10 Horror Movies That Actually Won Academy Awards
John Squires
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1987’s 59th annual Academy Awards was a ceremony that honored a handful of horror films, including the aforementioned Aliens, Little Shop of Horrors and even Poltergeist 2: The Other Side. In addition to the double win for Aliens, David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly nabbed itself the Best Makeup award for Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis’ memorably grotesque transformation makeups. It wasn’t long after that Walas was put into the director’s chair for The Fly 2, which he also created the effects for.
What’s the only horror film in the history of cinema to win an Oscar for Best Picture? That’d be Silence of the Lambs, which cleaned up at the 1992 event. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Silence of the Lambs is one of only three films to win all of the “Big Five” awards, which also include Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. Though it was nominated for Best Editing and Best Sound, the film didn’t take home those awards, but that’s of little importance when you consider how many it did. We salute you, Silence of the Lambs, for being the biggest horror film success story in Oscar history!
The most recent win for the horror genre at the Academy Awards was Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, which was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography and Best Editing. In the Best Actress category, Natalie Portman was presented with the naked gold dude for her performance as a mad ballet dancer in the dark re-telling of Swan Lake. Don’t even try to tell me that Black Swan isn’t a horror film because I’d have a hard time finding a genre that it belongs in more than the horror genre.
Other horror and horror-themed films that have won Oscars include: The Phantom of the Opera (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1946), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1963), King Kong (1977), Beetlejuice (1989), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Jurassic Park (1993), Sleepy Hollow (2000), King Kong (2006), Pan’s Labyrinth (2007) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2008).
