The 40 most popular 1950s horror movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Godzilla
1954 · 1h 36m
country: Japan
Japan is thrown into a panic after several ships are sunk near Odo Island. An expedition to the island led by Dr. Kyohei Yamane soon discover something far more devastating than imagined in the form of a 50 meter tall monster whom the natives call Gojira. Now the monster begins a rampage that threatens to destroy not only Japan, but the rest of the world as well.


Creature from the Black Lagoon
1954 · 1h 19m
country: United States
When scientists exploring the Amazon River stumble on a “missing link” connecting humans and fish, they plan to capture it for later study. But the Creature has plans of his own, and has set his sights on the lead scientist's beautiful fiancée, Kay.


The Fly
1958 · 1h 34m
country: United States
Industrialist François Delambre is called late at night by his sister-in-law, Helene, who tells him that she has just killed her husband. Reluctant at first, she eventually explains to the police that he invented a matter transportation apparatus and, while experimenting on himself, a fly entered the chamber.


Them!
1954 · 1h 34m
country: United States
As a result of nuclear testing, gigantic, ferocious mutant ants appear in the American desert southwest, and a father-daughter team of entomologists join forces with the state police officer who first discovers their existence, an FBI agent and, eventually, the US Army to eradicate the menace, before it spreads across the continent — and the world.


Dracula
1958 · 1h 22m
country: United Kingdom
After Jonathan Harker attacks Dracula at his castle, the vampire travels to a nearby city, where he preys on the family of Harker's fiancée. The only one who may be able to protect them is Dr. van Helsing, Harker's friend and fellow-student of vampires, who is determined to destroy Dracula, whatever the cost.


Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
1956 · 1h 21m
country: Japan
During an assignment, foreign correspondent Steve Martin spends a layover in Tokyo and is caught amid the rampage of an unstoppable prehistoric monster the Japanese call 'Godzilla'. The only hope for both Japan and the world lies on a secret weapon, which may prove more destructive than the monster itself.


Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1956 · 1h 20m
country: United States
A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.


House on Haunted Hill
1959 · 1h 15m
country: United States
Frederick Loren invites five strangers to the party of a lifetime and offers each of them $10,000 if they can stay the night in the reportedly haunted house. Armed with a gun for protection, each guest arrives in a hearse and will either leave in it much richer…Or dead.


The Bad Seed
1956 · 2h 9m
country: United States
Air Force Colonel Kenneth Penmark and his wife, Christine, adore their daughter Rhoda, despite her secret tendency for selfishness. Christine keeps her knowledge of her daughter's darker side to herself, but when a schoolmate of Rhoda's dies mysteriously, her self-deception unravels.


House of Wax
1953 · 1h 28m
country: United States
A sculptor opens a wax museum to showcase the likenesses of famous historical figures, but quickly runs into trouble when his business partner demands the exhibits become more extreme in order to increase profits.


Godzilla Raids Again
1955 · 1h 22m
country: Japan
Two fishing scout pilots make a horrifying discovery when they encounter a second Godzilla alongside a new monster named Anguirus. Without the weapon that killed the original, authorities attempt to lure Godzilla away from the mainland. But Anguirus soon arrives and the two monsters make their way towards Osaka as Japan braces for tragedy.


The Thing from Another World
1951 · 1h 27m
country: United States
Scientists and US Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while investigating at a remote arctic outpost.


The Curse of Frankenstein
1957 · 1h 23m
country: United Kingdom
Baron Victor Frankenstein has discovered life's secret and unleashed a blood-curdling chain of events resulting from his creation: a cursed creature with a horrid face — and a tendency to kill.


The Blob
1958 · 1h 22m
country: United States
A drive-in favorite, this sci-fi classic follows teenagers Steve and his best girl, Jane, as they try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches. The first to discover the substance and live to tell about it, Steve and Jane witness the blob destroying an elderly man, then it growing to a terrifying size. But no one else has seen the goo, and policeman Dave refuses to believe the kids without proof.


