Somehow, I ended up buying every #1 horror film since the box office began!

Cafe Society
1

You may think I’m joking, but let me explain how I achieved this feat. There’s a good chance that I’m the only guy that’s ever did this. :confused:

I bought a series of U.S. film charts on Amazon that are viewed with the Kindle app. They were all made by this Leonidas Fragias guy, but I already had pretty much every horror sequel ever made beforehand. Although many of them were released direct to video or DVD, so they didn’t chart at all. My obsession started many years ago. Likely around 2009 - as a few boxes’ worth, but I’m not sure.

Prior to 1982, film rankings were also only available in Variety on a week by week basis. But to view archives of the pages stored on their site, you need to pay $60 a month, and you only get 50 searches. But I think after 1982, the sources are the weekend rankings and NOT the weekly rankings.

Anyway, the initial box office samples in the 1920s were not really a proper chart. It was just a bunch of movies’ names and their estimated gross for that week. But this dude compiled top ten charts similar to how you would author the modern ones, so there really wasn’t many number one horrors between 1925 and 1969 at all, but I bought them all on DVD regardless. And, I’ve got every horror film recognized as a number one from Variety up to 1981 and then from all of the records kept by the studios after 1982 up to 2019. I’m now aiming to get every top ten horror film from each decade, apart from ‘lost films’ from the silent era that aren’t available anywhere. :cool:

I really doubt anybody else has even did this, and it has been an expensive… journey, so to speak. I really struggle to enjoy modern horror movies, though. I may not even resume my collection in the 2020s, as I know movies have changed for the worse, so maybe I’ll just stop here now that I have so many boxes, with so many films. :smack:

2

Have you moved any of your recordings to the cloud? It might be nice to have all of them backed up and indexed.

3

Sounds like a very excellent project.

Two questions just out of interest, since you are now the Go-To Guy:

  1. Are any of the No. 1s a sequel, say one of the Halloweens or Nightmare on Elm Streets?

  2. Are there any classic horrors that was not a No. 1 in its time?

4

They’re DVDs. I cannot even find a laptop nowadays that plays them.

5

One with a USB external Dvd drive?

6

OK. I was looking up the movies from the 1920s on my charts to figure out the first ever horror film to top the box office, and I think the first #1 at the box office is very likely the 1925 movie The Monster starring Lon Chaney. One Exciting Night from 1923 didn’t quite gross enough earnings to make it to the top spot, but maybe that’s the first number two horror movie, unless there’s another film I’ve yet to find out about. Although I don’t think there was that many horror pictures that were huge hits during that era.

It’s kind of funny that Lon Chaney is in it, so that technically made him the first horror star, predating legends such as Robert Englund and Anthony Perkins by several decades, and even Christopher Lee, who often played Dracula. :smiley:

Here’s a list I made on Fandom.