I initially intended to get these lists up sooner, but it’s amazing how much more time it takes than I anticipated to go through the selection of good scary movies from any given decade and narrow it down to the ten best. So here, on Halloween Day, is the latest one, and if you search through the Hollywire archives closely enough you can find lists of the greatest scary movies of the last four decades. You’re welcome!

10. The Cell (2000), R, 107 mins.

Personally I think The Cell deserves better than last place, but it is more of a truly bizarre crime thriller than a horror movie, so it comes in at #10. A revolutionary new psychological treatment allows therapists to literally enter the minds of patients. Catharine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is a psychotherapist who must make emergency use of the procedure to enter the diseased mind of a notorious serial killer, Carl Stargher,  whose signature is to trap women in remote location and leave them there as they slowly drown.

Deane is asked by the FBI to enter Stargher’s mind and determine the location of a currently missing woman. Stargher has fallen into a coma and will die before regaining consciousness enough to confess where the woman is being held, so Deane must search for the answer in his head.

The movie is literally a freaky journey through the twisted madness of an insane mind, and the sheer creativeness of the world that is shown inside this guy’s head make the film really stand out. For genuine cinemtic weirdness, this one is near the top of the list.

9. The Others (2001), PG-13, 101 mins.

The Others is director Alejandro Amenabar’s first English language film. Four years earlier he had directed the Spanish film Abre los ojos (which was remade as Vanilla Sky the same year that The Others was released), but this was still a sudden, dark turn in his cinematic style.

The Others is a quiet, brooding thriller that takes place in the darkened interior of a massive mansion in which a woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman) cares for her two photosensitive children near the end of World War II. Grace’s husband is a soldier in the war, and she is waiting hopefully for his return, which begins to seem less and less likely.

After previous servants turned up missing, Grace hired three new ones to help with the care of the children and the house. Soon after they begin working, strange things begin happening, and Grace begins to wonder if there is some huge and powerful presence in the house or if she is starting to lose her grip on her sanity.

Either way, the film is wonderfully atmospheric and has plenty of genuinely creepy moments. Kidman gives a great performance as the afflicted mother, but once again it is the outstanding performances from the children and the tension throughout the film that really make it stand out.

8. Secret Window (2004), PG-13, 96 mins.

Here you have another Stephen King story starring a successful novelist (see? I’m telling you, all his leads are writers!). Mort Rainey, the famed mystery novelist in question, is living in a beautiful cabin in the woods, a nice relaxing atmosphere for working on his next book (and recover from a nasty divorce), until a strange man named John Shooter (a brilliantly creepy performance by John Turturro) shows up and begins accusing Rainey of stealing the idea for his last best-seller from him.

Rainey assures Shooter that he can prove that, whether or not Shooter had the idea independently, he can at least prove that he did not plagiarize it. He begins searching for a magazine in which he had gotten published a shorter version of the novel ten years earlier, but as he is searching, Shooter’s behavior becomes more and more erratic and violent.

People and animals begin dying around him, and even his divorce proceedings begin to get uglier. Rainey becomes more and more desperate as Shooter forces him into the proverbial corner, challenging him to handle the situation in his own way.

It’s difficult to do justice to the movie just by explaining the plot, but you should remember that it stars Johnny Depp and John Turturro, two tremendously talented actors at the top of their game, and regardless of how often Stephen King writes books starring thinly veiled versions of himself, the man knows how to tell a story. This is a brilliantly entertaining thriller that, I should add, also has one of the greatest endings of any movie that I’ve seen in recent years. If you only see one movie out of the 45 best that I’ve selected from the last four decades, this should be it!

7. The Ring (2002), PG-13, 115 mins.

Like The Blair Witch Project, The Ring generated enormous public intrigue by its premise and marketing strategy. The previews showed a movie about a videotape that would make you die seven days after watching it, and how could you not just itch with the curiosity of what was on such a thing? It is so intriguing to me that, even if people were really dying in real life, I don’t think I would be able to resist an opportunity to watch it if given the chance!

And amazingly enough, it managed to live up to the hype. It’s not an original, it is a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ringu, and was released at the height of the Japanese horror craze. I don’t know what it is about Japan, but those people just know how to make scary, disturbing movies, and even when one of them was dumbed down by the Hollywood machine, it was still one of the scariest movies of the decade.

The movie is about a journalist who investigates the alleged killer videotape, and the movie turns into a race against time as she is forced to try to save her and her sons life before time runs out. An incredibly creepy atmosphere and some of the most effective sound effects that I’ve ever seen in a horror film make this one worth remembering.

6. Saw (2004), R, 103 mins.

Okay, so here’s a little factoid for you. Saw was released in 2004, and we have had a Saw sequel released every single year since then (oh, and Saw VI is slated for a 2009 release). This is almost unheard of in the world of horror movie sequels. I recently reviewed Saw V here on Hollywire and I noted that there is no end in sight. But if nothing else, it should be interesting to see when the yearly Saw sequel trend will stop.

Regardless, the original film was undeniably one of the most daring and original horror movies to have come along in quite some time. It had a brilliant element of mystery inserted right into the basic premise. Two guys wake up chained to the wall in a dingy old bathroom with a dead body on the ground between them, and they have to figure out why they’re their and how to get out.

Director James Wan makes a notable directing achievement in coaxing an amazingly bad performance out of Cary Elwes, who is an otherwise hugely talented actor, but Leigh Whannell, one of the film’s writers, gives a wonderful performance as one of the guys chained in the bathroom, and Danny Glover is perfect as the lead detective in charge of figuring out what the hell is going on.

Just because I hate vacuous logic in the movies, I’m going to go ahead and say that this movie and every sequel has had at least one horrific situation that could have been easily escaped using simple, basic logic (in the original, it’s the scene where Dr. Lawrence cuts his foot off to reach the phone rather than simply remove his shirt and use it to pull the phone toward himself), but for cringe-inducing horror ingenuity, Saw was a shot in the arm of the horror genre that was badly needed, but it was the genuinely shocking twist at the end that really solidified the movie’s classic status…

5. The Mist (2007), R, 126 mins.

If I remember correctly, this one came and went from theaters pretty quickly, and it’s too bad, because it’s one of the most faithful and satisfying Stephen King adaptations that I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of them. It’s made not from a Stephen King novel, but from a novelette of the same name as the movie, and it can be found in a King collection called “Skeleton Crew,” if you’re interested.

And you should be interested, by the way, because it is an amazingly well-written story, and one of my favorite things about the movie is that it follows the story so closely. Very little is changed, because it doesn’t need to be. I first read the story when I was about 13 years old, and not long after that I heard it as a book on tape, and the sound effects alone truly affected me, to say nothing of the original story’s work on my developing imagination. Now that a movie has come along, you can understand why I had high expectations.

Watch 'The Mist,' and you may very well find yourself spending a good portion of the running time sharing the same expression as this kid...

Director Frank Darabont (who also brought us the film versions of The Shawshank Redemption - also a short story - and The Green Mile - an episodic novel), has performed brilliantly in bringing to the screen a King story written at the height of King’s brilliant creativity.

The story is about a freak storm of intense fog that traps a cross section of society in a small east coast grocery store, not allowing them to leave the store without suffering a violent and bloody death, as mysterious, otherworldly creatures seem to be lurking just out of sight.

The violent deaths inflicted on anyone who leaves the store are truly frightening, but the people in the store have the choice to sit in the store and wait to die (the plate glass windows at the front of the store are quickly attacked by the creatures, and I when they started cracking and breaking when I first saw the movie, I looked around the theater and saw at least a dozen people frozen with handfuls of popcorn halfway to their mouths), or try to escape with their lives, knowing nothing about the world that remains outside.

I won’t spoil anything for you, but let’s just say that anytime Stephen King and Frank Darabont team up, we should all take notice!

4. Session 9 (2001), R, 100 mins.

The tagline for Session 9 is “Fear is a Place,” and trust me, the movie takes you there. This is one of the best and most effective psychological thrillers that I’ve ever seen.

A cleaning crew is assigned to clear out the asbestos from an abandoned insane asylum, but soon the personal lives of the crew complicate matters and, because of the building’s mysterious legacy, truly bizarre things start happening.

