Good Tidings (2016)
Psycho Santas
Another psycho Santa film – a genre that is almost gaining its own niche. This British entry fearlessly pushes its elements to an extreme that most of these other Christmas horrors balk at
Psychos and Serial Killers
Psychos and Serial Killers is an all-embracing term that refers to anybody of murderously psychopathic disposition in genre cinema. This can range from general murderers and Stalkers to persons of Disturbed Psychology and to those that fall under the modern description of a serial killer.
In textbook psychology terms, a psychopath is merely someone who displays antisocial behaviour and is lacking empathy – so we will specify here that a psycho refers to those with murderous intent and disturbed psychology in a horror context (so as not to include general all-purpose villains too).
The field is so prolific it is hard to say who the first screen psycho would have been. The first time this became a major genre was with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and its memorably gender-contorted, split-personalitied Norman Bates. The Psycho-Thrillers and Giallo Films that followed offered up a range of similarly gender-conflicted characters with strange psychological quirks.
This morphed into the psycho films of the 1970s, which placed less an emphasis on the thriller aspects and more on disturbed individuals and their often sordid states of mind. Plentiful psychos were found lurking in backwoods America to attacks passers-by in the Backwoods Brutality cycle.
The 1980s brought the Slasher Film where the psycho became a hulking Boogeyman or else a member among a group of teens nursing some troubled psychic split. Fatal Attraction (1987) produced a series of stalker films with vengeful women (usually) striking back for past or perceived slights.
The success of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) brought a public fascination with the term ‘serial killer’ and created the Serial Killer Thriller. In these, what was previously lumped together as being just ‘disturbed psychology’ was examined in terms of behavioural patterns that drove an individual to act, all of which could be deduced by minute examination of forensic evidence that gave key clues to their identity.
There is also a sizeable body of films about true-life psychopaths and serial killers. These are discussed under True Crime Films.
The Gore Gore Girls (1972)
Splatter Film
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter films about a killer who is targeting strippers. Lewis’s splatter outrageously over-the-top set-pieces are the only reason to watch
Graduation Day (1981)
Slasher Film
Another entry from the slasher heyday, appropriating a holiday as title. This is fairly tatty as the lowered standards of the slasher genre go, although the cast contains some interesting names in retrospect
Gravy (2015)
Psychos Imprison Staff of a Restaurant to Kill and Eat Them/Black Comedy
Three psychos who imprison the employees of a restaurant announcing they are going to kill and then cook all of them as a gourmet meal. A film made with a devastatingly black sense of humour
The Greasy Strangler (2016)
Gonzo Comedy/Grease-Covered Killer
The most likely response to this is going to be “WHAT THE $%@^* AM I WATCHING?” – a film so far removed from the average experience, so located in its own unique, utterly eccentric universe it has instant cult classic written all over it
The Great American Snuff Film (2003)
Sadism, Torture and Snuff Filmmaking
A really good, unrecognised early Found Footage film, supposedly a series of videotapes that chronicle the activities of a serial killer. A film that takes us inside an incredibly disturbed headspace
The Gruesome Twosome (1967)
Splatter Film
One of the splatter films from the cult figure of Herschell Gordon Lewis, who made some terrible films whose only watchability was extreme gore. This concerns a wigmaker who scalps them victims and sells their hair as wigs.
Guard from the Underground (1992)
Psycho Security Guard
An early Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, this starts out as a peculiar deadpan comedy about an office filled with strange characters before emerging as a slasher film of sorts as a hulking security guard eliminating people
The Guest (2014)
Sinister Stranger
Adam Wingard thriller about a sinister stranger who inveigles his way into a household. This does well playing off the handsomely polished charms of Dan Stevens, less well when it turns into an a left field action film
H (2002)
South Korean Serial Killer Thriller
A South Korean copy of The Silence of the Lambs where detectives find that a serial killer imprisoned in a cell is somehow causing others to continue his trail of killings
Halloween (1978)
Slasher Film
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
Halloween (2007)
Slasher Film
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
Halloween (2018)
Slasher Film
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what is a direct sequel to the original, erasing the continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
Halloween II (1981)
Slasher Film
The first sequel to Halloween, with Michael Myers pursuing Jamie Lee Curtis through a hospital. John Carpenter’s suspense is replaced by slasher hackery but in retrospect this is a lot better than the subsequent sequels
Halloween II (2009)
Slasher Film
Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his Halloween remake is a better film and closer to what the previous film should have been but his approach is still based on callous brutality than John Carpenter’s eerie suspense
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Slasher Film
Following John Carpenter’s departure from the Halloween series, the sequels begin their progression into a series of interchangeable slasher films in which Michael Myers is inevitably released to kill anew
Halloween 5 (1989)
Slasher Film
The fourth of the Halloween sequels where the series is by now is no more than a crudely directed slasher film, a far cry from John Carpenter’s eerily suspenseful original
Halloween Ends (2022)
Slasher Film
David Gordon Green and Jamie Lee Curtis return to round out their highly underwhelming Halloween reboot trilogy. By now, this feels like a Halloween film in name only
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)
Slasher Film
The seventh Halloween film, made for the original’s twentieth anniversary. This erases continuity to the other sequels and has Jamie Lee Curtis alive and pursued by Michael Myers again. Better than most of the other sequels.
