The 49 Greatest Black-and-White Horror Movies

Silent expressionist nightmares sit beside Universal monsters, Japanese ghost tales and a handful of modern films that chose to shoot without color. Shadows do most of the work here.

1. 1
   Psycho

   Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 shocker with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and the famous shower scene.
   1000pts
2. 2
   The Thing from Another World

   The 1951 Howard Hawks-produced film about an Arctic base besieged by an alien.
   753pts
3. 3
   Nosferatu

   F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent vampire film, an unauthorised Dracula with Max Schreck as Count Orlok.
   749pts
4. 4
   Night of the Living Dead

   George A. Romero's 1968 independent film that created the modern flesh-eating zombie.
   626pts
5. 5
   The Wolf Man

   Universal's 1941 werewolf film starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the cursed Larry Talbot.
   587pts
6. 6
   The Old Dark House

   James Whale's 1932 darkly comic tale of stranded travellers in a sinister Welsh mansion.
   587pts
7. 7
   Carnival of Souls

   Herk Harvey's eerie 1962 low-budget cult film about an organist drawn to an abandoned pavilion.
   587pts
8. 8
   The Phantom of the Opera

   The 1925 silent classic with Lon Chaney's famous unmasking beneath the Paris Opera.
   542pts
9. 9
   Cat People

   Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur's 1942 RKO film of shadows and suggestion about a woman who fears she turns into a panther.
   542pts
10. 10
    House on Haunted Hill

    William Castle's 1959 gimmick-filled chiller with Vincent Price hosting a deadly overnight party.
    542pts
11. 11
    The Black Cat

    The 1934 Universal film pairing Karloff and Lugosi in a Bauhaus fortress built on a war graveyard.
    542pts
12. 12
    Them!

    The 1954 Warner Bros. atomic-age thriller about giant irradiated ants in the New Mexico desert.
    542pts
13. 13
    Kuroneko

    Kaneto Shindo's 1968 Japanese ghost story of murdered women returning as vengeful cat spirits.
    542pts
14. 14
    Onibaba

    Kaneto Shindo's 1964 Japanese film about two women who kill samurai in the reeds, and a demon mask.
    542pts
15. 15
    Frankenstein

    James Whale's 1931 Universal classic with Boris Karloff as the flat-headed Monster.
    491pts
16. 16
    Invasion of the Body Snatchers

    Don Siegel's 1956 paranoid classic about townspeople replaced by emotionless pod duplicates.
    491pts
17. 17
    The Invisible Man

    James Whale's 1933 Universal film with Claude Rains as the unseen, unhinged scientist.
    491pts
18. 18
    White Zombie

    The 1932 independent chiller with Bela Lugosi as a Haitian voodoo master, often called the first zombie feature.
    491pts
19. 19
    Young Frankenstein

    Mel Brooks's 1974 loving black-and-white parody of the Universal Frankenstein films.
    491pts
20. 20
    What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

    Robert Aldrich's 1962 psycho-biddy shocker pitting Bette Davis against Joan Crawford.
    434pts
21. 21
    The Uninvited

    Paramount's 1944 haunted-house film on the Cornish coast, one of Hollywood's first serious ghost stories.
    434pts
22. 22
    Son of Frankenstein

    The 1939 third Frankenstein film, Karloff's last turn as the Monster alongside Lugosi's Ygor.
    434pts
23. 23
    Godzilla

    Ishiro Honda's 1954 Toho original, a grim nuclear-age allegory that launched the kaiju genre.
    434pts
24. 24
    Häxan

    Benjamin Christensen's 1922 Swedish-Danish docu-horror on witchcraft, full of startling devil imagery.
    434pts
25. 25
    The Innocents

    Jack Clayton's 1961 adaptation of The Turn of the Screw with Deborah Kerr as a haunted governess.
    367pts
26. 26
    Dracula

    Tod Browning's 1931 Universal film that made Bela Lugosi the definitive screen vampire.
    367pts
27. 27
    Eraserhead

    David Lynch's 1977 surreal debut about an anxious man and his mutant infant.
    367pts
28. 28
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

    Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 pre-Code version with Fredric March's Oscar-winning double role.
    289pts
29. 29
    Creature from the Black Lagoon

    Universal's 1954 film about an Amazonian amphibious Gill-man, the last of the classic monsters.
    289pts
30. 30
    Tetsuo: The Iron Man

    Shinya Tsukamoto's 1989 Japanese cyberpunk body-horror about a man turning into scrap metal.
    289pts
31. 31
    The Mummy

    Universal's 1932 film with Boris Karloff as the revived Egyptian priest Imhotep.
    289pts
32. 32
    Les Diaboliques

    Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 French thriller about a wife and mistress who drown a cruel headmaster.
    289pts
33. 33
    The Haunting

    Robert Wise's 1963 Shirley Jackson adaptation set in the malevolent Hill House.
    289pts
34. 34
    A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

    Ana Lily Amirpour's 2014 Persian-language vampire western set in the fictional Bad City.
    289pts
35. 35
    The Golem

    Paul Wegener's 1920 silent film about a clay giant brought to life in Prague's Jewish ghetto.
    289pts
36. 36
    Freaks

    Tod Browning's notorious 1932 circus drama cast with real sideshow performers.
    289pts
37. 37
    The Lighthouse

    Robert Eggers's 2019 film with Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as lighthouse keepers going mad.
    289pts
38. 38
    Island of Lost Souls

    Paramount's 1932 H. G. Wells adaptation with Charles Laughton as the vivisecting Dr. Moreau.
    289pts
39. 39
    I Walked with a Zombie

    Jacques Tourneur's poetic 1943 RKO voodoo chiller set on a Caribbean sugar plantation.
    197pts
40. 40
    Vampyr

    Carl Theodor Dreyer's dreamlike 1932 vampire film, shot in hazy, ghostly light.
    197pts
41. 41
    The Body Snatcher

    Robert Wise's 1945 RKO grave-robbing tale with Boris Karloff as a sinister cabman.
    197pts
42. 42
    Bride of Frankenstein

    James Whale's 1935 sequel, with Elsa Lanchester's lightning-streaked Bride.
    197pts
43. 43
    Repulsion

    Roman Polanski's 1965 study of Catherine Deneuve unravelling alone in a London flat.
    197pts
44. 44
    Black Sunday

    Mario Bava's 1960 Italian gothic debut with Barbara Steele as a vengeful executed witch.
    197pts
45. 45
    Dead of Night

    Ealing's 1945 British anthology, famous for its ventriloquist's dummy segment.
    197pts
46. 46
    The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

    Robert Wiene's 1920 German Expressionist nightmare about a hypnotist and his sleepwalking killer.
    0pts
47. 47
    Eyes Without a Face

    Georges Franju's 1960 French film about a surgeon stealing faces to restore his disfigured daughter's.
    0pts
48. 48
    Night of the Demon

    Jacques Tourneur's 1957 British film about a sceptic psychologist and a cult leader's curse.
    0pts
49. 49
    Village of the Damned

    The 1960 British film about an English village's eerie, golden-eyed telepathic children.
    0pts

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