Classic Horror Movies Trivia

Long before jump scares and found footage, horror built its reputation on shadowy black-and-white monsters, then reinvented itself every couple of decades with a new icon willing to terrify audiences all over again. This quiz spans a century of scares, from a 1920s silent vampire to the slasher villains who ruled multiplexes in the 1970s and '80s.

Grab a blanket to hide behind and see how much classic horror trivia you remember.

The Original Movie Monsters

Universal's early horror pictures gave the genre its first icons: Bela Lugosi's slow, hypnotic Dracula and Boris Karloff's mute, sympathetic Frankenstein's monster both debuted in 1931 and became templates that horror kept borrowing from for decades. Even earlier, the German silent film "Nosferatu" gave audiences their first unauthorized (and legally troubled) take on Bram Stoker's vampire.

The Rise of the Slasher

• Michael Myers, introduced in 1978's "Halloween," established the template of a masked, nearly unstoppable killer.
• Jason Voorhees followed close behind, terrorizing camp counselors throughout the "Friday the 13th" franchise.
• Freddy Krueger took the genre somewhere stranger, attacking victims through their dreams instead of waiting for them outside.

Horror That Broke the Mold

Not every classic horror film relies on a masked killer. "The Exorcist" mined dread from religious anxiety, "Night of the Living Dead" reinvented the zombie as a slow-moving social metaphor, and "The Shining" proved that an empty hotel could be just as terrifying as anything with claws.