The 1,000 Greatest Horror Films
INTRODUCTION to the 1,000 Greatest Horror Films
Current Version: May 2024 (9th edition)
Welcome to the 2024 (9th edition) of They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?. We have added about 200 new lists to the collection this year. I have slightly changed the formatting on the site; I’ve moved the AKA title and added a new list of genres/themes at the bottom, taken from RateYourMusic. These aren’t complete and I need to adjust the coding to fit everything nicely. They’ll be added to the Google sheet at a later time so that you have more options to filter and search the full list. Not a ton of stuff has changed behind the scenes, however some lists have had updates and I tweaked the way rankings work for films outside the top 1000.
I use a Kemeny Young program made by Chris Reynolds that uses a particular scoring system with qualifiers. Films have to appear on a minimum number of lists AND a minimum number of ranked lists in order to be ranked with this system. So after a certain point it ignores these qualifiers and the rankings become mixed with films with 1 vote receiving more points than a film with 11 votes etc. Basically what I changed is that after the point the program ignores the qualifiers I have moved the films with 5 or less votes to the bottom, sorted by number of votes. This should hopefully mean films that should have the most attention are appearing before films that aren’t receiving as many nominations. This has no effect on the Top 1000, just makes the rest of the list a little nicer.
There is also a Facebook page for this site in case anyone wishes to keep updated through Facebook. I now have a Google sheet with a master list, all previous editions and a more comprehensive list of sources. A full list of all films can also be found on IMDb.
There are 39 new additions to the 2024 edition of the list.
2024 Edition Stats:
Decades
1910s: 3
1920s: 21
1930s: 36
1940s: 27
1950s: 46
1960s: 84
1970s: 154
1980s: 189
1990s: 113
2000s: 201
2010s: 121
2020s: 4
Regions
USA/Canada: 623
Europe: 286
Asia: 60
Australia/New Zealand: 23
South America: 9
Africa: 1
Top 10 Highest New Entries
403. El espanto surge de la tumba (1973)
437. Der Student von Prag (1926)
535. Le pacte des loups (2001)
538. The Last Wave (1977)
540. Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
542. Dead Calm (1989)
544. Seul contre tous (1998)
545. Blade II (2002)
561. La morte vivante (1982)
579. La main du diable (1943)
Currently 3,950 lists have been compiled into the final result. Weighting each list based on its type and source and using a few formulas, I’ve managed to narrow down 9,152 films into possibly the most definitive guide to the best horror films. As with any consensus list, it’s never going to be perfect and it’s always going to be partly a popularity contest but hopefully this list will help to guide your horror diet and discover some new films. This list can also be found on iCheckMovies, IMDb and Letterboxd. This site also uses information taken directly from IMDb, including the use of original titles. Please note that this list and website is not affiliated with Bill Georgaris’ ‘They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They’, but that the title, website design and compiling methods were inspired by it.
If you want some extra viewing, check out the Hidden Horrors list. The 21st Century list can also be found on iCheckMovies. These lists will be updated on the website at a later time.
I’m always on the lookout for new lists, so if you find a list that you think could be useful, please share them!
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