80s horror everyone has forgotten
The decade is famous for slashers and Carpenter / Cronenberg / Argento. These are the films from the same period that didn't quite stick — body horror oddities, Italian giallo's last gasp, Eastern European chillers, video-store mainstays nobody talks about now.
Wolfman vs. Godzilla
foreign gemplayfulunhinged
The Thing
body horrorparanoid
Evil Dead II
playfulunhinged
The Fly
body horrorgut punchsurreal
Godzilla vs. Biollante
foreign gemepicraw
An American Werewolf in London
body horrorplayfulsurreal
Possession
body horrormindfucksurreal
Videodrome
body horrormindfucksurreal
The Return of Godzilla
foreign gemdreadparanoid
Santa Sangre
surrealunhinged
Poltergeist
dreadslow burn
Dead Ringers
body horrordreadslow burn
Angst
paranoidraw
Fright Night
pitch blackraw
Day of the Dead
dreadparanoidraw
The Dead Zone
cerebralslow burn
Manhunter
neon soakedparanoidraw
Re-Animator
body horrorplayfulunhinged
Frankenweenie
playfulsurreal
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
body horrorsurreal
Down to the Cellar
body horrordreadsurreal
Little Shop of Horrors
playful
Dressed to Kill
mindfuckneon soakedparanoid
The Hitcher
dreadparanoid
Devilman - Volume 1: The Birth
body horrorneon soakedsurreal
Creepshow
playful
The Hidden
outsiderplayfulraw
Hellraiser
body horrordreadsexy
Christine
paranoidraw
Virile Games
pitch blacksurrealunhinged
Other canon collections
Japanese New Wave — the essentials
Giallo — Italy's blood-red mystery genre
Korean cinema essentials beyond Parasite
Post-Soviet cinema — Russia & Eastern Europe after 1991
The Romanian New Wave
Essential anime that isn't Studio Ghibli
Slow cinema — the long-take canon
70s American paranoia — the post-Watergate canon
First features by directors who later mattered
Documentaries that hold up as cinema
Scandinavian noir beyond the Stieg Larsson franchises
Iranian new wave — Kiarostami, Farhadi, and the rest
Argentine cinema — beyond Wild Tales
British kitchen-sink and what it became
First features directed by cinematographers
German New Wave — Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Schlöndorff
Hong Kong action — Woo, Lam, Tsui, To
Spaghetti westerns — Leone, Corbucci, Sollima, and the second tier
Mumblecore — the American indie movement nobody named
Czech New Wave — Forman, Chytilová, Menzel, before they fled
French New Wave — Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Rivette, Rohmer
Blaxploitation — Shaft, Pam Grier, and the 70s Black cinema boom
Dogme 95 — von Trier, Vinterberg, and the vow of chastity
Australian New Wave — Weir, Miller, Armstrong, Campion
African cinema — Sembène, Sissako, Mambéty, and beyond
Italian neorealism — the rubble and the real
Commedia all'italiana — Italy laughing at itself
German expressionism — shadows, angles, madness
Taiwanese New Cinema — Hou, Yang, Tsai, and the island's quiet revolution
New Queer Cinema — Haynes, Araki, Van Sant, and the 90s insurgency
Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters