Vintage Horror Movie T-SHIRTS: archive of our favorite Tees from all the scariest movies...according to us
- C.T. Madrigal
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 18 hours ago
Some of the sickest of our authentic vintage tees from The Exorcist, Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm St., Texas Chainsaw, Suspiria, Evil Dead and Tales from the Crypt, Halloween and Friday the 13th, Nosferatu and Dracula, Buffy and Lost Boys, Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, Addams Family and The Munsters, The Crow, Twin Peaks, and of course Elvira.
And be sure to check out our collection of vintage OOAK artist-made airbrushed tees, they're uniquely magnificent and among the coolest shirts we’ve seen in our decades of collecting and selling horror tees from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Some of the shirts in our horror archive are available for purchase, you'll find them in The CHURCH of SATIN's three t-shirt shops (Madrigallery, Morbiditee, and SHIrT), and occasionally a sold shirt will be available in another size with varying vintage condition.
We've been collecting vintage tees for over three decades, and selling them online since 2016. If you've read my memoirs then you know that scary movies are as palpable a part of my macabre milieu as neglect and breakups and deaths. In the retelling of my young life, Hollywood's horror icons crawl around the text, peeking through my childhood memories as dependably as interdimensional supervillain "Killer Bob" peeks through the foot of your bed.
They're there because I’ve been haunted by horror movies since childhood when my parents took eleven-year-old me to a drive-in theater in the summer of 1980 to see William Friedkin’s Cruising, a slasher film about a psychopath scouring NYC’s underground gay leather bars, dismembering all those horny, hairy-chested homosexuals whose dimly lit nipples had glistened gloriously with salty 70s dance sweat just the night before.
That movie date is one of the only memories I have of my father, and it's complicated by the fact that the film was a numinous psycho-sexual mix of counter culture and man muscle and homo horror (though I probably said none of that in my movie review to my stepmother Berniece.) From the backseat of an unremarkable station wagon, the experience was shaping me just as tangibly as the the double popcorn with extra butter was shaping my dad.
Now, I won't spoil the entire movie for you, other than to say that the undercover cop, Al Pacino, has a strained relationship with his girlfriend Nancy, and that he didn't entirely hate his undercover assignment. Also, that it was the awkwardest two hours that an erect eleven year old ever spent with a father and stepmother, and my sister Mona.
Point is: I've been a horror hound since I was a rock-hard 11 year old, and too many decades later I'm still at it. The proof of my diabolical dedication is a t-shirt collection that just won't quit. I've sold thousand of horror tees, and I have thousands more. Many of my favorites—some available, and some sold—will be posted here in this archive, a place where I can revisit them like I would a favorite dog in a backyard cemetery (that's Sematary for the Stephen King fans.)
This curated collection of these authentic vintage horror t-shirts will grow, but the hundred or so below will get you started. If a shirt is available at the time we share it, then we'll say so in the caption. And to see our complete collection of available vintage tees, use the site’s Menu to shop our mall's three vintage t-shirt shops, as well as all the gloomy goods in all our thirteen of our boutiques (that's bootiques for the Halloween fans.)
TheCHURCHofSATIN’s archive of vintage horror movie t-shirts:
That's it for now, but if you like these horror tees, we've just slashed the surface. There are countless more authentic vintage horror movie t-shirts, as well as rare vintage music tees from all our favorite dark alternative bands. Check out the three vintage t-shirt shops (Madrigallery, Morbiditee, and SHIrT), and all thirteen boutiques in our mall. Happy shopping, and Long Live the New Flesh!▼
C.T. Madrigal is the author of the queer memoirs Oklahomo and San Fransicko, as as well as two horror novels, and he's the owner of the vintage couture website TheFROCK.com, His instagram is @c.t.madrigal
📚C.T. Madrigal's books on Amazon
👗C.T. Madrigal interview with VOGUE Magazine
👠C.T. Madrigal's interview with Dita von Teese