10 Perfect Horror Movies About Hollywood

The great Billy Wilder could claim a classic in every genre, and if Sunset Boulevard isn’t explicitly a horror, its tale of the fleeting, corrupting nature of fame makes it a seriously scary story.

In Oscar nominated performances, Gloria Swanson and William Holden play Norma Desmond and Joe Swanson. He’s a struggling screenwriter, she’s a fading star of the silent movie era whose career never overcame the invention of sound. When he stumbles into her crumbling mansion, he talks his way into a job helping to stage her comeback, but soon finds himself helplessly caught in her self-destructive web.

Wilder’s genius was his ability to employ a lightness of touch even to the blackest of stories, and this is among his darkest. Norma’s attempts to revitalise her career are played for laughs to a point, but as we see just how low she has sunk - and the depths to which Joe will in turn follow - the joke ends.

By the time we come to the iconic closing shot, Norma is more ghoul than human, and in the final stretches, her performance is pure horror.