Exploitation films

Lorna

Meyer stops joking. The one where the sun goes behind a cloud.

Witchfinder General

Vincent Price with the camp removed. Reeves died at 25, a year later.

Hercules in the Haunted World

Bava shoots Hades in gel colours. Looks like nothing else in the cycle.

Mothra

The most charming of Toho's roster, and openly anti-colonial about it.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much

The one usually called the first giallo. Still half a krimi.

The Wild Angels

Corman starts the cycle. Peter Fonda, real Hells Angels, and a funeral.

The Great Silence

Corbucci in the snow. The ending would never have cleared an American studio.

A Bullet for the General

The most openly political of the Zapata cycle, and the sharpest.

Black Sabbath

Three stories, one Karloff. The Wurdulak segment is the best thing Bava shot.

Destroy All Monsters

Eleven monsters, no restraint. Honda cashing every chip at once.

The Trip

Corman stages an LSD experience with every optical trick he had. Written by Jack Nicholson.

Africa Addio

Not staged, which makes it far worse. A repellent document.

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster

The film where Godzilla becomes a hero. Three of Toho's monsters team up against a golden space dragon.

Mondo Cane

The original. Oscar-nominated song, colonial gaze, half of it staged.

Carnival of Souls

Made by an industrial-film director for $33,000. Genuinely haunted.

Blood and Black Lace

The template, and still the best-looking film on this list.

Come Drink with Me

King Hu, Cheng Pei-pei, and the template for every wuxia since.

Black Sunday

Bava's debut as director. Barbara Steele and a mask full of spikes.

Death Rides a Horse

Revenge, Van Cleef, and a score Tarantino lifted wholesale.

The Colossus of Rhodes

Leone's actual debut, three years before the westerns.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Meyer's best. Tura Satana is a genuine screen presence and the dialogue snaps.

Sabata

A gadget-toting gunfighter blackmails a whole town. Lee Van Cleef, having an obvious blast.

King Kong vs. Godzilla

The most-watched Godzilla film in Japan, and essentially an ad-industry farce with two giant monsters.

Harakiri

A ronin asks to commit suicide in a lord's courtyard. What follows dismantles the whole code.

Django

A coffin, a machine gun, and mud everywhere. Banned in Britain until 1993.

Rosemary's Baby

Nothing supernatural is ever shown. It does not need to be.

A Fistful of Dollars

An unlicensed Yojimbo remake. Toho sued and won. Started everything.

For a Few Dollars More

Van Cleef arrives and the formula locks into place.

Night of the Living Dead

Made for $114,000 in Pittsburgh. Invented the entire modern genre.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Fonda cast against type as a child killer. Leone's masterpiece.

The Birds

Hitchcock refuses to explain anything. Nobody since has had the nerve.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The cemetery sequence is the best three minutes in the genre.