Every October I, like so many others, try to cram into the month as many horror movies as I can; I try to catch up on newer horror movies as well as those in my physical media collection that I bought in the last year (or more) and never got round to watching. One of those, for example, was TRICK OR TREAT – not the 2007 Michael Dougherty film TRICK ‘R’ TREAT, which I love, but the 1986 heavy metal horror movie starring Skippy from Family Ties and directed by nebbish character actor Charles Martin Smith. Watching it last night for the first time, I loved it, but I’d robbed myself of the experience all year because I received it in the mail a couple days after Halloween 2024. It just didn’t seem right. A movie with that name had to wait for October, my favorite month of the year.
Now it’s October 30th and I’ve watched 44 horror movies so far this month, with a 45th, the 1977 anthology TV-movie DEAD OF NIGHT, playing as I type this. (Written by Richard Matheson!) Tonight I’m going to a screening of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Tomorrow, on Halloween, I’ll commit to my annual tradition of taking the day off work and watching horror movies all day long, with a break for taking my son trick ‘r’ treating. So all this marathon watching (and sitting) has had me revisiting the question: What’s your favorite horror movie? And I realize I don’t have an easy answer to that anymore.
I used to have an easy answer. It was at first PSYCHO. Then it was ROSEMARY’S BABY, with PSYCHO a close second. That was back when I was in my 20’s. I’m at the tail end of my 40’s now. I’ve seen so many more horror movies, and my tastes in the genre have widened – sprawled. I’ve delved into subgenres and down international avenues. I’ve come to a richer understanding that there isn’t a “Best Picture” every year, but lots of excellent ones that can’t, and shouldn’t, be compared to each other like a sporting event. There isn’t a “best horror movie,” I’ve long since realized, but it should be easier to pick a favorite, shouldn’t it?
So what feels like an honest answer, a best guess, a mini-portrait of the horror-loving aspect of my personality? Which are the candidates? I think first of FRIGHT NIGHT – the original, from 1985. I saw that when I was in my teens, when I wasn’t very different from Charlie, the teenage protagonist (played by William Ragsdale) obsessed with old horror films, especially those on the weekly “Fright Night” program hosted by horror actor Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall). Next door to Charlie lurks a vampire (Chris Sarandon), but nobody believes him; it’s a simple, wonderful set-up by writer/director Tom Holland. Like Charlie, I grew up on old horror, mainly because my parents didn’t let me rent R-rated movies until I was a teen. So I got to know Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and both Lon Chaneys, even while the tantalizing Jasons and Freddys haunted the drive-in that my parents drove me past on the way to church. FRIGHT NIGHT captures the charm of old Hammer and Universal horror movies while updating the special effects to 1985: beautiful, gooey practical effects and amazing monster designs. Plus the film captures the loneliness of being a teen so well – in particular with Charlie’s friend Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), who succumbs to Sarandon’s vampiric bite because it’s a promise that he’ll never be so powerless again.
I love FRIGHT NIGHT. I also love the original THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, though it’s taken a while for me to get to the point of “love” (as opposed to admiration). I first watched this in college, when a friend and I rented both this (his choice) and HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II (my choice, being a Clive Barker fan) for a rather gnarly double-feature. The first viewing was so harrowing, so real, that I was quietly shaken. It took several years before I had the courage to revisit it, but when I did, it was airing with the DVD audio commentary track on TV for some reason (on the Sci-Fi Channel, I think!). Not only did this demystify the film, but it gave me a tremendous respect for the craft and artistic detail that went into the grit and sweat, the rust and weeds and, most of all, the bones. And on each subsequent viewing Tobe Hooper’s little masterpiece has crystallized into a horrorshow just as elegantly crafted as PSYCHO.
