The history of horror

Ten films chosen to show how horror was invented and how it kept reinventing itself, not simply the ten scariest films ever made.

Each film marks a turning point: a new kind of monster, a new source of fear or a new way of frightening an audience.

It starts in the shadows of German Expressionism, where fear is a style: distorted sets, vampires and sleepwalkers.

Hollywood turns those monsters into icons in the 1930s. Then Psycho and Night of the Living Dead bring the horror home, and The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween define the modern genre.