While you may be familiar with Nosferatu and its numerous adaptations, another silent-era masterpiece demands attention—the 1920s rendition of The Phantom of the Opera. This film predates the Universal Monster series and features Lon Chaney in a dual role as both the Phantom and the mastermind behind his own haunting makeup. Chaney’s portrayal, combined with his eerie appearance, leaves a lasting impression. Though the white mask from the musical adaptation is iconic, Chaney’s transformation is unforgettable for those brave enough to watch!

Catch The Phantom of the Opera streaming on Tubi for a dose of classic horror.

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Doctor X (1932)

RATING: TV-14
DIRECTOR: Michael Curtiz
CAST: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy

Many horror classics of the 1930s come from the Universal Monsters series, but early in that same era Warner Bros. contributed its own monster-ish tale of murder, cannibalism, voyeurism and ghastly scientific experiments. This was the glory of the days before the production code severely limited violence, sex, and other joys of cinema, here allowing what could have been a standard murder mystery to expand into grislier horrors. The doctor of the title is Dr. Xavier (Lionel Atwill), one murder suspect among many, for a series of crimes that sound like they could involve some kind of werewolf or zombie. Shot in an early form of Technicolor and running a brisk 76 minutes, Doctor X is exactly the kind of not-quite-canon older movie that Tubi specializes in.

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RATING: TV-PG
DIRECTOR: Robert Siodmak
CAST: Lon Chaney Jr., Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige

Robert Siodmak, one of the great underappreciated directors of his era, went on to make a bunch of terrific noirs and psychological thrillers, including some proto-horror work. Son of Dracula came before his peak period, and if his foray into the Universal Monster world isn’t quite up to his later films, it is an entertaining example of his genre versatility.  The film follows Lon Chaney Jr.’s mysterious, ah, Count Alucard (spell it backwards) as he arrives on a New Orleans plantation, invited by Katherine Caldwell (Louise Allbritton), who may have designs on something only this mystery man can provide. It’s more of a potboiler than the elegant original, and Chaney is no Bela Leguosi, but Siodimak’s stylish direction makes Son of Dracula a lot of fun anyway.

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RATING: TV-PG
DIRECTOR: Terence Fisher
CAST: Peter Cushing, Robert Urquhart, Hazel Court, Christopher Lee

The title makes it sound like a later-period entry in Universal’s Frankenstein series that began back in 1932. But The Curse of Frankenstein actually kicks off another, unrelated series based on the Mary Shelley classic, loosely adapting that novel in the first Frankenstein movie for Hammer Films. It became Hammer’s first big horror movie, ushering in an era of monster movies taking advantage of lurid color and looser content restrictions to deliver vivid red blood and ghastly new experiments and demises for the dead and undead alike.  

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RATING: TV-MA
DIRECTOR: Roger Corman
CAST: Vincent Price, John Kerr, Barbara Steele

The second in Roger Corman’s series of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired horror movies for American International Pictures, The Pit and the Pendulum is expanded (and altered) from the Poe story of the same name, becoming a mysterious-castle mystery about a man investigating the death of his sister, as reported by her husband Nicholas (Vincent Price). The famous torture device from Poe’s story turns up here, as do ghostly voices, grisly backstories, and visual nods to several other Poe works. It’s fine macabre melodrama with plenty of neat sets, and the Poe series became a horror landmark for the decade.

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RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Bob Clark
CAST: Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea

Man, 1974 was a hell of a year for the barely-existent slasher genre; it’s also when The Texas Chain Saw Massacre made its gnarly mark. That one is perpetually Tubi-available, but plenty of services have it on hand, and plenty of folks have seen it. So while it’s obviously more December than October, Black Christmas is equally worthwhile, as a mysterious creep terrorizes a sorority house with some of the most gorgeously lit and framed stalking the genre has ever seen.

