# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published October 29, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-49-greatest-black-and-white-horror-movies*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Psycho** — score 1000/1000
   Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 shocker with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and the famous shower scene.
2. **The Thing from Another World** — score 753/1000
   The 1951 Howard Hawks-produced film about an Arctic base besieged by an alien.
3. **Nosferatu** — score 749/1000
   F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent vampire film, an unauthorised Dracula with Max Schreck as Count Orlok.
4. **Night of the Living Dead** — score 626/1000
   George A. Romero's 1968 independent film that created the modern flesh-eating zombie.
5. **The Wolf Man** — score 587/1000
   Universal's 1941 werewolf film starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the cursed Larry Talbot.
6. **The Old Dark House** — score 587/1000
   James Whale's 1932 darkly comic tale of stranded travellers in a sinister Welsh mansion.
7. **Carnival of Souls** — score 587/1000
   Herk Harvey's eerie 1962 low-budget cult film about an organist drawn to an abandoned pavilion.
8. **The Phantom of the Opera** — score 542/1000
   The 1925 silent classic with Lon Chaney's famous unmasking beneath the Paris Opera.
9. **Cat People** — score 542/1000
   Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur's 1942 RKO film of shadows and suggestion about a woman who fears she turns into a panther.
10. **House on Haunted Hill** — score 542/1000
   William Castle's 1959 gimmick-filled chiller with Vincent Price hosting a deadly overnight party.
11. **The Black Cat** — score 542/1000
   The 1934 Universal film pairing Karloff and Lugosi in a Bauhaus fortress built on a war graveyard.
12. **Them!** — score 542/1000
   The 1954 Warner Bros. atomic-age thriller about giant irradiated ants in the New Mexico desert.
13. **Kuroneko** — score 542/1000
   Kaneto Shindo's 1968 Japanese ghost story of murdered women returning as vengeful cat spirits.
14. **Onibaba** — score 542/1000
   Kaneto Shindo's 1964 Japanese film about two women who kill samurai in the reeds, and a demon mask.
15. **Frankenstein** — score 491/1000
   James Whale's 1931 Universal classic with Boris Karloff as the flat-headed Monster.
16. **Invasion of the Body Snatchers** — score 491/1000
   Don Siegel's 1956 paranoid classic about townspeople replaced by emotionless pod duplicates.
17. **The Invisible Man** — score 491/1000
   James Whale's 1933 Universal film with Claude Rains as the unseen, unhinged scientist.
18. **White Zombie** — score 491/1000
   The 1932 independent chiller with Bela Lugosi as a Haitian voodoo master, often called the first zombie feature.
19. **Young Frankenstein** — score 491/1000
   Mel Brooks's 1974 loving black-and-white parody of the Universal Frankenstein films.
20. **What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?** — score 434/1000
   Robert Aldrich's 1962 psycho-biddy shocker pitting Bette Davis against Joan Crawford.
21. **The Uninvited** — score 434/1000
   Paramount's 1944 haunted-house film on the Cornish coast, one of Hollywood's first serious ghost stories.
22. **Son of Frankenstein** — score 434/1000
   The 1939 third Frankenstein film, Karloff's last turn as the Monster alongside Lugosi's Ygor.
23. **Godzilla** — score 434/1000
   Ishiro Honda's 1954 Toho original, a grim nuclear-age allegory that launched the kaiju genre.
24. **Häxan** — score 434/1000
   Benjamin Christensen's 1922 Swedish-Danish docu-horror on witchcraft, full of startling devil imagery.
25. **The Innocents** — score 367/1000
   Jack Clayton's 1961 adaptation of The Turn of the Screw with Deborah Kerr as a haunted governess.
26. **Dracula** — score 367/1000
   Tod Browning's 1931 Universal film that made Bela Lugosi the definitive screen vampire.
27. **Eraserhead** — score 367/1000
   David Lynch's 1977 surreal debut about an anxious man and his mutant infant.
28. **Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde** — score 289/1000
   Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 pre-Code version with Fredric March's Oscar-winning double role.
29. **Creature from the Black Lagoon** — score 289/1000
   Universal's 1954 film about an Amazonian amphibious Gill-man, the last of the classic monsters.
30. **Tetsuo: The Iron Man** — score 289/1000
   Shinya Tsukamoto's 1989 Japanese cyberpunk body-horror about a man turning into scrap metal.
31. **The Mummy** — score 289/1000
   Universal's 1932 film with Boris Karloff as the revived Egyptian priest Imhotep.
32. **Les Diaboliques** — score 289/1000
   Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 French thriller about a wife and mistress who drown a cruel headmaster.
33. **The Haunting** — score 289/1000
   Robert Wise's 1963 Shirley Jackson adaptation set in the malevolent Hill House.
34. **A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night** — score 289/1000
   Ana Lily Amirpour's 2014 Persian-language vampire western set in the fictional Bad City.
35. **The Golem** — score 289/1000
   Paul Wegener's 1920 silent film about a clay giant brought to life in Prague's Jewish ghetto.
36. **Freaks** — score 289/1000
   Tod Browning's notorious 1932 circus drama cast with real sideshow performers.
37. **The Lighthouse** — score 289/1000
   Robert Eggers's 2019 film with Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as lighthouse keepers going mad.
38. **Island of Lost Souls** — score 289/1000
   Paramount's 1932 H. G. Wells adaptation with Charles Laughton as the vivisecting Dr. Moreau.
39. **I Walked with a Zombie** — score 197/1000
   Jacques Tourneur's poetic 1943 RKO voodoo chiller set on a Caribbean sugar plantation.
40. **Vampyr** — score 197/1000
   Carl Theodor Dreyer's dreamlike 1932 vampire film, shot in hazy, ghostly light.
41. **The Body Snatcher** — score 197/1000
   Robert Wise's 1945 RKO grave-robbing tale with Boris Karloff as a sinister cabman.
42. **Bride of Frankenstein** — score 197/1000
   James Whale's 1935 sequel, with Elsa Lanchester's lightning-streaked Bride.
43. **Repulsion** — score 197/1000
   Roman Polanski's 1965 study of Catherine Deneuve unravelling alone in a London flat.
44. **Black Sunday** — score 197/1000
   Mario Bava's 1960 Italian gothic debut with Barbara Steele as a vengeful executed witch.
45. **Dead of Night** — score 197/1000
   Ealing's 1945 British anthology, famous for its ventriloquist's dummy segment.
46. **The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari** — score 0/1000
   Robert Wiene's 1920 German Expressionist nightmare about a hypnotist and his sleepwalking killer.
47. **Eyes Without a Face** — score 0/1000
   Georges Franju's 1960 French film about a surgeon stealing faces to restore his disfigured daughter's.
48. **Night of the Demon** — score 0/1000
   Jacques Tourneur's 1957 British film about a sceptic psychologist and a cult leader's curse.
49. **Village of the Damned** — score 0/1000
   The 1960 British film about an English village's eerie, golden-eyed telepathic children.

Tags: movies, horror, classics, black and white