Variety has published a new Top 100 Horror Movies of all time and it seems fair. There’s a danger with these things of recency bias, but none of that here.

The list is:

1: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974
The Exorcist (1973)
Psycho (1960)
Jaws (1975)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
Audition (1999)
Frankenstein (1931)
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
10: Carrie (1976)

We’ve no problem with this, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a worthy winner. Variety explained:

“Very few horror movies possess the quality of a true nightmare — that transcendently scary bad dream you can’t wake up from, because it feels like it’s really happening. In 1974, just the title of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre could put the fear into you.”

“Hearing those four words — Texas. Chain. Saw. Massacre. — you could almost see the movie unspooling before your eyes, like some bat-house snuff film. Yet as more and more people experienced it, the most shocking thing about Texas Chain Saw turned out to be what a masterpiece of terror it was. Tobe Hooper directed it with a lyrical suspense worthy of an existential grindhouse Hitchcock. He took the story of five post- hippie teenagers driving a van through the Texas wilds and turned it into a plunge into the American abyss.

There’s a reason The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has cast such a shadow over the last half-century of horror films. As much as Psycho or The Exorcist it created a mythology of horror, one that feels even more resonant today than it did 50 years ago,” the publication shared.