Best Horror Movies of 1953

Author & amateur astronomer John Putnam and schoolteacher Ellen Fields witness an enormous meteorite come down near a small town in Arizona, but Putnam becomes a local object of scorn when, after examining the object up close, he announces that it is a spacecraft, and that it is inhabited...

The controlled explosion of an atomic bomb in the Arctic Circle awakens a frozen dinosaur that will wreak havoc in New York City.

Roy and Gilbert's fishing trip takes a terrifying turn when the hitchhiker they pick up turns out to be a sociopath on the run from the law. He's killed before, and he lets the two know that as soon as they're no longer useful, he'll kill again. The two friends plot an escape, but the hitchhiker's peculiar physical affliction, an eye that never closes even when he sleeps, makes it impossible for them to tell when they can make a break for it.

One of the most discussed and imaginative cartoons of any era. It tells the famous Edgar Allan Poe story of the deranged boarder who had to kill his landlord, not for greed, but because he possessed an "evil eye." The killer is never seen but his presence is felt by the use light-and-shadow to give the impression of impending disaster.

In the early hours of the night, young David Maclean sees a flying saucer land and disappear into the sand dunes just beyond his house. Slowly, all of the adults, including his once loving parents, begin to act strangely.

Abbott and Costello, two bumbling American cops on exchange in London, hunt for Mr. Hyde—the monster that has been terrorizing the city.

A scientist takes the brain of dead man and revives it via electrodes as it lays suspended in a tank of liquid. Soon, the brain grows to possess enormous psychic powers and inflicts its personality upon the doctor who saved it, creating a "Jekyll and Hyde" paradigm.

A Scotsman abruptly breaks off his engagement to pretty Kitty and moves to his uncle's castle in the Scottish highlands. Kitty and her aunt follow Gerald a few weeks later, and discover he has suddenly aged. Some mysterious things happen in a maze made from the hedges adjoining the castle.

Orson Welles, taking a break from the filming of "Othello," is driving in the Irish countryside one night when he offers a ride to a man with car trouble. The man relays to Welles a strange tale of an encounter he had once before at the same isolated location.

A singer and her apartment manager get mixed up in a creepy Park Avenue murder and find themselves facing danger at every turn.

After a UFO sighting, a mysterious phantom in a bizarre outfit starts attacking people in San Fernando Valley.

Ro-Man, an alien robot who greatly resembles a gorilla in a diving helmet, is sent to earth to destroy all human life. Ro-Man falls in love with one of the last six remaining humans, and struggles to understand how his programming can instruct him to kill her while his heart demands that he can't.

A scientist develops a formula which will cause animals to regress to the form of their primitive ancestors, and tries it on himself with disastrous results.

A scientist perfects a chemical, unleashing the beast within, but before he can create an antidote, his neglected wife is accidentally dosed when he has to rush a batch home to keep it refrigerated. Her mild resentment of his endless hours at the lab accelerates into a torrent, after she gobbles pie on which the potion dripped.

A mad scientist, Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan), has created giant spiders in his Mexican lab in Zarpa Mesa to create a race of superwomen by injecting spiders with human pituitary growth hormones. Women develop miraculous regenerative powers, but men mutate into disfigured dwarves. Spiders grow to human size and intelligence.

A woman falls in love with a ghost on All Hallows Eve.

In 1909 Cornwall, the affair between a disfigured miller's wife and his estranged cousin leads to a tragic case of mistaken identity.

A package film of Halloween-themed cartoons, one of which being Trick or Treat (1952).