This is just what the title promises: a listing of my 20 favorite Halloween movies. This means the movies chosen must directly involve All Hallows Eve (meaning that unlike most other “Halloween movie” rankings, this isn’t a random horror movie listing). It also means that Halloween based flicks like NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, HOCUS POCUS and CASPER won’t be turning up because, simply, they’re not favorites. Rather, I’ll be covering only the good stuff (according to me), starting with…
1. HALLOWEEN
Not exactly an unexpected choice, but (as has been said about CITIZEN KANE) when they play the national anthem you have to stand, and in the category of holiday horror John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN is the national—nay, international—anthem. Halloween night, a masked killer and lots of blood: in the hands of the skilled director that’s all you really need, and HALLOWEEN was indeed graced by a mighty skilled helmer.
2. MS. 45
Another film that uses simplicity to its advantage. It’s about a mute NYC based seamstress (the amazing Zoë Lund) who after getting raped twice in one day snaps. She kills the second of her attackers and steals his .45 pistol, with which she embarks on a killing rampage, initially shooting lecherous men who antagonize her and then turning her gun on every male in sight. Director Abel Ferrara is capable of greatness on occasion, and this was definitely one such occasion, in a film containing equal parts urban grit a la MEAN STREETS and psychological apprehension a la REPULSION, and a delirious Halloween party set climax that’s cinematic perfection.
3. THE CROW
Definitely an example of style over substance, but when the style is as bravura as that on display in THE CROW, who really cares? The late Brandon Lee plays a guy who gets shot before his planned Halloween wedding and returns a year later as the undead title character to punish the scumbags who offed him.
It sounds—and is—pretty thin conceptually, but the grungy urban netherworld conjured by director Alex Proyas is quite something to see.
4. THE AMERICAN SCREAM
A documentary portrayal of the DIY Halloween haunted house craze, as seen through the elaborate attempts of several Massachusetts residents to scare their neighbors. We’re given a top-to-bottom run-through of the entire haunted house process, with all the inevitable hardships that come with it. Needless to add, this is required viewing for anyone thinking of putting on a haunted house themselves.
5. MAY
The funny, gory, John Hughes-on-acid story of May (Angela Bettis), a disturbed young woman who seems like a harmless eccentric until her dream guy (Jeremy Sisto) rejects her, at which point she becomes dangerous. The film loses some of its razor-sharp focus in the third act, when May snaps completely at a Halloween party and commences killing off everyone in sight (MS. 45 it isn’t), but redeems itself in the wrenching final shot.
Writer-director Lucky McKee made an impressive debut with this unforgettably twisted little film that Bettis carries with enviable assurance.
6. GINGER SNAPS
Here’s something new: a feminist werewolf movie, and one that works smashingly well. On display is a wonderfully perverse sense of humor and a genuinely subversive storyline that portrays lycanthropy as an integral part (or consequence) of the natural torments of adolescence. The film is further graced by an ingenious script that never shies away from the red stuff, excellent performances from a largely pubescent cast and a(nother) great All-Hallows set conclusion.
7. HELL HOUSE
One of the scariest movies of the 2000s, despite the fact that HELL HOUSE is not technically a horror movie. It’s a judgement-free documentary about the Cedar Hill, TX “Hell House,” a Christian-run Halloween maze that replaces the standard ghosts and ghouls with grim (and often hilarious) scenarios illustrating “evils” like abortion, homosexuality and suicide.
8. DONNIE DARKO
I’ve always found this iconic indie from writer-director Richard Kelly a tad overrated (I prefer Kelly’s less-celebrated follow-up SOUTHLAND TALES). It strains a bit too hard for Tarantino-esque hipness, and the time travel infused narrative isn’t nearly as profound as it thinks it is, but the film is fascinating nonetheless, juggling a teenage outcast (Jake Gyllenhaal), an airplane accident, a creepy guy in a rabbit suit and a most fateful Halloween party.
9.GHOSTWATCH
An enjoyable viewing experience, even if GHOSTWATCH is arguably more interesting as a cultural artifact than a proper scare fest. It was a BBC program that upon its October 31, 1992 broadcast terrified many a viewer who believed its mock documentary investigation of a haunted house was real. It may seem difficult to believe these days that so many viewers were fooled by the documentary ruse (horror mock-docs having become a genre unto themselves), but back in ‘92 GHOSTWATCH was apparently quite a mindblower.
10. ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
Perhaps the quintessential Hollywood black comedy, an unfettered yuck fest hailing from 1944 that pivots on subterfuge and murder. Cary Grant plays a just-married writer who on what was then known as Hallowe’en night discovers that his two beloved aunts have a bad habit of poisoning old men and stashing the corpses in a hatbox beneath their living room window. The film hasn’t dated especially well and runs out of steam long before the conclusion (at a full two hours it’s far too long), but when director Frank Capra hits his comedic marks, he generally hits ‘em hard.
