Top 10 Halloween Movies

by Brian Eggert
10/30/2008

Let’s be clear: This list isn’t the Top 10 Horror Movies of all time, otherwise you’d see entries like The Thing, The Fly, Dawn of the Dead, and The Mist topping the assortment. Instead, these selections represent ideal examples for Halloween viewing, each imbued with classic (or now-classic) horror iconography and foggy, autumn atmosphere. Under those criteria, the films are ranked by their application to the holiday itself—how they seem to feel “right” with the lights turned low, a bowl of popcorn before you, specifically on Halloween night—and not necessarily by which are better films. Instead of trick-or-treating this year, you kids may want to expose yourselves to these spooky films made in the playfully scary tradition of Halloween.

 

10. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Gothic in its prestigious presentation, Francis Ford Coppola’s majestic epic may take liberties with Stoker’s novel, but it elevates horror to romanticized high drama filled with tragedy and pain. Of course, red-eyed monsters disappear into the darkness, rooms fill with blood, and green mist kills with the force of a strongman, but these monster-movie tropes play out more like displays of manifested heartbreak than schlocky scares. Pay close attention to the soundtrack, especially those of you with surround sound—the whispers and screams just underneath the main audio track in Dracula’s castle send shivers up the spine. Part period romance, part bloody horror, Bram Stoker’s Dracula remains a grand entry and artistic highpoint into the horror genre, combining classic imagery with flawless modern production design.

9. The Fog (1980)

John Carpenter’s haunting ghost story The Fog looms with an eerie sense of dread. Shadows hover slowly through the haze, unknown in form yet positively dangerous. The film works off the terrifying concept of what happens when a campfire tale comes true, when “On a dark and stormy night…” suddenly becomes reality. Void of blood and gore, Carpenter relies on anticipation of the unknown and the terror of the unseen. With a trifecta of horror vixens leading his cast (Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, and Janet Leigh), Carpenter's follow-up to Halloween contains simplified shocks causing effective jolts, perfect for those murky autumn nights when we find ourselves questioning what lurks in the dark.

8. The Frighteners (1996)

Catch your breath. Enjoy a laugh. Something lighter. At least, for a while. Peter Jackson’s first American release The Frighteners begins with an affable Michael J. Fox using his ability to see the dead as a con game. His spirit friends engage in ersatz hauntings which he in turn faux exorcizes. It’s all fun and games, wholly involving and enjoyable, until a twisted psycho-sexual murderer returns from the grave to increase his body count, and then the film takes terrifying turns and gets downright creepy. Complete with your a macabre Danny Elfman score, lots of dated 1990s-brand special-effects, and a rainy and leaf dusted backdrop, the film offers everything from ghosts to mass-murders to quench your bizarre tastes. Jackson’s ghostly joyride is a rollercoaster of thrills and dark humor: a welcomed detour from your usual supernatural fare.

7. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

The Nightmare Before Christmas earned a place on my Christmastime Holiday Movie Guide, but deserves recognition here too for setting its story in a world where Halloween embodies the very core of its daily life. Vampires and unidentifiable creatures scour the streets; black is the only breed of cat; ghosts and bats and creepy things under the bed; the joy of Christmas spoils the natural morbid flow—its all part of this wonderful production dripping with Halloween imagery. In a world, named Halloweentown no less, where skeletons and insects are still meant to breed terror, yet sing lovely ballads, the film’s quintessential spirit and holiday amalgamation helps carry that feeling beyond All Hallows Eve, right until the New Year.    

 

6. The Wolf Man (1941)

Universal Studios reigned over the horror genre in cinema’s Golden Age, producing monster movies ranging from Dracula to The Mummy. None have the Halloween atmosphere of The Wolf Man, an intriguing psychological case wherein a man’s guilt and sanity might be represented as murderous lycanthropy. Is there a monster, or simply a man that sees himself as such? Lon Chaney Jr. plays the man asking himself these questions, inevitably transforming into a wild and jolting beast, represented with then-modern makeup effects. Take notice of the fog-laden woods writhing with contorted tree branches, and how in these surroundings, the film’s repeated folktale rhyme (Even a man who is pure in heart, And says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, And the autumn moon is bright.) gets under the skin. The resulting effect permeates a lasting sense that the mystical and mythological is more than just bedtime fodder.

