Image credit: Paramount Pictures, CFDC, PEA, Casey Productions, Universal Pictures, Bad Robot, Academy Pictures Corporation, Charles Band, Joseph E. Levine Productions
There's no "The Exorcist" or "Carrie" on this list.
We're focusing on way lesser-known, but equally scary (or downright terrifying) horror movies from the '70s.
1. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) Jessica, freshly out of a mental institution, is heading to a rural farmhouse with her husband and their friend. Think it's gonna be a fresh start? Nah, not even close. As soon as they arrive, they meet a mysterious woman named Emily who's been squatting there.
Strange things begin to happen: whispers in the air, antique photos that eerily resemble Emily, and locals who are straight-up hostile. As events escalate, Jessica becomes convinced that Emily is a vampire, and her mental state takes a nosedive.
2. Black Christmas (1974) This one's a holiday horror but not the festive kind. A sorority house starts getting obscene phone calls during Christmas break. Initially, they laugh it off as a bad joke, but things take a turn for the worst. One by one, the sisters start to go missing, and it's clear there's a killer in the house.
The remaining girls and their housemother desperately try to figure out what's going on while the police trace the calls, which turn out to be coming from inside the house.
3. Burnt Offerings (1976) So a family rents a big ol' mansion for the summer at a suspiciously low price. You'd think they'd see the red flags, right? The catch is that they have to care for the home's elderly owner who stays secluded in her room.
As they settle in, strange events unfold. The pool turns into a death trap, and the house starts to physically rejuvenate itself, almost as if it's feeding off the family's life force. The dad, Ben, starts to act increasingly strange, becoming obsessed with the house and its history.
4. The Car (1977) A small desert town where life is slow and uneventful. Until a black car with no plates and heavily tinted windows starts mowing down residents for no apparent reason. The local sheriff, Wade, tries to stop the killing spree. But get this, bullets and explosives do nada. The car seems invincible and even defies the laws of physics. The community realizes it's no ordinary vehicle – it's downright demonic.
As Wade pieces things together, he concludes that the car must be lured into a trap. But how do you outsmart a car that seems to think for itself?
5. Phantasm (1979) A teenage boy, Mike, spies on a mortician known as The Tall Man, who has the strange habit of lifting caskets all by himself. Mike sneaks into the mortuary and finds out that the dead bodies are being transformed into dwarf-like creatures. Why? To be sent to The Tall Man's home planet as slave labor.
But that's not all: The mortuary is full of flying metal spheres that attack anyone who enters. Mike and his brother Jody, along with their friend Reggie, try to put a stop to The Tall Man's twisted operations.
6. The Legend of Hell House (1973) A physicist, his wife, and two mediums are hired to investigate the Belasco House, a place dubbed "The Mount Everest of Haunted Houses." From the get-go, weird stuff happens. Objects move on their own, mysterious messages appear, and the physicist's wife gets sexually assaulted by an unseen entity.
Eventually, they figure out that the house's original owner was into all kinds of dark rituals. They try different scientific and psychic methods to cleanse the place, but the haunting persists.
7. Don't Look Now (1973) After the accidental drowning of their daughter, a married couple, John and Laura, head to Venice to work on restoring an old church. But Venice isn't the romantic getaway they hoped for. John starts seeing a little girl in a red coat similar to the one his daughter wore when she died. Laura meets two sisters, one of whom claims to be psychic and insists their daughter is trying to contact them.
As they get more entangled in these supernatural occurrences, a serial killer is on the loose in Venice.
8. The Sentinel (1977) A model named Alison moves into an old New York apartment building. Seems like a good deal until she realizes that her neighbors are a bit... off. Like, some of them are blind, some just stand there staring.
Then she finds out she's actually the only tenant. She starts experiencing horrific visions and becomes convinced the place is the gateway to Hell. When she tries to leave, she's informed that she's been chosen as the new "sentinel" to guard the gate.
9. Magic (1978) Corky, a failing magician, adds a ventriloquist dummy named Fats to his act, and his career takes off. But soon enough Fats starts to take on a life of his own, giving Corky murderous advice. Things get out of hand when Corky flees to his high-school crush's place to escape the pressures of stardom. As he grows more unstable, the lines between him and Fats blur completely.
10. Tourist Trap (1979) A group of friends find themselves stranded at a roadside museum after their car breaks down. The place is run by Mr. Slausen, a seemingly friendly guy. But this ain't no ordinary museum; it's filled with mannequins that come alive and kill. As the friends start disappearing one by one, it's revealed that Mr. Slausen has telekinetic powers and he's the one controlling the mannequins.
The survivors scramble to find a way out before they're turned into the next exhibit.
