Premise

I'm looking for some old scary movies to watch. Preferably pre '60s. I just seen 'The Red House' from 1947(Highly recommended), and found it creepy considering the age of the film. What are some others?

gfoots

Robert Wise's "The Haunting" is really good.

dugan

The Innocents
Psycho

HE Pennypacker

Night Must Fall (1937)
The Spiral Staircase (1945)

Harry Lime

I second that.

Giles

I third that watch it late at night, this movie gave me goosebumps.

islandclaws

House on Haunted Hill
13 Ghosts
Eyes Without A Face

nateman

Psycho & this is really pre 60’s but I highly recommend that you check out Nosferatu (1922), keep in mind it’s a silent film.

It isn’t exactly ‘scary’ but if you’re going to check out Nosferatu I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Shadow of the Vampire. It’s a perfect ‘fiction’ companion too the 22’ original & Mr. Defoe puts on an excellent performance as Count Orlok.

inri222

Rosemary's Baby
Repulsion
Night of the Living Dead
Peeping Tom
Kwaidan
Onibaba
Carnival of Souls

Giles

I Walked with a Zombie
Cat People

Ginwen

I second that (it's not quite pre-60's, but close enough).

Drop

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a wonderful silent fim with a great style and plot.

Also if you get Caligari or Nosferatu I recommend the Kino versions, especially for Nosferatu because it has the proper color tinting.

brainee

Some more pre-1960 ones:

The Dead of Night (1945) - Brilliant, way ahead of its time classic British ghost story. Though I found the comic-relief golf segment to be an unfortunate mood breaker.

The Queen of Spades (1949) - Shares a DVD with "Dead of Night". Little seen, but quite excellent and spooky period-piece ghost story.

Diabolique (1955) - A classic psychological horror/mystery; often imitated, but still stands tall.

The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Mitchum here is one of the most terrifying villains of all-time. Still packs a punch.

Can't go wrong with any of the 40's Val Lewton productions, especially "Isle of the Dead", "The Seventh Victim", "I Walked With a Zombie", "Cat People", "Body Snatchers", and "The Leopard Man".

Night of the Demon (1957) - One of the rare cases (especially for an old movie) where the appearance of the monster lives up to expectations. But outside of that, a 1st rate production all-around.

The Black Cat (1934) - The best Karloff-Lugosi pairing.

There are a few other Karloff movies that still hold up IMO as being scary. The resurrection scene in "The Mummy" is still chilling, and the movie itself is so very different than people remember (Karloff is only in mummy makeup for a few moments). "The Walking Dead" is underrated, and has some creepy concepts/moments.

Freaks (1932) - After all these years, still maintains its power to disturb.

M (1931) - Fritz Lang classic

The Beast With Five Fingers (1946) - Another great Peter Lorre performance, with a helping "hand".

The Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959) - A groundbreaking movie by the godfather of J-Horror.

The Fly (1958) - OK, the concept of a guy and fly just swapping heads (but keeping intelligence) is kind of silly. But still, one of the more grim, moving, and disturbing sci-fi horrors of the 50's.

OK, that's enough for now

Giles

I always recommend this film but it's definately one of the most unique and most unlikely genre from the film ouevre of Ingmar Bergman's - "The Hour of the Wolf" - it's very different, but it is truly nightmarish and horrific.

Linko

Some of these have already been said but some I'd check out

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Nosferatu (1922)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - the best version ever made
Freaks (1932)
The Thing from Another World (1951)
House of Wax (1953)
Them! (1954)
Gojira (aka Godzilla, 1954)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
The Fly (1958) - one of the best endings ever!
House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Universal Monster movies:
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
The Mummy (1932)
The Invisible Man (1933) - Great movie!
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - Great movie!
The Wolf Man (1941)
Phantom of the Opera (1943) - pretty disappointing
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Hammer Monster movies:
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Horror of Dracula (1958)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
The Mummy (1959)

Lastdaysofrain

Carnival of Souls

Rad14

The Uninvited (1944)

CreatureX

The Birds (1963)

Mondo Kane

Vampyr

baracine

All my favourites have appeared so far. I also strongly recommend The Ghoul (1933), a horror film Karloff did in England at the height of his success in order to spite Universal and make his salary go up. A totally pristine print of this film, that was thought almost totally lost for a long time, has been found at the British Film Institute and put on DVD in what is probably the best transfer of an old film ever: magnificent photography, beautifully rendered, and refurbished sound by Sonic Solutions. The cast is exemplary: Karloff, Cedric Hardwicke, Ernest Thesiger, Dorothy Hyson, Anthony Bushell, Kathleen Harrison, Harold Huth, D.A. Clarke-Smith, Ralph Richardson and George Relph. The photography and artwork are by certitied graduates of the German expressionist school, the music is before its time and the atmosphere is Agatha Christie - creepy with nice comedy turns.

The film has its own thread: http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=489473

This film is also at times

baracine

I also like The Ghost Breakers (1940) a lot. It's a Bob Hope comedy but it provides lots of atmosphere and chills and is way before its time as far as special effects, ghostly music and photography are concerned. It takes place in a haunted castle off the coast of Cuba that the Paulette Goddard character has inherited from a distant relative.



And for a romantic ghost story: Wuthering Heights (1939), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and every version of Hamlet.

dhmac

I'll also highly recommend The Innocents (1961)

(There are a number of movies with this exact same title, so be sure to look for the one with a release year of 1961).

baracine

Polanski's Repulsion, unless things have changed, is still not available in a decent DVD transfer in North-America. But his The Tenant (Le Locataire)

is and it's the only film that made me faint in the theatre ever. Also, for creepy comedy, his Fearless Vampire Killers (Le Bal des Vampires) is still top-notch.

Kwaidan (1965) was a very influential J-horror predecessor
while Onibaba was maybe the first modern horror film to conflate sex and horror - if you don't count Psycho.

The Others is also an interesting clone of The Innocents.


And let's not forget James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932).


P.S.: Of all the films mentioned here, the only one I didn't see is the OP's The Red House, which I will try to get a hold of. I hear the transfer is OK but the print used is dismal.

Kudama

Horror Express: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Telly Savalas in the same freaky monster movie that thrilled the shit out of me as a kid.

The Creeping Flesh: Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee AGAIN!!! As a kid I went

stonecountry

If you don't mind early 60's but also black and white, I highly recommend The Last Man On Earth, Vincent Price's best movie in my opinion based on the classic book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. It was remade as a campy 70's movie as The Omega Man with Charleton Heston and is being made again as I Am Legend with Will Smith.

I can second many of the others previously mentioned here as well such as the original House on Haunted Hill, Dead of Night, all the old Universal and Val Lewton films, and the first string of Hammer Horrors, especially Horror of Dracula.

I'd also like to recommend:

Mad Love (Peter Lorre)
Mark of the Vampire (Bela Lugosi)
Kill Baby Kill (Mario Bava)
Black Sunday (Mario Bava)
Pretty much all the old Vincent Price/Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films as well