Halloween is here and while we’re in no doubt that you’ll be putting in your pointiest dentures and sharpening your plastic axe, we’re worried that you’re going to pick the wrong horror film. If you want to get into the spirit (or churn out puns with an 84 per cent success rate), then we suggest you pick from this deadly list.
Prepare to have the boo scared out of you…
(Not listed in any particular order. Trailers have been checked and are suitable, although they may contain material some viewers may find upsetting.)
FILMS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN
1. Scream (1996)
Everyone’s favourite slasher movie, Scream defined the genre in the 1990s. The sleepy little town of Woodsboro is plagued by a masked maniac. There's a killer in the midst who's seen a few too many scary movies. Nobody is safe as the psychopath stalks victims, taunts them with trivia questions, then uses his knife to ill-effect.
2. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
While on a road trip, the Carter family's car breaks down in the desert of southern California. They soon become the prey of a bizarre clan of mutant cave-dwellers. Fortunately, the Carters have a very smart dog, and one clan member shows faint glimmerings of human feeling. If you’re determined to make yourself unwell, watch the 2006 remake – it may lack the magic of the original, but it’s as gruesome as it is devastating.
3. Misery (1990)
After a car accident, Sheldon (James Caan) is trapped in his vehicle during a blizzard; on the brink of death, he is rescued by Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), a former nurse who carries the writer to her home to recover. It turns out that Annie is a huge fan of Sheldon's work, and it transpires that she’s mad. Intense stuff and owed to the genius that is Stephen King.
4. The Dead Zone (1983)
Christopher Walken plays a schoolteacher, Johnny Smith, who awakens from a five-year coma. He discovers that he has acquired the ability to see a person's future simply by touching his or her hand. This ability is given reaches a terrifying level when Smith shakes the hand of ruthless politician Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen). The Dead Zone was written by yes, Stephen King. And this film is one of the best book-to-screen conversions.
5. The Exorcist (1973)
Few films have been at the centre of such controversy and even fewer have scared the audience into submission quite like The Exorcist. Novelist William Peter Blatty based his best-seller on the last known Catholic-sanctioned exorcism in the United States. Although the film had some minor differences, the unprecedented terror is unquestionable.
6. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Presented as a documentary, the film opens with a title card explaining that in 1994, three students went into the Maryland back woods to do a film project on the Blair Witch incidents. These kids were never seen again, and the film you are about to see is from their recovered equipment, found in the woods a year later. The entire movie documents their adventures leading up to their final minutes. It. Is. Terrifying.
7. The Shining (1980)
Another Stephen King novel filmed for the big screen, The Shining is still regarded as one of the scariest horror films of them all. With wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd), frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at the ominous, mountain-locked hotel so that he can write in peace. Before the hotel is vacated for the Torrances, the manager (Barry Nelson) informs Jack that a previous caretaker went crazy and slaughtered his family… Will Jack go down the same path?
8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Depravity, dementia, and a chainsaw; that just about sums up the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When a sister and her brother take a group of friends to visit the farmhouse of their deceased grandfather, they discover that next door lives a family of repugnant psychopaths. "Leatherface" is the one that stands out, mainly because he’s wearing a mask of leather, is very tall, and enjoys using his chainsaw… on people.
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
How this film was only rated PG (Parental Guidance) is something of a mystery. Noticing an increasing amount of strangely detached behaviour amongst his friends and neighbours, a health inspector soon discovers that the population of Earth is being taken over by alien "pod people." This is a remake of the 1950s version and is actually better than the original. You will never sleep again.
10. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
The midnight capers of Freddy Krueger ruined bedtime for an entire generation of 80s kids. A group of teenagers are terrorised by an evil being from another world who gets to his victims by entering their dreams and killing them with gloves that have knife blades attached to each finger. This film will not, in any way, help you if you suffer insomnia.
11. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
“I ate his liver with a side of farther beans” – this line sums this 1991 classic up perfectly. Jodie Foster stars as Clarice Starling, a top student at the FBI's training academy. She is investigating a vicious murderer nicknamed Buffalo Bill, who kills young women and then removes the skin from their bodies. Clarice interviews Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism.
12. Psycho (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho reinvented the horror film, and it’s still as scary today as it was back then. Marion (Janet Leigh) is on her way to start a new life, but stops for the night at the Bates Motel, where she meets the personable innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Bates cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother… You know what happens next…
13. The Wicker Man (1973)
A police officer investigating the disappearance of a young girl comes into conflict with the unusual residents of a secluded Scottish island. Brought to the island of Summerisle by an anonymous letter, the constable is surprised to discover that the island's population suspiciously denies the missing girl's very existence, and are governed by a strange society who performs pagan rituals. Not to be watched alone.
14. The Fly (1986)
Jeff Goldblum stars as Seth Brundle, a research scientist who is working on a teleportation machine – like the kind found in Star Trek. Persuaded into experimenting with teleporting humans, Brundle enters the chamber himself, successfully teleporting from one chamber to the other. Unaware to him, though, was that he shared the chamber with a fly, and that ultimately sees his transformation into… well. Just watch it.
15. Jaws (1975)
Steven Spielberg ruined the sea for a lot of people, and he went where no director had been before with Jaws. It didn’t matter if you were a young and pretty girl, a man, a shark catcher, or even a child, no one was safe from the giant Great White shark that prowled the waters of Amity Island. The scariest thing about Jaws though is the plausible reality of it.
16. Halloween (1978)
No Halloween would be complete without watching the film of the same name. Michael Myers (no, not Austin Powers) is a young boy who, for no obvious reason, kills his sister on Halloween of 1963, and is sent to a mental hospital. Fifteen years later he escapes incarceration and returns to his home town in order to wreak havoc.
17. Paranormal Activity (2009)
After several nights of loud noises and strange happenings in their new house, Micah and Katie believe that a ghost may have followed them. After a paranormal researcher tells the couple he can't help, Micah decides to set up a video cameras to capture any unusual capers on tape. Once the surveillance cameras are in place, Katie and Micah bring in a Ouija board in an effort to talk to the ghosts. This, as you can imagine, does not go down well.
18. 28 Days Later (2003)
It was the film that made Cillian Murphy, and also gave us an idea about what a post-apocalyptic Britain might look like after an outbreak – zombies, mainly. Twenty-eight days after a group of animal rights activists release infected caged chimps from a lab, Jim (Murphy) awakes from a coma in the deserted intensive care unit of a London hospital. He wanders out into a church where he finds dead bodies piled in heaps on the chapel floor. He soon meets fellow survivors and learns what has happened.
19. The Ring (2002)
A disturbing videotape appears to hold the power of life and death over those who view it in this non-A-lister horror. A strange videotape begins making the rounds in a town in the US. It features haunting images, and after watching it, many viewers receive a telephone call in which they are warned they will die in seven days. They do. All of them. But one…
20. Alien (1979)
This 1979 sci-fi horror just does not age. Alien is as terrifying today as it was then, and Sigourney Weaver’s performance is one of Hollywood’s best. Waking up from stasis, the crew of the Nostromo set out to explore an alien planet. Capt. Dallas's (Tom Skerritt) rescue team discovers a bizarre pod field, but things get even stranger when a face-hugging creature bursts out of a pod and attaches itself to Kane (John Hurt). They return to the ship and that’s when things really kick off.
Others terrifying flicks you could watch: Child’s Play (1988), The Omen (1976), Rawhead Rex (1987), An American Haunting (2006).
