Horror films have been a staple of cinema for decades, captivating audiences from the silent film era to today’s modern slasher flicks. The genre’s enduring appeal ensures packed theaters, where eager fans seek thrills, chills, and heart-pounding suspense. This success often leads Hollywood to capitalize on popular horror films by producing sequels, launching franchises, and creating reboots and remakes.

It’s rare to find a horror movie that hasn’t been reimagined in some form. Occasionally, these remakes can rival or even surpass the original. However, more often than not, the unique impact of experiencing a fresh and innovative horror film for the first time is irreplaceable.

While films like “The Thing,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and “Nosferatu” have inspired successful remakes, other horror classics prove more challenging to reinvent. Even when a new version emerges with an original twist, it frequently pales in comparison to its predecessor, reinforcing the notion that certain masterpieces are best left untouched. Here are some timeless horror films that outshine their remakes.

As the Christmas season arrives in the quaint college town of Bedford, the sorority sisters of Pi Kappa Sigma eagerly anticipate returning home for the holidays. However, their excitement is dampened by a series of disturbing, obscene phone calls from a mysterious caller who threatens violence whenever Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) answers. Soon, the sorority sisters start disappearing, and local police lieutenant Kenneth Fuller (John Saxon) begins investigating, only to discover that the menacing calls are coming from within the house.

It’s Christmas season in the small college town of Bedford, and the sorority sisters of Pi Kappa Sigma are excited to go home for the holidays. A mysterious pervert keeps calling and leaving obscene messages, threatening violence whenever Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) answers the phone. Before long, the sorority sisters start turning up dead, and local police lieutenant Kenneth Fuller (John Saxon) starts tracing the calls, which seem to be coming from inside the house.

Fans of “A Christmas Story” might be stunned to learn that director Bob Clark previously helmed the holiday slasher “Black Christmas,” as violent and malicious a horror movie as you could possibly imagine. Yet even though its plot hinges on the murder of young women, it’s a surprisingly feminist film, with the character of Jess taking agency over her own destiny and confronting misogyny head-on. 

It’s certainly a more feminist text than either of the two critically-reviled remakes, the first of which came in 2006 and the second of which was released in 2019. Whereas those two rehashes came and went, the 1974 original has been called one of the greatest horror films of all time by the likes of Indiewire, Esquire, and Paste. Best of all, you can watch it on both Halloween and Christmas, making it a dark double-holiday treat.

Cast: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Andrea Martin

Director: Bob Clark

Rating: R

Runtime: 98 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Criterion Channel, Kanopy, Peacock, Apple TV

Shy teenager Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is constantly bullied by her classmates and tormented by her religiously fanatical mother, Margaret White (Piper Laurie). Strange things start happening whenever Carrie stands up for herself, and before long she realizes she’s gifted with telekinesis. Meanwhile, a group of mean girls led by Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen) want to get revenge on Carrie after a prank causes them to lose their prom tickets, and they devise a scheme to humiliate her in front of the whole school after she’s crowned prom queen. Unfortunately for them, their plan backfires in spectacular fashion.

As usual with Stephen King books, there are several screen adaptations of “Carrie,” including a 2002 made-for-television movie and a 2013 remake starring Chloë Grace Moretz as Carrie and Julianne Moore as her mother. Yet there’s no beating the 1976 original, which finds director Brian De Palma at the height of his abilities to apply the visual aesthetics of Alfred Hitchcock to modern-day horror. The film’s impact was so strong that both Spacek and Laurie earned Oscar nominations, a rarity for the horror genre. The same could not be said for the 2013 version, which was deemed a pale imitator by critics, nor the 2002 TV iteration, which met with a rancid reception.

Cast: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley

Director: Brian De Palma

Rating: R

Runtime: 98 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, MGM+, Apple TV

Looking for a good time, a group of Michigan college students travel to a remote cabin in the woods of Tennessee. Once there, Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), his friend Scotty (Richard DeManicor), and Scotty’s girlfriend, Shelly (Theresa Tilly) discover the Necronomicon — aka The Book of the Dead — along with an archeologist’s tape recordings of incantations from it. After playing the tape, the group inadvertently awaken evil spirits that haunt the cabin and possess them one by one, leaving Ash as the lone man left standing.

Shot on a shoestring budget by first-time director Sam Raimi, “The Evil Dead” became an instant horror classic by making good use of its limited resources, spawning not just a pair of Raimi-helmed sequels but an entire media franchise that encompasses video games, comic books, a TV show, a Broadway musical, and of course, a remake and reboot. Both Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake “Evil Dead” and Lee Cronin’s 2023 installment “Evil Dead Rise” were greeted respectfully enough by critics, proving that not every reboot has to feel like an insult to the original. Yet for all of the high production value that money could buy, there’s no competing with the creepy, unsettling power of the 1981 original, which feels like a cursed object meant to be seen by no one.

Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly

Director: Sam Raimi

Rating: NC-17

Runtime: 85 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Apple TV

On the eve of its centennial, the small Northern California coastal town of Antonio Bay starts experiencing strange occurrences that threaten to disrupt the festivities. As hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis) and radio host Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) witness unsettling visions of violence, local priest Patrick Malone (Hal Holbrook) uncovers a dark secret about the town’s history: 100 years ago, Antonio Bay’s founding fathers deliberately sank an incoming ship to prevent the passengers from establishing a leper colony nearby, taking the ship’s gold for themselves. A century later, the ghosts of those passengers have returned in an ominous fog, intent on revenge.

Few directors have been remade as frequently as John Carpenter, whose low-budget horror movies have often been updated with modern special effects and newfangled gore. Although critics were initially divided about “The Fog” upon its release in 1980, it’s since gained a cult following thanks in large part to an overall critical reevaluation of Carpenter’s work. It certainly helps that the 2005 remake didn’t just look poor by comparison: it was downright awful. Whereas Carpenter creates suspense by making you dread what’s lurking in the shadows, the remake plays like a hollow imitation of ’90s teen horror movies, sacrificing mood and atmosphere for jump scares and PG-13 bloodshed. 

Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook

Director: John Carpenter

Rating: R

Runtime: 89 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Kanopy, Apple TV

On Halloween night, 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers murders his older sister in cold blood, and is confined to a mental institution for the rest of his life. 15 years later, Michael has grown big and strong, and escapes from the care of Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence), a psychiatrist who believes he is the very embodiment of evil. Michael returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, armed with a butcher’s knife and donning a white mask to blend in with the neighborhood trick-or-treaters. He stalks and kills the local teenagers, setting his sights upon babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).

Considering the amount of sequels, remakes, and reboots that have come in its wake, it’s almost difficult to appreciate John Carpenter’s “Halloween” for what it is: a very scary movie. Released in 1978, it built upon the success of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” to popularize the teenage slasher flick, a sub-genre that dominated horror cinema throughout the next two decades. So great was its influence that Rob Zombie remade it in 2007, amping up the violence to a degree that many critics found unbearable and unnecessary. David Gordon Green put his own stamp on the franchise with a legacy sequel released in 2018, which was greeted with a much warmer reception (its two sequels not so much).

Cast: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P. J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, Nick Castle

Director: John Carpenter

Rating: R

Runtime: 91 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, AMC+, Apple TV

Convinced that 90-year-old Hill House is haunted, Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) invites a small group of people to stay there and study the effects of paranormal activity on humans. His guests are Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris), a neurotic woman who claims to have experienced supernatural phenomena in her past; Theodora (Claire Bloom), a psychic gifted with ESP; and Luke Sannerson (Russ Tamblyn), cynical heir to the estate who joins at the insistence of his mother (Fay Compton). Throughout the night, the quartet experience terrors beyond their wildest imagination, as Eleanor, who is wracked with guilt over the death of her invalid mother, becomes increasingly convinced that the house is speaking directly to her.

Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel “The Haunting of Hill House,” 1963’s “The Haunting” is a masterpiece of Gothic horror, suggesting untold terrors lurking behind every shadow. Directed by Robert Wise, it plays both as a classic ghost story and as a psychological thriller about a disturbed woman grappling with her own increasingly wobbly grasp on reality. The 1999 remake, on the other hand, sacrifices this complexity in favor of CGI ghosts, to less acclaimed results. Luckily, we also have Mike Flanagan’s looser but still chilling 2018 Netflix adaptation, “The Haunting of Hill House,” to wipe that bad taste from our mouths.

Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Fay Compton, Lois Maxwell

Director: Robert Wise

Rating: G

Runtime: 112 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Apple TV

Eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) throws a party to celebrate his new wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), inviting five strangers to a vast estate for the event. But this is more than just a friendly get-together: Frederick has invited his guests to a haunted house, and whoever can spend the night there will receive $10,000 (a lot of money at that time). As the evening’s festivities become increasingly terrifying, the group becomes wise to Frederick’s true motive, which is to murder his new wife just like his last two.

Released in 1959, “House on Haunted Hill” was one of Vincent Price’s best horror movies and an artistic highlight for schlock-meister William Castle, who sold his low-budget terror flicks on gimmicks and shock value. This film, for instance, was shot in “Emergo,” for which a red-eyed skeleton suspended from wires floated over the audience during the final moments to give you that true haunted house feeling. The 1999 remake probably could have used a bit more of that showmanship, or anything noteworthy, for that matter, considering it all but cratered with critics and made one yearn for the days of a William Castle extravaganza.

Cast: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook Jr.

Director: William Castle

Rating: Approved

Runtime: 75 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, AMC+, HBO Max, Kanopy, MGM+, Apple TV

Teenager Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) awakens from a nightmare involving a severely-burned man wearing a glove with finger-blades, finding strange slashes in her nightgown. Tina’s best friend, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), and Nancy’s boyfriend, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp), have also been having dreams of the disfigured man, who calls himself Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). When Tina is murdered in her sleep by Krueger, her boyfriend, Rod Lane (Nick Corri), is arrested for the killing. But when Nancy learns the horrifying truth of Krueger’s origins, she determines to draw the undead murderer into the real world to clear Rod’s name.

