Hello friends and fellow 80s horror fanatics! I’m delighted to officially return with the heavily requested TOP 200 HORROR MOVIES OF THE 1980s! When I released my first list detailing the top 100 horror movies of the 1980s, I was floored by the positive response. Over time, the list became by far the most visited portion of the site (by about 500%!) and even snatched the top spot on Google for several different 80s horror related searches.

Due to the spectacular response to this list (along with several requests demanding a follow-up), I’ve decided to rank ANOTHER 100 80s horror films. Thus, when conjoined with the previous list, I’ll have a definitive ranking of my top 200 best horror films of the 1980s. As far as I know, this will be the most comprehensive and ambitious ranking of 80s horror films around.

One downside to creating a massive list like this is that, once a certain point is reached, the quality of films slowly begins to deteriorate. There were around 1,000 horror films released in the 1980s. I would consider about 5% of these (the top 50) to be excellent. The top 10% are very good and extremely enjoyable. As you can imagine, once we start hitting the 150 mark, some of the films, though perfectly fine in their own ways, aren’t what I would consider to be the cream of the crop. Further, the rankings begin to get a little muddled and pretty arbitrary, since the quality of films become so similar in my mind. Despite this, I still very much like all of the films on the list and I hope you do, too. My primary motivation here is to introduce to a wide audience a variety of films which they might have otherwise never been exposed to. So, without further ado, here is part one of the top 200 horror films of the 1980s!

Note: lists are subjective and are not meant to be an objective assessment of the quality or value of any particular movie. This list is undeniably personal and it reflects my own thematic preferences. I consider "best" to be some kind of combination of technical achievement, enjoyment of viewing and a variety of other factors. It's also contextual: ask me a month from now and I might provide you with a very different looking list. Additionally, it was difficult for me to leave some movies off the list which I actually adore (Aliens, Predator) but which I intuitively don't think constitute horror enough to be featured on a list such as this one. Understand all of this before replying or commenting with an outraged "how could you leave X off of the list!?" or "I can't believe you ranked X higher than Y!!!"