This is a horror movie premise that promises nothing new or interesting, but it gives us something genuinely remarkable in the world of horror movies. Director Brad Anderson described the movie as an exorcise in “creeping dread,” and this is definitely something of an understatement.

The setting preys on the individual fears of the characters (particularly the man who’s afraid of the dark and is the unwilling guest of one of the movie’s most effective scenes), and it’s filmed in the very real deserted Danvers Mental Institution in Massachusetts.

Sadly, the movie went almost unnoticed, possibly because it was released three days after the September 11th attacks, when horror movies experienced an understandable dip in popularity, but for atmospheric and genuinely effective psychological thrillers, you can hardly do better than this. See this one!

3. Dawn of the Dead (2004), R, 101 mins.

Ving Rhames lends his formidable screen presence to this example of the most unusual breed of horror movies - a re-make that is leaps and bounds better than the original.

With all due respect to George Romero, a giant in horror movie history if ever there was one, the 1978 sequel to his shocking 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, ah, left much to be desired (this is part of the reason why, if you look at my list of the ten best horror films of the 1970’s, you’ll notice that Dawn of the Dead is not there). It seemed that the transition from the black and white of the original film was off to a stumbling start with the original Dawn, but all of that has been more than fixed in this re-make.

The message of the original film remains intact (and yes, the movie does have a message that goes beyond bloody zombie killings. To save space, let’s just say that it has to do with America’s obsession with comercialism. This is why the few survivors of the zombie apocalypse instictively flock to a shopping mall), but now the zombies are faster, they’re smarter, and because of that they’re scarier.

A small group of people is trapped inside the shopping mall by the relentlessly approaching zombies. At first it seems that they can just wait out the epidemic of walking dead inside the mall, but soon the barriers between them and the outside world begin breaking down and they start running low on supplies, forcing them to find a way to escape their situation and find safe haven somewhere else. Also like The Mist, they know they can’t stay where they are, but they know nothing about what remains of the world around them. This is definitely a giant among zombie movies!

2. House of 1,000 Corpses (2003), R, 89 mins.

Okay, so if you want to get all mathematical about it, it’s actually more like House of 8 Corpses, but if you know anything about Rob Zombie’s music and, more importantly, his creative past that has led him to make such music, then you will really understand the importance of House of 1,000 Corpses, his directing debut.

If you are unfamiliar with his music, then I wonder about your real interest in the horror genre, but nonetheless, I recommend you become familiiar with such songs as ‘Dragula,’ ‘How To Make A Monster,’ ‘Meet the Creeper,’ ‘Thunder Kiss ‘65,’ ‘The Great American Nightmare,’ ‘Living Dead Girl,’ ‘I Am Hell,’ ‘Demonoid Phenomenon,’ ‘Spookshow Baby,’ etc. You get the idea.

This is a man who grew up nurturing a genuine love of horror movies, and House of 1,000 Corpses is a return to the gritty, horrific foundation of the horror genre, at the time that it was needed most. He reminded the world that horror movies don’t have to star teenage heartthrobs in tube-tops or pander to the lowest common denominator. Zombie had the guts and the brains to make a horror movie for horror fans, not for whatever the largest target audience may be. He made a movie that he would love, and he understood that the genre’s real fans would understand and appreciate it, and let me tell you, he was right!

The story is about a small group of friends that take a tour into the backwoods of America to take their own look at the local legend of someone named Dr. Satan, and after getting stranded, they find themselves at the mercy of a family of murderous and satanic cannibals.

The story bears an unsettling resemblance to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a lot of ways, but the important thing is when the movie was released. Horror movies, by 2004, had long since evolved into something entirely different (and something distantly inferior), and it was almost single-handedly that House of 1,000 Corpses reminded the world of what a real horror movie should look like.

Bravo, Zombie. Bravo.

**********Ladies and gentlemen, for #1, we have a tie!!!*************

1. Shaun of the Dead (2004), R, 99 mins.

If you were to take a worldwide show of hands back in, say, the year 2000, of who believed that it would take a British romantic comedy to truly resurrect the zombie sub-genre in the 21st century, I’m willing to bet that you would be greeted by an incredulous silence.

Nonetheless, it was exactly that kind of movie that gave us the best modern zombie movie, and one of the best zombies ever made, back in 2004.

The thing that really makes Shaun of the Dead great is that it is a brilliantly creative and inventive zombie movie, but at the same time it’s also a good romantic comedy. Shaun is a young professional in a dead-end job with parental issues as well as growing romantic troubles with his girlfriend, whose needs are not exactly conducive to those of Shaun’s binge-drinking best friend Ed (flawlessly portrayed by Nick Frost, who just about steals the entire movie).

The most important thing that Shaun of the Dead does, besides blending a heartfelt romantic comedy with one of horror’s bloodiest and most violent sub-genres, is that it presents the arrival of the walking dead in an everyday environment.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is impossible not to love this guy. He might be the most fun character who has ever been presented in a horror movie!

When a young zombie-woman shows up in their yard and is accidentally impaled through the spine on a lawn ornament but still gets right back up and keeps coming at them, Shaun and Ed don’t brainstorm about how to fight the living dead, they want to call a fire truck (”Anything with flashing lights, you know?” Ed laments).

What you have here is a fresh perspective on an old genre from a young team of actors and filmmakers, and while I hate using cliched terms like “they hit the nail right on the head,” that’s exactly what happened here. Rob Zombie set out to remind us of what horror movies are supposed to look like with House of 1,000 Corpses, while these guys just wanted to make a fresh new zombie movie. And I’m telling you, they nailed it.

If you can watch Shaun of the Dead and not be entertained, I really don’t know what to say to you. I would say ‘check your pulse,’ but as you know, I’ve already explained that I hate cliches. Just see the movie. If you haven’t seen this and you enjoy scary movies, you are genuinely missing out on something big. And if you have seen it, you know you agree with me that it is a serious contender for the greatest horror film of the 21st century thus far. Bravo!

1. Battle Royale (2000), R, 114 mins.

I love Shaun of the Dead to death, but as far as truly creative and disturbing horror, you really can’t do better than Battle Royale. This is the Japanese horror flick to end all Japanese horror flicks.

If you understood the power of a statement like “Asia Extreme,” you would not need to read any further. Battle Royale is basically about population control. It’s a futuristic film in which a class of ninth-grade Japanese students is chosen at random, and they are put into a situation in which they must all kill each other in order to survive.

But what makes the movie classic horror entertainment is not that they are forced to kill each other off, but that they are given a random selection of weapons with which to defend themselves, and the randomly chosem weapon might be an automatic weapon or it might be a toaster.

Horror movies have always been a medium designed around creative ways to kill people, but this is one of the only ones that I can think of that imposes that task on the cast rather than the writers.

It is truly unique among horror films for this and a myriad of other reasons, and if you haven’t seen it, you should add it at the top of your list of must-see horror films. It’s not the easiest thing to find, but you must believe me, this is a horror movie the likes of which has never been made, and will be the icing on the cake for a perfect Halloween weekend.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Okay, this one’s gonna be harder. It’s odd that the decade that gave us the goofiest horror movies is also overflowing with some of the best, but that’s just the way it is so I’ve done my best to narrow it down to the top 15. Besides, with Halloween just around the corner it’s time to get in the holiday spirit, and what better way to do that than by watching a lot of teenagers get slashed to death by a lot of masked maniacs?

When most people think of October, they most often think of Halloween and scary movies (especially when they’re looking at a big picture of a jack-o-lantern, like you are). So, in an effort to promote one of my favorite genres at one of the few times of the year that it gets the recognition it deserves, here is my list of 15 of the best scary movies of the 1980s…

You know, we just don't get cool movie posters like this anymore!

15. The Stuff (1985), R, 93 mins.

Ok, so I’ll start with one you’ve never heard of again. The Stuff, first of all, is not a great horror movie. Not by a long shot. It’s a thinly veiled social commentary about drug addiction (with a strong undertone about corporate corruption), which doesn’t strike me as the most interesting premise in the world for a horror movie, but ironically you can hardly do better for good, campy fun.