Halloween Kills (2021)
Slasher Film
Sequel to the 2018 reboot/sequel to Halloween from David Gordon Greene, this is more scrupulous about paying homage to the original and recapturing something of John Carpenter’s original stylism
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
Slasher Film
The eighth Halloween film. This tries to throw in some novelty by combining Michael Myers with a reality tv show being filmed in his family home but is still the same uninspired thrills of the other sequels
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
Slasher Film
The sixth of the Halloween films, the fifth with Michael Myers. By now John Carpenter’s original eerie suspense has been reduced to crude slasher movie payoffs. This tries to add some nonsense about druidic cults
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Psycho Babysitter
One of the thrillers influenced by Fatal Attraction with Rebecca De Mornay giving an ice cold performance as a nanny who infiltrates a family seeking revenge for the death of her husband.
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (2025)
Psycho Babysitter
A remake of the 1992 film that starred Rebecca De Mornay as a psychopathic babysitter who enters a household seeking revenge. This updates the story for the 2020s, although is no less a conservative version than the original
Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Jack the Ripper's Daughter/Hammer Film
Classic effort from Hammer Films in which a psychologist discovers a troubled patient responsible for a string of murders is Jack the Ripper’s daughter. Made with much class
Hangman (2000)
Serial Killer Thriller
A serial killer thriller with Lou Diamond Phillips as a detective investigating a killer who challenges the police to games of hangman
Hangman (2017)
Serial Killer Thriller
A dreary revival of the 1990s serial killer thriller. The surprise for a work that has no ambition beyond cable filler is that it has attracted a name like Al Pacino who mugs and showboats through the worst performance of his career
Hangover Square (1945)
Mad Composer
Big man Laird Cregar gained a sudden fame as the killer in The Lodger and was quickly repackaged as another psychopathic killer in this vehicle where he plays a mentally disturbed composer
Hannibal (2001)
The Silence of the Lambs Sequel
The immediate sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Anthony Hopkins is back but Jodie Foster is not. Ridley Scott takes the director’s chair and creates a slick film but it lacks the compulsive grip the original held
Hannibal Rising (2007)
Hannibal Lecter Origin Story
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be who he was during World War II
Hard Luck (2006)
Odd Couple on the Run/Torture Film
Mario Van Peebles directs a beyond ridiculous getaway thriller that turns into Torture Porn. Cybill Shepherd gives a performance that seems determined to trash her image
Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970)
Giallo Thriller
Mario Bava essentially created the giallo film. Here he returns to the genre with an entry about an man obsessed with killing brides that comes filled with exquisitely stylish surroundings and directorial set-pieces
The Hatching (2016)
Killer Crocodile in Rural England
There feels like there should be something tongue-in-cheek about the idea of a killer crocodile film set in the British lakelands. Surprisingly, this plays itself seriously
The Haunted House of Horror (1969)
Old Dark House Thriller
The haunted part of the title is misleading but this is an attempt to update the Old Dark House thriller of the 1930s and 40s to the midst of Swinging 60s London and featuring a youth cast
The Haunted Strangler (1958)
Split Personalitied Killer
A split-personality killer film from the early days of the English horror cycle that fails through fundamentally absurd psychology and a hammy performance from Boris Karloff
Haunter (2013)
Ghost Story
Vincenzo Natali tackles the ghost story, turning everything on its head in a series of mind-boggling twists. One of the few post-Sixth Sense films to take the film’s big twist as its starting point and build from there
The Hawk (1993)
Wife Believes Husband May Be a Serial Killer
BBC produced film with Helen Mirren as a housewife who believes her husband might be a serial killer. Despite promise, this never digs in like a good thriller should
He Knows You’re Alone (1980)
Slasher Film
A derivative and fairly lacklustre entry in the 1980s slasher film that is clearly imitative of Halloween featuring a killer who stalks brides-to-be
Heart Eyes (2025)
Slasher/Romantic Comedy
This is a film that manages to be both a slasher film and a romantic comedy, two genres that do not at all seem to go together but are made to with undeniably appealing results
Hell Fest (2018)
Masked Psycho Stalks a Halloween Attraction
