Westerns and horror movies have their roots in the earliest days of cinema, but filmmakers didn’t begin blending the two genres in a meaningful way until many decades had passed, and the hallmarks of each had been well-established. Featuring a character who is both vampire and gunslinger,1959’sCurse of the Undeadis often cited as the firstgenre-bending crossover of Western and horror.
Over the years, there have been more interesting films that executed such a crossover. Some filmmakers have set horror stories in the Old West, or simply gone dark enough with their otherwise-straight Western stories that they became horror. SomeSpaghetti Western directors put blood in the sauce, while other filmmakers, likeQuentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, have mashed up the genres just for the movie-nerd fun of it.
1973’sHexblends Western, biker movie and supernatural elements into a bizarre genre-bender. In it, a trio of motorcycling World War I veterans hole up at a Nebraska farm with a pair of Native American sisters, one of whom possesses shamanistic powers passed down from her father. Plot developments nudgeHexinto the rape-revenge area, but it’s not as sleazy as most 1970s examples of that disreputable genre.
After an arduous shoot on the prairies of South Dakota, writer-director Leo Garen sawthe studio recut his film to remove its comedic undertones and make it more straightforwardly a supernatural horror movie. Fox never gaveHexa full theatrical release, and today it’s too obscure to even have aRotten Tomatoesrating. Author Norman Mailer loved it, and so did the judges at the Atlanta Film Festival, giving it their Golden Jury Award.
The Burrowers
Cast
Set in the 1879 Dakota Territories, The Burrowers follows a rescue party searching for missing settlers, only to discover that they face an indigenous feral species with menacing predatory instincts. The film blends elements of horror and western genres, offering a tense exploration of survival against sinister creatures lurking beneath the plains.
Set in the wilds of Dakota Territory,The Burrowersfollows a rescue party that needs to save itself after being targeted by mysterious underground creatures. These monsters paralyze their victims before pulling them underground to make human gravlaks, branding them as truly horrific. It’s eventually explained that the Burrowers were happy to leave humans alone and eat buffalo until the animals were all killed off, giving the film an ecological angle.
Director J.T. Petty also works as a video game writer, having contributed to theSplinter CellandOutlastseries
The Burrowersreceived a straight-to-DVD release, but nevertheless went over well with critics,currently holding a 73% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie may not be to everyone’s liking, however, as indicated by its 35% RT audience rating. The movie’s too-ambiguous ending seems to have turned off many audience members, but critics praised its story and visuals.
Ravenous
Ravenous is a 1999 horror film directed by Antonia Bird. Set during the Mexican-American War, it follows Captain John Boyd, played by Guy Pearce, as he is transferred to a remote military outpost where he encounters a man with a disturbing tale of cannibalism. The film blends dark humor with gruesome suspense, featuring performances by Robert Carlyle and David Arquette.
The eternally fascinating cases of Alfred Packer and the Donner Party inspiredRavenous, a blackly comic cannibal horror movie. Set in a remote California outpost, the film stars Robert Carlyle as a mysterious stranger whose cannibalistic practices have transformed him into a demon with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. InRavenous,cannibalism serves as a metaphor for capitalism and the unquenchable thirst for more consumption.
Audiences didn’t seem to get the point when the film was released in 1999, grossing just $2 million on a budget of $12 million. It did receive some critical praise at the time,getting a positive review from Roger Ebert, who enjoyed its atmosphere.Ravenousnow holds a 52% fresh rating on RT, but has enough admirers to qualify as a cult classic.
7From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
A Wild Genre-Bender From Two Filmmakers Who Love Down-And-Dirty Exploitation
Robert Rodriguez teamed with Quentin Tarantino for this wild, blood-soaked exploitation film, based on a treatment by Robert Kurtzman. It starts as a fugitives-on-the-run thriller, starring Tarantino and George Clooney as brothers on a murder spree, then becomes a tense kidnapping movie,then morphs again into anoff-the-wall survival horror exercisepitting Clooney as his compatriots against swarms of very bloodthirsty vampires.
Tarantino’s script plays with multiple genres, while Rodriguez’s direction and editing keep everything at a fever pitch. Audiences were willing to go along for the ride in 1996, pushingFrom Dusk Till Dawnto a $59.3 million gross on a budget of $19 million. Called by Roger Ebert “a skillful meat-and-potatoes action extravaganza with some added neat touches,” Rodriguez and Tarantino’s deliberately schlocky action-horror hit is at 65% fresh on RT.
The Wind
The Wind is a horror film released in 2018, centered on Lizzy, a resilient frontierswoman, contending with mysterious and ominous forces in the desolate 19th-century American frontier. As a newlywed couple settles nearby, Lizzy’s growing unease culminates in a cascade of unsettling events.
