Unforgettable Horror Films You've Never Seen

I feel that it's more important to watch bad films than good ones. In the hands of a master of the craft, all the piece come together in an orchestra that permanently imprints on our psyche. In a bad film, though, the parts don't sync quite correctly and you see behind the curtain. The editors, foley artists, designers, boom-mike operators, gaffers, key grips, and honeytruck drivers that make a major picture possible. All the pieces of the cinematic orchestra that must come together and blend into an invisible whole.

These are the films that failed. Producers who started a movie with the best of intentions and discovered that the task was simply beyond them. Films I submit to remind you that, as much as we might take pleasure in their failure, we cannot for a second presume that we could accomplish better.

I've already discussed the myriad lurking threats to a film. Most filmmakers bring creativity and ingenuity to work around their limitations, but some obstacles cannot be overcome. Shoestring budgets and limited resource doom a film before it even begins. However, there are those who soldier one, fully recognising that they cannot make a good film, but they can still try and make a bad one.

This is a dangerous gambit and part of the reason this category is so small. When your best case scenario is utter failure, the slightest slip up can bring your film into the ultimate sin - utter mediocrity. You cannot make a bad film by being lazy at making a good one. It requires as much heart, stress, and effort as a successful film and these are the instances where the effort paid off.

We know all the standard horror starts. A middle class family moves into their new dream home, not realising that it holds an unexpected secret. A group of teenagers head out to the woods to complain about each other before they're slaughtered off. Privileged American tourists in Eastern Europe pay the price for their arrogance.

However, sometime a films comes a long with creativity. A situation no one could have prepared for. Characters doing their best while always missing fundamental information about the dangers. Films where genre savvy won't save you, since they made their own sub-genre.

Old familiar tropes are often old and familiar because they work. They touch us on levels we don't wish to confront and probe our fundamental fears. The protean terrors that morph and mutate as our culture changes, but, like a good slasher villain, always find a new way to return, even if they look a little different this time.

These are the films that take the stories we all know and remind us what made them scary in the first place.

Gene Siskel once started that we should demand that a movie be more interesting than filming the cast having dinner together. Stack a film with enough charismatic, talented performers and you can produce memorable cinema, even if the story is utter dreck. This category is dedicated to the films where an actor put in the effort, even if the screenwriter didn't.

As my objective was to provide you with films you haven't seen before, I've not included several films that are more likely to appear on other lists you might find. However, these films still aren't approaching The Shining or Saw in the public conciousness. Only a dedicate fan would have bothered to seek out most of them. I may sprinkle some of these into the mix as we