We have had several horror films set around Halloween haunts in recent years. This effort produced by Gale Anne Hurd is well above average and generates quite a degree of tension
Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)
Sadomasochistic Demons
The ninth Hellraiser sequel. Most of the others are a far call from Clive Barker’s original. This demonstrates that all hope is not lost in a wild and imaginative opening sequence
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Serial Killer
An immensely disturbing film loosely based on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. John McNaughton directs with a chillingly understated ordinariness and Michael Rooker has never been better in a role.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Part II (1996)
Serial Killer
A sequel to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer that lacks the raw and disturbing quality of its predecessor both in its direction and in the recasting of anonymous Neil Giuntoli as Henry
Hero and the Terror (1988)
Cop vs Psycho
One of Chuck Norris’s action films made for Cannon Films during his 1980s heyday. This is a rather forgettable police procedural where Chuck is cast as a detective hunting an escaped serial killer
He’s Out There (2018)
Backwoods Maniac
Cabin in the Woods drama with Yvonne Strahovski and her children terrorised by a hulking masked maniac. Tension and suspense that feels served by a conveyor belt
Hide and Go Shriek (1988)
Slasher Film
A 1980s slasher film that takes place in a furniture store after hours. The film has the novelty of featuring a gay killer – and the results are really quite bizarre
Hideaway (1995)
Psychic Link with a Serial Killer
A Dean R. Koontz adaptation from the director of The Lawnmower Man, this is a numbingly predictable film in which Jeff Goldblum returns from the dead to find he has a psychic link with a serial killer
Hider in the House (1989)
Psycho Hiding in the Attic
A psycho film with an original premise – Gary Busey as a psycho who builds a hidey-hole in the attic of a house where he spies on and tries to manipulate the lives of the family living there
Highwaymen (2004)
Cat and Mouse Game with a Killer on the Backroads
Robert Harmon made the classic The Hitcher, but failed to ever follow up on it. This is the sole work that ever came close – a beautifully tense series of games between Jim Caviezel and a motorised killer on the backroads
The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)
Backroads Brutality
Sequel to the 2006 remake of Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic (not to be confused with the sequel that Craven made to his original), this is premised around a series of extremely gory set-pieces
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Backroads Brutality
The second film from Wes Craven, a classic in the 1970s Backwoods Brutality cycle with a family stranded in the desert as they come under attack from a family of cannibals lurking in the hills
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Backroads Brutality
Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic gets a gore-drenched makeover from Alexandre Aja. One of the better amid the 2000s fad for horror remakes where the original is dragged into the modern day in some interesting ways
The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1985)
Backroads Brutality
Wes Craven makes a sequel to his earlier Backwoods Brutality classic but the result is a mess that is all over the place and counts as one of Craven’s worst films
The Hills Run Red (2009)
Backwoods Brutality
A Backwoods Brutality effort that is somewhat better than usual thanks to a darkly acerbic David J. Schow script that constantly subverts the expectations of the genre
The Hillside Strangler (2004)
True Life Serial Killers
Excellent film based on true-life serial killers Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono with C. Thomas Howell and Nicholas Turturro giving electrifying performances in the respective roles
Hitchcock (2012)
The Making of Psycho
A non-fiction film about Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho. The script does a great job nailing the psychological undertows and the parts are brought to life with several tour-de-force performances
The Hitcher (1986)
Psycho Hitchhiker
One of the best horror films of the 1980s, a grippingly suspenseful work where C. Thomas Howell is caught in a series of taunting psychological games across the interstate after offering psychopathic hitcher Rutger Hauer a ride
The Hitcher (2007)
Psycho Hitchhiker
Another disappointing remake of an 80s horror film, this misses the gripping suspense and everything that worked about the 1986 original and turns it into just another teen horror film
The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting (2003)
