Renaissance man of the Fantastique, Tim Lucas is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, critic, and blogger. A select few of his most recent achievements include the completion of the acclaimed biography Mario Bava: All The Colors Of The Dark and shepherding Video Watchdog to its 150th issue. He’s forgotten more about strange cinema than you will ever learn, so sit up straight and pay attention, because you’re about to get schooled.

In past Top Ten horror lists I’ve done, I’ve included certain titles that now strike me as better belonging to other genres, like Schoedsack’s King Kong (1933), Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (1946) or Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968). I’ve kept my list very focused on horror, which can encompass the allure and the repulsion factor of horror, but everything here frightened me on first viewing and continues to, on some level. I’ve eliminated anything I might have included that seems more closely allied to science fiction, fantasy, psychological drama, or other frontiers of imaginative cinema. I find the older the film, the more secure it is in its standing for me, while the more recent ones are subject to my own day-to-day fickleness. By and large, I find the truly great not as interesting as the offbeat, and would probably find the films on my Top 11-20 more interesting to list and write about. — TL

Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)
I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face/The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus; Georges Franju, 1959)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
I tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath; Mario Bava, 1963)
Operazione paura (Kill, Baby… Kill!; Mario Bava, 1966)
Toby Dammit (from Histoires Extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead; Federico Fellini, 1968)
Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
The Devils (Ken Russell; 1971)
Marebito (Takashi Shimizu; 2004)

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