Given their shared interest in delving into the darker side of life (and death), one might expect goths and horror movies to go together like corpses and coffins.
Indeed, goths—a loosely-defined subculture that delights in all things sinister and spooky—have had a serious toehold in the genre at least since Vampira started hosting horror movies with her signature glamour ghoul looks and deadpan delivery on TV in the 1950s.
The following decade would see another resurgence of goths on the small screen when The Munsters and The Addams Family—two sitcoms that married broad humor with decidedly funereal aesthetics—both made their network debuts in 1964.
But it wasn’t until the late ‘70s that goth emerged as a true cultural force.
By 1976 Anne Rice’s romantic, brooding novel Interview with the Vampire and the advent of punk bands like The Damned and Siouxsie and the Banshees helped lay the groundwork for goth, but the genre didn’t really take root until three years later.
In 1979, Bauhaus recorded their signature song, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”—a dour, spooky, and improbably sexy 9 and-1/2-minute tribute to the actor who played the notorious Count in 1931 and, in the most goth move imaginable, was eventually buried in his Dracula cape—and the world would never be the same…at least for those of us who will only stop wearing black when they invent a darker color.
If all of this sounds right up your fog-choked, gaslamp-lit cobblestone alley, then fire up a clove cigarette and stake out a shady nook in your local cemetery—here are some of the most memorable horror movies featuring goths: