Halloween Movie List

Audition, 1999

Halloween is swiftly approaching, and with it, the desire to have the bejeezus scared out of us intensifies. Halloween more than any other holiday except Christmas has us celebrating with cinema. Even audiences that would normally shy away from the horror genre find themselves squealing with feverish delight over monster madness. And the perennial horror fan looks for something new to stimulate their jaded sensibilities.

I almost didn’t make this list because I was afraid of getting SO INTO IT that I wouldn’t come up for air until next Halloween. So I kept it quick and simple, including the first films that came to mind as noteworthy and eliminating the most obvious (because honestly, if you haven’t seen The Conjuring yet, you don’t need me to tell you about it.)

I’ve tried sub-categorising the list as much as possible since I get that some people just flat don’t like Giallo or what-have-you, and that’s fine. As I compiled this list I discovered that a lot of films I considered atmospheric are quite sad at their root, and tend to deal with loss such as Don’t Look Now or The Eyes of My Mother. I recommend reading the attached IMDB links for reviews, trailers, etc if you consider these kinds of horror films to be real downers. Same thing with camp and comedy: some of these are bonafide comedies. Others are just fucking wacko. Still others such as the ‘women in peril’ pictures of the ‘60s are so over the top in their melodrama realness, they just felt wrong anywhere else. I’ve also tagged all of my personal favourites with an asterisk *.

If a title seem obscure to you but the story sounds appealing, try seeking it out online nonetheless! I can find every single one of these films on some platform in just a few minutes so I know you can, too. There are more resources out than ever before. That being said, I would also recommend giving a Shudder subscription a try. No, I don’t get paid to endorse them, but they have great films on offer, as well as iconic horror host Joe Bob Briggs’ The Last Drive-In. Watching Joe Bob is like going to a trailer park beer bust if the trailer park manager graduated from USC film school. Shudder has trial subscriptions through Amazon and their website, taking care of all your Halloween film needs with the click of button.

Let’s get spoopy!

General Horror

Hauntings, monsters, investigations, and the supernatural

*Before I Wake, 2016

A Tale Of Two Sisters, 2003

*I See You, 2020 (I need to write an entire article about this film, as often as I include it in my watch lists.)

Summer of ‘84, 2018

*The Changeling, 1980

Terrified, 2017

Doctor Sleep, 2019

The Boy, 2016

Traitement De Choc, 1973

The Bride, 2017 (Also check out Mermaid: The Lake of the Dead, 2018 if you like director Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy)

Reincarnation, 2005

Urban Legend, 1998

*Exorcist III, 1990

Toolbox Murders, 2004

Goodnight Mommy, 2014

In The Mouth Of Madness, 1995

*The Lodge, 2020

*The Wailing, 2016

*Audition, 1999

Psychedelic

Maybe druggy, maybe just bananas: wild visual horror

Mandy, 2018

*Hausu, 1977

Climax, 2018

Color Out Of Space, 2019

Coherence, 2013

Anthology

Horror for the short attention span

*Campfire Tales, 1997

Southbound, 2015

Scare Package, 2019 (Almost a comedy, really.)

*The House That Dripped Blood, 1971

Twice-Told Tales, 1963

Tales from the Crypt, 1972

Tales of Terror, 1962

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, 1965

Asylum, 1972

Three… Extremes, 2004

Black Sabbath, 1963

Dead of Night, 1945

Kwaidan, 1965

Night Gallery, (AKA Pilot) 1969

*Spirits of the Dead, 1968 (Alain Delon being his impossibly beautiful self, but the real gem here is the last vignette by Fellini starring Terence Stamp)

*The Vault of Horror, 1973 (Tom Baker alert!)

Torture Garden, 1967

From Beyond The Grave, 1974

Barbarous Mexico, 2014

Camp or Comedy

The silly, the weird and the in-between

*Bad Ben Franchise, 2016

Dead Alive (AKA Braindead), 1992

*The Day of the Beast, 1995

Der Bunker, 2015

Eating Raoul, 1982

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1964

*Lady In A Cage, 1964

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, 1962

Straight-Jacket, 1964

*Cemetery Man, 1994 (As Rupert Everett is La Bouche’s ex-partner, this film also qualifies for Béatrice Dalle bonus points)

Nekromantik, 1987

The Babysitter, 2017 (Also noteworthy: The Babysitter: Killer Queen, 2020)

*Corona Zombies, 2020

*One Cut Of The Dead, 2017

*Bio-Zombie, 1998

Someone's Watching Me!, 1978

Revenge Horror

Not to be confused with Giallo, which is also almost always about revenge

*Inside, 2007 (Béatrice Dalle bonus points)

Audition, 1999

Baise-Moi, 2000

Martyrs, 2008

Irreversible, 2002

Atmospheric

Visually stimulating, poetic transitions, loaded with eerie ambience

Livide, 2011 (Béatrice Dalle bonus points)

Don’t Look Now, 1973

*The Sentinel, 1977

Hagazussa, 2017

The Eyes of My Mother, 2016

*Trouble Every Day, 2001 (Béatrice Dalle bonus points)

A Page Of Madness, 1926

*As Above, So Below, 2014

Possession, 1981

Daughters Of Darkness, 1974

Giallo

What is it the Italians have about eyeballs?

*The Stendahl Syndrome, 1996

*Your Vice Is a Locked Room And Only I Have The Key, 1972

The Beyond, 1981

Opera, 1987

Aenigma, 1987

*The Eyes of Laura Mars, 1978

*Dressed to Kill, 1980

Alice, Sweet Alice, 1976

Lisa And The Devil, 1973

House By The Cemetery, 1981

Horror Sci-Fi

Non-terrestrial invaders, lab villains, and techno-fear

Solaris, 1972

*Attack The Block, 2011

*They Live, 1988

Ghosts of Mars, 2001

The Thing, 1982

*Night Of The Creeps, 1986

*REC, 2007