Favorites in Horror Decades: The 60s

A new “series” on the blog but I wanted to talk about my adventures into different decades of horror. We can talk about the 80s and 90s horror all we want, they are great, and the 80s is oversaturated but home of the big franchises but no one is really giving earlier decades its due. I’ve been into watching a lot of films and other forms of media from the 50s, 60s and the 70s and I gotta say, give more respect to them.

A lot of these films prior to the 80s are really significant blueprints and ideas of what is to come and perhaps the 80s+ take them and improve upon them or get inspired by but don’t forget how far the horror genre had come and developed. Blood and gore wasn’t necessary to scare an audience I’ve noticed with these films. Good ole fashioned jump scares, a psychological/thriller nature attached, the best of the best acting from established or new faces, and just letting your imagination go wild is what makes these earlier decades fascinating and today we’re gonna talk about the 60s.

Let’s get into it! Sidenote, these decades won’t be order, so don’t expect a 70s if I’m not ready!

Here are films from the 1960s that I have seen in recent times: The Birds, Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead, Black Sunday, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Black Sabbath, Black Sunday, The Terror, Carnival of Souls, The Haunting, 13 Ghosts and Blood and Black Lace.

Now out of those, which one do you think is the top grossing of that time period? Immediately you’d think Psycho right? According to online, 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby is the top grossing with $33,396,740 which is quite impressive. The films that come before and a year after are all Godzilla films so you can imagine the movie theater atmosphere probably wanting something new and fresh for Rosemary’s Baby to break that chain. Fun fact, other general movies released in 1968 specifically are The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Funny Girl, Barbarella and Once Upon a Time in the West. Talk about some heavy hitters!

Films that I would highly recommend from my list above? The Haunting, Carnival of Souls, Blood and Black Lace and Black Sunday.

Why these? The rest are huge heavy hitters and people most likely know about them.

But for me, there’s some that I haven’t seen yet and I want to like VIY, Spider Baby, Mothra, Village of the Damned, Children of the Damned, Kill Baby Kill, Dementia 13, and other Godzilla films that I know I haven’t seen that are considered more “serious” and less goofy or likeable Godzilla portrayals.

When it comes to horror, I say the 60s are a huge part of horror’s overall growth. Directors looking back to grab ideas, movies becoming a blueprint to what’s to come. What are some of your favorite movies from the 1960s?

Mine? 1961’s West Side Story (outside of horror).