11. RIDING THE BULLET
Writer/producer/director Mick Garris, adapting a Stephen King story, does a surprisingly good job with this film despite making an unholy mess of the plot. At its center is a young Maine based hitchhiker (Jonathan Jackson) on a nightmarish October 31 journey to visit his mother (Barbara Hershey), who’s suffered a stroke. Jackson encounters a number of unsavory characters along the way, including David Arquette as a supernaturally endowed creep who knows far too much about the protagonist for comfort. In contrast to much of the rest of the film, the elegiac ending is quite sentimental, though effective nonetheless.
12. CREEPSHOW
George Romero and Stephen King are a true match made in horror Heaven. Their combined presence on CREEPSHOW ensures that, obvious and overdone though much of it is, it’s at least partially worthwhile. A Halloween set, EC comics-inspired anthology, none of the King-scripted segments—involving undead revenge, killer vegetation, a monster in a crate and a cockroach infestation—are in any way exceptional, but taken as a whole the pic satisfies adequately.
13. DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW
A TWM that contains what is almost certainly the screen’s most eerily effective use of a scarecrow. It takes place in a small Southern town (actually the outskirts of Los Angeles) where a mentally impaired man (Larry Drake) is falsely accused of, and executed for, the murder of a young girl, setting off a series of killings marked by strategically placed scarecrows. The cheap TV movie origins are painfully evident throughout, but there are also some canny directorial touches, and again, the film’s use of a scarecrow as an object of horror, in both wide shots and close-ups, remains unrivalled.
14. SEASON OF SCREAMS
If you don’t have a rooting interest in Knott’s Berry Farm’s annual Halloween Haunt then you probably won’t get much out of this documentary, which provides a thorough exploration of the event and its legacy. I do happen to have an interest in the Halloween Haunt, and so greatly enjoyed this film, in which a perky, perpetually grinning blonde woman eagerly takes us through the Haunt’s particulars.
15. LADY IN WHITE
This film is a bit of a mess, but the sense of heartfelt nostalgia it evokes is genuine. Writer-director Frank LaLoggia (of the nutzoid satanic horror fest FEAR NO EVIL) based it on his own memories of growing up in upstate New York in the early 1960s, and a local urban legend about a ghost woman who roams the land in search of her missing daughter.
Never one to shy away from excess, LaLoggia spices his story, about a young boy (Lukas Haas) coming into a contact with the Lady in White’s spectral daughter while locked in his classroom closet, with bullying, racial politics, serial killing, time travel and special effects that were far too insanely extravagant for the low budget with which LaLoggia was saddled. Again, though, the film is quite likeable despite, or possibly because of, all the bloat.
16. TRICK OR TREAT
I’ve never been too impressed with this film, about a nerdy metalhead calling up a deceased heavy metal star by playing heavy metal records backwards, from a storytelling standpoint (it being cluttered and uninspired), nor a special effects one (with effects that run the gamut from cheesy to outright laughable). It does, however, have two irresistible elements: a protagonist (FAMILY TIES’ Marc Price) whose foibles will be familiar to anyone who grew up in the 1980s, and a nostalgic depiction of late eighties satanic panic, which will likewise ring true to anyone who lived through that time period.
17. HELLBENT
A slasher of note because it’s a gay-themed slasher set during a Halloween celebration in West Hollywood, the queer capitol of the universe. Many commentators have overrated this film due (I assume) to political correctness, but it’s as mindless and trashy as any hetero splatter flick you can think of. Still, the many graphic beheadings are extremely well carried off, there’s an ingenious gag involving a glass eye, and the color scheme is gaudy enough to give SUSPIRIA a serious run for its money in that area.
18. TRICK ‘R’ TREAT
An anthology film that’s slick, fast moving and graced by some first-rate actors, including Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin and Brian Cox. The scripting, furthermore, is strong and imaginative, with a definite EC Comics flavor and a very up-to-date grunge overlay. TRICK ‘R’ TREAT would indeed be the classic many have dubbed it were it not for the annoying structure, which interweaves its five segments rather than presenting them in linear fashion. An interesting idea, but it fractures the time stream in a distracting PULP FICTION-ish manner, resulting in various characters reappearing in different segments, and often seen walking around after they’ve been killed.
19. THE HALLOWEEN TREE
This animated kid flick was based on Ray Bradbury’s 1972 novel of the same name. Bradbury also scripted and narrated the film, which has a group of youngsters entering a haunted house on Halloween and, in an attempt at saving the life of an appendicitis-stricken chum, embarking on a trip through time to discover the secret of Halloween. The animation isn’t great, but the film gets points for the welcome presence of Bradbury’s voice, and also because it’s reasonably diverting, unpretentious and respects the source material (none of which can be said for the other major Bradbury adapted Halloween-themed kid flick SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES).
20. HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH
The nuttiest of the HALLOWEEN sequels, a Michael Myers-less All Hallows Eve set something-or-other about a mad scientist looking to destroy the world by inserting pieces of Stonehenge into kids’ Halloween masks, which when exposed to a certain computerized TV signal lead to death and destruction. It’s just as dopey as it sounds (indeed perhaps even more so), but writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace deserves credit for attempting something (very) different, and enough of the discarded original screenplay by the great Nigel Kneale is evident to make for an interesting, if compromised, viewing experience.