Great Horror Directors Pt.2

By RodneyHatfieldJr for Movies

Since part 1 was a rather difficult list to compile because it is hard to list so few, we are going to add some more. The only difference is, I want to add in some old school directors. So let's get started. As before, this is in no form or fashion in any particular order other than how they come to mind.


Alfred Hitchcock


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Quite arguable the greatest director of all time.  From movies to TV, he is the director's director. From Presents on TV to Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, and an often overlooked gem The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. 


Tod Browning


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Browning is an example of a cinematic tragedy. Having shown himself an accomplished director with silent films like The 13th Chair, he was only one of a few who transitioned into sound films.  Dracula cemented him into the new media. However, Freaks(a masterpiece) hurled him into the preverbal gutter. Even though he became friends with the performers in the sideshows, and finally gave them Hollywood exposure, plus giving them a decent wage. The public was not prepared for it. Audiences were disgusted by the “freaks” of the film. In the UK, the film was banned by the British censors and remained as so for over thirty years before being passed with an X rating in August 1963. Instead of viewing them as performers in a film with lives, personalities, and dreams; they only saw the deformities.  And because of it, he was blackballed from Hollywood.


James Whale


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An English transplant who found fame in Hollywood. Universal gave Whale free rein on a host of now-classic films.  Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein. When you talk classic Universal, Whale is never far away.


Stanley Kubrick 


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He is what you call quality over quantity. Spanning over 40 years he only directed a little over a dozen films. But what films. The top is Clockwork Orange and The Shining.


Herschell Gordon Lewis 


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The Godfather of Gore. Where Kubrick was quality over quantity, Herschell was quantity over quality. In just 9 years Lewis directed 35 films. If you like blood and sex, then Herschell was the guy. His movies gave us Grindhouse, which was the basis of some of our most classic films of the '70s. The only movie worthy of any mention is Two Thousand Maniacs! The rest is just bad. But if you like bad like me, then Blood Feast, A Taste of Blood, She-Devils on Wheels, The Wizard of Gore are perfect for you.


Roger Corman


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This is a personal favorite. He directs all my favorite Vincent Price films. Well most of them. So I am biased.  In no particular order: The Little Shop of Horrors, House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia. 


Jack Arnold


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The master of 1950‘s Science Fiction. Before he became a TV director of everything, Arnold gave us some of the best movies of the 50s. Tarantula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, and It Came from Outer Space.


William Castle


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The director of low budget but huge returns. Not just making movies, he is the master of the Gimmick. Be it flying skeletons through the air in the theater, to attaching buzzers to seats. Castle gave us some of the most popular films of the 1960s.  From The Night Walker, 13 Ghosts, The Tingler, House on Haunted hill.


Lucio Fulci


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The king of the Giallo. The New York Ripper, The House by the Cemetery, The Black Cat, City of the Living Dead, and Zombie.  Unfortunately, his films are hard to find that are dubbed.


Michele Soavi


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One of the most popular European directors of the 1980s. Soavi blended horror, Giallo, and comedy into memorable movies. StageFright, The Chruch, The Sect, and Cemetery Man.

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