Psycho Hitchhiker
The Hitcher was a classic of 1980s horror. This is a cheap and indifferently made sequel that brings back C. Thomas Howell but misses all of the seat-edge suspense of the original
Holidays (2016)
Horror Anthology
Another in the spate of multi-director horror anthologies with each episode here being set around a holiday. As with these films, some of the episodes work well, some end with a puzzled WTF and most fall somewhere in between
The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979)
Psycho Film
A film from cult director Ray Dennis Steckler about psychos lurking around Hollywood Boulevard. Things get admirably twisted, while the work is a unique time capsule of the period
Home Sick (2007)
Various Killings
The first film from Adam Wingard from which it is hard to guess he would be a major director. This is a very amateurish work, nevertheless comes with an undeniable enthusiasm for the genre
Homeless Joe (2009)
Genetically Engineered Homeless Serial Killer
A low-budget film about a homeless man who has been turned into a serial killer by a series of experiments designed to create urban mayhem
The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
True Life Murderers
A film based on true-life killers Martha Beck-Raymond Fernandez who lured and killed women from Lonely Hearts ads. This comes with an incredible rawness and an unforgettable performance from Shirley Stoler
Horny Teenagers Must Die! (2024)
Slasher Film
A slasher film that certainly grabs your attention with a sensationalistic title. While not without occasional amusements, this is mostly amateurish
A Horrible Way to Die (2010)
Serial Killer
Adam Wingard has been a director on the rise in the last few years, although his films often feel as though they could have been more than they are. This mumblecore serial killer film is his most satisfying and fully achieved work so far
The Horror Show (1989)
Executed Killer's Supernatural Revenge
Routine executed killer comes back from the electric chair film made to exploit the success of Wes Craven’s Shocker. In some places this was sold as another of the House films
The Horror Vault (2008)
Compilation of Horror Shorts
A compilation of short horror films from Denmark
Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)
Psycho Crime Writer
A highly entertaining Herman Cohen production where Michael Gough plays a mad crime writer who employs a series of cruel sensationalistic deaths for his victims
Horsemen (2009)
Serial Killer Thriller
Serial killer thriller that brims with much Biblical imagery about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and passes through assorted increasingly improbable twists without much affect
Hounds of Love (2016)
Couple Abduct and Imprison a Teenage Girl
Australian film about a couple that abduct and imprison a teenage girl. This received some very good notices in theatrical release but as a horror film, it soft pedals and seems to avoid most of its horror element
House at the End of the Street (2012)
Psycho-Thriller/Crazed Family Member in the Cellar
Psycho-thriller that plays out like a creaky old deranged relative in the cellar film retooled as a teen romance until an absurd mid-film conceptual twist irredeemably kills the film off
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Backroads Brutality
Rob Zombie’s debut film was propelled into an infamy it didn’t deserve it was banned by its distributor. Zombie only slavishly rehashes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a constant posturing for shock effect that becomes tiresome
House of Mortal Sin (1976)
Psycho Catholic Priest
From British director Pete Walker who specialised in films about insane authority figures slaughtering Swinging Sixties youth – in this case, he caused a considerable stir with a film featuring a psychopathic Catholic priest
The House of the Dead (1978)
Horror Anthology
Not to be confused with the Uwe Boll videogame adaptation, this is an obscure but not entirely uninteresting horror anthology from the 1970s that tells several tales set around a funeral parlour
House of Wax (1953)
Mad Waxworks Curator
The film that launched Vincent Price as a horror icon where he plays a mad waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax. A remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum shot in the original 1950s 3D fad.
House of Wax (2005)
Wax Museum Slasher
Despite borrowing the title, this has the no connection to the 1953 film with Vincent Price as a mad waxworks curator and is a modern slasher film. Nevertheless, director Jaume Collet-Serra does come up with some very inventive dispatches
The House on Sorority Row (1982)
Slasher Film
A slasher film from the classic 1980s heyday set during a party at a sorority house. This has been praised as being one effort that is well above the rest of the genre.