The Incredible Shrinking Man
1957 · 1h 21m
country: United States
A dangerous combination of radiation and insecticide causes the unfortunate Scott Carey to shrink, slowly but surely, until he is only a few inches tall. His home becomes a wilderness where he must survive everything from spiders living in the cellar to his beloved cat.


The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
1953 · 1h 20m
country: United States
The controlled explosion of an atomic bomb in the Arctic Circle awakens a frozen dinosaur that will wreak havoc in New York City.


The Hunchback of Notre Dame
1956 · 1h 55m
country: France
In 1482 Paris, Frollo, Chief Justice of benevolent King Louis XI, becomes infatuated by the beauty of Esmeralda, a young Romani girl. The hunchback Quasimodo, Frollo's protégé and bell-ringer of Notre Dame, lives in peace among the bells in the heights of the immense cathedral until he's involved by the twisted magistrate in his malicious plans to free himself from Esmeralda's alleged spell, which he believes to be the Devil's work.


Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
1958 · 1h 6m
country: United States
When an abused wife grows to giant size following an alien encounter and an aborted murder attempt, she goes after her philandering husband with revenge on her mind.


The Revenge of Frankenstein
1958 · 1h 30m
country: United Kingdom
Rescued from the guillotine by his devoted dwarf Fritz, the Baron relocates to Carlsbruck, where he continues his gruesome experiments.


This Island Earth
1955 · 1h 25m
country: United States
Aliens have landed and are hiding on Earth, but need Earth’s scientists to help them fight an inter-planetary war.


Cry of the Bewitched
1957 · 1h 25m
country: Mexico
A freed slave, who is descended from a murdered witch, plots revenge with her grandmother on a sugar plantation's inhabitants. Complications ensue due to her love for the master of the estate.


Night of the Demon
1957 · 1h 36m
country: United Kingdom
American professor John Holden arrives in London for a conference on parapsychology only to discover that the colleague he was supposed to meet was killed in a freak accident the day before. It turns out that the deceased had been investigating a cult lead by Dr. Julian Karswell. Though a skeptic, Holden is suspicious of the devil-worshiping Karswell. Following a trail of mysterious manuscripts, Holden enters a world that makes him question his faith in science.


The Hound of the Baskervilles
1959 · 1h 27m
country: United Kingdom
When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.


The Quatermass Xperiment
1955 · 1h 22m
country: United Kingdom
The first manned spacecraft, fired from an English launchpad, is lost from radar before roaring back to Earth and crashing in a farmer's field. The rocket is found to contain only one of the three men who took off in it; and he is unable to talk but appears to be undergoing a torturous physical and mental metamorphosis.


Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy
1955 · 1h 19m
country: United States
Bud and Lou, two stranded American archaeologists, run afoul of an Egyptian cult with big plans to resurrect the mummified corpse of Klaris, guardian of his Princess Ara's treasure-filled tomb. When Lou accidentally eats the cursed medallion needed to find the ancient treasure, the two become targets of the cult's leader, his goons, a mysterious femme fatale, and the mummy of Klaris himself!


It Came from Outer Space
1953 · 1h 20m
country: United States
Author and amateur astronomer John Putnam and schoolteacher Ellen Fields witness an enormous meteorite come down near a small town in Arizona. Putnam becomes a local object of scorn when, after examining the object up close, he announces that it is a spacecraft, and that it is inhabited...


It! The Terror from Beyond Space
1958 · 1h 9m
country: United States
The first manned expedition to Mars is invaded by an unknown life form, which stows away on the rescue ship.


Tarantula
1955 · 1h 20m
country: United States
A rogue scientist near a small desert town arouses the suspicion of the town's doctor when his lab assistant is found dead from a case of acromegaly, which took only four days to develop. As the doctor investigates, aided by the scientist's new female assistant, they discover that something is devouring local cattle and humans in increasingly large quantities.


