“They’re coming to get you, Barbara . . .” – Night of the Living Dead
The question for 2026, are ghost costumes occultural appropriation?
Movies are our modern campfire tales. Yeah, I know, not as good as real campfire tales, but here we are. Given that, one of the things that humanity has shared around the fire since we first discovered fire was scary stories. Sure, we heard about the events of the day, but the stories, the old stories that were passed down of tragedy and the supernatural were the ones that the kids really listened to.
We’re not so different in 2026, we just lack the campfire and are distracted by the shiny objects that get put in front of us, like movies. Since tomorrow is Halloween, based on publishing date, I thought I’d just run through a list of some of the Halloween movies that I thought were especially good. As far as rules, I have once big one: no more than one from a particular creator, otherwise my list would mainly be John Carpenter movies and Alien.
Not all of them are scary, as you’ll see, which is okay. I’ve never been to a Halloween party where they actually killed people, so at least part of the day as we celebrate in modern times is tied to having fun, so some of the movies are just fun.
Is this a definitive top 10 list? No. It’s a list of great movies based on the mood I’m in at noon on 10/29/2026. No spoilers.
First off must be Halloween. This movie was shot on a shoestring, and made $47 million dollars in 1978 money. It’s about an insane kid who escapes a mental institution and wants to kill teenagers who are having sex. Obviously, feminists hated it, and many of them have written doctoral dissertations about this film on their way to becoming spinsters who are that horrid lunch lady with a Ph.D. The bad part of this movie is that it was so very foundational to modern movie horror that everyone copied it.
If Halloween wasn’t named Halloween it would have made the list, but it wouldn’t have been first on the list. First would have been Alien. Why? It’s just a haunted house in space, but the thing haunting the house is an alien. That’s not a spoiler, because it’s in the title. This film is visually stunning, because that’s what Ridley Scott does with every film. However, this one is also tightly written into a perfect little claustrophobic story with life and death on the lines. And a hot chick in her underwear.
I continue to maintain that The Exorcist, despite the denunciations from various religious leaders, is the most fundamentally Christian horror movie ever made. It depicts Evil as a tangible reality, it depicts the power of Christ saving a young child, and it depicts priests being dedicated and selfless. Oh, yeah, the crucifix thing. There’s that. I get it, but in the whole that movie has probably brought more people to religion than pushed them away.
The other side of the coin is Ghostbusters. I sure like that movie. Too bad they never made any sequels or follow-on series. Oh, well, I’ll just have to make due with the only movie ever made about tied to this universe. The movie itself is quotable, rewatchable, hilarious, and has the perfect cast, including the actress that played a character in Alien, believe it or not.
Poltergeist is, perhaps, the most cursed (in real life) movie on this list. There were many untimely deaths of young women associated with the film, which is well known. A lesser-known horrifying fact is that in the swimming pool scene with all the human skeletons, those were real human skeletons. The actors didn’t know that they were, essentially, sitting in and getting splashed with a soup of actual dead people for the five days it took to shoot the scene.
Okay, palate cleanser time. The Addams Family started as a set of cartoons and then became a television series and then a children’s cartoon and then finally a movie in 1991 and they’re still making Addams Family crap today. Fun, silly, but for me the original TV series is still the best.
Back into the darker themes: The Shining. Stephen King hated this movie, but he liked the money a whole bunch because it bought lots of cocaine. This movie spawned nearly as many conspiracy theories as a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano. The biggest? That this was Stanley Kubrick’s coded admission that he had faked the Moon landing. I have been told from someone I trust with a security clearance that this is true but that Kubrick, being a stickler for accuracy, demanded they film on location. Probably Jack Nicholson’s best movie.
The Shining elbows out Salem’s Lot from this list, which was way scarier than a television movie had any right to be.
There are about two scenes from The Crow that could have been removed to make it a perfect movie, as it is, it’s still a compelling story. Digging deeper into the “why” of this story, the motivation for this film was the tragedy of the creator trying to cope with the grief caused by the death of his fiancé, who had been killed by a drunk driver. The star of this movie, Brandon Lee, died making it. So, this movie may even be more cursed than Poltergeist.
Nobody died making Steel Magnolias, which makes me sad. The major horror of this movie is that it exists, and that I once was talked into watching this 118-minute movie about women talking about their feelings, which is more chilling than anything John Carpenter ever put on film. I cannot in good conscience recommend watching this film to anyone, even my worst enemy.
As to movies that aren’t scary at all, Fright Night (1985) is one. Fright Night captures that age before cable TV when UHF stations would show crappy old B movies with live hosts shilling the local stereo and water bed stores. The catch? A real vampire moves in next to Charlie Brewster. Good fun, have no idea how it got an R rating unless I forgot some boobs. Not scary.
There’s a recipe for humor, parody the poster of a movie that didn’t have a poster in a fairly obscure style. Next I’ll start telling jokes about high cycle metal fatigue or inside jokes from books that only six people have read. That’ll get ‘em laughing, Wilder!
And for my obscure adder: I saw Night of the Living Dead when I was five, and that was really scary, but I was five. One that scared me when I saw it as a 12 or 13 year old on our local “Fright Night® late night horror movie on UHF” station was Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. This is the original 1973 movie, not the horrible Guillermo del Toro remake where he failed to catch the magic. It’s a decent haunted house movie that really got me, with the idea of hordes of little supernatural people living in the walls and basement. It was well done and very creepy, especially as a television movie.
Okay, those are some of my favorites, and I probably could have done a dozen more. What did I miss that you love?
>Next I’ll start telling jokes about high cycle metal fatigue
I’m listening. Nerd jokes are the best jokes and even better than dad jokes.
Seriously though, a great list. The Alien poster makes me realize how much I miss the old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip.
Lot’s of John Carpenter references. His best movie, if you haven’t seen it, was a very low budget student film called “Dark Star”.
Was Steel Magnolias worse than Fried Green Tomatoes? I get those two mixed up, but I think I saw the latter one and it was indeed painful. And since we are talking “horror” movies, you might as well include anything produced by Hallmark Channel .