The Top Five Horror Movies Without Gore

When it comes to horror movies these days, it seems that gore fests are the order of the day. Gone are the classic days of "The Mummy" and "Bride of Frankenstein" and in their place is Freddie Kreuger and Jason. Some movies have managed to straddle the line, however. Some horror movies are able to suspend our disbelief and scare us to death, even without showing every slice of the knife. Here is my list of the top five horror movies without the gore and blood of the majority of modern day splatter:

Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock is famous for a number of things, but to me he is simply the master of the non-gore horror genre. His use of lighting, music and tension filled action was unparalleled in his own time, and would stand up in the theater today if he were alive. Psycho is a perfect example of such. Thought by many to be the scariest movie of all time, Psycho started the whole shebang. This movie was ground breaking and is terrifying even today.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original) - The original TCM is not the gore filled movie that many think it is. It has it's moments, but by and large it is a blood free movie. The intent of the movie is incredibly gory, but the movie itself is very tame by today's standards. This does very little to keep it from being one of the scariest movies of all time.

Halloween (Original) - Michael Myers is without doubt the spookiest horror movie villain of all time, and while Halloween certainly is a forerunner of splatter films to come, it does not go there. The first Halloween has very little blood. It is not a film for the kids, but it is far from being gory. This movie is all about suspense and it builds like a Hitchcock masterpiece.

Jaws - This movie simply redefined the whole idea of horror. Instead of a terrifying murderer that can not be killed, we instead turned our attention to the real life horror of a great white shark. The truth is, great whites don't generally act that way but that is not the point. Jaws changed the way we looked at horror movies and did it in a fairly non-gory way. The lone exception would be the part where Quint is eaten whole. Short of that, the movie is not that bloody.

It (Stephen King) - Clowns. What the heck is it about Clowns? If you want to make a great horror movie and keep it non-gory, then simply put a terrifying looking clown in the movie. Having this clown menace children and adults alike would not hurt either. This was a brilliant movie and horrifying to it's core.

Sources:

Personal experience with 25 years of Horror move watching.