10 Best Horror Movies of All Time

The 10 best horror movies of all time are scary, suspenseful, and all-around entertaining. These following SPOOKTACULAR (sorry) horror movies will get you wetting your pants and/or sleeping with the lights on in no time.

1. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" This silent classic is not only one of the best horror movies, but quite possibly the first. It's a feel-good story about an evil doctor who employs the services of a 20-year-old nigh-comatose sleepwalker for murder and kidnapping. If you think a 90-year-old movie can't be scary, pop this one in around midnight and be wrong.
2. "Nosferatu" This 1921 vampire movie features a different Dracula than most of the more famous ones that would follow - and one of the best horror movie villains of all time. This version, (called "Count Orlock" for legal reasons) as played by Max Schreck is a hideous, deformed, un-dateable monster. "Nosferatu" came a decade before Bela Lugosi's suave romantic Dracula and remains the scariest.
3.  "Cat People" This space could be held by any of producer Val Lewton's movies of the 1940's, but "Cat People" is the most famous and possibly the best horror movie of the bunch. The plot turns around a Ms. Irena Dubrovna who fears that a curse placed on her ancestors will cause her to transform into a murderous cat if she becomes sexually aroused. Me-ow (sorry)!
4. "Psycho" The best horror movies are influential in addition to being pants-crappingly scary (to contemporary audiences, anyway). And none are as influential as Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." To this day you can see this movie's bloody fingerprints on everything from the various slasher series like "Halloween" to non-horror bloodletting like "Inglorious Basterds" or "Saving Private Ryan." But this movie's value goes beyond its influence - it's also an impeccably crafted horror-thriller that will stand the test of time better than 99% of the stuff that it influenced.
5. "The Exorcist" Even the best horror movies sometimes require a suspension of disbelief. Not so with "The Exorcist" which takes a ridiculous premise and makes it so believable even if you're Bill Maher you might be liable to start going to church after it's over.
6. "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" Sarah Palin likes to talk about how American small towns contain the best and most real Americans - those who haven't been corrupted by big city values like abortion, gay marriage, and leaving the house without your hat on. Anyone who's seen this - one of the scariest and best horror movies of the '70s - knows that while rural America has its charms, it also has its murderous psychotic cannibals.
7. "Carrie" Remember that weird kid in school? "Carrie" is the best horror movie for people who ever felt bad about making fun of her (or him), and for people who WERE her (or him). Also, pig's blood. Lots and lots of pig's blood.
8. "Alien" Many of the best horror movies are about real people facing real situations - it's scarier if after you walk out of the theater "it could happen to you." Funny thing about "Alien" - it's unlikely that any of us will ever be on a giant spaceship/haunted house watching out co-workers get picked off by a killer alien monster, and yet it seems more realistic than most "realistic" horror movies. Also, the alien's head looks kind of like a penis. We don't know what it means, but it freaks us out.
9. "The Shining" Women, huh? Can't live with 'em, can't bash their heads in with a baseball bat. Jack Torrence ignores that charming idiom in "The Shining," even though it's probably more likely the haunted hotel where he's staying with his wife that's responsible for his violent outbursts. Or is it? The best horror movies don't skimp on the art even while they're scaring the bejesus out of audiences, and "The Shining" is a shining (sorry) example of this.
10. "Se7en" Horror movies can make you afraid of things that you might never have thought about before you see them. For instance, after seeing this, you'll never look at razor-sharp dildos the same way again!