It’s about this creamy new snack product that has become a phenomenal commercial success, almost as though people were addicted to it! It’s difficult to describe exactly what it is, but let’s just say that throughout the movie I couldn’t stop thinking about Marshmallow Creme. I don’t know how Marshmallow Creme could become a success as a snack that people would eat by itself in large quantities, but whatever the case, people can’t seem to get enough of “The Stuff.”

A guy named Mo Rutherford (”They call me that ’cause when people give me money, I always want mo’.”) is sent by a competing corporation to discover what exactly is in “The Stuff” so they can get an edge on the market (apparently this is before the days of Nutrition Facts and ingredient labels). Complicating matters is that The Stuff literally seeped up out of the earth, was discovered and tasted by miners, and then was packaged and sold because it tasted so good.

Unfortunately, it also took over the minds of those who ate it, turning them into zombies and starting a full scale war between humans and this mysterious goo. Here’s a little quote to give you an idea of how this particular war on terror is handled:

Col. Malcolm Grommett Spears: “We’re Americans - we’ve never lost a war!”
Jason: “What about ‘Nam, sir?”
Col. Malcolm Grommett Spears: “‘Nam? We lost that war at home, sonny.”

That leap from snack to zombie is a doozie, but nevertheless, The Stuff is undeniably a horror comedy classic.

14. Cujo (1983), 91 mins.

Donna Trenton is a regular New England wife and mother whose life has been thrown into turmoil after her husband Vic has discovered that she has been having an affair. Brett Cambers is a young local boy whose only companion is a massive Saint Bernard named Cujo (which, incidentally, is an ancient Indian word meaning “unstoppable force”). One day while Vic is away on business, Donna drives her Pinto with her 5-year-old son Tad over to Brett’s father’s car shop, only to have to car break down and the Cambers family is nowhere in sight. But Cujo is around, and he’s pissed off and very, very sick…

Cujo is not a traditional horror movie, it doesn’t do what you would expect with that premise and turn Cujo into a vicious, fire-breathing movie monster. It’s a realistic, suspenseful movie that takes a while to build up, but once it does it never lets you relax and the tension is high throughout. It fits a frightening occurrence into an everyday situation, which was one of Hitchcock’s favorite techniques, and it stars Dee Wallace, who you might remember as the mother from E.T. the year before.

Note: Ten years later, one of the best horror movies of the 90’s, The Dark Half, was released (also made from a Stephen King novel), and it’s main character is a novelist named Thad (pronounced “Tad”). Coincidence?

13. Fright Night (1985), R, 106 mins.

Young Charlie Brewster is a horror movie fan and when two men move in next door and begin behaving strangely he has no doubt in his mind that it is because they are a vampire and his undead guardian. Carlie enlists the only help he can find in hunting them down, a washed-up actor named Peter Vincent who also hosts Charlie’s favorite TV show, “Fright Night.” Unfortunately, Vincent believes in money more than he believes in vampires, so Charlie may be even more on his own than he thinks.

Fright Night stands out among vampire films because of its classic portrayal of a modernized vampire, its villainous nature presented perfectly by Chris Sarandon juxtaposed with the pathetic mortals that he preys on. The feeling of power that this situation gives the vampire is what creates the tension and suspense when one young mortal rises up against him.

The movie was released in competition with films like Nightmare on Elm Street and Back to the Future, but still manages to hold its own with surprisingly impressive special effects and performances that are far better than are now to be expected from 80’s horror movies. Fright Night is not one of the greatest horror films ever, but it is one of the greatest vampire films.

12. They Live (1988), R, 93 mins.

In the same spirit as The Stuff, They Live is one of the funniest scary movies that I have seen. Or one of the scariest funny movies that I’ve seen. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which genre it’s supposed to be. A unemployed construction worker named Nada (played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of sunglasses that allows him to see the true form of some aliens that have infested our population, taken human form and embarked on a campaign to control people’s minds.

Billboards and advertisements, seen through the glasses, reveal their true meanings with slogans like “Obey,” “Conform,” “Stay Asleep,” and “Submit to Authority.” And the aliens themselves are revealed in their true form as well, which is pretty creepy (look to your right and you’ll get an idea of what they look like!).

Nada’s mission is to find the other people that know about what’s happening (the ones who made the sunglasses), sabotage the aliens’ plans and awaken the world to what’s really going on. Along the way he meets a black man named Frank (a brilliant horror comedy performance by the now hugely successful actor Keith David), engages in what might be one of the funniest fist fights ever filmed, and then teams up with him.

The question is - will they be able to make people realize what’s happening, and what will happen when the sleep is washed from their eyes?

Welcome to the real world…

11. Friday the 13th (1980), R, 95 mins.

One of the most famous horror movies ever made, if not necessarily the best, the original Friday the 13th is one of a very small handful of films that gave birth to what became known as the slasher sub-genre, about vicious, relentless masked killers that couldn’t be stopped and seemed to especially dislike promiscuous teenagers.

A group of young counselors at the infamous Camp Crystal Lake begin to prepare to open the camp for the summer, years after a young boy drowned in the lake and, the following summer, two camp counselors were mysteriously murdered. It very soon becomes clear that there is someone who is not at all happy that the camp is reopening, and it soon becomes the scene of a lot of hilarious 1980’s teenage partying and more grisly murders.

Besides being a slasher classic, the movie has become a trivia piece as to who the real killer is. Here’s a hint, it’s not the local nutcase that warned the teens against going up to the lake…

10. Pet Sematary (1989), R, 103 mins.

The Creed family has just moved into their dream house in the peaceful countryside, fulfilling their idyllic location except for the narrow highway on which huge semi-trucks roar past at high speeds and the mysterious cemetery in the woods nearby. The locals are initially reluctant to talk about the cemetery, until the Creeds suffer the tragic death of their beloved cat, Church.

It seems that the cemetery is a mysterious ancient site with the power to bring loved ones back from the dead. They bury Church there and are astonished when he reappears at their house. He’s alive and well but is somehow changed. He’s mean now.

Not long afterwards, the family’s son is killed by a passing semi-truck, and the family, unable to handle their grief, buries him in the cemetery as well. They are at first overcome with relief when he reappears alive and well not long after, but he is also not quite the same…

Pet Sematary is also not a classic horror film, but it has a great story and has more than a few moments that are genuinely scary. This is the kind of horror that I wish Stephen King would go back to, and it has some moments that are some of the more memorable in the genre. An astonishing performance from 3-year old (!!) Miko Hughes (you mey remember him as the little kid in the 1998 Bruce Willis film Mercury Rising) gives the horror in Pet Sematary a particularly, ah, sharp edge (pun intended). See this one!

9. Hellraiser (1987), R, 94 mins.

Taking place in an entirely different horror world from any of the other 80’s horror movies on this list, writer/director Clive Barker’s Hellraiser introduces the world to Pinhead,  who might be the single most recognizable face in horror movie history. Clive Barker not only has the perfect name for a horror novelist (and now, director), but also a truly uniqe and bizarre imagination.

A man and wife move into an old house and discover a hideous monster living upstairs that turns out to be the man’s half-brother (as well as his wife’s former lover). By solving Pandora’s Box and opening a doorway to Hell, he has lost his physical body to the Cenobites (led by Pinhead), but a drop of blood on the old wooden floor of the room upstairs has brought him back into existence.

He soon coerces Julia, his former mistress (a frightening performance by Clare Higgins) to bring him human sacrifices so that he can come back to life completely, with the Cenobites fighting their efforts all along the way.

Hellraiser is Clive Barker’s feature film directing debut, but when Stephen King says, at the height of his own career, “I have seen the future of horror, and it’s name is Clive Barker,” you know you have something special. Also unique about the Hellraiser series is that, of it’s numerous sequels, they tend to be far better than the majority of installments in your typical horror franchise (hear that, Freddy?).

8. The Evil Dead (1981), R, 85 mins.

Fans of the Evil Dead series are often amazed to look back at the original film and compare it to the two sequels (especially Army of Darkness), because when you watch Army of Darkness, it’s hard to believe that in the original film Ash was just such a geek.

Five friends go into the deep woods for a nice weekend out of the city, only to quickly discover an old, rotting cabin in which lies the Necronomicon (The Book of the Dead), and a taped translation of the text from a man who was studying it years earlier in the same cabin. The mystery surrounding his fate becomes more and more important as the group discovers a powerful evil force lurking in the woods around them.

