Best 1980s Horror Movies Ranked

Students from Miskatonic University decide to spend the night in the Winthrop house, a spot widely believed to have been haunted for the past 300 years, ever since Joshua Winthrop was horribly murdered and mutilated by the hideous creature born of his wife.

On a quiet, tree-lined street, an old television set receives a single channel that repeats the same horror film over and over, freeing zombies from the grave to kill.

A group of hobos begin melting into multicolored piles of goo after drinking sixty-year-old liquor. At the same time, the psychotic Vietnam War vet who rules the hobo camp snaps and begins killing at random. Two brothers set out to stop the liquor and the killer.

Faced with the town lawyer, the sheriff, and a rival slaughterhouse owner trying to purchase his land, Lester Bacon decides to take matters into his own hands, ordering his hulking and mentally deranged son to permanently dispose of anyone who conspires against them.

Five-thousand-year-old vampire Miriam promises her lovers the gift of eternal life. When John, her cellist companion for centuries, discovers that he has suddenly begun growing old, he attempts to seek out the help of Dr. Sarah Roberts, a researcher on the mechanisms of aging.

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 bullied unpopular high school student named Hoax finds an ad for 976-EVIL, a number that provides daily 'horrorscopes'. But when he calls the number he gains demonic powers, which he uses to seek vengeance against those who bullied him.

Horrifying shocker as a biological experiment goes haywire when meat-eating mutant roaches invade an island community, terrorizing a peaceful New England fishing village and hideously butchering its citizens.

To debunk the Amityville house's infamous reputation and take advantage of a rock-bottom asking price, skeptical journalist John Baxter buys the place and settles in to write his first novel.

When the senior sorority sisters of Theta Pi decide to do in their demented house mother, someone seeks revenge, and begins a night of terror and madness.

When tragedy strikes his remarkable robot and the beautiful girl next door, lonely teenage genius Paul tries to save them by pushing technology beyond its known limits into a terrifying new realm.

Playing around with a Ouija board, a trio of friends succeeds in contacting the spirit of a young boy. Trouble begins when the evil spirit, Malfeitor, takes over one of their bodies.

In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a fraternity accidentally thaw the corpse, which proceeds to infect the campus with parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies.

Toxic waste dumping in a small Idaho town turns a young boy into horrible mutant monster. The town's police chief and a government scientist team up to stop the monster, which is quickly killing off the town's citizenry.

A posh couple experience car trouble on their way to a villa party and stop into a local mechanic's shop for assistance, unaware of his shady background. After he and his mentally challenged assistant fix the car, the couple invite them to the party to return the favor, leading to an evening of mayhem.

A rash of bizarre murders in New York City seems to point to a group of grotesquely deformed vagrants living in the sewers. A courageous policeman, a photojournalist and his girlfriend, and a nutty bum, who seems to know a lot about the creatures, band together to try and determine what the creatures are and how to stop them.

A fleeing gangland flunky discovers the New York nest of Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl, the man-eating flying serpent.

Angela Baker escapes from a mental hospital and surfaces at a summer camp as a counselor who lectures her teenage charges on proper moral behavior. Those teens who break her strict rules -- from the camp chatterbox or a sex-obsessed girl to the boys who are peeping Toms -- are murdered by the impostor in various gruesome ways. As more campers go missing, intrepid counselor Molly begins to piece together the truth.

Mike, after his release from a psychiatric hospital, teams up with his old pal Reggie to hunt down the Tall Man, who is at it again. A mysterious, beautiful girl has also become part of Mike's dreams, and they must find her before the Tall Man does.

Something or someone is attacking people one by one on the beach. Some of them are mutilated, but most of them are sucked into the sand, disappearing without a trace. What is the creature responsible? Where does it live, and where did it come from? And is there any chance of it reproducing? Meanwhile, David Huffman and Mariana Hill are once-almost-married old friends, reunited over the death of her mother on the beach, and searching for clues in the abandoned buildings where they used to play when they were young.

Upon joining a sorority, Beth is plagued by nightmares of a knife-wielding killer, when her past comes back to haunt her.

Bullied by classmates, a pudgy military-school student fights back by computer with the devil.

Taking a wrong turn, travelers find themselves trapped in a mysterious house. One horror after another threatens them, as the sorcerer who lives within needs sacrifices to give eternal life to his beautiful bride.

A trio of female reporters find themselves staying overnight in a house occupied by a hostile being lurking in the basement

Madman Marz, an old folklore legend who murdered his family before escaping into the woods, is inadvertently summoned to a campsite to finish the spree he started decades ago.

A group of friends head out for what is expected to be a vacation of hiking, camping and a good time, but when a backwoods mama finds them on her turf, it becomes anything but a vacation.

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."

A deranged, misogynistic killer assaults a journalist. When he discovers that she survived the attack, he follows her to the hospital to finish her off.

Thirty years after a murder on the night of Avalon Bay's graduation dance, the sleepy town's teens meet grisly ends at the hands of a prowler once thought to be a jilted soldier home from war.

