Best Horror Movies of 1958

Industrialist François Delambre is called late at night by his sister-in-law, Helene Delambre, who tells him that she has just killed her husband, André. Reluctant at first, she eventually explains to the police that André invented a matter transportation apparatus and, while experimenting on himself, a fly entered the chamber during the matter transference.

A drive-in favorite, this sci-fi classic follows teenagers Steve and his best girl, Jane, as they try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches. The first to discover the substance and live to tell about it, Steve and Jane witness the blob destroying an elderly man, then it growing to a terrifying size. But no one else has seen the goo, and policeman Dave refuses to believe the kids without proof.

Jacques Duval devises a fiendishly clever method of murdering his wife. Doping her up with sleeping tablets, Duval places his wife in a sealed room, then opens all the gas jets. While the police identify the body, Duval remains hidden in the room, breathing through a snorkel, then makes his escape when the authorities leave. Only one flaw in this perfect crime: Duval's stepdaughter (Mandy Miller) is the suspicious type.

Baron Frankenstein, working under the protective pseudonym Dr. Victor Stein, together with his assistant Dr. Kleve, transplants a dwarf's brain into another body and unleashes a deranged being.

An 1840s British surgeon, experiments with anesthetic gases in an effort to make surgery pain-free. While doing so, his demonstration before a panel of his peers ends in a horrific mishap with his patient awakening under the knife; he is forced to leave his position in disgrace. To complicate matters, he becomes addicted to the gases and gets involved with a gang of criminals, led by Black Ben and his henchman Resurrection Joe.

A researcher investigating a notorious serial killer who was hanged 20 years earlier seemingly becomes possessed by the long dead strangler.

A newly appointed cemetery chairman believes that, merely by inserting a black plot-marking pin into a wall-sized map of the cemetery, he can cause the deaths of that plot's owner.

Aliens from Outer Space are slowly switching places with real humans -- one of the first being a young man about to get married. Slowly, his new wife realizes something is wrong, and her suspicions are confirmed when her husband's odd behaviour begins to show up in other townspeople.

After his wife and her blind sister have died under his care, a doctor's small daughter is kidnapped and reported as buried alive, and he is given just five hours to find and rescue her.

An American airbase in Canada provokes resentment from the nearby residents after fallout from nuclear experiments at the base are blamed for a recent spate of disappearances. A captain from the airbase is assigned to investigate, and begins to suspect that an elderly British scientist who lives near the base and conducts research in the field of mind over matter knows more than he is letting on..

A college paleontology professor acquires a newly discovered specimen of a coelecanth, but while examining it, he is accidentally exposed to its blood, and finds himself periodically turning into a murderous Neanderthal man.

In 1973, the first manned expedition to Mars is marooned; by the time a rescue mission arrives, there is only one survivor: the leader, Col. Edward Carruthers, who appears to have murdered the others! According to Carruthers, an unknown life form killed his comrades during a sandstorm. But the skeptical rescuers little suspect that "it" has stowed away for the voyage back to Earth...

A brilliant surgeon encases his dead son's brain in a large robot body, with unintended results...

After a vampire leaves his native Balkans, he murders a Czech artist, assumes his identity, and moves in with the dead man's American cousins.

A man and wife are terrorized by Mad Scientist Dr. Callistratus who was executed but has returned to life with a heart transplant. Along with his crippled assistant Carl, the 'anemic' Mad Scientist, believed to be a vampire, conducts blood deficiency research on the inmates of a prison hospital for the criminally insane to sustain his return to life.

A stone-encrusted body is unearthed at Pompeii, and people left alone with it keep dying of crushed skulls...

When an abused wife grows to giant size because of an alien encounter and an aborted murder attempt, she goes after her cheating husband with revenge on her mind.

The baron's grandson rents the family castle to a TV crew to fund his atomic revival of the family monster.

A deranged scientist creates a ray that can shrink people down to doll size.

An American investigator for the U.N., a German scientist and a British reporter join forces to investigate a series of disappearances and mutilation-deaths confined to a Swiss Alp and involving a thick, mobile cloud, a telepathic girl, an animate dead man, and tentacled, cyclopean beings from another planet.

A convicted murderer uses an ancient curse to take his revenge on those responsible for sending him to prison.

Teenagers from a small town and their high school science teacher join forces to battle a giant mutant spider, living in a cave nearby and getting hungry.

A huge, alien structure resembling an inverted cone, appears in the woods outside a small rural town. Sent from Washington to investigate the origin of the mysterious object, a team of investigators discovers that intelligent parasites from inside the "cone" can attach themselves to humans' nervous systems and control their minds, taking control of the authorities and workers, making communication with the outside world impossible, and leaving the responsibility of stopping the invasion up to seven people who have thus far been able to avoid possession by these creatures from parts unknown.

