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Halloween (1978)
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Waiting until Halloween to make another trip up to the lab with this camp classic may make you shiver with antici…
…pation.
A staple of midnight screenings the world over, the film focuses on Janet (Susan Sarandon) and Brad (Barry Bostwick), a repressed couple who stumble upon Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s sexy, scary castle on a dark and stormy night. Come for the B-movie thrills and laughs; stay for Tim Curry’s impeccable eye shadow game.
The Exorcist (1973)
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Warner Home Video It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
Now 47% Off
Into sentiment over scares? This holiday version of the beloved Peanuts comic strip is the one for you. Blanket-bearing Linus waits up for the mythical Great Pumpkin while Charlie Brown frets about going to a Halloween party. Spoiler alert: Everything turns out just fine for everyone.
The Craft (1996)
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The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Is this a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie? Unclear. So why not watch it from October to December, just in case? Tim Burton’s at times gentle, at times sinister stop-motion musical focuses on Jack Skellington, the king of Halloween Town, whose efforts to bring Christmas Town home produce disastrous results.
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Coraline (2009)
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“Do you like scary movies?” That line and the shocking killing that followed it marked the beginning of a new era for horror movies. Written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven, Scream is the perfect blend of ’90s pop culture archness with slasher film tropes. The series has produced four sequels and a TV series (some good, some… not so much) but the original remains the best.
The Witches (1990)
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Offering perhaps the best reason for never befriending your neighbors, this psychological horror classic focuses on a newlywed (Mia Farrow) who becomes mysteriously pregnant and begins to suspect that her neighbors have designs on her baby. Featuring a deliciously creepy turn by Ruth Gordon, this movie is a Halloween must-watch.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
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Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy play comedic divas (fine, they’re also 300-year-old witches) who spend the entire length of the film chasing a teenage virgin (fine, who has stolen their spell book) in this totally improbable cult favorite from the director of High School Musical. What’s not to love? The long awaited sequel is on the way!
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Fun Size (2012)
Friday the 13th (1980)” src=”https://hips.hearstapps.com/vader-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/1601323757-51xW1FJo7xL.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:*” width=”375″ height=”500″ />
In this horror standard, a group of camp counselors are stalked by a vengeful serial killer. The Friday the 13th series is best known for Jason, a hockey mask-wearing, axe-wielding serial killer, but he doesn’t appear in this first installment. Decide for yourself if that makes it less enjoyable than its descendants, which kept the original’s inventive gore but got more and more absurd as the years went on.
Practical Magic (1998)
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A legit terrifying spin on Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Disturbia features an actually excellent turn by Shia LaBeouf as a teen on house arrest who suspects his neighbor is a serial killer. Combining tech-fueled paranoia with old-fashioned thrills, this movie delivers scares right up to the last minute.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
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Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) goes full Sarah Connor in this reboot of the reboot of the horror classic. A perfect scary movie for the anxious 2010s, filmmaker David Gordon Green is as interested in thrills and chills in this installment as he is in investigating the lasting effects of trauma. The events of the 2018 Halloween deem the sequels non-canonical, choosing instead to focus on the hermetic life of a now 60-something Laurie Strode, her daughter (Judy Greer), and their relentless pursuit by one Michael Myers.
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Hereditary (2018)
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The rare all-out Halloween comedy on the list, this Wayans Brothers film spoofs the Scream series and I Know What You Did Last Summer directly, but leaves no horror movie unscorched. Featuring Regina Hall and Anna Faris, Scary Movie is laugh-out-loud funny, even if you’ve forgotten half of the movies it skewers.
R. Eric Thomas is a columnist for ELLE.com, where he skewers politics, pop culture, celebrity shade, and schadenfreude. He is also the author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, a memoir-in-essays.
Amy Mackelden is a freelance writer, editor, and disability activist. Her bylines include Harper’s BAZAAR, Nicki Swift, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, ELLE, The Independent, Bustle, Healthline, and HelloGiggles. She co-edited The Emma Press Anthology of Illness, and previously spent all of her money on Kylie Cosmetics.
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