A quartet of murderous psychopaths break out of a mental hospital during a power blackout and lay siege to their doctor's house.

High-tech robots equipped with state-of-the-art security devices have been recruited as the new mechanical "night watchmen" for the Park Plaza Mall. When a jolting bolt of lightning short-circuits the main computer control, the robots turn into "killbots" on the loose after unsuspecting shoppers!

As soon as Muffy St. John and her college friends arrive on her parents' secluded island, someone starts trimming the guest list... one murder at a time.

An amnesiac sorority member who has been plagued by a recurring nightmare is stalked alongside other coeds by a killer in a deserted department store where they are completing a hazing ritual.

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.

As an initiation rite into Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity, four pledges must spend a night in Garth Manor, twelve years to the day after the previous resident murdered his entire family.

Otherworldly creatures inhabit the bootlegging tunnels underneath a small town mining community, and they kill any of the townsfolk who invade their home.

Arriving in Chicago, Henry moves in with ex-con acquaintance Otis and starts schooling him in the ways of the serial killer.

After years of separation, Irena Gallier and her minister brother, Paul, reunite in New Orleans. When zoologists capture a wild panther, Irena is drawn to the cat – and zoo curator Oliver to her. Soon, Paul will have to reveal the family secret: that when sexually aroused, they revert into predatory jungle cats.

A young man carrying a big basket that contains his extremely deformed, formerly conjoined twin brother seeks vengeance on the doctors who separated them against their will.

A group of kids discover one of the drums containing a rotting corpse and release the 2-4-5 Trioxin gas into the air, causing the dead to once again rise from the grave and seek out brains.

After a doctor kills his mistress and himself while researching the mysterious previous owner of his Boston home, his colleague, Dr. Norman Boyle, takes over his studies and moves his family into the Boston mansion. Soon after, Boyle's young son Bob becomes plagued by visions of a young girl, who warns him of the danger within the house.

After a man dressed as Santa Claus brutally murders Billy Chapman's parents, little Billy then endures the cruelty of a sadistic nun at his orphanage. Years later, when adult Billy has to fill in for an absent in-store Santa, his childhood trauma brings him to the breaking point.

Roger Cobb, a divorced horror novelist coming to terms with the disappearance of his young son, inherits an old mansion home to malevolent supernatural residents.

Trish invites her high school basketball teammates over for a night they'll never forget when an unexpected guest crashes the party: an escaped psychopath with a portable power drill.

A group of tenants and visitors are trapped in a 10-story high-rise apartment building infested with demons who proceed to hunt the dwindling humans down.

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 caretaker at a summer camp is burned when a prank goes tragically wrong. After several years of intensive treatment at hospital, he is released back into society, albeit missing some social skills. What follows is a bloody killing spree with the caretaker making his way back to his old stomping ground to confront one of the youths that accidentally burned him.

Rebellious teen Amy defies her parents by going to a trashy carnival that has pulled into town. In tow are her boyfriend, Buzz, and their friends Liz and Richie. Thinking it would be fun to spend the night in the campy "Funhouse" horror ride, the teens witness a murder by a deformed worker wearing a mask. Locked in, Amy and her friends must evade the murderous carnival workers and escape before it leaves town the next day.

In Arborville, California, three high school students try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches.

After failing to kill stubborn survivor Laurie and taking a bullet or six from former psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis, Michael Myers has followed Laurie to the Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, where she's been admitted for Myers' attempt on her life. The institution proves to be particularly suited to serial killers, however, as Myers cuts, stabs and slashes his way through hospital staff to reach his favorite victim.

Brian comes under the addictive spell of a parasite with the ability to induce euphoric hallucinations in its hosts.

While a group of young actors rehearse a new musical about a mass murderer, a notorious psychopath escapes from a nearby insane asylum.

Bill Whitney is worried that he is different to his sister and parents. They mix with other upper-class people while Bill is more down to earth. Even his girlfriend seems a bit odd. All is revealed when Bill returns home to find a party in full swing.

Seemingly mild-mannered Henry Morrison has just murdered his entire family. After adopting a new identity and skipping town, he begins building a new relationship with a widow and her teenage daughter. However, he soon begins struggling to hide his true identity and maintain a grip on reality.

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 friendly St. Bernard named "Cujo" contracts rabies and conducts a reign of terror on a small American town.

A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders.

On a stormy night, young Jim, who transports a luxury car from Chicago to California to deliver it to its owner, feeling tired and sleepy, picks up a mysterious hitchhiker, who has appeared out of nowhere, thinking that a good conversation will help him not to fall asleep. He will have enough time to deeply regret such an unmeditated decision.

A group of people are trapped in a West Berlin movie theater infested with ravenous demons who proceed to kill and possess the humans one-by-one, thereby multiplying their numbers.

After a man with extraordinary, and frighteningly destructive, telepathic abilities is nabbed by agents from a mysterious rogue corporation, he discovers he is far from the only possessor of such strange powers. Some of the other “scanners” have their minds set on world domination, while others are trying to stop them.

