LoC 28 Countdown: Top 50 Movies to Watch At Halloween

[Johnny Unusual]

1. Phantasm
2. The Haunting (the original)
3. Poltergeist
4. Ghostbusters
5. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
6. Suspiria
7. Young Frankenstein
8. The Shining
9. Halloween
10. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (I love this one.  Clearly, for better or worse, an inspiration to Tim Burton)
11. Evil Dead II
12. An American Werewolf in London
13. Psycho
14. Demons
15. Night of the Living Dead
16. Coraline (Not overtly Halloween, but a great, creepy kids movie.  Also, it makes me want a Thief of Always movie)
17. The Frighteners
18. From Dusk Till Dawn  (Vampires, boobies and violence.  On the downside, Quetin Tarantino in front of the Camera)
19. Alien
20. The Thing   
21. The Addams Family
22. Candyman (Cool horror movie.  Also, Clive Barker and Harvey Feirstein... Same guy, right?)
23. Creepshow (I love anything EC Comics themed.)
24. Midnight Meat Train (Wow, someone else thought of this.  Criminally underwatched film)
25. Grindhouse (OK, Deathproof was a dud but Planet Terror and the fake trailers were brilliant.  DON'T!)

18/25.  I think I shall declare myself the King of Halloween.

[Courtney]

I did pretty well this list. 

1. Clue
2. Rocky Horror Picture Show
3. Halloween
4. Nightmare on Elm Street
5. The Shining
6. Beetlejuice
7. Hocus Pocus
8. The Craft
9. Evil Dead
10. The Thing
11. Poltergeist
12. The Worst Witch (for this reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmG80v473AI)
13. Carrie
14. Saw
15. Teen Wolf
16. Young Frankenstein
17. Lost Boys
18. Ghostbusters
19. Evil Dead 2
20. An American Werewolf in London
21. Rosemary's Baby
22. It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
23. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
24. Shaun of the Dead
25. Dawn of the Dead (not sure if this one counted since I indicated that I meant the remake - what can I say?  I dug it.)

[FordPrefect]

# 1 - It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

After this special originally aired, children all over the country sent candy to Charlie Brown out of sympathy.

I remember hearing that after Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown aired, lots of kids sent Charlie Brown Valentine cards out of sympathy too.

Also: No Willy Wonka? Really? Has everyone forgotten the candy part of this holiday?

Despite the freaky tunnel sequence, I think of this more as an Easter movie. Easter has candy too. Plus I know they've aired it on TV around Easter time in the past.

[LucasM]

First, a VERY big Thank You! [see? it was 'very big'] to Smoky for the wonderful effort put in on collecting, collating, and 'publishing' this list!  It is much appreciated, and was a lot of fun to sit in on (especially since it was the first 'List of Crap' that I've participated in).]

Happy Halloween, all!  I'm bushed and off to watch one of these fine films.  Bushed because I got about 120 kids in just a bit over an hour!  (My subdivision has a grade school in it, so most people living here have kids.)  Most kids LOVE my house... not for the decorations, but because they not only get a full-size candy bar (or Famous Amos cookies, or chips), they also get a little Halloween-related toy (things like scary 'party favors' that I buy 1/2 price the day after the previous year's Halloween).

You're getting pretty high on my Love List, just so you know

I hope you still have some quality decorations in the yard to back up the sweets inside.

Outside?  Not really much at all.  Roughly a decade ago I had the third of three head injuries that often make doing even simple tasks exhausting, so I just don't have the energy to spare to do what I'd LIKE to be doing for decorating (which would be basically a personal haunted house in my front yard).  But visible from outside I have enough things in the windows that at least let people know that I am 'participating'.  And hopefully the kids are more likely to remember the treats (both edible and non) than the decor. 

Since I was a kid I loved Halloween far more than any other holiday.  Probably why all my life I've wanted a black cat (which I got just over 3 years ago, and is my avatar... handsome devil, eh?)  As an adult, one of the things that I find MOST important is the effect of the holiday on children.  It is a time of year that lets kids know VERY clearly that most strangers CAN be safe, and are nice enough to give them stuff 'for fun' simply because the kid exists!  [95% of all child abuse is done by someone the child knows.]  With all the fear-mongering that has gone on (around Halloween and in general), kids NEED that sociological 'safety net' of things like Trick-or-Treating to grow up remotely emotionally healthy [childhood fear results in people being dogmatic (closed-minded)*, which results in them watching Fox News when they grow older, which results in them having no real idea of what is actually going on in the world, which results in them remaining fearful, ignorant, adults].  [[Please note: using "ignorant" in its true sense of 'not knowing', NOT as a pejorative.]]


Love List, eh?  Who or what else has ended up on it?



