Les yeux sans visage (1960)

Psycho (1960)

Tired with her life - and her boss, a young secretary (Janet Leigh) absconds with a wad of his cash. Exhausted after her lengthy drive, the comely criminal pulls into The Bates Motel, where she's greeted by a seemingly nice, nerdy fellow with a fetish for birds and taxidermy.

The femme fatal felon looks forward to a soothing hot shower. Needless to say, her fatigue isn't the only thing to wash down the drain in this horror masterpiece from Alfred Hitchcock.

The Innocents (1961)

While it may lack the blood and guts horror buffs now take for granted, this chilling psychological creep show isn't easily shaken off. A young governess (Deborah Kerr) takes up her duties at a rambling old English mansion.

With two eerie siblings under her charge and supernatural forces haunting the regal homestead, fear sucks the life from  the woman's creamy English face, leaving her - and us - scared to the bone without spilling one drop of blood. 

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Vincent Price is back in this delicious Roger Corman classic! A distraught aristocrat rushes to Spain to uncover the truth about his sister's untimely death.

Once he arrives at the foreboding Castle Medina, his haughty brother-in-law (Price) claims a blood disease, not fowl play, claimed his late wife's life. The dutiful sibling isn't biting, dogging his adversary until he unearths his sister's real fate: being buried alive.  

Carnival of Souls (1962)

At first blush the demure blonde heroine of this cult classic looks like a nothing more than a church organist. Yet as audiences soon discover, this girl's got a past - and the otherworldly ghouls to prove it.

Phantom figures. A deadly car crash that only this woman seems to have survived. It's a demon of a story that toys with our imaginations and leaves audiences shaken to perfection on any dark and stormy night.

Hill House is the setting for this taut horror, in which two women with ESP gifts are enlisted for a parapsychology study.  Locked in for the night at the haunted New England mansion, the women and their companions roam the rambling hallways, mocking it's sordid past as they while away the hours.

But the home's unearthly occupants soon make their presence known, leaving the test subjects - and audiences - wondering who is being haunted and who is insane.

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Satan worshipers, a dirty middle-aged Prince and an oncoming plague get things rolling in this '60s spine-tingler about a masked ball gone horribly wrong. Amidst the debauchery and depravity the party's host (Vincent Price) is known for, the Prince spies a hooded stranger entering the eerie festivities.

Certain that Lord Satan's finally come calling, his devout pupil greets his new guest in style. But what he discovers under that mysterious cloak is even more monstrous than this scum-bucket bargained for.

Whether you love it or hate it, Roman Polanski's black-and-white classic about a young manicurist sliding into insanity was a '60s sensation.

At only 22, Catherine Deneuve gives a harrowing performance as the cataleptic Belgian beauty who holes up in her sister's crumby apartment, pummels her amorous beau to death and hangs out with rotting rabbit meat as she freaks herself senseless with the shadows on the walls.  

Tackling the role of Dr. Frankenstein for the fourth time, Peter Cushing doesn't disappoint in this chilling '60s pick. Eager to liven up the body of a dead young woman, the crafty doctor captures the soul of a recently deceased victim and installs it in the lifeless body.

Yet the soul is clearly troubled, turning Frankenstein's angelic creation into a demon of a bad date.

George A. Romero made horror history with this influential cult classic. After a radioactive space probe returns to earth, dead bodies start popping up everywhere full of zombie-like lust for human flesh. Humanity's only hope rests with a group of survivors barricaded in a farmhouse.

Their mission: Race through the ravenous zombie horde, drive to the nearest gas station and burn their evil brains to bits. Burn baby burn!

Charming Manhattan apartment. A young couple in love. Such unassuming normalcy opens this '60s spine-tingler. But just like Rosemary (Mia Farrow), we all suspect that something's up -- and it's coming straight from hell.

From Farrow's harrowed, wounded animal eyes to the her horrible nightmare about the demon that impregnates her, Roman Polanski's jitter-inspiring tale about a hunted woman and the evil she carries makes us all wonder anew about the neighbours living next door.