Nerdy high schooler Arnie Cunningham falls for Christine, a rusty 1958 Plymouth Fury, and becomes obsessed with restoring the classic automobile to her former glory. As the car changes, so does Arnie, whose newfound confidence turns to arrogance behind the wheel of his exotic beauty. Arnie's girlfriend Leigh and best friend Dennis reach out to him, only to be met by a Fury like no other.

A priest discovers an ancient canister containing a strange liquid in an abandoned church. When a group of graduate students and scientists are tasked with studying it, they unknowingly unleash an evil force waiting to destroy all of humanity.

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

In 1979, a group of college students find a Sumerian Book of the Dead in an old wilderness cabin they've rented for a weekend getaway.

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

The Resonator, a powerful machine that can control the sixth sense, has killed its creator and sent his associate into an insane asylum. When a psychiatrist becomes determined to continue the experiment, she unwittingly opens the door to a hostile parallel universe.

Years after a terrible boating accident, Angela is sent to Camp Arawak where a series of bizarre and violent "accidents" begin to claim the lives of various campers.

A Harvard anthropologist is sent to Haiti to retrieve a strange powder that is said to have the power to bring human beings back from the dead. In his quest to find the miracle drug, the cynical scientist enters the rarely seen netherworld of walking zombies, blood rites and ancient curses. Based on the true life experiences of Wade Davis and filmed on location in Haiti, it's a frightening excursion into black magic and the supernatural.

A razor-wielding serial killer is on the loose, murdering those around Peter Neal, an American mystery author in Italy to promote his newest novel.

Elliot, a successful gynecologist, works at the same practice as his identical twin, Beverly. Elliot is attracted to many of his patients and has affairs with them. When he inevitably loses interest, he will give the woman over to Beverly, the meeker of the two, without the woman knowing the difference. Beverly falls hard for one of the patients, Claire, but when she inadvertently deceives him, he slips into a state of madness.

A young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural "accidents", she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to Hell.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

Twenty years after a Valentine's Day tragedy claimed the lives of five miners, Harry Warden returns for a vengeful massacre among teen sweethearts gearing up for another party.

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.

After a bizarre and near fatal encounter with a serial killer, a newswoman is sent to a rehabilitation center whose inhabitants may not be what they seem.

A farm boy reluctantly becomes a member of the undead when a girl he meets turns out to be part of a band of vampires who roam the highways in stolen cars.

When a group of teenagers inadvertently kill his only son, Ed Harley seeks the powers of a backwoods witch to bring the child back to life.

As the president of a trashy TV channel, Max Renn is desperate for new programming to attract viewers. When he happens upon "Videodrome," a TV show dedicated to gratuitous torture and punishment, Max sees a potential hit and broadcasts the show on his channel. However, after his girlfriend auditions for the show and never returns, Max investigates the truth behind Videodrome and discovers that the graphic violence may not be as fake as he thought.

After receiving an exotic small animal as a Christmas gift, a young man inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet, which unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous creatures on a small town.

After the Creed family's cat is accidentally killed, a friendly neighbor advises its burial in a mysterious nearby cemetery.

When two bumbling employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to rise again as zombies.

Charley Brewster, a high school student, accidentally discovers the true and creepy nature of Jerry Dandrige, his dashing and enigmatic new neighbor; but no one seems willing to believe him.

After being shot in a toy store, a serial killer transfers his soul into a Good Guy doll. A mother then gifts it to her 6-year old son Andy, which unleashes terror upon the city.

Conducting clandestine experiments within the morgue at Miskatonic University, scientist Herbert West reveals to a fellow graduate student his groundbreaking work concerning the re-animation of fresh corpses.

When an unsuspecting town newcomer is drawn to local blood fiends, the Frog brothers and other unlikely heroes gear up to rescue him.

As the world is overrun by zombies, scientists and military personnel in an underground Florida bunker must decide on how they should deal with the undead.

Five grisly tales from a 1950s-style comic, including a murdered father rising from beyond, a bizarre meteor, a vengeful husband, a mysterious crate's occupant, and a plague of cockroaches.

American tourists David and Jack are savagely attacked by an unidentified animal while hiking on the Yorkshire Moors. After retiring to the home of a beautiful nurse to recuperate, David soon begins experiencing disturbing changes to his body and mind.

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.

When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.

A hedonistic man finds a mysterious puzzle box that summons a group of gruesome beings known as the Cenobites. These otherworldly entities open the doors to a dominion where pain and pleasure are indivisible.

Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda find a log cabin in the woods with a voice recording from an archeologist who had recorded himself reciting ancient chants from "The Book of the Dead." As they play the recording an evil power is unleashed taking over Linda's body.

Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter, Nancy Thompson, traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger, who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, must devise a plan to lure the monster out of the realm of nightmares and into the real world...

The Freelings' suburban home becomes the center of paranormal activity that opens a portal to the 'other side'. With help, they must cross over to get their daughter back.

A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.

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.