Best Horror Directors
by bowlinball1975 | created - 04 Sep 2012 | updated - 04 Sep 2012 | PublicMy favorite horror directors a-z.
1. Alexandre Aja
Director | Haute tension
Alexandre Aja was born on August 7, 1978 in Paris, France. He is a producer and director, known for High Tension (2003), The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Piranha 3D (2010). He is married to Laïla Marrakchi.
2. Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer | Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Paul W.S. Anderson gained a fair bit of notoriety in his native England when he directed the ultra-violent Shopping (1994) (which he also wrote), starring Jude Law and Sean Pertwee in a story about thieves who steal by ramming a car into storefronts. The film was banned in some cinemas in England, ...
3. Dario Argento
Writer | Profondo rosso
Dario Argento was born on September 7, 1940, in Rome, Italy, the first-born son of famed Italian producer Salvatore Argento and Brazilian fashion model Elda Luxardo. Argento recalls getting his ideas for filmmaking from his close-knit family from Italian folk tales told by his parents and other ...
4. Charles Band
Producer | Puppet Master
Charles Band is a writer, producer, director and publisher. He was born on December 27, 1951 in Los Angeles, California, as Charles Robert Band. His father was producer and director Albert Band and his brother is composer Richard Band.
Band has been writing, producing and directing films in the ...
5. Clive Barker
Writer | Nightbreed
Born in Liverpool, England, UK, Clive Barker is an English writer, director, and visual artist, best known for his works in the genres of horror and dark fantasy. His mother Joan Ruby (née Revill) was a painter and school welfare officer and his father Leonard Barker was a personnel director for an...
6. Uwe Boll
Producer | Postal
As a youth, he produced a number of short films on Super 8 and video. After short stints as guest auditor at Filmacademy Vienna and Filmhochschule Munich, Boll studied literature and economics in Cologne and Siegen. He graduated from university in 1995 with a doctorate in literature. From 1995-2000...
7. John Carpenter
Writer | The Fog
John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, to mother Milton Jean (Carter) and father Howard Ralph Carpenter. His family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father, a professor, was head of the music department at Western Kentucky University. He attended Western Kentucky ...
8. Larry Cohen
Writer | God Told Me To
Larry Cohen was born July 15, 1936, in New York, New York, and spent time in Kingston, a small town north of New York City. At a young age, his family moved to the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and he eventually majored in film at the historic City College of New York, from which he graduated in ...
9. Roger Corman
Actor | The Silence of the Lambs
Roger William Corman was born April 5, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan. Initially following in his father's footsteps, Corman studied engineering at Stanford University but while in school, he began to lose interest in the profession and developed a growing passion for film. Upon graduation, he worked a...
10. Don Coscarelli
Writer | Bubba Ho-Tep
In much the same way that director George A. Romero creative output has been primarily centered around the highly successful "Dead" series of zombie films, then fellow fantasy director Don Coscarelli has for over two decades seen his universe swirling around the lesser successful, but equally cult,...
11. Wes Craven
Writer | A Nightmare on Elm Street
Wes Craven has become synonymous with genre bending and innovative horror, challenging audiences with his bold vision.
Wesley Earl Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Caroline (Miller) and Paul Eugene Craven. He had a midwestern suburban upbringing. His first feature film was The Last House on ...
12. David Cronenberg
Actor | The Fly
David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early...
13. Sean S. Cunningham
Producer | Friday the 13th
Like William Girdler, Oliver Hellman or even Ed Wood, Sean S. Cunningham had a successful career of starting films cheap and fast. Originally from New York, Cunningham had a vast knowledge of directing films and came to Hollywood. He started about the same time Wes Craven did. Cunningham meets ...
14. Joe Dante
Director | Innerspace
Joe Dante is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art. After a stint as a film reviewer, he began his filmmaking apprenticeship in 1974 as trailer editor for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. He made his directorial debut in 1976 with Hollywood Boulevard (1976) (co-directed with Allan Arkush)...
15. Brian De Palma
Director | Body Double
Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American ...
16. Fred Dekker
Writer | The Monster Squad
Writer/director Fred Dekker was born on April 9, 1959 in San Francisco, California. An avid comic book fan, monster movie buff, and film nerd from an early age, Dekker was rejected by both USC and UCLA film schools. He wound up attending UCLA as an English major instead. His fellow UCLA classmates ...
17. William Friedkin
Director | To Live and Die in L.A.
Friedkin's mother was an operating room nurse. His father was a merchant seaman, semi-pro softball player and ultimately sold clothes in a men's discount chain. Ultimately, his father never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Eventually young Will became infatuated with ...
18. Mick Garris
Writer | Amazing Stories
Born in Santa Monica, California, on December 4, 1951, Mick Garris grew up with his mother in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Van Nuys from age 12, following his parents' divorce. Garris was making his own 8mm home movies around that time, and when he got older be became a freelance critic ...
