A loose and highly sensational definition of the occult has been a part of cinema since its inception. For the most part, the horror film genre has been the occult’s unofficial home, with devil worshipers, pagan cults, and the like populating movies such as The Wicker Man, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and others. Occult-themed movies really exploded in popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, when the hippie counterculture’s flirtation with Eastern thought and New Age practices was turned into something much darker. (The Manson family murders also helped to spread the idea that “peace and love” was just a front for hippie malevolence.)
While some of the entries here come from that time period, many are much older and date to the era of silent films. Some of these movies are linked to the occult by secondary and even tertiary threads. While some were written by writers looking to thrill audiences with blasphemous tales, others were penned by serious practitioners of the occult.
Source: Listverse
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