Nice one! This is definitely the kind of topic I can get my terth into!
The 80's was a cracker for horror, including my all time favourite movie, which obviously gets the number one spot in my top five:
5) American Werewolf in London
Speciel effects that ate are still amazing to this day, a genuinely creepy atmosphere, fantastic cast, bizarre half way between absurdist and surrealist humour, genuinely horrifying, but fundamentally tragic. My wifes favourite horror and has given her an irrational phobia of werewolves.
4) Gremlins
Just perfect in its anarchic, comedic grossness, while being a great Christmas movie. My gateway into horror as my mother only watched the first 20 minutes with me, before getting bored and going off to do soemthing else, ie before the Gremlins showed up.
3) The Thing
The pinnacle of practical effects in horror, tense, paranoid, terrifying, isolated and claustrophobic all in equal measure. It's probably the best alien invasion movie ever filmed.
2) Evil Dead 2
Bruse Campbell chews the scenery as he's driven insane by the forces of darkness, then straps a chainsaw to an amputation and starts dishing out one liners as fast as he does shotgun shells. Groovy.
1) Aliens
Ripley is still the greatest movie heroine ever in my eyes. Her journey through Alien leaving her mentally scared and emotionally broken, yet she faces her fears, rallies a team of marines that get their arses handed to them and finds a new family, then finally faces her fears head on against the alien queen through fire, fury and massive armoured punches before blowing another alien out an airlock that's as wrathful, planned and contemptuous as it was paniced, terrifying and desperate in the first movie.
The greatest sequel of all time, and the best an action horror likely ever will be.