The recitation of the text awakens the evil forces and one-by-one the group makes frightening transformations into demonic zombies, with the (eventually) heroic Ash stunned to find himself battling the evil manifestation in the most bizarre ways imaginable.

Note: The incantation that they recite from the book of the dead - “klaatu barada nikto” - is taken from the classic 1951 science fiction/horror film The Day the Earth Stood Still (”Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.”). A re-make of the film, starring Keanu Reeves, is set for release this December.

7. The Lost Boys (1987), R, 97 mins.

To this day it’s difficult for me to watch Kiefer Sutherland in any film or tv show without thinking about this movie. You just can’t go wrong with a tagline like “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.”

A single mother moves to a small coastal town in California with her two sons, and right away the town is plagued with bikers and mysterious deaths. The younger boy makes friends with two other boys who claim to be vampire hunters, while the older boy becomes interested in a beautiful girl who lures him into the biker gang.

As the older brother’s sleeping habits make a sudden and suspicious change, the younger brother becomes more and more deeply involved in the obsession of the vampire hunters and begins to suspect that his brother has become one. He sets off on a mission to find and destroy the lead vampire and therefore save his brother’s soul.

Besides being one of the most entertaining vampire films around, The Lost Boys stands out as a great popcorn flick. The entertainment value is high and the performances throughout are impressive, and it even has a great soundtrack. The Lost Boys was far ahead of its time…

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), R, 90 mins.

Here’s a curious little factoid about the original Nightmare, besides being the film debut of Johnny Depp, it is midway through this film that we learn that Freddy Krueger, who is now one of the most morbidly loved horror characters ever, was a child molester who was released on a technicality. The reason he’s dead and haunting the dreams of teenagers is because he’s seeking revenge on the private citizens who took the law into their own hands and killed him!

In the movie, he returns from the dead to haunt the dreams of the children of the people who killed him. The line between dreamland and reality is blurred as Freddy begins killing off victims in their sleep, resulting in their deaths in real life, leaving one girl with the mission to draw him out of her dreams into the real world so that he can be killed once and for all, without being killed herself in the process.

It was a long, long time ago that this movie stopped being scary, but it’s got a clever premise for weaving nightmares into real life, made by a director on his way to the top of his game. The entertainment level is high even if the scares have long since evaporated, but if nothing else, who could forget that girl in her underwear rolling around the walls and ceiling of her room??

5. Poltergeist (1982), PG, 114 mins.

Steven Spielberg makes another unexpected appearance in another top 10 of horror list with his 1982 film Poltergeist, which must be the most successful family horror film ever made. I always forget that the movie was rated PG, which tends to make me think that it can’t be much of a horror movie, but it remains one of the most genuinely entertaining and fun ghost story movies I’ve ever seen.

A family is visited by ghosts in their home, which at first seem to be friendly, moving objects around the house to the family’s amusement, but soon their tricks turn mean and nasty. The family’s young daughter seems to have found a way to communicate with the ghosts through the static on the tv, but soon she is “kidnapped” into an unknown parallel world.

A memorable perfomance by Zelda Rubinstein as the curious Tangina, the woman who comes to clear the home of the ghostly spirits and save the daughter, makes the movie particularly memorable, along with several impossible to forget scenes, such as the living trees and the coffins popping out of the swimming pool. Excellent entertainment, even for the weak of heart.

4. Re-Animator (1985), R, 86 mins.

When I think about Re-Animator, the first thing that pops into my mind is that, if nothing else, it is a campy horror classic that deserves to be called a horror camp classic. It gives us the kind of horror/comedy that makes the Evil Dead films so much fun, and it remains a great film despite the fact that the soundtrack seems to be a naked rip-off of Bernard Herrman’s score for Psycho, probably the single most famous sound ever to have come from a movie.

Jeffrey Combs delivers a wonderfully crazy performance as Herbert West, the mad scientist who believes he has discovered a scientific way to beat death, and he becomes desperate to try it out on a human being rather than small animals, on whom he has had remarkable success. In order to carry out his experiments, he needs to get his hands on some fresh corpses, and in the horror genre, this premise makes for a great movie.

The movie is all about too much gore and too much blood and too much gratuitous nudity, but also about too much fun. It’s so over-the-top that it’s hard notto have a great time with it. It’s a great example of how much fun horror movies can be.

3. An American Werewolf in London (1981), R, 92 mins.

Two American students on a walking tour of England  are attacked one night by a werewolf. One is killed while the other escapes but is badly injured. The werewolf is killed but reverts to its human form, so the local people deny that it ever existed.

The surviving American begins having nightmares about hunting as a wolf, and the original werewolf’s recent victims begin appearing to him ad demanding that he find a way to die because as long as he is alive they are trapped between worlds because of their unnatural deaths.

The mutilated victims appearing to him and brainstorming about how he can kill himself provide for some pretty classic horror comedy, but it is the remarkable and groundbreaking special effects used to show the transformation from human to werewolf and back that really made the movie stand out when it was first released. In fact, the creativity and ingenuity displayed in the technical production of the film remains respected and admired to this day.

2. The Evil Dead II (1987), R, 85 mins.

Why is The Evil Dead II ranked #2 while the original film is way back there at #8? Well, mostly because it is one of the rarest kinds of movies in the film world, a horror sequel that’s better than the original. In fact, it’s almost more a remake of the original film than a sequel, which is probably part of the reason that it’s better than part 1.

Once again Ash is in the woods in the old, broken down cabin and listening to recorded passages from the Book of the Dead. Soon the forces of evil are unleashed again and the night becomes a long, grisly, enormously bloodly but side-splittingly hilarious chainsaw/shotgun battle between Ash and the fiendish horde of demons.

An innumerable quantity of classic quotable quotes and Bruce Campbell’s phenomenal performance (it may very well be the funniest performance in a horror movie ever filmed) make this one of the bloodiest but most highly entertaining horror movies around. I can’t begin to tell you how many drinking game opportunities are to be found here!

1. The Shining (1980), R, 146 mins.

Okay, so technically 1980 is the 70’s (right? because we count from 1-10, not from 0-9), but The Shining was directed by Stanley Kubrick, one of the cinema’s greatest directors, written by Stephen King, the most successful horror novelist of all time, and stars Jack Nicholson. How can you go wrong?

You probably can, but they didn’t. The Shining is one of the two or three scariest movies that I’ve ever seen, and I have this movie to thank for a fear of hallways that I developed the first time I saw it and that continues to this day. Thanks a lot!

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson - once again playing a character with his own name) is a writer who needs some peace and quiet to work on his next project, so he and he signs up to be the caretaker of the cavernous Overlook Hotel during the winter, when heavy snowfall cuts it off entirely from the rest of the world. The hotel owners are required by law to inform them that the last caretaker went crazy and brutally murdered his family while overseeing the hotel in a previous winter, but Jack is not bothered.

He and his wife and son go up to the hotel and begin to spend a quiet winter there, getting accustomed to the massive amount of space and empty hours, until Danny begins to have strange visions with a ghostly presence in the hotel, in particular the errie appearance of what have to be the creepiest twin girls ever. He has a “gift” that the hotel’s cook explains to him is called “shining,” which allows him to see the grisly images of the terrible things that have happened in the hotel in the past.

Soon Jack begins to lose touch with his sanity, having visions himself of people and things that may or may not really be there, and ultimately the true nature of his own existence becomes questionable.

Kubrick’s unique directing style and his love of tracking shots gives a unique experience for the sheer size and emptiness of the hotel, but Jack Nicholson’s performance as the increasingly unstable Jack Torrance and his terrorization of his own wife and son is the centerpiece in what is undoubtedly one of the most thoroughly well-made horror movies ever made.

For some reason, I really get a kick out of the HAHAHAHAH at the bottom. I've seen all five movies, so surely someone somewhere is laughing at me!

So the tagline for Saw V is “You won’t believe how it ends.” Yeah, whatever. More like, “you won’t believe that it ends.” And you shouldn’t believe it, either. The grisly series has been a dead horse for three movies by now, but if the rumors circulating the internet are true, there will be at least two more.

In the movie’s defense, there are times when the premise is interesting and creative, at least more than I had anticipated. Eyes will glaze over throughout the audience when the movie starts out with Jigsaw saying Hello so-and-so I want to play a game, but the story that the movie tells is a lot more ambitious than you might think. It’s better than part 3 and 4, but that’s not saying a lot.

The vicious, brutal death-traps remain the centerpiece of the movie, but this one gets extra points because it goes behind the scenes into Jigsaw’s world. The problem is that the movie tries to tell a bigger story than the material can sustain. There is a series of flashbacks that jumps back and forth between past and present (and more than one previous Saw sequel), making the movie convoluted and confusing. You may find yourself wondering why Jigsaw is masked and kidnapping people one moment, and lying in a hospital bed struggling for breath the next.

The Jigsaw Killer - feeling much better than in previous movies...

There are three main stories going on in the movie. Five apparent strangers are forced to perform violent tests in order to get a door to open before it locks forever, and during each test, one person will be, ah, voted off the island. The whole scenario is remarkably similar to Cube, a far more interesting movie.

The other story is a detective named Mark Hoffman who is involved with Jigsaw as sort of an unwilling accomplice, and then there is an Agent Strahm that is investigating the killings from outside Jigsaw’s world, trying to figure out what’s going on while the five strangers are killed off one by one.

By this point in the series, hardcore Saw fans (which I am guessing make up about 90% of the remaining audience) will probably be mostly interested in the new torture devices, but the movie spends a huge amount of it’s relative short running time jumping around in flashbacks and side stories, including one about Jigsaw’s daughter, who has inherited a mysterious box, the contents of which Jigsaw explains are “of grave importance.”

Agent Strahm, early in the film, escapes a trap that was not meant to test him but to kill him, and he begins to suspect a copycat killer or that Jigsaw had an accomplice. Hoffman has a unique involvement in Jigsaw’s killings, and is forced to try to cover his tracks while at the same time overseeing the deadly game involving the five supposed strangers, while they themselves try to get to know each other enough to figure out why they were put there together in the first place.

As before, Jigsaw once again is taking on the laughable mission of trying to clean up where America’s shoddy legal system screws up. The movie opens with a stomach-turning scene involving a guy who slipped through the cracks, serving only five years of a 25-year sentence because of a technicality. I appreciate the effort of the movie trying to make a comment of the shortcomings of the American legal system, but it’s pretty hard to take it seriously when it tries to present the Jigsaw Killer as doing the Lord’s good work. He’s like a Boondock Saint with a violent imagination and a lot more time on his hands.

Detective Hoffman tries to remember what happened when he saw this on "CSI: Las Vegas."

The performances are passable, given the movie that they’re in (which doesn’t really ask much of an actor except screaming), although there are a few moments of remarkably awful acting. Tobin Bell once again lends his creepy voice to a nice synthesizer and then to that creepy doll, but the look of the movie is pretty thoroughly boring. It’s totally lightless from beginning to end, a cheap horror technique that gets real old real quick.

Not much effort is put into having a good twist at the end of the movie, although the closing scene does have the element of surprise and, like mostly all of the movies before it, is pretty painful to watch. This is not the worst Saw film that they have sprung on us so far, but there is definitely nothing in it to make me look forward to any more sequels.

Captain Kirk showing his good side...

1.    Halloween is the Celtic New Year. It was originally a pagan holiday to honor the dead (note: “pagan” means “heathen!” - See #19). It took place, as it does now, on October 31st, and was called All Hallow’s Eve (the next day, November 1st, was called All Saint’s Day). It dates back more than 2000 years.

2.    Due to the movie’s tiny budget, for the Michael Meyers mask in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) the prop department had to use the cheapest thing they could find, which turned out to be a spray-painted William Shatner mask.

3.    Made on a budget of $320,000 in about three weeks, Halloween became the highest grossing independent film ever made at the time of its release (it grossed more than $65,000,000).

4.    The Mexican version of Halloween Day is called Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and takes place on the 1st and 2nd of November. They use the occasion to to gather together with family and friends and pray for loved ones who have died. They believe that during the Dia de los Muertos, it is easier for the souls of the dead to visit the living.

5.    The “Jack-O-Lantern,” according to Celtic folklore, got it’s name from a guy named Stingy Jack, a miserable old drunk who liked to play tricks on everyone from his own mother to the Devil himself (see the full story at the end of this post).

6.    You must hold your breath while walking past a cemetery or you might breathe in the spirit of someone who has recently died. And if I’ve learned anything from years of watching scary movies, there is no way that can be a good thing.

7.    Jack-O-Lanterns originated in Ireland, where people would put candles into hollowed out turnips and beets to keep away evil spirits and ghosts on the Samhain holiday. Why did they use turnips and beets and not pumpkins like normal people? See the story about Stingy Jack below.

John Carpenter - "Nobody breaks up with ME and gets away with it without being terrorized in a series of wildly successful horror movies!"

8.    To the original European immigrants who first brought it to North America, Halloween was a celebration of the end of the summer harvest, and they would observe the holiday by gathering around a bonfire to tell ghost stories, sing, dance, and tell fortunes.

9.    Laurie Strode, the beleaguered heroine of the Halloween movies, was named after John Carpenter’s first girlfriend.

10.    Halloween is the second most commercially successful holiday (Halloween candy sales average more than $2,000,000,000 [$2 billion] annually). Christmas, of course, is number 1.

11.     Tootsie rolls were the first wrapped penny candy in America. They were introduced in 1896 by an Austrian candy maker named Leo Hirschfield, who opened a tiny candy shop in New York City. He named the candy after his 5-year-old daughter’s nickname, “Tootsie.”

If #13 wasn't true, this whole series would never have happened!

12.    The ancient Celts believed that spirits and ghosts roamed the countryside on Halloween night, so they began wearing costumes and masks to avoid being recognized as human!

13.    Horror movies, love them or hate them, show us the most unusual and creative human deaths that any of us will ever see (and I’m willing to bet that includes real life CSI’s).

14.    Pumpkins also appear in nature in white, blue, and green.

15.    It is believed that the Irish started the tradition of trick-or-treating. In preparation for All Hallow’s Eve, Irish townspeople would visit people throughout their neighborhoods asking for contributions of food for a town feast.

Trick-or-treating has benefited everyone from lost 9th century souls to this kid's dentist!

16.    Another theory is that trick-or-treating originated with a 9th century European custom called “souling.” Christians would go from village to village on November 2nd (All Souls Day) and beg for “soul cakes,” which were square pieces of bread with currants. The more they received, the more prayers they would promise to say for the souls of the donors’ lost loved ones. At that time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for some time after death, and prayer, even from strangers, could quicken a soul’s passage to heaven.

17.    The music in Halloween was credited in the movie to the “Bowling Green Symphony Orchestra,” but was actually put together by John Carpenter and a few of his music buddies. It is one of the most famous and enduring horror movie scores of all time.

18.    About 21% of pet owners dress up their pets for Halloween. No word on what their marriages are like…

Say your prayers, Peter Pan, I'll kill you with cuteness!

19.    There is some debate, with opinions generally divided, as to whether or not Halloween is a Satanic holiday. What do you think?

20.    In North America, it’s bad luck if a black cat crosses your path but good luck if a white cat crosses your path. In Britain and Ireland, it’s the opposite.

21.    Black and orange are the colors of Halloween because orange represents the Fall colors and black represents darkness and death.

22.    Superstition says that if a bat flies around a house three times, it is considered a death omen. So if you live in bat country, keep a BB gun handy.

23.    It’s bad luck to allow a fire to burn out on Halloween.

24.    The significance of black cats is that they are believed to be the protectors of a witch’s powers. If a black cat walks toward you, it brings good fortune. But if it walks away, it takes the good luck with it.  Again, keep that BB gun handy.

Hey man, I don't make up the rules, I'm just reporting this stuff. Who would have thought you could make a witch look sexy??

25.   Every year almost without exception, the most popular Halloween costume for women is something that starts with the word “sexy.”

26.    Also almost without exception, men who dress up for Halloween in a costume that begins with the word “sexy” do not look at all sexy.

27.    Halloween did not become an American holiday until the 19th century because the restrictions of lingering Puritan tradition prevented even the observance of Christmas before the 1800s.

28.    Check this out - It was the transatlantic migration of millions of Irish immigrants following the great Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) that finally brought Halloween to America. So basically, we have an overseas potato shortage to thank for our second most commercially successful holiday!

29.    Halloween was mostly a social holiday from the 1800s until around 1910, when the introduction of postcards first commercialized it. Masks and costumes were not being mass-produced until the 1930s, and trick-or-treating didn’t become a permanent holiday fixture until about 20 years after that.

30.    Salem, Massachusetts claims to be the “Halloween Capital of the World,” while at the same time trying to disassociate itself with its history of persecuting witches. The irony kills me! Anoka, Minnesota also claims the world title, but sadly has no history of witch trials to make it stand out. For some reason, national attention continues to evade its beloved annual Halloween parade.

31.    Your humble writer would really, really, really like to know where he can get a bottle of Stingy Jack’s authentic pumpkin wine. So, if you know, feel free to help me out!!

.

And now…

One dark Halloween night, a deceitful and bitter old drunk named Stingy Jack managed to trick the Devil into climbing up an apple tree. Once he was in the tree, Jack quickly put crosses all around the tree, trapping the Devil. He then told the Devil that he would not let him down until he promised not to take his soul when he died. The Devil gave the promise and Jack finally let him down.

Years later, when Jack finally died, he met Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates of Heaven and was told that he had lived a worthless and miserable life on earth as a drunken trickster, and so would not be allowed into heaven. He was sent to Hell to talk to the Devil, and once there, Jack reminded the Devil of his promise not to take his soul. The Devil kept his promise and didn’t allow Jack to enter Hell.

Now, Jack was scared and had nowhere to go. All he could do was wander forever in the total darkness between Heaven and Hell. He went back to the Devil and asked him how he could survive when there was no light, and the Devil, in an unusual gesture of kindness, responded by tossing him an ember from the flames of Hell to help him light his way.

Jack placed the ember in a hollowed out turnip, one of his favorite foods which he always carried with him, and from that day on, Stingy Jack roamed the earth without a resting place, lighting the way as he went with his lantern…

Many people consider the 1970s to be the high point of horror movies. It was a formative decade for a genre that had been around for more than half a century because filmmakers were beginning to shake off the censorship restrictions of earlier years and had not yet succumbed to the bad CGI and teen cuteness that ruined so many horror films in later decades. So, here in no particular order (other than numerical:), are my top 10 horror movies of the 70s…

10. Satan’s School For Girls (1973), Unrated, 78 mins.

Ok, so I’ll start with one you’ve never heard of. Satan’s School For Girls is not a great horror movie, it’s actually a made-for-tv horror thriller, but while the bad parts are pretty bad, the good parts are creepy as hell. A young girl’s mysterious death seems to leave no explanation other than one involving the supernatural, so the police quickly close the case and move on, leaving the girl’s sister to take the investigation into her own hands.

She enrolls at the school for girls that her sister was attending at the time of her death, suspicious that the school or it’s faculty may have had something to do with it. There is little blood and gore in the movie, instead it relies more on a tense and creepy atmosphere, which is really a more effective way to make a scary movie. Fountains of blood have an entirely different effect.

The movie is not a classic and even though the atmosphere is not always very good, there are a few times when it’s very good. Definitely worth watching, especially for horror movie buffs.

9. The Amityville Horror (1979), R. 117 mins.

A brutal murder takes place in the infamous Amityville house right at the beginning of the movie, followed by a scene of some prospective tenants taking a tour of the house, with glimpses of the murders edited in as they look around. As soon as the family moves in, strange things start happening. Some of them are genuinely creepy, like when a friend of the family hears children laughing upstairs while the whole family it outside. I don’t know why the ghosts of children are so much scarier than adults, but it gets me every time.

Other parts of the movie are less impressive, but this was the start of a horizonless stream of sequels (and one of the better Simpsons Halloween episodes) and the house viciously ordering the tenants to “Get out!” is a classic horror moment if I’ve ever seen one!

8. Deep Red (1975), R, 126 mins.

Deep Red was marketed as something so intensely scary that you should constantly pinch yourself and remind yourself that it’s only  a movie. It’s directed by Dario Argento, the Italian horror master and director of the classic Suspiria, so the warning about the scariness is not exactly a stretch.

It’s about a psychic who can read minds who picks up the thoughts of a murderer and then soon becomes a victim. An English pianist gets involved in the investigation of the murder, only to have every pursued lead cut off by new killings. As his frustration mounts, he begins to notice that the murderer seems to be closely following his movements, committing a new style of grisly murder just when he begins to think he knows what’s going on. It’s a rich horror tapestry from one of the genre’s best directors.

7. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), R, 83 mins.

“Who will survive and what will be left of them?”

There is no denying that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the most famous horror films ever made, although I have to admit that I don’t like it at all. But the reason it is so distasteful to me is because it is incredibly effective at being almost painful to watch. The level of realism that they achieved in making the movie is astonishing, so much so that, for me, it’s impossible to enjoy.

The movie gets high marks and reaches a higher level of intrigue because it is supposedly based on a true story of a series of chainsaw murders that happened in Texas, but it’s a little too good at showing us what happened. This family that was living out there in the Texas desert were an illustration of the depths of human depravity, and director Tobe Hooper wants to make sure that we fully realize how screwed up they were!

The movie spawned a couple of bad sequels and an even worse 2003 remake, but as far as classic, milestone horror films, this is one of the most important, regardless of how much fun it is to watch..

6. The Hills Have Eyes (1977), R, 89 mins.

The Hills Have Eyes, Wes Craven’s second film, is also one of his most famous. Like his directing debut, The Last House on the Left, it’s essentially about people doing horrible things to other people, a theme that Craven seemed to love, as it has permeated his career.

A group of city folk are driving across the desert and soon break down and then find themselves entirely cut off from civilization and running from their lives from a bizarre group of sinister and disturbing desert-dwelling cannibals.

Interestingly, Craven got the idea for the film when he was studying Greek mythology and how the forces of good and evil sometimes get blurred together, with one eventually becoming the other (usually good becoming the very evil that it is seeking to destroy).

It’s unusual for such a raw and grisly horror film to explore such a universal aspect of humanity. On the one hand, it attempts to delve into a base aspect of the human condition, and on the other hand it tries to scare people out of their wits. And amazingly enough, it succeeds at both.This is the filmmaking style to which Wes Craven’s longest standing fans wish he would return.

5. The Last House on the Left (1972), R, 84 mins.

It was when I was watching Last House on the Left again recently that I was reminded of that distinct line between horror movies and scary movies. Scary movies scare you, while horror movies, although often scary in a different way, are horrible.

Wes Craven’s debut film is not scary, but it is presented in a documentary style which gives the terrible things in it a realistic and effective quality. It’s like watching actual footage of real people doing terrible, terrible things to other real people. When it was released, there were people that didn’t want Wes Craven and producer Sean Cunningham to ever be allowed to make movies again, and it’s not hard to see why!

Unlike Texas Chainsaw, Last House on the Left realizes that it’s abrasive and painful to watch, so it counterbalances the horror with unusually hilarious comic relief (consider the town sheriff slapping his forehead and rubbing his chin helplessly at his inability to commandeer a chicken farmer’s truck when his own car runs out of gas, gosh darn it).

The simple fact that the movie can be as graphic as it is without being exploitative is enough to show that even after three decades it remains as effective as it ever was. And interestingly enough, the reason Craven didn’t direct again for five years was because the studios were pressuring him to make another sick and depraved movie like this and he didn’t want to do it. He waited until he was almost broke, and then gave in and made The Hills Have Eyes.

4. Jaws (1975), PG, 124 mins.

Yeah, the shark looked fake and was constantly breaking down or sinking or both during production, but this might be part of the reason that Steven Spielberg only agreed to direct the film on the condition that we don’t see the shark at all for the entire first half of the movie.

A tiny town on the curiously named Amity Island is terrorized by a killer shark, but the town authorities stubbornly resist closing beaches because the town relies so heavily on its summer tourist traffic. Publicity involving a killer shark could be disastrous for the town’s economy.

