Best Horror Movies of 1980, Ranked

A series of hideous murders is taking place, and Inspector Capell and cop-turned-novelist Lonergan are investigating. The murders are found to be the work of an out-of-control experiment in genetic engineering. The two men must descend into the city's sewer systems to destroy the horrific miscreation. It won't be hard to find, as it's already looking for its next victims...

A nuclear-plant leak turns a bus-load of children into murderous atomic zombies with black fingernails.

Survivors of a tragic shipping collision are rescued by a mysterious black ship which appears out of the fog. Little do they realise that the ship is actually a Nazi torture ship which has sailed the seas for years, luring unsuspecting sailors aboard and killing them off one by one.

A reluctant bride-to-be is stalked by a serial killer who only kills brides and the people around them. While her friends get whacked one by one, a hard-boiled renegade cop whose bride had been killed years before tries to hunt the killer down before it is too late.

When Dr. Pieter Fales' patients start receiving ominous letters and getting murdered by an unknown black-clad assailant, he and his daughter both come under suspicion.

A group of teenagers at a party find themselves being stalked by a maniacal killer in a Santa Claus costume.

A little girl named Cathy tries to keep her mother from making out with a man while driving one day, and she inadvertently causes her mother's death in the car crash. 16 years later, Cathy has changed her name to Helen and has become a psychotic actress. Things are going fine until horrible things starts to happened with the cast of her new play.

Three girls discover that two men are willing to do anything to impress Mother and what impresses Mother is watching her sons commit acts of rape and murder. Now these women are prisoners and lowered to pawns in the game of checkers between two dim wits and their Maniac Mommy and the question becomes, can any of them escape, alive?

After a new cannery introduces scientifically augmented salmon to a seaside town in the Pacific Northwest, a species of mysterious, mutated sea creatures begin killing the men and raping the women.

A schoolteacher moves into her deceased aunt’s house in a small Californian town, and is harassed by unfriendly locals and a mysterious hearse.

A former astronaut helps a government agent and a police detective track the source of mysterious alien pod spores, filled with lethal flesh-dissolving acid, to a South American coffee plantation controlled by alien pod clones.

Garbed in his red suit, Harry, a toy factory worker, decides that the only thing he can do to save the spirit of Christmas is to become Santa Claus himself and make all of the naughty townspeople pay... in blood!

Sandy and Greg are teenagers who go camping, despite warnings not to, with their friends. They soon encounter aliens, who are using the area as a hunting ground.

A shy, lonely film buff embarks on a killing spree against those who browbeat and betray him, all the while stalking his idol, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike.

A young girl witnesses the brutal murder of her stepfather at the hands of her brother, by mirror reflection. Years later, when the mirror is accidentally shattered, a dark and vengeful curse is unleashed on the family, and anyone unlucky enough to come into contact with its shards falls victim to heinous murder.

After an American family moves to an old country manor in rural England, one of the daughters is tormented by the spirit of the owner's long lost daughter, who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago during a solar eclipse.

A baby alligator is flushed down a toilet and survives by eating discarded lab animals that have been injected with growth hormones. The now gigantic animal escapes the city sewers and goes on a rampage, pursued by a cop and a big-game hunter.

A masked killer targets six college kids responsible for a prank gone wrong three years earlier and who are currently throwing a large New Year's Eve costume party aboard a moving train.

Farmer Vincent Smith and his sister Ida run a motel attached to a farm where they capture unsuspecting travelers, bury them alive, fatten them up and then harvest their bodies as ingredients for his famous brand of "smoked meats."

After a tragic event happens, composer John Russell moves to Seattle to try to overcome it and build a new and peaceful life in a lonely big house that has been uninhabited for many years. But, soon after, the obscure history of such an old mansion and his own past begin to haunt him.

A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of human consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from Native American shamans, he explores these altered states of cognizance and finds that memory, time, and reality itself are states of mind.

After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.

A woman seemingly dies of fright after participating in a séance where she sees a vision of a Dunwich priest hanging himself in a church cemetery. New York City reporter Peter Bell investigates and learns that the priest's suicide has somehow opened a portal to Hell and must be sealed by All Saints Day, or else the dead will overtake humanity.

A New York University professor returns from a rescue mission to the Amazon rainforest with the footage shot by a lost team of documentarians who were making a film about the area's local cannibal tribes.

A young man returns from Rome to his sister's satanic New York apartment house.

A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, kills and mutilates young women and local models on the streets of New York City.

Strange things begin to occur as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town's founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.

At a high school senior prom, a masked killer stalks four teenagers who were responsible for the accidental death of a classmate six years prior.

Jack Torrance accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren't prepared for the madness that lurks within.

Camp counselors are stalked and murdered by an unknown assailant while trying to reopen a summer camp that was the site of a child's drowning.