Quatermass 2
1957 · 1h 25m
country: United Kingdom
In England, a group of space scientists led by Bernard Quatermass, who have developed plans for the first Moon colony, learn that a secret, ostensibly government-run, complex of identical design has been built in a remote part of England and is the focus of periodic falls of small, hollow "meteorites" originating in outer space. Quatermass determines to investigate and uncovers a terrifying extraterrestrial life form which has already begun action to take over the Earth.


Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Invisible Man
1951 · 1h 23m
country: United States
As novice detectives, Bud and Lou come face to face with the Invisible Man.


A Bucket of Blood
1959 · 1h 6m
country: United States
Nerdy Walter Paisley, a maladroit busboy at a beatnik café who doesn't fit in with the cool scene around him, attempts to woo his beautiful co-worker, Carla, by making a bust of her. When his klutziness results in the death of his landlady's cat, he panics and hides its body under a layer of plaster. But when Carla and her friends enthuse over the resulting artwork, Walter decides to create some bigger and more elaborate pieces using the same artistic process.


Revenge of the Creature
1955 · 1h 22m
country: United States
In a tributary of the Amazon, a monster – half-man, half-fish – is captured and placed in a reservoir in a Florida national park to be observed by scientists.


Plan 9 from Outer Space
1957 · 1h 18m
country: United States
In California, an old man grieves the loss of his wife, and dies the day after she is buried. However, the space soldier Eros and his mate Tanna use an electric device to resurrect them both, alongside the strong Inspector Clay, who was murdered by the alien-controlled dead couple. When the populations of Hollywood and Washington D.C. see flying saucers on the sky, a colonel, a police lieutenant, a commercial pilot, his wife, and a policeman try to stop the aliens.


The Tingler
1959 · 1h 22m
country: United States
A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.


Phantom of the Rue Morgue
1954 · 1h 23m
country: United States
When several women are found mutilated and murdered, the Paris police are baffled as to who the killer may be. All evidence points to Dupin, but soon it becomes apparent that it is someone (or something) stronger and deadlier than a human.


Invaders from Mars
1953 · 1h 18m
country: United States
A boy tries to stop aliens that have taken over his town and are brainwashing its inhabitants.


Return of the Fly
1959 · 1h 20m
country: United States
Fifteen years after his father's experiments with matter transmission fail, Philippe Delambre and his uncle François attempt to create a matter transmission device on their own. However, their experiments have disastrous results, turning Philippe into a horrible half-man, half-fly creature.


Attack of the Giant Leeches
1959 · 1h 2m
country: United States
A backwoods game warden and a local doctor discover that giant leeches are responsible for disappearances and deaths in a local swamp, but the local police don't believe them.


Attack of the Crab Monsters
1957 · 1h 3m
country: United States
A group of scientists travel to a remote island to study the effects of nuclear weapons tests, only to get stranded when their airplane mysteriously explodes. The team soon discovers that the tests have given rise to crabs mutated into intelligent, impervious, telepathic giants intent on increasing their numbers by breeding, then travelling to populated areas to feed, and which do not intend to be stopped by their discoverers.


The Mummy
1959 · 1h 28m
country: United Kingdom
One by one the archaeologists who discover the 4,000-year-old tomb of Princess Ananka are brutally murdered. Kharis, high priest in Egypt 40 centuries ago, has been brought to life by the power of the ancient gods and his sole purpose is to destroy those responsible for the desecration of the sacred tomb. But Isobel, wife of one of the explorers, resembles the beautiful princess, forcing the speechless and tormented monster to defy commands and abduct Isobel to an unknown fate.
1950s cinema fought television with everything it had: widescreen formats, colour, and spectacle. Underneath the scale, it was also the decade of Japanese cinema's international breakthrough and the birth of the modern art film.
Horror is cinema's most reliable laboratory — cheap to make, endlessly reinvented, and unusually good at smuggling in subtext. Every few years a national wave redefines it: Italian giallo, Japanese J-horror, the Korean thriller, American indie horror.