10 Best Horror Movies With No Supernatural Elements
7. Isle Of The Dead
Hall Of Fame horror icon Boris Karloff played all manner of monsters in creature features, but in this atmospheric and claustrophobic 1945 production, he found one of his juiciest roles.
Karloff plays Nikolas Pherides, a Greek general embroiled in the Balkan war. He and an American reporter take a trip to a cemetery across the water to pay respects to his late wife, but find the island ravaged, and a motley crew of occupants holed up in a mansion. When one of them comes down with the plague, they find themselves stuck, and it’s not long before paranoia sets in.
The driving force of the plot is the folkloric vorvolaka, a mythological malevolent creature. Housekeeper Kyra pins the plague on young Thea, and before long Pherides buys into the theory.
The mounting tension and possibility of violence make this zippy film genuinely tense, with the climax especially delivering gripping scares. While the spectre of the vorvolaka hovers over proceedings, what these people truly have to fear is one another.