The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière created the first publicly shown movies, the first documentaries and, with this one-shot, 50-sec. movie filmed at a Provence railway station, the first horror picture. It is said that as the Paris spectators watched the train chug toward the screen, they believed it was about to crash out of the frame and into the auditorium, and ran out screaming. True or not, the story indicates the power the medium would wield over its audience. The film can be seen on YouTube.
Top 25 Horror Movies
From silent vampires to animated murders to sharks that won't die, TIME chronicles the best from more than a century's worth of big-screen scares
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
Full List
Horror Movies
- Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
- The Fly
- The Exorcist
- Night of the Living Dead
- Freaks
- Blood Feast
- Carrie
- Men Behind the Sun
- Paranormal Activity
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
- Thirst
- Braindead/Dead Alive
- Jaws
- Bambi
- Audition
- The Phantom of the Opera
- Trilogy of Terror
- Peeping Tom
- Halloween
- Frankenstein
- Nosferatu
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- Alien
- Psycho