Book lists⁴

Films name-checked in Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies — the comprehensive critical encyclopedia of horror cinema since 1968. An exhaustive reference rather than a curated canon, covering thousands of films across the modern horror era.

The films catalogued in Kier-La Janisse's 2012 book — a hybrid of film criticism and personal memoir built around women's neurosis in horror and exploitation cinema. The Letterboxd mirror tracks the canonical filmography from the book.

Films discussed in Carol J. Clover's foundational 1992 study of gender in modern horror — the book that named the 'final girl' archetype and reframed slasher, occult, and rape-revenge cinema through feminist film theory.

The films listed in Appendix I of Stephen King's 1981 non-fiction book on horror — King's personal canon of essential horror, fantasy, and dark fantasy cinema from 1950 to 1980. Entries 1-41 are King's personally-marked favorites.