October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article exploring our picks for the ten best slices of Hong Kong horror is part of our ongoing series, 31 Days of Horror Lists.

We probably don’t need to explain to horror fans that filmmakers in the U.S. don’t have a monopoly on the genre. This year’s two best horror films, for example, come from Spain (When Evil Lurks) and Australia (Talk to Me). Past years, past decades even, have also seen the cream of the nightmarish crop cross seas and borders to reach our eyes. That’s all to say that other countries know how to bring the spooky, weird, and gory goods.

There are boom periods and busts, though, and while the film industry in the U.S. is big and broad enough that there’s no stopping it, smaller industries in smaller countries don’t have that luxury. Giallo films were big business in Italy in the 70s and 80s, but when they lost favor with the public, they pretty much stopped making them. To the point of this post, something similar can be said about Hong Kong’s production of its own particular brand of horror movies — although the Chinese handover in 1997 probably had more to do with it than fading public interest.

Hong Kong has produced horror films for as long as they’ve been making movies, but their sweet spot was objectively a stretch between the 80s and 90s. So-called Cat III films — movies “given” the Category III rating signifying adult content in the form of extreme violence/gore, sexual imagery, or even incredibly dark themes — found their niche with wild visuals, absolutely bonkers set-pieces, crazy/cruel pairings of T&A and terror, gross things going in and out of people’s mouths, slime-covered monstrosities, heavy doses of the weird and fantastical, and lots and lots of blood.

Anything is possible in a Hong Kong horror movie — you often, quite literally, have no idea what’s going to happen next — and that WTF insanity makes “Hong Kong horror” a force to be reckoned with. With more than two decades of prime HK horror goodness to enjoy, there’s no shortage of new discoveries. I’m still finding new favorites on a regular basis, and the odds are quite good that you will, too, after checking out the ten movies we’re highlighting below. So keep reading for the ten best Hong Kong horror movies. Basically, our favorites as of the time we compiled this list, as ranked by Chris “克里斯” Coffel, Brad “布拉德” Gullickson, Meg “梅格” Shields, Jacob “雅各” Trussell, and me,

The first Shaw Brothers production to make the list, Yang Chuan‘s Seeding of a Ghost is a wild tale of murder and vengeance splattered with magic, goop, and “sexy” shenanigans. A taxi driver crosses paths with a magic man through no fault of his own, and his life soon turns to shit. When his wife has an affair, is attacked, and ultimately killed, the man loses it and........

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