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RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Dario Argento
CAST: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci

Speaking of gorgeously lit and framed carnage! Forget Luca Guadagnino’s drab remake with Dakota Johnson and go straight for the visually arresting original, surely one of the medium’s greatest triumphs of shapes and colors. The story is pretty simple: Suzy (Jessica Harper) attends a German ballet school and discovers what any of us might have suspected: It’s run by a coven of murderous witches. The widely beloved film from Italian master Dario Argento became hugely influential with its eye-popping colors and ear-popping score from prog-rock act Goblin.

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RATING: R
DIRECTOR: John Carpenter
CAST: Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul

1980s horror is often associated with the slasher sequels and ripoffs that dominated the decade, but it was also when Stephen King mania really hit the cinema. 1983 was a particularly major year in that regard, with the release of Cujo, The Dead Zone, and Christine – the first time more than one King movie was out in a single calendar year, and far from the last. (This year, for example, is going to notch four of them before all is said and done.) For pure horror, John Carpenter’s adaptation of the killer-car novel Christine might be the best of the bunch, with affecting and well-drawn characters caught in the evil car’s headlights.

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RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez
CAST: George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Quentin Tarantino

A horror movie for the Tarantino-heavy ’90s, released earlier the same year as game-changer (and, in its own way, Tarantino-ish) Scream, this movie famously begins as a tense, disturbing crime drama following a pair of violent criminals (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) who abduct a family of three (led by ex-minister Harvey Keitel) and head across the border into Mexico. Then, halfway through, the movie spins on its heels and becomes an all-out Robert Rodriguez monster mash, when it’s revealed that our heroes and antiheroes have stumbled into a nest of vampires disguised as a nudie roadhouse. Not only does Rodriguez unleash some of his finest mayhem for this extended vampire siege (an obvious influence on Sinners), he does a pretty decent imitation of Tarantino’s directing style in the first half.

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RATING: PG-13
DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
CAST: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver

Sam Raim’s 1983 classic The Evil Dead is also on Tubi, and obviously it’s great, but it’s almost more impressive how many jolts, jumps, screams, transgressions and buckets of effluvia Raimi is able to cram into a PG-13 studio horror movie. Alison Lohman plays a young woman who, in a moment of upwardly mobile desperation, forecloses on an old woman’s house, and boy, does she pay for her cruelty.

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RATING: PG
DIRECTOR: Henry Selick
CAST: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Keith David

Before exiting the 2000s, let’s include one token family-friend horror movie: Coraline, another stop-motion marvel from Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, put Laika Studios on the map and remains beloved years later. It’s whimsical enough for kids but also smart about tapping into their nightmares, like, for example, what if you traveled to an alternate dimension where your parents were preplaced with button-eyed weirdos?

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RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Karyn Kusama
CAST: Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard, Michael Huisman

Karyn Kusama, of cult fave Jennifer’s Body (also on Tubi at the moment), returns to the horror genre with this more psychological offering, about an unnerving dinner party that may reveal how a man’s ex-wife has joined some kind of a cult. Low-budget, relatively unstarry slow burns can be a risk, but Kusama’s direction is so assured that The Invitation never falters into time-killing tedium. Instead, it keeps just enough out of reach as it builds to a genuinely chilling ending.

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RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Josh Ruben
CAST: Aya Cash, Josh Ruben, Chris Redd

Tubi doesn’t have many horror classics from the past five years on deck, understandably given how much of their appeal is in mining extensive back catalogs. But for the token 2020s entry, check out the clever and relatively little-seen Scare Me, from director Josh Ruben, who made this year’s fun Valentine’s Day slasher Heart Eyes. Scare Me is also romance-adjacent, though far more sardonic (and minimalist) in its treatment of gender dynamics, following a successful horror writer (Aya Cash) sorta-trapped with a needy aspiring one (Josh Ruben), trading scary stories. It sounds like the framework for an anthology film, but Ruben stays in the room with his duo, using visual tricks alongside a constant flow of dialogue to create a genuinely original take on the horror comedy.

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