I still love PSYCHO, though I don’t revisit it quite as often – I’ve probably seen it too many times by now. ROSEMARY’S BABY is a similar story, though I’m due for a revisit. I have always looked to those two films as the pinnacle of suspenseful filmmaking: subjective camera shots, queasily drawn-out terror, sadistically timed shocks. They have always held up. But since PSYCHO I’ve come to realize that it did not exist in a vacuum: there was DIABOLIQUES before, PEEPING TOM the same year, and, after, some fabulous little black-and-white thrillers like TASTE OF FEAR and SPIDER BABY. ROSEMARY’S BABY is an occult classic, but I’ve spent so long pursuing so many other devilish thrillers from the 60’s and 70’s (BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN! THE DEVIL’S RAIN!) that I haven’t watched it again in quite some time. And, of course, THE EXORCIST remains a classic – but now I’ve also, like so many others, discovered how special EXORCIST III is. And of all those cinematic dalliances with Satan, the movie I go back to the most is Hammer’s THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, starring Christopher Lee and Charles Gray. That truly is one of my favorites.
And I love ghost stories. THE HAUNTING and THE INNOCENTS are the undisputed classics of the genre, and I do keep going back to them, but the special one for me has always been THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (again with Richard Matheson – he also wrote THE DEVIL RIDES OUT). I can’t tell you exactly why. It is, I think, the least of those three movies in terms of writing and direction, but the plot and setting (an unquestionably evil haunted house with all the windows bricked up) is irresistible to me. The book, Hell House, is scarier, and made a big impact on me when I read it in high school. But the movie captures a lot of what makes the book unique: not just the suffocating atmosphere, but the intellectual basis of the film, the argument between a scientific explanation and a supernatural one, embodied in the characters of a rigidly scientific researcher and an emotional, intuitive psychic.
All three of those haunted house movies deal with terror of the unknown. They suggest the supernatural without always depicting it directly. The nightmares live in the shadows. Atmosphere, and relying upon the audience’s imagination, is important, which is something that horror movies forgot about for most of the 80’s and 90’s. I distinctly remember being frustrated, in the late 90’s and early 00’s, by how un-scary horror movies were, how they had forgotten how frightening the dark could be. This is why I was so excited when THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT came out. A lot of people thought that movie was boring (a lot of people still do). I was excited because, if you were paying attention and sufficiently engrossed, it worked upon your imagination to give you some real, lasting creeps with the film’s final shot. And no, you never saw any witch. Sounds and shadows were more important. After BLAIR WITCH – and, in no small part, the dread-filled J-horror hits like RINGU, PULSE, and JU-ON – lessons were forgotten until found footage took root with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, and I welcomed the genre (at first) because silence and darkness were at the forefront. Atmosphere! Though found footage was the formal opposite of Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING, at its best it played at the same psychic level, that vertiginous feeling of staring into the abyss. It wasn’t about gore. It was about reaching out of the screen and into your mind, teasing out your oldest fears.
Yeah, THE SHINING is one of my favorites too. You can feel its influence in newer horror films, made by filmmakers who must have been just as frustrated as I was by the state of the genre in the early 00’s. I love MIDSOMMAR and HEREDITARY and THE WITCH, and now there are so many great horror movies playing in similar waters that I can barely keep up with them. I just watched SMILE 2. If that had been released in the 90’s, it would have been hailed by horror fans; now, it’s almost lost. (I have problems with SMILE 2’s plot – impossible to get into without spoilers – but not with its superior direction and acting. All the great acting these days is in horror.) Who has the time for the intermittently brilliant but flawed SMILE 2 when this year also saw the release of Ryan Coogler’s instant-classic SINNERS and Zach Cregger’s clever Grimm’s fairy tale WEAPONS? And though I wasn’t a big fan of THE MONKEY, Oz Perkins – Norman Bates’ son! – is easily one of my favorite filmmakers working today; LONGLEGS is another new horror classic, as far as I’m concerned, and he’s got another one being released just round the corner. I saw GOOD BOY in the theater on a Tuesday night. The place was packed. And it was great.
If it’s not clear by now, I don’t know what my favorite horror film is. I don’t know how to measure anymore, and I’m too busy drinking from the hose to rewatch very many. The genre is exploring new and exciting territory every year, and its audience seems to be getting bigger, too. But I have to pick something, so for now, on October 30th, 2025, I’m going to say FRIGHT NIGHT.
Maybe because these days I feel more like young Charlie than ever, glued to his screen, dreaming of stakes through the heart.
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