Roy Scheider plays the town sheriff with the unenviable job of scanning the beaches looking for a shark fin while people frolic on the beach, oblivious to the dangers lurking in the water. Spielberg manages the spectacular feat of making the ocean itself, which naturally radiates calmness and tranquility, look threatening, and the movie’s film score is one of the most recognizable of all time.

The movie’s third act, with Sheriff Brody, Captain Quint, and Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) at sea battling the shark are probably what the film is most remembered for, as well as the part with the most effectively scary scenes. Spielberg showed his mastery of film direction only four years after directing his first film in 1971, and proved that sometimes the most effective ways to create tension and fear are also the simplest.

3. The Omen (1976), R, 111 mins.

Robert and Katherine Thorn have a wonderful life. Robert is a United States Ambassador to Italy and the only thing that he and his wife are missing is children. When Katherine gives birth to a stillborn child, Robert is approached at the hospital by a priest (before Katherine realizes that her child was born dead) who suggests that he consider switching his stillborn child with that of a healthy newborn whose mother had just died during childbirth.

Without consulting his wife, Robert accepts, knowing that she would be absolutely devastated to learn that she had given birth to a lifeless child. A few years later, the family relocates to London and grisly deaths begin happening around them. A priest approaches the family giving them ominous warnings about their son, leading them to believe that the son they have been raising may be the incarnation of evil.

Lee Remick and Gregory Peck deliver memorable performances as the stricken parents, but it is the astonishing performance of six-year-old Harvey Stevens as Damien that really makes his character, and the film, stand out.

2. Halloween (1978), R, 91 mins.

Director John Carpenter’s most famous film, Halloween was a major cinematic landmark, ushering the slasher genre into the mainstream and becoming an enormous popular and critical success. Carpenter shows that he knows his scare tactics, he never lets the audience relax. The threat of Michael Myers is never far away, and his constant, wordless pursuit of the unfortunate Laurie Strode creates an unusually effective atmosphere of tension throughout the film.

Donald Pleasance stars for the first of several times as Dr. Loomis, Michael’s psychologist and the representation of Halloween’s other theme, the equal relentlessness of good fighting evil.

Young Michael killed his 17-year-old sister when he was only six, then spent 15 years sitting silently in a mental institution before breaking out and heading back to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois ot repeat his crime on Halloween night, and it’s up to Dr. Loomis to find and stop him before it’s too late.

Once Michael gets to Haddonfield and begins pursuing his other sister, Laurie, the suspense is nonstop. A series of brilliant performances and one of the most famous horror movie themes in movie history make this one of horror’s most enduring classics.

1. The Exorcist (1973), R, 122 mins.

Considered by many to be not only a classic horror film but one of the greatest films ever made (as well as the scariest movie of all time), The Exorcist absolutely frightened its first audiences out of their seats. It has lost some of its effect over the years, but its gritty and direct approach to its horrific content are presented so brilliantly that it has become the most enduring horror film ever made.

Max von Sydown stars as Father Merrin, who is called upon to perform an exorcism on a little girl named Regan. Her mother has sought an exorcism because Regan has transformed from a sweet little girl into a vicious, foul-mouthed animal who shrieks with violent outbursts at anyone and anything near her.

Father Merrin arrives and does battle with the demon that seems to have possessed Regan.

Using a series of physical set tricks, sound effects and movie props, The Exorcist shocked audiences with its effective portrayal of a demonic possesssion, but it is the amazing performance from little Linda Blair that really makes the movie memorable. It is not only the greatest horror movie of the 1970s, but one of the greatest ever made.

Okay, that’s kind of a goofy title I admit, but with the release of the new horror film Mirrors, I have been moved to put up a few recent movies for those of you who enjoyed it and want to see something similar, or for those of you who don’t want to waste your money at the movies but still want to see something similar. I’m always down to check out a good psychological thriller, so feel free to make any suggestions if you think I missed any…

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2004), R, Crime/Drama/Horror, 119 mins.

Quite possibly the most genuinely scary movie I’ve ever seen. At first glance it seems like a rip-off of The Exorcist, but The Exorcism of Emily Rose is very much its own movie. It’s a courtroom legal thriller about a death resulting from an exorcism, and it would make John Grisham proud. Laura Linney plays the attorney assigned to investigate the man who conducted the exorcism, and we join her as she searches for the truth about what really happened.

It’s an epic battle between science and religion in the courtroom, which I can’t say that I’ve ever seen before. Laura Linney delivers an outstanding performance as the ambitious lawyer, but the real standout is Jennifer Carpenter as Emily Rose. She gives such a brilliant horror performance that they almost don’t need any effects or music. See this one.

THE HAUNTING (1999), Horror/Thriller/Mystery, PG-13, 113 mins.

A remake of the 1963 classic (which in turn in an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s incredibly eerie 1959 novel “The Haunting of Hill House”), the 1999 version of Jackson’s story features one of the more peculiar premises that I’ve seen in a horror movie. A group of people are brought together and whisked away to a cavernous, allegedly haunted mansion in the middle of the empty woods in order to conduct research about sleeping disorders.

Now, I’m no psychologist, but wouldn’t such a location just introduce all kinds of bizarre variables into the experiment? Soon the experiment turns out to be something other than what they were all told, and ultimately all of the characters find themselves trying to escape for their lives from this haunted mansion.

Starring: Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta Jones, Owen Wilson
Director: Jan de Bont
Written by: David Self, based on the novel by Shirley Jackson

THE HAUNTING (1963), Horror/Thriller, rated G (!!), 112 mins.

Despite a prohibitively tame rating, this is a much creepier film than you might think. They say the original is always better, and this is no exception. Black and white photography allow for more disconnection between yourself and the characters, but somehow make the tense atmosphere more effective. This time, a Dr. Markway is doing research into the existence of ghosts, so he concentrates his investigation on Hill House, which has a frightening history of violence and insanity.

With him are a young skeptic named Luke, a clairvoyant Theodora, and the insecure Eleanor who happesns to have psychic abilities that give her a special ability so sense anything supernatural going on in the mansion. Soon the house begins to manifest itself in horrific and deadly ways…

Starring: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Lois Maxwell, Fay Compton
Director: Robert Wise
Written by: Nelson Gidding

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1999), Horror/Thriller, R, 99 mins.

Despite the harder rating, this one wasn’t much better than the fairly disappointing The Haunting, released the same year. This time we are made to wonder what we would do for a million dollars, as an eccentric billionaire offers a group of people a million bucks each to spend the night in a haunted mansion with a murderous past. They walk into the deal confident that it’s all just a made-up story, and they’re not about to fall for it.

The setting of a former mental institution is far cooler than the former department store in Mirrors, and Geoffrey Rush is wonderfully creepy as Stephen Price, who came up with the devilish plan. The opening scene of the movie shows us how he got rich in a wonderfully scary ride on the new amusement park ride that he has just designed.

Before long, the house automatically seals itself shut and the attitudes of the people inside change radically. There is some chillingly effective imagery brought back from past psychological experiments that were conducted in the hospital, but also plenty of disappointing CGI. Also don’t miss the 1959 original, which stars the great Vincent Price in the lead role…

Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Peter Gallagher, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Chris Kattan, Bridgette Wilson
Director: William Malone
Screenplay: Dick Beebe

.
IN DREAMS (1999), Psychological Thriller, R, 100 mins.

One of my favorite horror thrillers of the 1990s, In Dreams tells the story of Claire Cooper, a middle-aged mother who begins suffering from disturbing recurring dreams. She dreams of a little girl in her neighborhood being kidnapped, and then her own daughter in kidnapped shortly thereafter, triggering the beginnings of the unravelling of Claire’s sanity. She becomes convinced that her mind and the kidnapper’s mind are connected, but is unable to convince anyone else. A suicide attempt lands her in a padded cell, where she begins having dreams of her husband’s murder.

Robert Downey Jr., who has arguably the best role in Tropic Thunder, was highly underrated when this movie came out. He was having a lot of problems in his personal life, but he has a scene at the end of the movie involving a mirror that surpasses anything in the recently released Mirrors. I remember shouts of surprise throughout the theater when I saw it in 1999.

