Metropolis wasn't a horror movie.

I would have placed "Ringu" in the 90's....

metropolis horror??? maybe for capitalists :D :D :D

for me most influential movie is scream in 90. Freddy in 80. texas chainsaw in 70. NOTLD in 60.

60's Dracula by Hammer, brought the genre back to life
70's Exorcist, no Q, even though there was stiff competition from Omen, TCSM, Alien
80's I' say American Werewolf in london.
90's Ringu
00 - Too early to say yet.

where to start

1958, sequels pale in comparison to the first

1998

he's right

he's right again

i've mentioned this one before but. . . one of my favorite books about horror films talks about exactly this question. the book is titled Projected Fears and the list of most "influential" horror films in american history is:

Dracula (1931)
The Thing (1951)
Psycho (1960)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The Exorcist (1973) & Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 - the book actually talks about these two together)
Halloween (1978)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Scream (1996)
and, The Sixth Sense (1999)

it wouldnt' have been my list, but the book makes a very compelling case for each.

Maybe not the most influential, but Alien was for me because Ripley fought instead of being the victim, and she won. Really really dug that.....................

from the 20's and 30's, I'd mention...

Nosferatu
Phantom of the Opera
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
King Kong
Frankenstein
Freaks

Couldn't really name any movie that was "most" influential because it's a continuum...We wouldn't have NOTLD had not other stuff come before it and paved the way, for example. We wouldn't have had Star Wars without Flash Gordon and King Kong, etc. But it's nice to make lists of things that were ALL influential in their own individual ways...

I guess you're right about Metropolis. I thought Caligari was before the 20's, which is why I hadn't thought of it. I think we can pretty much say Germany in the 20s was changing every genre out there. I can see where the book is coming from on Sixth Sense. It revived PG-13 horror, and that has been something of a force to be reckoned with at the box office in recent years. I don't know if I'd stand behind Scream, though. It states the obvious a lot.

i liked scream