Best horror filmmakers of this group?

Wes Craven
John Carpenter
Dario Argento

George Romero (newly discovered movie Amusement Park coming out soon!)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Tobe Hooper
Mario Bava
Tod Browning

Rough ranking. Like/love 'em all, or at least some of their movies. Top 3 is a toss up, depending on what we're arguing. But I gotta count how I grew up on Craven/Carpenter movies, and how those same movies hold up now in a new even better way. Can't say that about the other junk I watched as a kid. I've seen pretty much everything they've done and both have more than 10 movies I either love or consider great guilty pleasures - Argento I've only seen 9 of his movies and I actually like them all. Recently saw Opera which improves a lot when thinking back on it, and reminded me a bit of Scream; pacinoyes nails Argento and "the faulty nature of memory" is right, even extending to our own, the ways his movies stick with you and on rewatches how there's always details or elements of style you forget about that make each viewing rewarding and gripping....

Read about this last night. Very exciting!

I'm not familiar with the oeuvre of some of these filmmakers but from the ones I've seen Dario Argento is easily the greatest, his best films reaching an abstract/lyrical quality which I just adore.

Oh shit nice, which two? 

I've always wished I liked Bava more as he seems like the type of filmmaker I'd be really into, but I mostly just find his stuff OK. Probably going to give some of his work another shot this October - these last few years I've been majorly lacking on watching horror during Halloween season, it's got to change! 

John Carpenter is easily my favorite of the bunch, his 80s run is almost unreally. He's also the most versatility, because while he's commonly associated with horror, he was never pigeon-holed into the genre the same way the likes of Craven and Hooper were. He did action movies, comedies, and even a sci-fi drama (Starman).

I love a lot of Dario Argento 70's, and 80's films, and although his recent run of movies is fairly rough, his films from Deep Red to Opera, is mostly full of brilliance.

Wes Craven didn't always strike it out, Deadly Blessing for example, but his movies were always interesting and or sadistically great. Nightmare on Elm Street, and the first two Scream movies are great, but I think my favorite Craven movie might be People Under The Stairs, which is a great demented black comedy, with a lot of surprisingly social commentary attached to it.

A lot of George Romero's films can be hit and miss, but when he's on, he's on. The first four Dead movies, Martin, The Crazies, Creepshow, some good horror films on that list. Also highly recommend his only non horror film Knightriders. Quite indulgent, but there's some brilliance and fun to be had with it.

What I've seen of Mario Bava's is great, and I think I need to explore even more. I love Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Planet of the Vampires, and A Bay of Blood. To me he might be the best Giallo filmmaker, because he knew how to use red to such an excellent effect.

Tobe Hooper I felt never got a lot of respect. At best he's known as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or being the alleged ghost-director for Spielberg in Poltergeist (something that looks more iffy to me as more actual evidence is revealed), but he also made a lot of fun genre flicks, until the bottom fell out as far as mainstream releases went. The Funhouse, Lifeforce, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a hilarious sequel etc...

Lucio Fulci generally made the most blatant trash out of the bunch, but some of his movies like City of The Living Dead, and Zombi2 are slickly made well-done horror films.

Tod Browning's Freaks and Dracula are both excellent, and his silent horror films with Lon Chaney were also vitally important to the genre as a whole. It's a shame that his career spurted out of control after Freaks failure though, because Mark of The Vampire is a movie with a nifty concept, that was ruined because of executive meddling.

I haven't seen much of Rob Zombie's beyond his Halloween films, and The Devil's Rejects / House of 1000 Corpses. Can't say I'm much of a fan.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is the huge blindspot to me as far as this list is concerned, and I think I need to explore more of his work. I only know of Cure, and that sounds great.

Agreed on Hooper having made the best 1, it's almost untouchable - TCM 2 is really good too, not on the same level at all, but a pretty insane and fun watch. I'd like to see more of his lesser known works like Spontaneous Combustion and Eaten Alive, they look sick. 

I highly recommend The Girl Who Knew Too Much (also known as The Evil Eye) from 1963.

I like a lot of his stuff but Fascination (1979) is on a different level imo - that's the one where the sex, the look of the women and the look of the film itself,  the twists of the plot are really eerie and (no pun) fascinating........it's horrific in a carnal way.

In the old IMDB days we once had a thread about "pornographic films that would be good movies if you took the sex scenes out"........well Rollin in Fascination made a film that you could add explicit sex on to it and it would be a great pornographic film and I'm not kidding and I mean it as a compliment 

It's sex raised to a kind of trashy high Art: