Classic Halloween Movies

If you’re like me you want to take in a couple of classic horror films around this time of year.  I’ve compiled a list of some of my GO TO movies that never get old.  Hope you like them.

The Shining, 1980

What's scarier than a haunted house? Try a haunted hotel. Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film centers on the young Torrance family — writer dad Jack (Jack Nicholson), homemaker mom Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and clairvoyant son Danny (Danny Lloyd) — who've taken on the task of caring for the remote Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the off-season. However, isolated in the snowed-in location, it isn't long before cabin fever and writer's block (not to mention the hotel's ghosts) begin to drive Jack murderously insane. Despite being markedly different from the Stephen King novel it was adapted from, The Shining is widely considered to be one of the scariest movies of all time, full of creepy twin girls, decaying corpse ladies, blood-spewing elevators and one hell of a hedge maze.

The Haunting, 1963

It's no surprise that a movie based on one of the best haunted house tales ever written (The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson) would be this good. A scientist and two women with psychic gifts visit an evil-looking mansion named Hill House, a place where everything is just slightly wrong, where the angles at which walls meet are off by half a degree, so that doors are always closing on their own. The trio is accompanied by the skeptical young heir to Hill House. As directed by Robert Wise (who had a delightfully diverse career, helming movies from The Sound of Music and West Side Story to the first Star Trek film, as well as being the editor on Citizen Kane), The Haunting perfectly demonstrates the power of suggestion. We never see any ghosts. We hear them — banging, giggling, crying behind walls. We feel them. But they always remain just on the other side of the door. Which is where they are scariest. For the second after we first see the thing is the second at which the fear begins to fade.

Poltergeist, 1982

The brilliance of Poltergeist isn't in its special effects or its Steven Spielberg-branded movie magic. It's in the film's mundaneness. The Freeling family home is an ordinary house inside an ordinary suburban community. The characters aren't overly likable, special or interesting. The Freelings could be any typical American family. Therein lies the terror. While the film lends itself to some wonderfully quotable moments, it also brought the good old fashioned haunting into the modern suburban home. As the Freelings got sucked into closets and harassed by electronics, audience members began to glance suspiciously at their own TVs, and white noise began a reign of terror that reached its apex with 2002's The Ring.

The Lost Boys, 1987

"Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." That says it all! This one is just plain fun. The cast features Kiefer Sutherland as a punky teen vampire, Jason Patric as the newest reluctant convert, and the two Coreys (Haim and Feldman). Feldman plays one of two wacky brothers (Edgar and Allen) who insist the town is crawling with vampires. They made the phrase "vamp out" famous.

The Evil Dead, 1981

Filmmaker Sam Raimi first hacked his way to notoriety with 1981's The Evil Dead. The film follows a band of students on a weekend getaway to a rickety Tennessee mountain cabin, where they plan for the typical sex and booze-type debauchery. Unfortunately for them, the gang encounters a group of demons and quickly realize these are no idle spooks. Even the forest greenery is under their control. (Is it possible for a tree to be misogynist? Watch and find out.) The gore fest, in which all the usual horror appliances get ample screen time (by film's end, the dagger, ax, chainsaw and shotgun get more than their share of screen time), was widely criticized as too gruesome by critics and theaters alike, which only seemed to hasten the audience's desire to watch the corn syrup flow.

The Others, 2001

Grace (Nicole Kidman) is alone with her kids. Stuck in a giant, fog-shrouded manor on the British isle of Jersey during World War II, Grace can't leave because her son and daughter suffer from extreme sensitivity to sunlight. She's isolated and anxious. But Grace and her kids are not alone, because there's something with them in the house. Kidman shines as a mother incapable of connecting to her kids, a mother who hides her fragility behind a stern countenance. The film begins with Kidman shrieking loudly and near the end, she breaks down in hysterics. The Others is as affecting as it is chilling.

Nosferatu the Vampire, 1922

Let's start at the beginning with F.W. Murnau's silent film featuring the creepiest looking vampire ever -- Max Schreck. Rumors at the time of the film circulated that the strange looking Schreck was indeed a real vampire. That became the inspiration for the film Shadow of the Vampire. But you can decide for yourself.

Arachnophobia, 1990

Spiders. John Goodman with a blowtorch. Who's scarier? I'm sure we could ask Roseanne, but that's the subject of a much more frightening movie. Anyway, as anyone who has ever squashed a spider can attest, things with eight legs are creepy. Gross. Big ones that fly through the air when provoked? Even worse.

Amityville Horror, 1978

A family moves into a perfectly nice house in Amityville, N.Y. Then things begin to happen: black goo comes out of the toilet, flies appear (does this have anything to do with the toilet?), a voice tells a priest to "get out," and something with glowing red eyes peers through the windows at night. Sure it was an "Exorcist" rip-off, but it was "based on a true story!" That's got to count for something.

The Exorcist, 1973

Spinning heads. Vile expletives. Buckets of vomit. Sound like your last blind date? It was worse for Ellen Burstyn and Max Von Sydow, who had to play opposite Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." When this puppy first hit the silver screen, people were running out of the theater in droves. Now we call those people sissies. But as approximately 6,453 previous "Scariest Movies of All Time" lists have noted, this movie is scary.