10 Best Comfort Horror Movies

10. The Beyond (1981)

Lucio Fulci's 1981 Italian-made The Beyond is not the most obvious choice for comfort horror, and yet something about the rhythm and unreality of it all makes it compelling and unchallenging viewing.

Liza Merril (Catriona MacColl) inherits an old hotel in New Orleans, with the intention of refurbishing and reopening it, not knowing a devotee of the dark arts was lynched there 50 years prior. The hotel sits on a gateway to Hell, and all manner of happenings befall her and her companions: Bleeding hands, tarantulas, eye gouging, spectral forces, and the resurrection of the dead – basically everything you need to make your new hotel project a home away from home.

Originally (and perhaps unfairly) branded as a video nasty - alongside some seriously grim features, such as Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and I Spit On Your Grave (1978) - The Beyond was made at a time when horror was still hoping and praying for the kind of budgets these films command today. Its scares are so crazy and OTT, and presented within such a scattered and improvisational plot, that they don't interrupt the rhythm of the film. In fact, it is so saturated in elementary gore effects that it all becomes part of the scenery; moving wallpaper for an easy evening of blood and guts.