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 gemlate nightcult
The Thing
dreadlate nightneon soaked
Evil Dead II
late nightcozycult
The Fly
late nightcultdread
Godzilla vs. Biollante
foreign gemlate nightcult
An American Werewolf in London
weirddevastatinglate night
Possession
late nightcultdread
Videodrome
dreadneon soakedsurreal
The Return of Godzilla
foreign gemlate nightcult
Santa Sangre
surrealweirddevastating
Poltergeist
devastatinglate nightcult
Dead Ringers
late nightcultdread
Angst
late nightcultdread
Fright Night
late nightcozycult
Day of the Dead
late nightcultdread
The Dead Zone
late nightcultdread
Manhunter
dreadneon soakeddevastating
Re-Animator
late nightcozycult
Frankenweenie
late nightcozycult
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
neon soakedweirdlate night
Down to the Cellar
late nightdreadcozy
Little Shop of Horrors
late nightcozydread
Dressed to Kill
cozyfever dreamlate night
The Hitcher
dreadlate night
Devilman - Volume 1: The Birth
late nightdreadatmospheric
Creepshow
late nightdread
The Hidden
mindfucksurrealweird
Hellraiser
mindfucksurrealweird
Christine
late nightdread
Virile Games
late nightcozydread
Altre collezioni canone
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