Last year, I tossed out a quick ten recommendations for Halloween movie viewings. I said at the time they weren’t necessarily my all-time favorites, but they were good movies I wouldn’t think twice about recommending.
Let’s do that again.
1. The Wolf-Man (1941)
I have a certain affection for werewolves. I’ve found them to be a lot more fascinating that most other movie monsters. Vampires are a bit overdone, but there are plenty of good vampire movies. There are not as many good werewolf movies, possibly because of the budgetary needs to actually make a wolf transformation look good.
That brings me back to Lon Chaney Jr’s first turn as doom Larry Talbot. He wasn’t the first cinematic werewolf, but everything we “know” about werewolves–the full moon, silver as a weakness, the wolfbane, the pentagram–came from this movie. Werewolves in folklore were often people who, willingly or otherwise, simply transformed into a wolf at any time, and there was none of that bipedal stuff. This movie helped give us the werewolf-as-victim, where some poor soul would, whenever the moon is full, transform into a bloodthirsty monster that would track down and kill innocents, especially loved ones. Not every werewolf since then has been so doomed or cursed, but few of those are as tragic as this one.
2. Re-Animator (1985)
Perhaps more a comedy than a straight horror movie, Stuart Gordon’s gory story of a dedicated (if insane) scientist’s attempts to return the dead to life has a very slapstick sort of appeal going for it. When a scientist is revived head and body separately, and the head can use the body to sneak around with a false head on the top of the neck while carrying the real head in a bag, you know you got something that may not be for everyone, but is sure to delight those who are into that sort of thing.
Jeffrey Combs makes for a good Herbert West, such that despite the fact Combs looks nothing much like author H.P. Lovecraft’s physical description of West, most interpretations use a character that looks at least vaguely like Combs ever since. Even before he opens his mouth, you know there isn’t something quite right in West’s head, and you’re never quite sure how far he’ll go to finish his work. Did he murder some of his patients in order to revive them? The movie doesn’t say, but given how Combs plays the character, it probably wouldn’t be much of a surprise either way.
3. Halloween (1978)
While not quite beginning the slash movie craze that would run for the better part of the next decade or two, John Carpenter’s original Halloween brought all the elements together with the implacable, seemingly unstoppable killer in his distinctive costuming running around a suburban town and killing, well, whoever he came across along the way. Why does Michael Myers do what he does? Well, he’s just pure evil.
Packed with suspense and a star-making turn from Jamie Lee Curtis as the original “final girl,” it’s easy to see why this movie spawned so many…rather unfortunate sequels, truth be told. That said, the most recent one from 2018 is a rather worthy successor that wisely ignores all the other sequels and remakes that came before it.
4. The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter is here again, this time with his take on The Thing. I saw this one only rather recently, and let me tell you, even knowing where all the big scares were, this still was an exercise in paranoia and tension.
With Kurt Russel at his most Kurt Russeliestness, this was a movie with top-of-the-line practical effects that still hold up today as a group of men battle something they only barely understand. There’s not much I can say about this one that other, more eloquent people haven’t already said.
5. Dog Soldiers (2002)
So, above I talked about the werewolf-as-victim, the poor soul doomed to be a monster at certain times against his or her will. The werewolves of Dog Soldiers are nothing like that. These things love being what they are and doing what they do.
Reminding me a bit of the original Predator, a group of British soldiers hole up in a farmhouse and try to stay alive until daybreak against a pack of werewolves that may or may not include a few people in their group. These things are fast, strong, and hard to kill. Then again, these soldiers won’t go down easy either. Just shut off your brain and enjoy this one.
6. IT Chapter 1 (2017)
I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the first of the two IT movies with Bill Skarsgard’s take on the utterly inhuman Pennywise the Dancing Clown. I’ve heard the complaint that Pennywise is less scary as the movie progresses, but a part of me really thinks that was the whole point. Even resetting the story from King’s novel from the 50s to the 80s, it still works as a coming-of-age story about a group of misfits that just so happens to feature a murderous clown.
That said, the sequel was such a letdown.
7. Alien (1979)
How many horror movies show morons doing stupid things that get them all killed? Well, the original Alien shows a group of professionals who do (almost) everything they are supposed to do in a given situation and make a series of very smart decisions…and it still gets most of them killed.
Billed as a haunted house movie in outer space, this is the movie that gave us both Sigourney Weaver, her character Ellen Ripley, and the distinctive H.R. Giger-designed xenomorph, the unstoppable killing machine that mostly just wants everything around it dead. John Hurt had a long and varied career, and yet, he’s still probably best known for what happened in that breakfast scene…
8. The Shining (1980)
Look, there isn’t anything about The Shining that I could say that I not only have almost certainly said before or hasn’t been said by who knows how many people already. It really is that good.
And, for the record, last year’s sequel Doctor Sleep is actually also pretty good. It does its own thing, doesn’t even attempt to copy Kubrick, and produces some rather effective horror in its own right.
9. The Witches (1990)
Given the recent remake, I’ll just say here the 1990 movie version of Roald Dahl’s The Witches with Angelica Huston under a ton of prosthetic make-up and a variety of other creations from the Jim Henson Creature Shop, is a rather fine movie in its own right.
Really, we didn’t need another one.
10. The Lighthouse (2019)
That said, I highly doubt anyone is going to remake this oddball of a movie. Two men go out to a remote island to tend a lighthouse’s lamps for a month and end up staying longer than planned…maybe, time is a little loose. Set in black-and-white with a tight aspect ratio, Willem Defoe and Robert Pattinson drink, fight, hallucinate, and then fight some more as the veteran wickie man and the new guy try not to murder each other.
Then again, this is a rather superstitious time period, and that sea gull outside seems awfully pushy. And that’s ignoring what may or may not be happening in the lamp room or if there is or isn’t a mermaid lurking in the seas nearby. Moody and freaky are a good combination when done right, and director Robert Eggers sure knows how to do both.
So, for this horrid year of 2020, consider these rather charming flicks for the spookiest day of the year.
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