100 Greatest Horror Movies Of All Time
43. Mulholland Drive
David Lynch's Mulholland Drive isn't a straight horror in the conventional sense - the closest the director has ever got to that is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - but his reality-bending tale of love, loss and stardom does feature some of the most horrifying sequences of all time.
Whether it's a prescient dream giving way to a real-life nightmare or the unwinding of a heroine who can't tell fact from fiction, Lynch's abstract thriller isn't lacking in horror imagery or tense set-pieces, fuelled entirely by an unnerving atmosphere that breaks down the artificiality of L.A. to reveal its grim core.
Naomi Watt's gives the performance of her career as fractured hero, Betty, deteriorating bit by bit after the fantastical dream she's created for herself threatens to completely come undone.
[JB]
42. Les Diaboliques (1955)
Henri-Georges Clouzot's haunting thriller Les Diaboliques follows two women as they conspire to murder a sadistic boarding-school headmaster plated by Paul Meurisse. These are no strangers however: one of the would-be killers is his wife and the other is his mistress - a set-up that naturally, grimly leads to some pitch-black humour and the very real feel of a Hitchcock thriller.
It's all built on a delightful twist that Hitchcock too would have been proud of and which was so cherished by the studio that they asked audiences not to spoil the ending to others in the final credits. It's very clever and supremely nasty and the best thing about it is the second, scarier twist that subverts the whoel thing.
It was remade in 1996 and the only reason you should watch it is so you can appreciate how great the original was. And why nobody should ever try to remake it again.
[SG]
41. The Birds
Many of the best horror stories take the mundane and make it macabre, perhaps even murderous, and Alfred Hitchcock understood the fragility of the world better than most, which is best exemplified by The Birds.
Hitchcock was known as the master of suspense for a reason, and he lets this build and build before allowing the birds to attack in all their winged-menace. As they swoop down upon their victims en masse, it makes for some terrifying imagery, with such a ferocity that you’ll never quite feel comfortable hearing the flapping of wings ever again.
[JH]