In Dreams is not for everyone. It has the rare distinction, I think, that there will be people who loved it, people who hated it, and people who just didn’t understand it, with probably not much in between. Unfortunately, it was much more effective on the big screen than on video, but with a healthy twist of the volume knob, it can be made to have virtually the same effect. Just don’t watch it alone if you live out in the woods!

Starring: Annette Bening, Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea, Robert Downey Jr., Paul Guilfoyle
Director: Neil Jordan
Written by: Bruce Robinson and Neil Jordan, based on the novel “Doll’s Eyes” by Bari Wood

.
HAUNTED (1995), Horror/Thriller/Drama, R, 108 mins.

In turn of the century England, a young boy named David loses his twin sister while playing by a lake. He feels responsible for his sister’s death, but he and his family move to the U.S., where they live for nearly the next quarter century before he returns to English to teach at Cambridge University. He’s now a teacher and an accomplished author who exposes false mediums and spiritualists.

After numerous requests, he accepts an invitation from a Miss Webb to investigate so bizarre goings on in her remote mansion, known as Edbrook, where she claims to be tormented by spirits. The movie stars Aidan Quinn and a young Kate Beckinsale. Low on the gore but surprisingly effective.

.
SESSION 9 (2001), Horror/Thriller, R, 100 mins. “Fear is a place.”

Probably my favorite in this whole list, Session 9 is one of my favorite underrated horror movies to recommend (it’s lack of wide success may be attributed to the unfortunate fact that it was released three days after Sept. 11th). It’s sort of a character driven story about an asbestos cleaning crew working on cleaning an old insane asylum. Hardly an original setting, but it cleverly works together the conflicting personal lives of the characters with the increasingly strange and frightening surroundings that they find themselves in. Director Brad Anderson (who also directed Christian Bale in The Machinist), knows how to create and maintain tension, and there are more than a few scenes that will have you cringing in your chair. If you only watch one of these movies, this should be the one.

Starring: David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, and Paul Guilfoyle
Written by: Brad Anderson and Stephen Gevedon

.
MADHOUSE (2004), Horror/Thriller, R 91 mins. “Let the insanity begin.”

How could you go wrong with a byline like that? I saw Madhouse on the same day that I saw Session 9, and while this was definitely the less impressive of the two, it still has an interesting story and good tension, but it is also one of those movies that takes place in a mental hospital that is clearly a movie set. You know the type, everything is dark and wet with a greenish tint, and there are always distant, creepy sounds echoing down the hallways.

Lance Henriksen’s talent is wasted here as the hospital director who appears offended that some rookie psychologist intern would insinuate that his filthy, filthy hospital could use some renovation, and he is promptly brought upstairs to the level 5 ward, which of course is without electricity. Nice.

Fans of the genre are sure to have a good time and it’s an interesting installment in the psychological thriller genre, although not necessarily one of the best.

Starring: Joshua Leonard, Jordan Ladd, Natasha Lyonne, and Lance Henriksen
Director: William Butler
Written by: Willian Butler

.
WHISPERING CORRIDORS (2005), Drama/Horror, R, 105 mins.

This Korean horror thriller borrows a lot from the horror films that have been pouring out of Japan lately and, while it doesn’t necessarily cover much new ground, it’s still a pretty entertaining thriller. Interestingly, I found that the best thing about the movie were the performances, some of which were outstanding. Acting prowess is generally not something you look for in horror films.

I expected Whispering Corridors to be scarier than it was, but I was still impressed with the consistently creepy mood that permeated the film.
It’s an interesting film that gives some insight into some of the surprising teaching methods practiced in Korea as well as a fairly interesting story. There’s nothing new about haunted schools, but the mixture of that foundational premise and the Korean schoolyard environment make for a pretty interesting combination.

Written, Directed by, and starring a lot of Korean people with Korean names. Just go watch the movie…

Alexadre Aja, the man behind the intensely creepy 2003 film High Tension and the intensely crappy 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes has now brought us something in between. Kiefer Sutherland adds credibility to the otherwise unoriginal horror film Mirrors, about an exiled New York City cop who soon finds himself battling a mysterious force hidden behind every reflective surface that is endangering his sanity, his life, and the lives of his family.

The movie opens with a terrified night watchman running for his life. From what, we don’t know, until he begs forgiveness from a mirror for trying to escape. The mirror cracks angrily in response.

There is a strange force in Mirrors that is able to torment members of the living, or members of the three dimensional, or members of whatever land the mirror-forces are unable to occupy. It is at least an hour and a half into the movie before we learn much of anything about the deadly force that is tormenting Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland), and that’s more than a little too long.

Ben Carson has recently been put on mandatory leave from the New York police department after a tragic shooting, and his life is increasingly spiraling out of control. Not the least of his worries is the strange fact that the only job he is able to get is as a night watchman, a caretaker, if you will, of a department store that burned down five years earlier.

I’m a little confused about that whole setup, by the way. The building is standing but is nothing more than a skeleton of its former self, and is clearly beyond repair. What is a nightly caretaker meant to do? Upkeep is obviously unimportant. Are they worried about teenagers or homeless people wandering in? Isn’t that a job that, say, a good fence can do?

It’s definitely the worst job ever, but it’s a great setup for a horror movie. A guy under tremendous pressure is forced to take a job where he has to wander through an enormous, burned building every hour or so in the middle of the night. Personally I would walk off the job and quit as soon as the mirrors showed me on fire, but not Ben Carson. He didn’t start browsing the classifieds even when he learned that his predecessor suffered a mysterious death involving mirrors. This guy has balls of solid rock!

Complicating the matters of Ben’s unraveling professional life is the fact that his wife doesn’t want him coming over to see his kids without calling first, he’s an alcoholic, and his sister, who is providing him with a sofa to sleep on, is a bartender. This guy needed professional help before the mirrors started talking to him! But apparently he doesn’t know that, because even when he becomes the prime suspect in his sister’s grisly death, he doesn’t know better than to go around telling people that

Ben and his wife stare in shock at how obvious this metaphor is.

mirrors are talking to him. Not exactly the best time to go talking crazy, you know? Here’s a sample of his reassuring dialogue, “Amy, I’m not crazy, these mirrors are dangerous!” He then proceeds to take a mirror out in front of her house in broad daylight and shoot it.

The scenes inside the derelict department store are actually pretty effective, but it becomes clear very early on that far too much stock is put into the scares of his nightly walk-throughs and not nearly enough put into developing a real story. There’s a story, of course, it’s just that the movie feels like a lot of Funland Haunted House tours intermixed with an occasional break to explain a few things, and then back to the haunted house.

A good horror movie will either make you fear something that previously seemed harmless (like the dark or hallways or dolls or children or the like), or instill in you the fear or interest that there might be something more going on right under our very noses. Mirrors attempts to do both - to make us fear not only mirrors but all reflective surfaces, which are all dangerous in the movie, and also to suggest that there is a whole other world going on behind those mirrors, that those pesky handprints that won’t wipe off are really someone on the other side with their hand on the glass.

Ben ponders which side of the mirror he's on.

I doubt that the movie will succeed in making many people afraid of mirrors, although it did have a fair amount of good scares and a genuine feeling of tension when it was supposed to. Naysayers will balk at the idea of paying real money to watch Jack Bauer scream at his reflection for two hours, but even though this is basically a strange combination of several previous movies and there’s not much original going on, you could definitely do worse. It’s a major improvement on the horror movies that we’ve seen released in the last ten years or so. I had started to lose faith completely in the entire genre. Mirrors is not going to save the horror genre from being sacrificed to the box office gods, but I’m happy every time I see a scary movie these days that doesn’t star a lot of sorority girls in halter tops and idiot pretty boys.

The movie takes a bizarre turn in the third act when Ben goes in search of a mysterious someone named Esseker, about whom he knows nothing. The only thing he knows is that the mirrors will not let him or his wife and kids live unless he provides this Esseker. His investigation leads him to a super-creepy farmhouse in Pennsylvania where a nice old man is remarkably forthcoming to Ben about past family tragedy. He must have been impressed with Ben, who claimed to be a grad student writing a research paper about schizophrenia.