20 Horror Films for Humanity

As Mark Gatiss said at the opening of his History of Horror on BBC4: “The Cinema was made for horror movies”. This is literally – and metaphorically – true. Fear, discomfort, anxiety, apprehension and the unknown are the primal purposes of Cinema.

I’ve tried to do a list that covers all the basic fundamentals of horror. In order: poetry, romance, deformity, dreams, carnality, esoterism, innocence lost, fright, obsession, madness, cruelty, terror, blood, an implacable enemy, the unknown, body horror, gore, allegory, humour and the banality of evil.

I haven’t included torture porn which...