One of Wes Craven’s best movies, 1984’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” plunged into the depths of the subconscious to create a terrifying new movie monster, launching a franchise that encompassed nine films, the television show “Freddy’s Nightmares,” comic books, and video games. In each sequel, Freddy became increasingly comedic, and by the time Craven directed 1994’s “New Nightmare,” he was a meta-textual comment on the entire concept of horror cinema. The critically-reviled reboot, released in 2010, was an attempt to make Freddy scary again, but sacrificed the wit and intelligence that Craven brought to the original.

Cast: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, Johnny Depp, John Saxon

Director: Wes Craven

Rating: R

Runtime: 91 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Apple TV

While in Rome, American diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) adopts an infant orphan after his wife, Katherine (Lee Remick), gives birth to a stillborn child. Five years later, Robert and Katherine are living in London with their son, Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens), as strange occurrences start happening after his nanny hangs herself during his fifth birthday party. A troubled priest (Patrick Troughton) soon warns Thorn that his son is the Antichrist. Disbelieving at first, Thorn becomes increasingly convinced of his son’s true nature, and with the help of photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner), tries to stop Damien from bringing about the apocalypse.

Directed by Richard Donner, “The Omen” was one of the big hits of 1976, winning an Oscar for Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting score. Capitalizing on the Satanic panic that propelled “The Exorcist” to success, it preyed upon the fear every parent has of how their child might turn out when they grow up, taking that terror to irrational heights. Three sequels and a TV pilot followed, each one sillier then the last, and in 2006, a poorly-reviewed remake came about for seemingly no better reason than to capitalize on its 6/6/06 release date.

Cast: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw, Harvey Spencer Stephens

Director: Richard Donner

Rating: R

Runtime: 111 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Apple TV

Five teenagers — Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her paraplegic brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), and their friends Jerry (Allen Danziger), Pam (Terri McMinn), and Kirk (William Vail) — are driving through Texas to visit the gravesite of Sally and Franklin’s grandfather. During their trip, they find a ramshackle house in the middle of an empty field, occupied by a family of demented butchers who have constructed furniture with human skin and bones. Most terrifying of all is Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a large man wearing a mask made of flesh and wielding a chainsaw, who kills them one by one.

Few films have been as influential as Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” which ripped through grindhouse cinemas in 1974 like its title weapon. Taking its inspiration from the crimes of Ed Gein, it presented a terrifying new vision of horror that felt all the more palpable by virtue of its low-budget aesthetic. Practically inventing such slasher movie tropes as the final girl and the masked killer, the film spawned a legion of imitators, along with sequels, reboots, and remakes. The 2003 remake (renamed “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) amps up the gore to an unbearable degree, which critics believed made for a less terrifying experience.

Cast: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen

Director: Tobe Hooper

Rating: R

Runtime: 83 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Netflix, Peacock, Apple TV

One day, the residents of the small British village of Midwich mysteriously fall asleep, and the town’s women wake up to discover they are all pregnant. As the years pass, the children, all of whom have white-blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, grow up to become eerie little oddballs who seem strangely connected to each other. One of the parents, Professor Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders), suspects something is amiss, and it soon becomes clear that the women have been impregnated by extra-terrestrials and given birth to aliens with the power to read minds and control the actions of adults.

Released in 1960, “Village of the Damned” is one of the great sci-fi/horror flicks of the Cold War era, playing upon the paranoia of double agents and fear of the outsider bred by the decades-long conflict. The subject matter was ripe for a remake, and there was seemingly no better person to do that than John Carpenter, who updated the similar Cold War classic “The Thing from Another World” into “The Thing.” Unfortunately, the same Carpenter touch that turned “The Thing” into a new classic didn’t translate to his bland reboot of “Village of the Damned,” one of his worst critical failures.

Cast: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens, Michael Gwynn

Director: Wolf Rilla

Rating: Approved

Runtime: 77 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Apple TV

When a little girl goes missing, Scottish police sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) travels to the remote island of Summerisle to investigate. Upon arriving, he discovers the locals have adopted pagan rituals that offend his devout Christian faith, including public orgies and witchcraft cures. His search leads him to the town magistrate, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), who knows the truth about the girl’s disappearance. Unbeknownst to Sgt. Howie, he’s been lured to the island to be sacrificed, in a large wooden structure known as the Wicker Man.

Released in 1973, Robin Hardy’s “The Wicker Man” managed to be both a terrifying horror film and a pitch black satire of religious fundamentalism, mining big scares and subtle laughter as it barreled towards a shocking conclusion. Its influence can be felt in Ari Aster’s “Midsommar,” which similarly explored the ties between religion and sex in ways that were horrifying and hilarious. Unfortunately, that influence didn’t rub off on the actual remake, released in 2006 and directed by Neil LaBute. That film, which cast Nicolas Cage as the police detective, became an instant punching bag for its laughably bad set pieces (“Not the bees!”), earning a dismal score of 15% on Rotten Tomatoes and a Razzie nomination for worst picture.

Cast: Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland, Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt, Christopher Lee

Director: Robin Hardy

Rating: R

Runtime: 88 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video, Kanopy, Apple TV