Baylor Horror Film Expert Lists 10 Movies 'Everyone Should See'

October brings pumpkin spice, changing leaves, cooler temperatures and Halloween. And Halloween, of course, brings horror films.

James Kendrick, Ph.D., associate professor of film and digital media in Baylor University’s College of Arts & Sciences, is a Hollywood film historian and an expert on cult and horror films. While horror is not everyone’s favorite genre, Kendrick says, horror films are known to have a universal appeal.

“We all know what it means to be frightened, to feel dread, to want to look away,” Kendrick said. “On some level we all fear death and are aware of our human mortality, and the best horror films engage that fear in complex and challenging ways.”

In honor of Halloween, Kendrick has developed a list of 10 horror classics he says “everyone should see.”

1. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)

2. The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

3. Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

4. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

5. Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)

6. The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

7. Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

9. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

10. The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

James Kendrick, Ph.D., serves as associate professor of film and digital media in Baylor University’s College of Arts & Sciences. Kendrick’s primary research interests are post-Classical Hollywood film history, violence in the media, cult and horror films, media censorship and regulation and cinema and new technologies. He has authored three books: Darkness in the Bliss-Out: A Reconsideration of the Films of Steven Spielberg, Hollywood Bloodshed: Violence in the 1980s American Cinema and Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre. In addition to this, he is also the film and video critic for the website Qnetwork.com. Kendrick is a member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the University Film and Video Association and the Online Film Critics Society.

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