It’s Halloween today. That means for a movie review site like this one that it’s time to talk scary movies! Or something. I need to check the by-laws.
Anyway, here are 10 movies for a good Halloween scare. It’s not a top ten list, but if I give it a title like that, it looks extra click-baity. Besides, I’m not a huge horror movie fan, so I wouldn’t dare make a top ten list of something I’m not overly familiar with. I gotta have some standards.
And yeah, this is a fairly cliched list.
1. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
I purchased some box sets of the various Universal monster movies, and I’d say the Frankenstein series held up the best. And the best of those movies was the second, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein. That one featured the only iconic female monster in the Universal pantheon, and that’s even more amazing given how little screen time she has.
Keep in mind that original monster Boris Karloff went from unknown to huge star between movies because of how well the original went. This one actually used the fact the monster spoke as a major selling point. Factor in as well director James Whale’s campy sense of humor and some general moralizing about playing God, and you have a sure fire classic that does what the best horror movies do: question what really scares us. In this case, that would be either a flat-headed monster or science run amok.
2. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
The last of the classic Universal monster, the Gill-Man is a different sort of monster. He’s more sci-fi than the others with their more supernatural origin stories, and his original movie actually has what could be an unintended environmental subtext.
Despite a pair of sequels (both also pretty good in their own right), the original has some real power. The design of the Gill-Man is fantastic. There were actually two different monster suits. One was for the guy who walked on land, and the other was for the one in the water. There are some subtle differences, but really, this one was a breakthrough in underwater cameras, has a very memorable musical score, and told a good story to boot. Sure, it’s the same story as a host of others with a monster falling in love with a human woman, but it really works here.
Speaking of monsters falling for human women…
3. King Kong (1933)
Even if you’ve never really seen the original King Kong, you probably know the plot: large gorilla falls in love with a girl, gets captured and taken to New York, and climbs the Empire State Building only to be killed by airplanes. There have been enough parodies and remakes to seep the whole story into the cultural consciousness.
But that doesn’t for a second rob the original movie of its power. Sure, Kong is basically a stop-motion monster, but there’s a reason every giant gorilla is thought of as “Kong”. Granted, the depiction of the natives on Kong’s island hasn’t aged well, but the rest of the movie shows what happens when you try to bring a force of nature into human civilization and expect him to put on a show. Kong, if nothing else, is the original cinematic invasive species.
4. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Considering George Romero screwed up the copyrighting process and made his breakout hit public domain, it shouldn’t be too hard to see this movie. Filmed on a shoestring budget, what the movie lacked in money it made up for in style.
Essentially, this is the movie that told us all we need to know about fictional zombies. There had been zombies in movies before, but they were nothing like the ones on display here. While some of the acting may be a bit on the amateurish side, Duane Jones in the lead role works very well, and the ending scenes, both when zombies swarm the farmhouse and then when local law enforcement comes by to clean-up, demonstrate some real talent. This one will stick with you.
5. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Hold on…Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead came out the same year? Could any two horror movies be more different in their depiction? A low budget movie that featured the undead killing people and eating their organs front and center opposite a big budget movie with name actors where most if not all of the violence and horror happens off-screen? And yet, both are classics. I do dig them both.
The difference is Rosemary’s Baby is really about a first time mother’s general anxieties and paranoia as her body does things she’s never experienced before. That’s scary to a lot of people who aren’t having the devil’s son. Rosemary doesn’t know what’s happening to her and strange things keep happening around her. And we don’t even get to see the baby boy with his father’s eyes…
6. The Exorcist (1973)
I must be onto a theme here. First pregnancies and how those scare women and now a child sick with an unknown illness (sort of). It’s like threatening children is the way to go.
But really, The Exorcist shows us how ill-prepared the modern, rational world can be for things that predate it. Young Regan’s gradual transformation from innocent young girl to obscenity-spouting host to a really old demon works incredibly well. Her mother only really turns to the Church for help when, well, nothing else works. Between that and Father Karras’ needing to rediscover his faith, the film ultimately is about just believing in a higher power to do what needs to be done against some of the scarier things we may not even wish to acknowledge are in the universe.
7. Evil Dead II (1987)
The original Evil Dead is a fairly fun horror movie. It’s mostly straight-up scares, but director Sam Raimi was still new to all that and there wasn’t much of a budget. My personal favorite in the series, Army of Darkness, is more a slapstick comedy with monsters. But the second entry, Evil Dead II actually straddles the line between horror and comedy quite well.
Yeah, tough guy numbskull Ash Williams arguably appeared for the first time in a form fans would know and love right here. Taking as much abuse as a human being can, this is a guy who can and will fight his own demonically-possessed hand. You don’t see that sort of thing in too many movies.
8. Carrie (1976)
I only saw this one for the first time somewhat recently, but I have to say: it isn’t all that scary for a good chunk of the movie. Instead, it’s about the slow build-up to a teenage girl having the worst possible reaction when, like Popeye, that was all she could stand and she couldn’t stand any more.
No, most of Carrie is rather ordinary, but that’s used to good effect. It looks like poor Carrie White may finally be finding some sense of happiness and acceptance, but instead some people just must be cruel and inadvertently awaken the beast. Stephen King always did write particularly memorable bullies, the kind that really just want to see someone they don’t like dead for the crime of the bully’s not liking them. And then they pay for it. Of course, with Carrie, a whole lot of other people pay for it too, and her townwide rampage has her looking more like a praying mantis than a human being. Factor in great performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, and you’ve got an all-time classic.
9. Get Out (2017)
The best horror movies are always the ones about what a society is afraid of at the time it is made. Can something like Get Out have come from any other time or place as 21st century America?
Movies like this are there to make you rethink assumptions you have about ideas like racism. And the movie’s pretty damn good anyway, so it’s got that going for it as well. Jordan Peele’s directorial debut showed a poise and confidence that didn’t seem likely given the genre of the movie and all of Peele’s past work. Plus, the equally good Us this year showed Peele was no fluke.
10. Hereditary (2018)
If you had told me in 2017 my favorite movie for 2018 would be a horror movie, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. I mean, I never was much of a horror fan and had only gone to see two the year before, the aforementioned Get Out and It: Chapter One. Granted, those two were really good, so that helped. I don’t mind a good psychological horror movie. It’s gore and jumpscares I can do without.
And Hereditary is almost entirely psychological, showing how grief and inherited mental illness can affect a family. But what really sets Ari Aster’s debut feature apart is the tone. This is an appropriately bleak movie that never lets up for a minute with some deft cinematic construction, a few shocks, but mostly just characters driven to the brink by mourning and misery. It can be a bit much, but I really dug it. Aster’s follow-up, Midsommar, wasn’t quite as good as his debut, but it was still very much worth a look.
Final note: These ten aren’t necessarily my favorites, so perhaps next year I’ll recommend a different ten movies.
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