15. Rob Zombie
Some people might scoff at the idea of Rob Zombie being so high on this list, especially when others like Kubrick, Nicholson, Cronenberg, and even RAIMI FOR CHRISSAKE, are behind him. Well, again I say: scoff away! The truth is that Rob Zombie knows a LOT about fear and he's been able to prove it with a relatively short career thus far. He's also been able to show it in more than one medium. Rob Zombie is the director of new classics The Devil's Rejects, House of 1,000 Corpses, Lords of Salem, and the recent Halloween remake. He's also a founding member of the band White Zombie and the crafter of a solo music career that produced such albums as Hellbilly Deluxe and The Sinister Urge. Zombie showed us that music and horror can go just as hand-in-hand as film and horror. He has a uniquely dirty visual style and disturbingly speedy sense of horrific pace, and he has the balls to air out the dirty laundry of Fear with a capital F, for all his friends and neighbors to see.
14. Bram Stoker
What would the horror genre be without the mythos of Count Dracula to give it countless tales of blood-sucking evil? It would be a much sadder place, I can assure you. Bram Stoker delivered Dracula to us, and while vampires have been a part of cultural mythology for hundreds of years prior to the publication of the great novel, Stoker gave us many of the rules and tropes we've come to expect from a true vampire tale. Yes, he's on this list for his intellectual contribution to the fear factory, but he's also here because it is one hell of a scary book. Seriously, if you've never read Dracula, get over yourself and get over to the library. It's worth it, not only to see what the original masters were like in their own day, but also to see how well this terrifying and exciting story holds up today.
13. John Carpenter
John Carpenter is one of the most important horror and sci-fi film directors of all time. He's given us bleak and desperate visions of a yesterday, today, and tomorrow filled with terrors both psychological and monstrously physical. Carpenter has had hits and misses in terms of box office success, but he will always be a true Master of Fear to the fans. How could he not, with a filmography that includes such cinematic masterpieces as Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, They Live, In the Mouth of Madness, and Village of the Damned? He's shown us true terror on celluloid and we have obediently watched, helplessly shivering and sweating in fear. And loving every minute of it.
12. Richard Matheson
Do you know who Richard Matheson is? Well, you certainly should. He is the author of some of the scariest, most exciting books of the 20th century. And so many of them have been made into films. He wrote the novel I Am Legend, which has been adapted no less than three times for the silver screen (The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and the Will Smith vehicle that shared the original book's name). He wrote the story Duel, which became an early Steven Spielberg directorial vehicle. He wrote a novelized remake of the House on Haunted Hill which is capable of scaring the pants right off your legs. He wrote the short story Button, Button which became the severely underrated Cameron Diaz and James Marsden flick The Box. He wrote the novel Stir of Echoes which became another underrated frightener starring Kevin Bacon. He wrote the long story The Incredible Shrinking Man which has been adapted for both genders for the big screen. He wrote several episodes of the Twilight Zone for that other Master of Fear Rod Serling. He wrote, he wrote, he wrote, and in doing so, he succeeded in filling us with wonder and drowning us infear.
11. Clive Barker
Clive Barker has a finger in just about every horror pie out there--which, admittedly, sounds absolutely disgusting. But honestly, while Barker is best known for authoring novels of horror and fantasy, he's also a film director and producer, the producer of several bloody comic book series, and even has his name on a handful of video games in the fear genre. His most recognizable contribution to horror is certainly Hellraiser (and Pinhead's pinhead found therein), but he's also been behind dozens and dozens of other tales of terror in many other branches of entertainment. If he's not a true Master of Fear, then I know longer know what the phrase means.