House on the Edge of the Park
This home invasion sleaze-fest is one of many that popped up after the success of Last House on the Left, but it has the distinction of coming from the mind of director Ruggero Deodato, who also directed the widely-banned, explicit and controversial Cannibal Holocaust. It's not a masterpiece of style or tension, but as far as limit-testing gore and degrading violence, this tale of a mechanic psychopath and his friend holding a high society party hostage still rests at the top of the heap.
Desperate Hours
William Wyler's tense suburban thriller used to be something of a classic, but it gets mentioned less and less these days, hence its inclusion here. In the film, Humphrey Bogart and two lackeys hole up in a suburban home and terrorize the family -- both physically and psychologically. In other words, it more or less laid-out the formula for many home invasion films to come. Michael Cimino directed an remake in 1990 with Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins, and while its certainly inferior, parts of it are a bit too odd to completely dismiss.
For more home invasion fun with Bogart, also see Key Largo.
Night Holds Terror
This is basically a cheap rip-off of Desperate Hours, but it's lean, thrilling, efficiently directed, plus John Cassavetes plays one of the gangsters that takes over the suburban home this time around. Not groundbreaking, but lots of fun.
Suddenly
It's the Desperate Hours set up once more, only this time it's Frank Sinatra taking over a peaceful household, and rather than money or a hideout, he wants to use the family's home as a headquarters to -- ready for it? -- assassinate the president. Beyond that amazing setup, this one gets points for being surprisingly brutal and intense for its time, and casting Sinatra in such a despicable role.
Kidnapped (Secuestrados)
Miguel Angel Vivas' lesser seen modern take on the Desperate Hours formula gets the edge over the very similar French thriller Them because of its stylish long takes and unflinching brutality. This time around it's three Eastern European hooligans vs. a wealthy Spanish family. Bleak and savage stuff.
The 49th Parallel
An insane wartime thriller about a group of renegade Nazis tearing through Canada and breaking into homes, courtesy of well-regarded British directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus )
The film was actually commissioned by The British Ministry of Information as a propaganda film to try to convince the then-neutral United States to join the WW2 effort. Said Powell, "I hoped it might scare the pants off the Americans [and thus bring them into the war]."
The Visitors
A creepy, slow-burn thriller about a Vietnam veteran, Bill, and his family who get an unexpected visit from two ex-soldiers that bring to light violent, previously buried secrets.
James Woods makes his acting debut as Bill in the penultimate film of director Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront, Splendor in the Grass)
Lady in a Cage
One of the most aptly-titled thrillers of all time. Olivia de Havilland plays a wealthy, injured widow who becomes quite literally trapped in a cage-like elevator between the first and second floors of her home. She uses the emergency alarm button to call for help, but the first responder turns out to be a malevolent alcoholic rather than a savior.
Sleep Tight
A twisted, suspenseful thriller about an obsessive apartment doorman from Spanish director Jaume Balagueró (Rec), Sleep Tight posits that torture, death and assault are perhaps not the worst fates that home invasion victims can suffer. Voyeuristic, perverse and extremely creepy, this one will give apartment dwellers nightmares for years to come.
Teorema
An unwelcome visitor brings about oddly welcome changes in Pier Paolo Pasolini's hypnotic 1968 oddity. Terrence Stamp shows up out of nowhere at the home of a bourgeoisie family and proceeds to seduce each of them, one by one, changing all of them in dramatic, otherworldly ways.
Largely dismissed as too strange upon when it was first released, Teorema has become considerably more influential over the years, serving as the basis for a number of loose remakes, most significantly, Takashi Miike's equally bizarre and brilliant Visitor Q.
La Cérémonie
More bourgeoisie mayhem, this time courtesy of French suspense master Claude Chabrol. An illiterate maid living in the home of a wealthy family strikes up a dangerous friendship with a devious post-mistress that leads to blackmail and eventually, a violent siege on the house. The powerhouse cast includes Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire.
Inside
One of the sickest and most tense home invasion flicks of all time, regular readers are probably familiar with this gory French thriller that finds Beatrice Dalle mysteriously trying to break into the home of a very pregnant woman. But for those who still haven't caught it, Inside is the real deal and sports one of the sickest, most brutally inventive climaxes of all time.
Martyrs
More madness from France. This bloody tale begins as an action packed home-invasion movie in reverse (our protagonist is the one invading), then slowly morphs into something even sicker and more disturbing.
The Aggression Scale
Our very own Ryland Aldrich says it all in his review out of SXSW:
What if Macaulay Culkin's Kevin McCallister from Home Alone wasn't the lovable trouble maker in the John Hughes mold, but was instead a vicious psychopath more in line with Jack the Ripper than Dennis the Menace? This is the essential question asked by Steven C. Miller in his sophomore feature. Replace marbles with razor sharp jacks, replace paint cans with sharpened branches, and replace simulated gunfire with a pump-action 12 gauge shotgun, and you've got the basic premise of The Aggression Scale. You've also got a pretty damned good time at the cinema.
Countdown
This Thai horror comedy ultimately came off as a bit too simplistic and preachy to me when I first saw it, but our own Joshua Chaplinsky walked away with a much more interesting reading in terms of its morality and philosophy.
But forget all of that! Countdown is above all else an extremely well-directed and entertaining thriller, and, I think, the only home invasion movie to feature Jesus Christ as the antagonist.
