20. Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
It's fitting that this film is the first on the list in order of release as it is perhaps the definitive nightmare movie. It deals with many of our primal fears but laces them with an apocalyptic destruction as the dead are reanimated and return to feed on the flesh of the living. Many other films on this list will be described as 'tightly wound' but this one set the standard from a template set by Hitchcock in Lifeboat by placing the character largely in one, compact environment. Beginning in an eerie graveyard, Johnny and Barbara are visiting the grave of their father when a shuffling man begins to move closer. Johnny makes fun of his sister ('They're coming to get you Barbara') but is attacked by the man who then chases Barbara through the fields before she finds an abandoned farmhouse. Terrified, she is further shocked when Ben appears and bludgeons to 'death' several others who have congregated outside. Ben explains that he has witnessed many strange acts of violence and, upon listening to the radio, they discover these random attacks are widespread. Others join them but the living dead, including Johnny, are crowding outside. This film, a simple drive-in horror, has become particularly influential not just through the ideas of the zombie apocalypse and the nightmares that would entail (killing loved ones and constantly escaping the terrifying dead) but also, through Ben, looks at issues of race and, with the final shot of the film directed at our hero, it is clear these issues are prevalent in George Romero's mind. Although later films would have bigger budgets and arguably more talented casts, this original film explores our nightmares of paranoia and loneliness. Many looked on Romero as a Pittsburgh hack but after the success of this film, and later explorations into our nightmares, he is rightly regarded as an auteur and one that was prevalent in the creation of the horror films we watch today.