The 70s seems as though there was a lot of transition going on from the cerebral to the visceral when it came to movies, horror movies in particular since the gore was starting to become increasingly graphic and the effects were actually getting a lot better, thereby leading the way for more gory sequences that could freak the audience out and make the movies even more memorable. There are many stages of horror after all and once you get past the psychological aspect and start to drag it into the biological it’s kind of obvious where the terror is heading, directly beneath the skin where it’s bound to creep a bunch of people out since let’s face it, anything that does damage to or alters a person’s body in any way in a horror movie is going to be graphic and altogether nightmarish in appearance. And the 70s didn’t disappoint.
Here are some of the best horror movies from the 70s.
5. Alien
In space no can hear you, well, you know. What wasn’t known at the time was just how terrifying this movie was going to be and how popular it would eventually become as one of the prime science fiction/horror classics of the decade. Back then it was likely that many people believed this to be a one and done, but there might have been some people to think that there was more to the story thanks to the discovery on LV-426. Since then the Alien saga has only expanded into books, comics, games, and more movies of course since it is a great idea and one that’s been able to be held up as an industry standard for a long time.
4. Jaws
Of course when we’re talking about industry standards you can’t forget the one undersea critter that caused a lot of people to think of the entire ocean as a death trap. Believe it or not some people were even looking to rivers, lakes, in some irrational cases swimming pools, thinking that a man-eater would appear out of nowhere. While the effects of Jaws have been kind of cheesy throughout the years there’s no denying that the terror this film initially brought to the for is something that was unique for the time and proved that no one is completely safe in a horror movie be they women or children.
3. Halloween
This is another movie that’s kind of been allowed to be remade and made again in order to try and capture the same magic that it sparked way back when. The problem with this however is that the original is always bound to be seen as the best since it’s the one that produced the most genuine scares without the expectations that have come since. Michael Meyers has after all been the kind of stalker that seems to keep coming and coming no matter what you do to him, and throughout each movie there’s always some horrendous injury that should end him, but it never seems to be quite enough.
2. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Welcome to one of the most disturbing and likely terrifying horror movies ever conceived of, and one that to this day people are still wondering about the validity of since the idea that something this horrific happened is of course going to get a decent amount of attention. Since the first movie there have been a few pretenders to the throne but none have ever really captured the same amount of scares. It’s definitely gotten far gorier and a lot more shocking throughout the years, but somehow the first of any series is always going to be the best unless the first movie was just that godawful and needed to be rebooted.
1. The Exorcist
People still talk about this movie and what it meant to people, and what it did to a lot of folks when it came to their psychological mindset. The Exorcist as a book was terrifying enough if you were reading it alone in the dark, but the movie took the book to another level and got truly evil in a big way. Since it was released a lot of movies have tried to follow the same pattern in many different ways but none of them have quite hit the mark, not even the follow-up movies that were used as sequels to this one. Something about an original movie just seems to raise the bar to a level that a lot of successors can’t possibly reach, and in some cases this means that the shock value and the effects are going to be used in an attempt to outdo or at least pay homage to the original. It does work in some instances but a lot of times you just can’t beat the original movie.
The 70s were definitely ready by the end of their run to give birth to a whole new era of horror.
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