‘Tis the Season to be Fearful 🎃

Aargh-aargh-aargh-aargh-aargh, aargh-aargh, aargh-aargh!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. A day to celebrate monsters and darkness and the evil that men do. An opportunity to carve pumpkins until your hands are twisted with cramp, to disguise the kids and set them loose on your neighbours, and to eat sweets until your stomach begs for mercy.

Best of all is the opportunity to sit back and enjoy a few festive movies. To turn out the lights, wait until the tension builds to fever pitch, and then scare the living hell out of your partner with a well timed thigh grab or simple “BOO!”

I’m talking horror here, and Halloween wouldn’t be the same without it.

To guide you on your wicked way, I’ve compiled a list of thirteen chilling fright flicks and franchises guaranteed to transport you all the way to Terror Town, with no return ticket.

The Black Phone (2021)

“Never talk to strangers.”

A bona fide suspense classic from director Scott Derrickson, The Black Phone follows the fate of a kidnapped teen (Mason Thames) in a haunted dungeon with an exotic, masked psychopath (Ethan Hawke) to contend with. Taut, lean and unnervingly scored, dark but fun, and just beautifully crafted, it's based on a short, sharp Joe Hill story that blends a wide variety of influences - Silence of the Lambs, The Great Escape and The Karate Kid among them - into something fresh and utterly fantastic.

Smartly played and thoughtfully made, with style for miles and genius old school effects and cinematography, it's frightening, exciting and dramatic, with humour hiding in even the darkest spaces. A masterclass in movie-making, you'll be so invested in it all, the edge of your seat will be on the edge of its seat.

Drag Me To Hell (2009)

“Christine Brown has a good job, a great boyfriend, and a bright future. But in three days, she's going to hell.”

Evil Dead director Sam Raimi returned to his horror roots to shoot by far the scariest, funniest and all-out barmiest frightener of the Noughties, the twisted tale of a humble loan officer (Alison Lohman) whose decision to evict a vengeful old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver) from her home sees her saddled with a rapidly-escalating demonic curse.

Let The Right One In (2008)

“Eli is 12 years old. She's been 12 for over 200 years and she just moved in next door.”

A dark vamp masterpiece from Sweden, this tells a tale of unlikely friendship and bloody revenge, as a 12 year-old lad befriends a young female neighbour who just so happens to be a 200 year-old bloodsucker. Exploring the sad and seamy side of eternal life, this is a chilling, atmospheric horror drama.

30 Days of Night (2007)

“They’re Coming!”

An intense, atmospheric and giddily bloody horror thriller following the fate of a small Alaskan town that’s plunged into darkness for a month and subsequently besieged by a gang of monstrous, black-eyed, cold-hearted blood-suckers, this is unquestionably one of the greatest vampire movies of all time.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

“To enter the mind of a killer she must challenge the mind of a madman.”

Although most people seem to think of this five-time Oscar winner as a thriller, it’s clearly a horror movie. Consider if you will the head in the jar, the peeled face, the girl in the pit, the skin-suit, the cannibal hero and cellar-dwelling villain of the piece.

Rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) hunts for skin-stitching psycho Buffalo Bill with the help of liver-eating monster Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). It’s a dark and creepy movie, no doubt about it, with some first class frights and an atmosphere thicker than a blood clot.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

“Before man walked the earth… it slept for centuries. It is evil. It is real. It is awakening.”

Less isn’t always more. Sometimes more is more. After all, why settle for demons when you can have zombies too? And why stop there when flesh-eating bugs and psychotic down-and-outs are also available? As for creatures from alternate dimensions, don’t get me started.

A motley collection of science, religious and philosophy types join forces to investigate Satan’s Second Coming. Surrounded by all manner of beasties in a shadowy old church, they are unnervingly advised to “Pray for death”.

A lesser-known but endlessly entertaining horror favourite from master of the art John Carpenter, this is a tense and bloody shocker that will make you scream loudly, laugh nervously and check for white hairs when it’s finished.

The Fly (1986)

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Jeff Goldblum bugs the hell out of Geena Davis in this thoroughly nasty but compelling tragedy, the horrifying tale of an eccentric scientist who turns, one cell at a time, into a giant, hairy, acid-spewing fly. Stare with disbelief at the botched baboon teleportation. Struggle to keep your lunch down as our hero peels off his fingernails, then his ears, then the rest…

Director David Cronenberg, a man obsessed with viscera, avoids the camp of the ‘50s original by first making us care for Jeff and Geena before dragging them through mutant hell all the way to a climax that will leave you speechless, shaking and a little bit queasy.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 1, 3 & 7 (1984, 1987 & 1994)

“If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.”

