The Top 5 Pre-1970 Monster Movies You Might Have Missed

They inspired big dreams before the blockbuster age

Carnival of Souls - Think of any scary movie with a shocking twist ending, from Jacob's Ladder to The Sixth Sense, and chances are it was cribbed from this 1962 cult classic about a young woman who emerges in shock from a car crash and begins seeing ghouls everywhere she goes. We have faith this will continue to endure; director Herk Harvey proved himself to be quite the survivor playing a post-nuke farmer in The Day After.

The Last Man on Earth - Richard Matheson's I Am Legend tends to pop up onscreen every generation, but it was Vincent Price who first lived alone in a world full of vampires, in that far-off future world of 1968. Scary for its day, though perhaps not as terrifying as what has become of vampires themselves in more recent pop-culture.

Them! - Not to be confused with a similarly named 2006 French home-invasion thriller, this 1954 ant-attack flick is generally considered the best of the giant bug movies from the early atomic age. Cameo alert: Leonard Nimoy as a soldier who reads wire copy.

Gojira - You've almost certainly seen the dubbed Godzilla, with scenes of Raymond Burr awkwardly spliced in. Seek out the original Japanese version to see how genuinely scary the movie was originally, as it basically starred a walking Hiroshima bomb.

It Came from Outer Space - Giant, hairy, floating eyeballs take over a small town after their spaceship crashes, and are shocked to discover that humans are scared of them. Go figure.

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