19. Stuart Gordon
Writer | Re-Animator
Stuart Gordon started his film directing career in 1985. After graduating from Lane Technical High School, Gordon worked as a commercial artist apprentice prior to enrolling at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Unable to get into the film classes, he enrolled in an acting class and ended up ...
20. Tobe Hooper
Director | The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Honored with many awards for his films and achievement in the horror genre, Tobe Hooper is truly one of the Masters of Horror (2005).
Tobe Hooper was born in Austin, Texas, to Lois Belle (Crosby) and Norman William Ray Hooper, who owned a theater in San Angelo. He spent the 1960s as a college ...
21. John Landis
Director | The Blues Brothers
John Landis began his career in the mail room of 20th Century-Fox. A high-school dropout, 18-year-old Landis made his way to Yugoslavia to work as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes (1970). Remaining in Europe, Landis found work as an actor, extra and stuntman in many of the Spanish/Italian "...
22. Herschell Gordon Lewis
Director | This Stuff'll Kill Ya!
Only one film-maker can claim the title "Godfather of Gore." That peculiar but apt identification seems to be the exclusive property of Herschell Gordon Lewis. With an unusual background that included teaching English Literature to college students, producing and directing television commercials, ...
23. Patrick Lussier
Editor | Drive Angry
Patrick Lussier is known for Drive Angry (2011), My Bloody Valentine (2009) and Terminator Genisys (2015).
24. Neil Marshall
Director | Dog Soldiers
Neil Marshall was born on May 25, 1970 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK. He is a producer and director, known for Dog Soldiers (2002), The Descent (2005) and Doomsday (2008). He was previously married to Axelle Carolyn.
25. Sam Raimi
Director | Spider-Man
Highly inventive U.S. film director/producer/writer/actor Sam Raimi first came to the attention of film fans with the savage, yet darkly humorous, low-budget horror film, The Evil Dead (1981). From his childhood, Raimi was a fan of the cinema and, before he was ten-years-old, he was out making ...
26. Fred Olen Ray
Director | Hatfields and McCoys: Bad Blood
Fred Olen Ray spent most of his childhood in Florida, where he was always a fan of horror movies on TV. He collected autographs of many of the actors in those films where he met Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. His early career was filled with low-budget horror and science-fiction films, but the ...
27. George A. Romero
Writer | Land of the Dead
George A. Romero never set out to become a Hollywood figure; by all indications, though, he was very successful. The director of the groundbreaking "Living Dead" films was born February 4, 1940 ,in New York City to Ann (Dvorsky) and Jorge Romero. His father was born in Spain and raised in Cuba, and...
28. Eli Roth
Producer | Thanksgiving
Eli Raphael Roth was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Cora (Bialis), a painter, and Sheldon H. Roth, a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and clinical professor. His family is Jewish (from Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Poland). He began shooting Super 8 films at the age of eight; after watching Ridley ...
29. Victor Salva
Writer | Powder
Born in Martinez, California, 20 miles outside San Francisco, Victor Salva had written and directed over 20 short and feature-length films before graduating from high school. In the mid-'80s his 37-minute short Something in the Basement (1986) took first place in the fiction category at the Sony/...
30. Tom Savini
Actor | From Dusk Till Dawn
Actor/SFX wizard/stuntman/director Tom Savini was born in Pittsburgh. Inspired by the film Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), a young Savini became fascinated with the magic and illusion of film. He spent his youth in his room creating characters by tirelessly practicing make-up. Later, as a combat ...
31. James Wan
Writer | Saw
James Wan (born 26 February 1977) is an Australian film producer, screenwriter and film director of Malaysian Chinese descent. He is widely known for directing the horror film Saw (2004) and creating Billy the puppet. Wan has also directed Dead Silence (2007), Death Sentence (2007), Insidious (2010)...
32. Ti West
Director | Pearl
Ti West is most notable for directing horror films, as well as being an actor, writer, producer, and editor. Ti broke out, after directing various projects, in 2009, when he directed two feature films - 2009's The House Of The Devil and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. Ti later directed, with his ...
33. Brian Yuzna
Producer | Beyond Re-Animator
Brian Yuzna was born on August 30, 1949 in Manila, Philippines. He is a writer and producer, known for Beyond Re-Animator (2003), The Dentist (1996) and Faust (2000). He is married to Cathy Yuzna. They have four children.
34. Rob Zombie
Writer | Grindhouse
Robert Bartleh Cummings, more famously known as Rob Zombie, was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts on January 12, 1965. He is the oldest son of Louise and Robert Cummings, and has a younger brother, Michael David (aka Spider One; b. 1968), who is the lead singer of Powerman 5000. Growing up, Zombie ...
35. Steve Miner
Director | House
Steve Miner has had a very popular career in making films and remains one of Hollywood's most prolific directors and has worked with a variety of stars that includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielsen, C. Thomas Howell, Tom Arnold, Amy Steel Rick Moranis, and Bill Pullman.
Before becoming a director, ...
Tell Your Friends