The bastard son of a hundred maniacs, Freddy Krueger was indisputably the freakiest anti-hero of 1980s cinema, a child molester burnt to a crisp by angry parents and embraced by a generation of film fans as the killer of their dreams. Scarred from head-to-toe with blades for fingers and an inexhaustible supply of cheesy one-liners, he returned from the grave to slaughter kids in their nightmares and inspire a merchandising bonanza that included children’s dolls, bladed gloves and Halloween masks.

Created by director Wes Craven, who named the character after a school bully, Freddy is seen to best effect in the terrifying first, hilarious third and mind-messing seventh chapter of his gory saga.

The Evil Dead Trilogy (1981, 1987 & 1992)

“The ultimate experience in grueling terror.”

Blood-soaked, off his rocker and ready to rumble, accidental hero Ash is mad at Hell and isn’t going to take it any more. First he’s attacked by demons in a cabin. Then witches, walking skeletons and even his own left hand. His friends possessed, he has no choice but to chop them up. Then he’s thrown back in time to battle the medieval dead, yet still he fights on, a shotgun on his back, a chainsaw on his stump and a joke on his lips.

Banned for years due to the infamous sequence in which a girl is sexually assaulted by a tree, the first movie sets you up for the madness that follows. The strangest, silliest and most enthusiastic horror series of them all, courtesy of director Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell, The Evil Deads will blow your mind.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

“From the director of Animal House - a different kind of animal.”

From the grotty splendour of the Northern Line to the porn palaces of Piccadilly Circus, death stalks London in the snarling, slobbering form of the meanest movie werewolf of them all. A slick mix of gags and gore from director John Landis, who wrote the movie as a teen and shot it a decade later, American Werewolf kicks off with lycanthropic terror on the foggy Yorkshire Moors and builds to a bloody crescendo in the heart of the West End.

Best of all is Rick Baker’s groundbreaking, Oscar-winning transformation sequence in which, instead of falling behind a sofa and emerging covered in fur, actor David Naughton turns slowly and painfully into a wolf before our widening eyes.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

“When there’s no more room in HELL, the dead will walk the EARTH!”

Robbed of darkness, creepy music and other staples of the horror genre, the dead are forced to menace the living in the brightly lit, saccharine setting of an abandoned shopping mall. Turns out there’s dread in the daytime, too. In fact, dragged from the shadows, the living dead seem even more terrifying, and inevitable, in the cracking central instalment of George Romero’s Dead Trilogy.

With mankind on the verge of collapse due to the zombie plague, a mismatched group of survivors take refuge in a mall swarming with reanimated corpses. Dark, desolate and dense with desperation, yet perversely, also kinda fun, it’s a magnificent showcase for the entrail-spewing brilliance of MUFX wiz Tom Savini.

Halloween (1978)

“The night HE came home.”

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as the father of the modern Slasher Flick, after unleashing a cross-dressing lunatic on a showering Janet Leigh in his 1960 shocker Psycho. Without director John Carpenter’s Halloween, though, the killing might have ended there. Instead, as the remorselessly evil Michael Myers hacks the unsuspecting residents of Hadonfield, Illinois into Bolognese sauce, wearing, as it happens, a customised William Shatner mask, every director with a camera and a couple of bucksw resolved to freak out audiences in much the same way for the next 25 years.

A creepy, edgy masterpiece, it launched several sequels of its own, as well as the career of Janet Leigh’s daughter, scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis.

The Omen (1976)

“Good morning. You are one day closer to the end of the world. You have been warned.”

A kid doesn’t have much of a chance in life when his mother’s a jackal and his father’s the Devil. Unless he wants to rule the earth, that is. Set to the spine-tingling strains of composer Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar-winning choral soundtrack ‘Ave Satani’ – ‘Hail Satan’ - The Omen kicks off a trilogy devoted to the rise and fall of Damien Thorn, born on the sixth hour of the sixth day of the sixth month, a very bad man and no mistake.

The first and most chilling chapter in the saga sees Damien as a fat-faced little scamp, wreaking mortal havoc without even trying. A distinguished cast is steadily extinguished as each character first learns of Damien’s true identity, only to be burnt, hung, impaled or decapitated for their troubles.

What’s your favourite Halloween horror movie? What beloved scary film of yours did I dare leave out? Spill your brains!