Comprised of 4 episodes from the unsold TV series "The Veil" (1958) - "Summer Heat," "Genesis," "Food on the Table," and "Jack the Ripper."

In this pilot for a series that was never picked up, Dr. Frankenstein has just finished rebuilding his creation, but the monster is unresponsive. He needs to try something different to make it work, perhaps some new parts. Enter a terminally ill sculptor and his assertive wife…

Near a small English village, a scientific team is conducting experiments with magnetic fields, the results of which may have military applications but the intensification of which seem to be connected to UFO reports, a series of murders, an enormous insect egg, and a strange visitor with exceptional scientific knowledge. Released in USA as THE COSMIC MONSTER.

A 400 year old disembodied head hypnotizes a female psychic, who recovered it using a dowsing rod, to search for the rest of its body.

When master monster make-up man Pete Dumond is fired by the new bosses of American International studios, he uses his creations to exact revenge.

A newlywed is terrified when her husband brings her to live in the old house that figures in her recurring nightmare.

After exposure to radiation, an atomic research scientist finds himself changing into a murderous, lizard-like creature every time he is exposed to sunlight.

An "unknown force" declares war against planet Earth when the United Nations disobeys warnings to cease and desist in its attempts at assembling the first satellite in the atmosphere.

Dr. Frankenstein's insane grandson attempts to create horrible monsters in modern day L.A.

Scientists try to stop a mysterious missile from destroying the Earth.

Newlyweds Eric and Jenni Whitlock retire to his desolate mansion, where Eric's first wife Marianne died from a mysterious freak accident. Jenni, who has a history of mental illness, begins to see strange things including a mysterious skull, which may or may not be a product of her imagination.

Glenn Manning, "The Amazing Colossal Man," believed dead after falling from the Hoover Dam, reemerges in rural Mexico, brain damaged, disfigured, and very angry.

Two escaped convicts are found hiding in a rocketship built by a renegade inventor, who forces them to become the crew for a trip to the Moon. Also on board, as inadvertent stowaways, are his assistant and his secretary; and none of them are aware that the inventor is actually a Lunarian explorer sent to Earth by the dying Lunar civilization and the only remaining male member of that civilization.

A mad scientist captures women and feeds them to a flesh-eating tree, which in turn gives him a serum that helps bring the dead back to life.

A couple wash up on an uncharted island where Nazi experiments are going on.

A series of grisly murders plague a small mountain community and the sheriff suspects a local scientist whom he dislikes. Together with a former professor and the professor's pretty daughter, the scientist sets about solving the crimes and discovers the killer is an oversized 16th century conquistador, resurrected by a lightning bolt from his mountain grave.

An astronaut is killed on re-entry to Earth, but his body is seeded with rapidly-gestating aliens.

A newlywed in Africa reveals, through hypnosis, a previous link to her husband's pet gorilla.

An American scientist tells two colleagues about the finding of an abominable snowman living in the Japanese alps, where it is worshipped by a remote tribe as a god, and how it was discovered by modern man after it raided a ski-ers' shelter following an avalanche, killing all inside. This is an adaptation of the Japanese film Ju Jin Yuki Otoko with added American-made footage, narration and music track.

In a little Western town, a boy is subjected to rays from a meteor. As a result, he grows into a teenaged, hairy, psychopathic killer. His mother hides him in her basement.

Archaeology students uncover a prehistoric manster… part man, part monster, and all bad attitude with a cheap costume. This film was completed in 1958 but the only theatrical release it received was in the director's hometown. The movie remained unreleased until 1975 when the director used the footage in Curse of Bigfoot. (IMDb)

The original "Pontianak" was made in 1957 directed by B.N. Rao and starred Maria Menado.The film was such a hit that in quick succession, two sequels were made "Dendam Pontianak" aka "Revenge of Pontianak" later in the same year (1957) and "Sumpah Pontianak" aka "The Curse of Pontianak") in 1958,both with Maria Menado."Dendam Pontianak" started the trend of introducing more than one supernatural being into the story,the other character being an old witch Nenek Kebayan(The Old Woman of the Forest)and by the time "Sumpah Pontianak" was made that had increased to four-female vampire Pontianak,an Orang Hutan(Wild Forest Man),a kind of bird-lizard creature and a Hantu Raya or "King Ghost"."Sumpah Pontianak" is an entertaining Malay horror movie with cheap special effects.The main female character Comel is infected by been infected with sumpah pontianak,the curse of the vampire and the villagers begin to die!

A Communist agent planted in America creates werewolves in order to start a panic in the U.S. that will lead to a Communist takeover.