House on the Edge of the Park (1980)
Home Invasion/Sadism and Brutality
From the director of Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato, comes this home invasion thriller that rips off The Last House on the Left. This was listed as a Video Nasty back in the day
The House That Jack Built (2018)
Serial Killer
Lars von Trier, who I would argue is the best director at work in the world, makes a film about a serial killer. The results, as you might expect from von Trier, are outrageous, blackly funny and challengingly provocative
The House That Screamed (1969)
Girl's Boarding School Psycho-Thriller
From the almost unknown Narciso Ibañez Serrador, this is essentially a giallo thriller made with the lush sensibilities of a Hammer film. Set in a girl’s boarding school, this substantially prefigures Suspiria
The House That Vanished (1973)
Psycho Film
Spanish director Jose Larraz gained a small cult reputation for his work amidst the 1970s Anglo-horror cycle. This is a psycho film where a model is stalked after witnessing a murder
Hunted (2020)
Woman Hunted Through the Woods
Solidly effective Belgian film about a woman fleeing through the woods from a killer who wants to make snuff movies. One of several films about people hunted in the woods to come out around the same time
Hunter Hunter (2020)
Wolf Attack in the Woods
A solid and well-made film that creates quite a reasonable tension as a family that live in the woods deal with a lurking wolf. What is going on sits in an interesting state of ambiguity.
Hunting Ava Bravo (2022)
Woman Pursued by a Hunter
A decent variant on The Most Dangerous Game with a woman forced to survive with her bare hands while pursued by a hunter, this places emphasis on the psychological interplay between hunter and hunted
Hush (2016)
Deaf Woman Stalked by a Killer
A Mike Flanagan film that keeps you in a state of seat-edge tension. The premise is a simple one – a deaf woman is terrorised by a killer waiting outside her house – but Flanagan delivers it with electrifying effect
I Came By (2022)
House Breakers Encounter a Psycho
Form the fine and underrated Babak Anvari, a tight thriller about a duo of graffiti artists who get more than they planned for when they break into the home of a psycho Hugh Bonneville
I Can’t Sleep (1994)
French Serial Killer
Claire Denis makes a film loosely based on the activities of a true-life drag performer/serial killer. However, she seems uninterested in developing plot or suspense
I Dismember Mama (1972)
Psycho Film
From they heyday of 1970s exploitation cinema, this is a rather sick and nasty little psycho film. Its themes would never be able to play today without major protests.
I Know Who Killed Me (2007)
Twin Psycho-Thriller
Widely ridiculed psycho-thriller starring Lindsay Lohan at the height of her tabloid headline phase and giving a zero effort performance as twins. Quite what is going on in the confused screenplay is anybody’s guess
I, Madman (1989)
Killer Emerges from a Book
A rather interesting horror film in which both the heroine and the heroine of the story she is reading are stalked by a disfigured madman, as the boundary between fiction and reality begins to dissolve
I Saw the Devil (2010)
South Korean Revenge Film
Overrated South Korean revenge thriller about a detective obsessively pursuing a serial killer that has a mild level of ultra-violence going for it but otherwise fails to grip or dig into a psychological darkness
I Saw What You Did (1988)
Prank Phonecall Psycho-Thriller
TV movie remake of a 1960s psycho-thriller about two girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a killer. The premise makes a lot more sense updated to the 80s
The Ice Cream Truck (2017)
Psycho Film
A horror film about a psycho ice cream truck driver prowling a suburban neighbourhood. The film is made appealing by its characterisation of the heroine
Identity (2003)
Remote Motel Psycho-Thriller
John Cusack leads a star cast line-up in what appears to be a slasher where a group of people gathered at a motel are being killed by someone among their number. Big conceptual twists then ensue
I’m Not Harry Jenson. (2009)
Psycho on a Tramping Expedition
A New Zealand-made film about a crime writer joining a party tramping through the bush as the group starts to be killed off by one among their number
In a Glass Cage (1986)
Nazi War Criminal
The original Apt Pupil, an extraordinary study in cruelty about a Nazi war criminal confined to an iron lung and the way his past cruelties influence a teenage boy reading his journals
In a Violent Nature (2024)
Slasher Film
A uniquely original film. Almost an arthouse take on a slasher film where we are placed in the hulking killer’s shoes and the rest of the show takes place in abstract brushstrokes
In Dreams (1999)
Clairvoyance Thriller
In one of his more mainstream films, Neil Jordan takes a leaf from Eyes of Laura Mars as Annette Bening gains psychic insight into the mind of serial killer Robert Downey Jr
In the Cut (2003)
Psycho-Sexual Thriller
Jane Campion makes one of the best post-Basic Instinct erotic thrillers with Meg Ryan as a teacher in New York caught between erotic awakening and a lurking killer