The Windtells the harrowing story of a troubled woman left alone in the New Mexico wilderness following a horrific tragedy, whose subsequent terrifying experiences are either the work of her own deranged mind, or of the demonic forces that haunt the wastelands.Emma Tammi’s psychological-horror exercise gains power from its Western setting, whose desolation alone could drive someone insane.
IFC Films promotedThe Windwith a video game designed by Airdorf
The film came out of the 2018 Toronto Film Festival, winning praise from critics, who admired its fresh perspective on its material, and lauded director Tammi as an intriguing new talent.The Windcurrently holds an 82% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Receiving only a limited theatrical release, the movie grossed just $130,000.
Dakota Fanning plays a young mute woman doggedly pursued over many years by her own wrathful father, an incestuous, would-be frontier prophet, played with sinister zeal by Guy Pearce. The lead performances lift Martin Koolhoven’s non-linear psychological horror Western, as it grimly catalogs the many outrages inflicted upon Fanning’s character (also played at a younger age by Emilia Jones, star ofCODA) by an array of gleefully evil men.
Brimstonecost $12 million to make but only grossed $1.2 million theatrically. However, critics in Europe embraced the international production, andfilm festivals lavished it with accolades, among them a Golden Lion nomination from the prestigious Venice Film Festival. American critics were turned off by the film, however, and it only has a 45% Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating, showing how divisive the entire project is.
Sinners
Sinners follows twin brothers who, in an attempt to escape their past hardships, return to their hometown seeking a fresh start. However, they find themselves confronted by a formidable and sinister presence awaiting their comeback. The 2025 film explores themes of redemption and malevolence.
Having put in his time on the MCU assembly line, Ryan Coogler emerges with a film that plays like a blast of liberation. Pulling from a wide variety of inspirations, theBlack Pantherdirectorconcocts a work that not only bends genres, but outright defies the concept of them.There’s a lot ofNear Darkin the movie’s DNA, and quite a bit ofFrom Dusk Till Dawn, the latter of which was cited by Coogler as an influence, along with another Rodriguez movie,The Faculty.
The weight of expectations must have been stifling to Coogler as the director of twoBlack Panthermovies, perhaps explaining why his first post-MCU movie seems so determined to shatter all expectations. The ride proved thrilling to audiences,pushingSinnersto a $351 million gross, and to critics, as reflected in the film’s 97% fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating.
There isn’t a lot in Clint Eastwood’s filmography that can be even loosely categorized as horror. This could be due in part toEastwood’s early work in B horror movies, an experience that left him with a permanent aversion to the genre. Only twice did Eastwood flirt with the supernatural in his Westerns. The first time came in 1973’sHigh Plains Drifter, at first glance a typical Eastwood stranger-rides-into-town story, which takes on subtly spooky shadings,as it’s implied that Eastwood’s character is the ghost of a murdered marshal.
Eastwood’s 1985 filmPale Rideralso has supernatural shadings
Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” from the Leone Westerns seems almost ethereal, an abstraction more than a person. All the actor-director does inHigh Plains Drifter, really, is take that indistinct quality of his Leone character one step further into the spectral. The movie was a big hit, grossing $15.7 million on a budget of $5.5 million. Its Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating stands at 94%, marking it as one of Eastwood’s most enduringly popular Westerns.
The 1970s more-or-less killed off the Hollywood vampire movie, but the genre saw a comeback in the second half of the 1980s, thanks to box office hits likeFright Night, and laterThe Lost Boys. Kathryn Bigelow’sNear Darkwas not a hit, but had an even greater influence on the genre’s future than its more successful counterparts. Mixing Western and horror elements into a narrative about desperate outsiders, easily read as an AIDS allegory, the film generated a new, more grounded and nihilistic branch of the vampire movie tree, one that even today continues sprouting new buds.
Not a lot of people ventured to theaters to seeNear Darkwhen it was released in 1987, as it limped to a $3.4 million gross. It’s now a cult classic, however, and its influence can be seen in works as diverse asSinners,Let the Right One In,andTwilight. Bigelow is reported to be involved in an A24 TV remake of her vampire masterwork, which sits at 83% fresh on RT.
The ever-provocative S. Craig Zahler starts with the classic – and problematic - Western trope of rescuers going out to save white people captured by inhumanly savage natives (The Searchersbeing the foremost example), launching into a genuinely stomach-turning exercise in primal horror. The film’s cannibalistic troglodytes are a menace to both white people and native tribes,and whether this invention gets Zahler off the hook for the apparent racism of his premise is up to the individual viewer to judge.
Not in question isBone Tomahawk’s capacity to shock and disgust. Critics found plenty to admire in its unhinged horror, as reflected in its 91% fresh score on RT. The film was not a box office hit, grossing only $475,000 on a budget of $1.8 million but the 2015 film continues to linger in the pop culture consciousness even 10 years on, standing as a supreme example of Western horror.
