Best Horror Movies of 1962

Mary Henry ends up the sole survivor of a fatal car accident through mysterious circumstances. Trying to put the incident behind her, she moves to Utah and takes a job as a church organist. But her fresh start is interrupted by visions of a fiendish man. As the visions begin to occur more frequently, Mary finds herself drawn to the deserted carnival on the outskirts of town. The strangely alluring carnival may hold the secret to her tragic past.

Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.

After an unusual meteor shower leaves most of the human population blind, a merchant navy officer must find a way to conquer tall, aggressive plants which are feeding on people and animals.

A skeptical college professor discovers that his wife has been practicing magic for years. Like the learned, rational fellow he is, he forces her to destroy all her magical charms and protective devices, and stop that foolishness. He isn't put off by her insistence that his professional rivals are working magic against him, and her protections are necessary to his career and life.

An artist grows distant from his new wife as an irrational horror of premature burial consumes him.

An American tourist, a youth gang leader, and his troubled sister find themselves trapped in a top secret government facility experimenting on children.

What secret lay behind the dreaded Marsh Phantoms, the ghostly riders whose silent approach in the darkness of the bleak, unwelcoming Romney Marshes causes men to die of fright? Are they a genuine manifestation or a cover for illegal smuggling activities. Perhaps Dr. Blyss, the benign vicar of the quiet village of Dymchurch, knows the truth about the ruthless pirate and smuggler who lies buried in the village graveyard and can unravel the phenomenon of the curse of Captain Clegg.

The corrupt Lord Ambrose D'Arcy steals the life's work of the poor musical Professor Petry. In an attempt to stop the printing of music with D'Arcy's name on it, Petry breaks into the printing office and accidentally starts a fire, leaving him severely disfigured. Years later, Petry returns to terrorize a London opera house that is about to perform one of his stolen operas.

The twisted Richard III is haunted by the ghosts of those he has murdered in his attempt to become the King of England.

The year is 1885, and necrophiliac Dr. Hitchcock likes to drug his wife for sexual funeral games. One day he accidentally administers an overdose and kills her. Several years later he remarries, with the intention of using the blood of his new bride to bring his first wife's rotting corpse back to life.

Penniless Fred Bancroft, along with his new wife Molly, visits a sinister uncle he hasn't seen in years in hopes of living rent-free in his musty, decaying mansion.

Experimental gothic short, adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Pit and the Pendulum'.

A delirious young woman feels trapped in a remote mansion at the mercy of a madman.

Young Ursula plays in a tree and ruins her fancy dress. Her elderly mother teaches her a cruel lesson about whether things can ever be mended; what Ursula learns about how to behave may not be what her mother intended.

A space expedition to Uranus is menaced by a giant brain that can make illusions come true.

Woton Wretchichevsky has a disfigured face, dresses in cloak and mask and stalks couples to burn them with a blowtorch. He is also a sculptor of steel and garbage installations. One day one of his creations comes alive in the form of a young woman. She flees him when he tries to express his love by pointing the blowtorch at her. She hides in a house where some kind of orgy or happening is going on. Also war breaks out. —flixster

Dr. Bill Cortner and his fiancée, Jan Compton, are driving to his lab when they get into a horrible car accident. Compton is decapitated. But Cortner is not fazed by this seemingly insurmountable hurdle. His expertise is in transplants, and he is excited to perform the first head transplant. Keeping Compton's head alive in his lab, Cortner plans the groundbreaking yet unorthodox surgery. First, however, he needs a body.

A millionaire businessman's brain is kept alive after a fatal accident, and communicates clues to a doctor on the trail of the killer

A concert pianist loses his hands in a car crash, but a surgeon gives him new ones. The experimental medical procedure goes awry when the new hands drive the pianist mad.

In an effort to find an economic means of purifying salt water, a joint U.S.-Japanese military command is set up on an isolated Japanese island where an unusual salt water lake is situated. However, their purifying experiments arouse the prehistoric monster Obaki from hibernation at the lake's bottom, and it proceeds to attack Japan. Although made by a U.S. independent film company, this film was based on a Japanese Toho monster film of 1958, "Daikaiju Varan", from which all of the monster effects scenes and a few incidental dramatic shots were edited into it.

A low-budget re-telling of the classic fairy tale.

The Wolfman, Dracula and Frankenstein spy on a girls' school in the mountains, where most of the girls spend their time sunbathing in the nude, nude exercises and nude art classes. The monsters finally invade the school…

A newlywed woman is alone in her home during a devastating storm. As she waits for her husband to return, she is besieged by menacing sounds throughout the house, power outages, a jumpy pet black cat, and a creepy cabbie. After much deliberation, she decides to investigate a strange disturbance in the storm cellar.

A scientist spills a new serum in his lab, accidentally inhales its fumes, and turns into a murderous monster who kills anyone he touches.

Teenagers stumble across a prehistoric caveman, who goes on a rampage.

A man is shipwrecked on the island of a cruel Count and taken prisoner.

After a daring jewel heist, a trio of thieves hold up in an old dark house inhabited by a motley bunch of restless ghosts that only want to dispatch their new guests in the most horrible manner possible – that is if they can get to them before the spirits of an unruly group of dismembered corpses from the nearby cemetery!

A group of medical students undertake some silly and frightening endeavors in order to pledge a fraternity.

A sinister montage intimates the hellish void facing a man emptying bottles by the river. Sandy Fisher’s densely reverberating electronic score provides strong support for Lloyd Williams’ cultic collage of skulls, chess boards and fire.

The Mute Book is a French TV movie, written and directed in 1962 by Gerard Dumont, based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale. Performed by Marcel MOULOUDJI, Rita CADILLAC, Hilda CAMBA and Frédérique VILLEDENT.