishing, directed by George Sluizer
- 1989 — Pet Sematary, directed by Mary Lambert
The 1990s and Beyond: Psychological Twists and New Nightmares
The nineties shifted horror toward psychological dread and clever storytelling. Then the 2000s brought a new wave of remakes and inventive scares that stood on their own.
- 1990 — Misery, directed by Rob Reiner
- 1991 — The Silence of the Lambs, directed by Jonathan Demme
- 1992 — Candyman, directed by Bernard Rose
- 1993 — Body Snatchers, directed by Abel Ferrara
- 1994 — In the Mouth of Madness, directed by John Carpenter
- 1995 — Se7en, directed by David Fincher
- 1996 — Scream, directed by Wes Craven
- 1997 — Event Horizon, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
- 1998 — Ringu, directed by Hideo Nakata
- 1999 — The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
- 2000 — Final Destination, directed by James Wong
- 2001 — The Others, directed by Alejandro Amenábar
- 2002 — The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski
- 2003 — A Tale of Two Sisters, directed by Kim Jee-woon
- 2004 — Saw, directed by James Wan
- 2005 — The Descent, directed by Neil Marshall
So, did your birth year land on a classic you still remember? Or maybe one you have never seen and now want to? Either way, it is a fun excuse to settle in with some popcorn and revisit the golden age of the good scare.
