10 Horror Classics From The 1960s

The 1960s was a great decade for horror, paving the way for horror cinema to break into the mainstream during the 1970s and then explode everywhere in the 1980s. In fact, some of my favourite horror films were released in the 1960s, so allow me to take you through ten of my favourite horror films from the 1960s. Hopefully you come across something you haven't seen or heard of!

Eyes Without A Face (1960)

This French film directed by Georges Franju is renowned for being a sort of proto body horror film with some of its surgery sequences, but it is so much more that just that. Yes, it's surprisingly gory for its time, in all of its black and white glory, but it is also a deeply sad, mournful film about a refusal to properly deal with grief and tragedy. It's deeply affecting not just in its horror elements but also in its depiction of a family torn apart by grief and the outward effect that begins to have on the people around them.

Onibaba (1964)

This is a Japanese film that follows and woman and her daughter in law who has recently divorced her husband as they make a living during the Japanese civil war of the fourteenth century in the sazuki grass by killing naive soldiers and selling their armour. While one starts to have an affair, things start to get freaky when the other has a run-in with a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask. I put this in a similar category as films like The Witch or The Descent, where the environment plays such a huge role in the unfolding drama and horror. The long grass these women lives in is such a brilliant location for a horror film, and the noise of the wind blowing through the reeds more and more becomes its own character in the film.

The Innocents (1961)

Jack Clayton's film adaptation of Henry James' The Turning of the Screw is iconic gothic horror. It's influence has really been felt a lot over recent years, with things like The Haunting of Hill House, The Hole in the Ground, Crimson Peak and The Babadook (among many others) making explicit use of the gothic horror traits popularised in films like The Innocents. Before cattle-prod cinema became a thing, reorient yourself in the world of creepy, slow burn gothic horror by giving this classic a go.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Roman Polanski's horror classic needs to introduction at this point - it's slow burn horror at its finest, and an oddly accurate predictor of the domestic horror subgenre that would reappear in a huge way throughout the 2010s. 

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic almost wasn't made - the story goes that the studio was so hesitant to fund Hitchcock's detour into uncharted territory that he just used a TV crew to shoot what is now one of the most iconic horror films of all time. Rightly so, it is remembered in particular for its shocking shower sequence, in which Hitchcock puts the audience through the horror and terror of being brutally stabbed to death with 70-odd different camera angles and not a single shot of either the knife plunging into its victim or any real nudity. And while that is certainly one of the film's most memorable scenes, a lot of people leave their experience of the film there, and don't actually watch it in its entirety and experience first the borderline troll-like subversion of that scene killing the heroine we had started too root for at the end of the first act, and second how it then unravels into an exercise in insanity and the proto-slasher film it is now recognised as. I know a lot of you will think you've experienced Psycho from clips and sections, but trust me, if you haven't actually seen the film you won't understand what all the fuss is about. 

Repulsion (1965)

The second Polanski film on this list is just as fantastic as Rosemary's Baby, in fact I think I like Repulsion even more than I like Rosemary's Baby. The problem is that compared to Rosemary's Baby, almost nobody has seen this film. It is just as frightening, and just as deranged in its exploration of psycho-sexual terror.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George A. Romero's first film in his "Dead" trilogy at first glance seems dated and quaint when compared to its two follow-ups, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead (my personal favourite). In fact, I hadn't actually seen this for the longest time, assuming that compared to the other two it was going to be boring and slow. I have to admit, that there was a fair bit of people talking in rooms that began to wear me down as the film went on, but I was genuinely startled by the amount of tension in the film, and particularly just how gory the film is. It is by no means as visceral or fleshy as Day of the Dead, Tom Savini's masterclass in practical effects, but it is so much more than just a visual Rosetta Stone for zombie movies to come - it's genuinely frightening and unnerving, even if it does sag a little through the middle. 

Black Sunday (1960)

This cult classic famously didn't get on with film censors around the world, and so struggled to make the impact that it should have at its time of release, but if you can find it in its uncut version you could do a lot worse for a spooky movie night. 

Peeping Tom (1960)

This is another film that didn't get on well with censors at release, but it also was critically panned at the time. In a parallel universe in which Psycho was never released, Peeping Tom could well have taken up that mantle as the iconic 1960s horror film about a voyeuristic serial killer preying on women. The critics didn't know what to make of the films leering, misogynist villain and the film's portrayal of such subject matter, but in retrospect the film has been reassessed as the horror classic that it is. 

The Haunting (1963)

Mike Flanagan's Netflix mini-series adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House was immensely popular a few years ago, and rightly so, because it is not only a great adaptation of a classic chiller novel by Shirley Jackson, but it expands upon the source material and allows its 8-hour run time to really take advantage of its ability to go deep into the characters. By comparison, Robert Wise's 1963 adaptation is a much more streamlined, faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel, and a great companion piece for those who watched and loved 2018's The Haunting of Hill House as I did. Julie Harris and Claire Bloom give great performances, and it is rightly still considered one of the great horror films of the 1960s, if also a lesser-known one. 

There you have it - ten of my favourite horror films from the 1960s. There are plenty of other films that could have made my list if I were to have made it on a different day, just as I'm sure there are probably horror films from the 1960s that you love that didn't make my list - let me know in the comments what your favourite is, and which classic 1960s horror films I should have included in my list 

See you next time, legends!