5. The Exorcist (1973)

Halloween night several years back, a thunderstorm rattled outside my window. Indoors, my jaw tightened and hands clenched as I watched The Exorcist for the first time. The climax was nearing. Fathers Karras and Merrin chant their prayers at the devil possessing young Regan. Flashes of demonic faces shutter onscreen. Multi-layered soundtracks emit groans and screams. All at once, lightning strikes my house, the television goes Pop!, and the room goes black. The power is out. I sat motionless for a few moments, frozen in shock. And while I wasn’t able to finish the film until the next day when Best Buy retrieved the disc out of my fried DVD player, that night still haunts me, and makes this film, which tops horror polls every year, one of the greatest of all horror experience.

4. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George A. Romero’s breakthrough picture, shot in high contrast black & white, revolutionized B-movies into something worthy of closer examination. Beyond its social significance, in consideration of Halloween night, ghosts and goblins parading around in the dark, Night of the Living Dead captures those ideas completely. While today’s monsters move with all the speed the computers that generated them can muster, Romero’s zombies creep with an unrelentingly chill pace, every step squirm-inducingly closer. Nowadays, the film delivers best to audiences willing to escape into its old-timey horror environment, and then let themselves be shocked by the abrupt realism. Both existing in the classical horror schema and reinventing it, no other Romero zombie picture contains the spooky thrills Halloween night feeds from.

3. Frankenstein/The Bride of Frankenstein (1931/1935)

Double-feature time. James Whale directed Universal’s classic monster movies with artistry and class, single-handedly inventing genre formula employed to this day. Bubbling beakers and sparking electrodes fill the laboratory of the mad doctor, hard at work at a monster who at once emotes sympathy and terror. “It’s alive! Alive!” Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) cries, as his creation (Boris Karloff) slowly rises from under a sheet. Strange that this assemblage of body parts punctuated with neck bolts would unexpectedly become a whole personality, demanding a bride in the follow-up tale of tragedy—one of the few sequels that outdoes its predecessor. From scene to scene, we see traces of how Hollywood has plagiarized these works, simultaneously implanting their archetypal and referential status. Though liberties are taken with Mary Shelley’s text, Whale’s expressionistic filmmaking takes scary movies to new heights, and with every moment creates the very essence of modern horror.

2. Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Nevermind the ludicrous and over-complicated plot. Consider the pages of Tim Burton’s bloody storybook: Burton’s crooked trees are evil hands reaching out from the ground. Pumpkins greet on the porch of every household. Ever-present fog never dissipates, veiling the Headless Horseman riding his black stallion across a painterly grim landscape. With the film’s presentation washed of color, blood gleams—and what an impressive display of gore, with evil trees and decapitations and autopsies spraying the stuff in abundance! Wonderfully macabre and visually rich, every frame pumps the holiday’s influence, seemingly constructed as a love letter to its traditionalized spirit. A light enough entry-point for anti-horror moviegoers, yet bursting with Halloween-time airs, October never felt so well-captured on film.

 

1. Halloween (1978)

Of course John Carpenter’s slasher deserves the number-one spot. His ingenious-yet-simple title says it all. Streets populated with children sporting white ghost sheets and plastic masks. Late-night shockers on television. Jack-o-lantern carving. Leaf-lined streets. Babysitters feeding their libidos. And a faceless figure, unstoppable, always looming in the background of suburban America, shatters our illusion that the Boogeyman is just a silly idea to scare children. Without splattering a drop of blood, Carpenter orchestrates not only jolting suspense, but the film’s haunting score, establishing the eerie tone. On its own (ignore the umpteen sequels) a standard for why we dress up and pretend to be scary things (because there are real ones out there), Halloween remains essential viewing, and the perfect way to launch or conclude your horror movie marathon on Halloween night.