Here are the 11 scariest 1970s horror movies. What a great decade for horror — and movies in general.
The Exorcist (1973)
it’s not only one of the scariest 1970s horror movies, but maybe the scariest of all horror movies — especially if you grew up believing in the existence of the devil.
The Exorcist is a meticulously terrifying film that earns every single scare, and has haunted pretty much everyone whose seen it… ever since.
It’s profoundly disturbing long before Linda Blair’s head starts spinning, The Exorcist did for unearthing ancient demons what Jaws did for going in the water.
What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)
This giallo thriller has a straightforward premise: a private school teacher becomes a murder suspect when he can’t provide an alibi for a killing — because he was in the arms of one of his students. The manner of death remains gasp-inducing, all these years later.
What Have You Done with Solange has a very dated approach to student-teacher relationships, and maybe all relationships, that adds to its unsettling atmospherics. A captivating film.
Last House on the Left (1972)
Last House on the Left is a great horror movie of the 1970s that feels like a commentary in the disappointments of the hopeful 1960s.
The directorial debut of future Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street icon Wes Craven, Last House on the Left is a difficult-to-watch story of two young women who are terrorized by escaped convicts. Eventually, parents seek vengeance. But before that you have to sit though a deeply unpleasant scene where the convicts treat the women horribly, and one walks hopelessly into water to die, rather than let it go on any longer.
It’s loosely based on Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, and carried the infamous tagline, “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, ‘It’s only a movie … Only a movie … Only a movie …'”
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
You’re creeped out just reading that title. The film’s relentlessly menacing atmospherics — buzzing flies, animal sounds — make it one of the creepiest things ever committed to film. The chainsaw stuff pushes it far over the top. But Tobe Hooper’s very smart direction also lifts it far above its many imitators.
Also: Grainy ’70s film stock makes everything scarier.
Black Christmas (1974)
Years before he made Porky’s and A Christmas Story — two diametrically opposite films — director Bob Clark made this movie with elements of both. It’s a bleak, spooky early slasher film set in a Canadian sorority house stocked with top-notch actors, including Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder.
It will change the way you look at plastic bags and make you grateful that phone calls are a lot easier to trace these days.
Jaws (1975)
A perfect movie that deploys its doll-eyed villain with impeccable skill, Jaws made everyone who has ever seen it think about sharks at least a little bit every single time we went to the beach for the rest of our lives. It’s still every bit as scary now as it was nearly 50 years ago.
Carrie (1976)
Based on the first Stephen King novel, Carrie remains anxiety-inducing not because of the literal bucket of blood, but because of the high-school cruelty that still rings in the souls of anyone who experienced it.
The casual bullying, from a time when it was much more tolerated than it is today, is as upsetting to watch as it ever was, making this one of the most profoundly upsetting horror movies for anyone who’s ever gone to high school. (It’s even scarier if you see it before high school and think is what it will be like.)
It’s very much a product of its time — when everyone was a little less concerned with people’s feelings, and the results could be grim.
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
George Romero’s sequel to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead tracks a zombie invasion from a besieged news station to a shopping mall, where a small band of survivors try to ward off an army of the undead and a whole lot of symbolism about consumerism.
It’s a violent, jolting zombie movie, a sharp-eyed satire, and a fabulous time capsule of late 1970s grit.
One of our favorite 1970s horror movies.
Halloween (1978)
A masterpiece of simplicity, this John Carpenter classic lays down the gauntlet from the very beginning with a scene from the POV of the very young Michael Myers, who will grow up to be one of the most relentlessly terrifying villains in cinematic history.
We soon switch to the perspective of Laurie Stroke (Jamie Lee Curtis, above), who will grow into one of the most beloved scream queens — and survivors — in all of horror. Right up until her big faceoff with Michael Myers in last year’s Halloween Ends, reputedly her final appearance in the franchise.
It’s also relatively tasteful compared to the slew of inferior horror movies it inspired.
Suspiria (1977)
A giallo masterpiece worth watching for the lurid colors alone, Dario Argento’s beautiful, haunting and terrifying story follows an American (Jessica Harper, above) at an elite German ballet academy who realizes, via some very creatively presented murders, that the school is hotbed of witchcraft.
The very confusing sequel, Inferno, released in 1980, is also very worth a watch. Don’t try to sort out the plot. Just let yourself be hypnotized in a wash of blood, color and fire.
Whether you like them or not, Argento makes the most visually stunning horror movies.
Alien (1979)
We know: Maybe you think of Alien as a sci-fi movie rather than a horror movie. Can we settle on sci-fi horror movie? Alien is one of the scariest movies on the list, and sneaks up on you like a drooling Xenomorph.
Ridley Scott’s second film masterfully starts things off with the extremely routine details of a space mission before walloping you with one of the most horrifying sequences in any movie — the Facehugger scene. Things only get worse from there.
And of course Sigourney Weaver’s Alien, who doesn’t seem like the main character at the start of the film, quickly became one of the greatest heroines in all of film. And if you love Alien, you’ll appreciate the many callbacks to it in the new Alien: Romulus.
Liked Our List of the Scariest 1970s Horror Movies?
You might also like this list of the 12 Rad ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember or this list of 5 Horror Movie Remakes That Improve on the Originals.
Main image: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.