When you are past the age when traipsing to strangers’ homes to beg for pitifully tiny candies inspires excitement, how does one conjure the Halloween spirit? How do we capture that magic when our belief in ghosts is now a thoughtful choice rather than a blind belief? The answer is in the movies. I’m so glad I’m alive at a time when we have Hocus Pocus at Halloween and Home Alone at Christmas. Sometimes I wonder how people got those holiday warm fuzzies before 1984 when nightmare on elm street first premiered or the 1960s, when Rankin and Bass had yet to bless us with The Year Without a Santa Clause. I even feel regret for not being alive in the future. How many brilliant films am I going to miss? What if the ultimate Halloween movie comes out in 2150 and I’m not here to see it? What a sad thought.
Fortunately, there’s no shortage of great horror films as it stands and I’ve compiled some of my Favorites here. Don’t let the categories throw you off. What some might consider true horror, I might list under campy classics or Nostalgia. I’ve tried my best to categorize them for a general audience but some of these fit multiple categories so work with me here. I may also leave out something truly great. I recently learned of a few horror films that I’ve never even heard of and when I mentioned them to Chase, (who had seen them) I scolded him for not telling me about them. This is my genre, I can’t NOT see all the horror movies. So feel free to list any of your favorites that I’ve missed. I’d love to find some new favorites. You’ll also find some TV shows mixed in here, fair warning.
Without further ado, here it is:
Really good, supernatural flicks
These are the films that I think, on a critical level stand up as good supernatural horror.
•The Shining
•The Others
•What lies beneath
•It Follows
•The sixth sense
•Signs
•Poltergeist
•Pet Semetary (original)
•Sleepy Hollow
Family
These are great for families with younger kiddos, though there are some innuendos in a few…there’s nothing here that I didn’t watch as a kid myself.
•Hocus Pocus
•Practical Magic
•Are You Afraid of the Dark* (I love watcher’s woods, the dollhouse, and the quiet librarian best)
•Ahhhh Real Monsters*
•Beetle Juice the Animated Series*
•Martha Stewart Halloween specials* (Martha Stewart tv, 40 episodes)
•The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
•Sabrina the Teenage Witch (original)
•The Mummy
•Harry Potter
•Beetle Juice
•Disney’s Tower of Terror
•Halloweentown
•Coralline
•Casper
•The Addams Family
•Dracula Dead and Loving it
•The Witches
•Don’t Look Under the Bed
•Ghost Busters
•Young Frankenstein
Horror comedy
If you didn’t realize these were comedies, watch them again. They are all superb.
•Death Becomes Her
•Jessica’s Body
•The Faculty
•Slither
•Behind the Mask the Rise of Leslie Vernon
•The Visit
•Wellington Paranormal
•Cabin in the Woods
•Dead Like Me
•Six Feet Under
Suspense
This list is pitifully short but I don’t know where else to put this one. 1990s classic about a vengeful nanny.
•The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
•Secret Window
•The Skeleton Key
•Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Campy, Aesthetic, and Classics
Kind of the category for films that are all great but weird in some way (ie; dated, less scary today, or highly stylized)
•Nightmare on Elm Street
•Black Sabbath
•Rosemary’s Baby
•Fright Night
•Sleepy Hollow
•Friday the 13th
•The Nanny
Monsters
There’s a lot of Stephen King here, because he writes a lot of monsters. Chase loves him for this. I love him for The Shining and Pet Semetary, thus, they are both in the first category.
•It (new)
•The Mist
•Jeepers Creepers
•Salem’s lot
•American werewolf in London
•Alien
•Nosferatu
Haunted Houses
A few of these all took inspiration from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, but I love them all. Haunted houses are my favorite.
•The Haunting of Hill House*
•The Haunting of Blye Manor*
•The Haunting
•House on Haunted Hill
•The Crying Child (very old made for TV movie that I saw as a kid and never forgot.)
•The Conjuring