* For dogmatism/closed-mindedness info: Dig up a book from roughly 1960 by Milton Rokeach titled The Open And Closed Mind (I did my Master's thesis using a combination of that and Kohlberg's moral development stages to show links between dogmatism and moral development; basically that dogmatic people never develop into the higher levels of moral development that Kohlberg talked about [and society is poorer for it]).  One of the major quotes from Rokeach's book was, "A person will be open to information insofar as possible, and will reject it, screen it out, or alter it insofar as necessary."  That kinda' sums it up: their FEAR makes them 'alter reality' to conform to what they expect because they can't deal with things that are unexpected.  Rokeach said that was because 'the unexpected' was fearful growing up (e.g. the way abuse by parents makes a child's life unpredictable in a terrifying way).

Oops... late at night, very tired from the day's activities, got a bit sidetracked there into psychology and a bit of politics in a thread on 'fun'.

[FordPrefect]

8. Bugs Bunny's Howl-O-Ween Special

Have you seen Daffy Duck's Quackbusters? I think it's a lot better.

[Imrahil]

8. Bugs Bunny's Howl-O-Ween Special

Have you seen Daffy Duck's Quackbusters? I think it's a lot better.

I use them interchangeably, because I don't actually have either in their entirety, just shorts from them edited together in a way that I find pleasing.

[kete00]

My list:

1 Young Frankenstein
2 Evil Dead 2
3 Shaun of the Dead
4 Army of Darkness
5 Nightmare Before Christmas
6 The Shining
7 Psycho
8 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad
9 Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
10 Ghostbusters
11 Rear Window
12 Frankenstein (1931)
13 Sixth Sense
14 Sleepy Hollow
15 Thriller
16 It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
17 Silence of the Lambs
18 The Village
19 Night of the Living Dead (1968)
20 Corpse Bride
21 Signs
22 The Blair Witch Project
23 Beetlejuice
24 Nosferatu
25 Mary Shelly's Frankenstein

[Johnny Unusual]

I am mistaken.  Clearly Courtney and Kate00 are tied for Queens of Halloween.

[Relaxing Dragon]

Also: No Willy Wonka? Really? Has everyone forgotten the candy part of this holiday?

Despite the freaky tunnel sequence, I think of this more as an Easter movie. Easter has candy too. Plus I know they've aired it on TV around Easter time in the past.

I dunno, with all the bad things happening to children and Wilder's freak-out at the end (in addition to that tunnel of terror), I think it works much better at Halloween.

Happy Halloween, all!  I'm bushed and off to watch one of these fine films.  Bushed because I got about 120 kids in just a bit over an hour!  (My subdivision has a grade school in it, so most people living here have kids.)  Most kids LOVE my house... not for the decorations, but because they not only get a full-size candy bar (or Famous Amos cookies, or chips), they also get a little Halloween-related toy (things like scary 'party favors' that I buy 1/2 price the day after the previous year's Halloween).

You're getting pretty high on my Love List, just so you know

I hope you still have some quality decorations in the yard to back up the sweets inside.

Outside?  Not really much at all.  Roughly a decade ago I had the third of three head injuries that often make doing even simple tasks exhausting, so I just don't have the energy to spare to do what I'd LIKE to be doing for decorating (which would be basically a personal haunted house in my front yard).  But visible from outside I have enough things in the windows that at least let people know that I am 'participating'.  And hopefully the kids are more likely to remember the treats (both edible and non) than the decor. 

Since I was a kid I loved Halloween far more than any other holiday.  Probably why all my life I've wanted a black cat (which I got just over 3 years ago, and is my avatar... handsome devil, eh?)  As an adult, one of the things that I find MOST important is the effect of the holiday on children.  It is a time of year that lets kids know VERY clearly that most strangers CAN be safe, and are nice enough to give them stuff 'for fun' simply because the kid exists!  [95% of all child abuse is done by someone the child knows.]  With all the fear-mongering that has gone on (around Halloween and in general), kids NEED that sociological 'safety net' of things like Trick-or-Treating to grow up remotely emotionally healthy [childhood fear results in people being dogmatic (closed-minded)*, which results in them watching Fox News when they grow older, which results in them having no real idea of what is actually going on in the world, which results in them remaining fearful, ignorant, adults].  [[Please note: using "ignorant" in its true sense of 'not knowing', NOT as a pejorative.]]


Love List, eh?  Who or what else has ended up on it?

Yes, that's my feelings exactly. Well, on at least half the matter. It is a great night to help get the whole neighborhood to actually meet and greet one-another, to let the kids get sweets and get celebrated for every little thing about them that's different (for those of us that are slightly more different than everyone else, it's even better). Plus, the general Halloween spirit has something for everyone, and the more ways to celebrate that the better.

Well it's a secret list, can't go spilling the beans of what's on it now can I?

I think someone on this site mentioned once they got a bunch of cheap Halloween-themeish DVDs one year and gave them out. That's a kick-ass idea if I ever heard one.

[FordPrefect]

8. Bugs Bunny's Howl-O-Ween Special

Have you seen Daffy Duck's Quackbusters? I think it's a lot better.

I use them interchangeably, because I don't actually have either in their entirety, just shorts from them edited together in a way that I find pleasing.

Daffy Duck's Quackbusters finally got a DVD release this year. The bonus features (three additional cartoons) seem kind of tacked on as an afterthought, but if you ever want to revisit it you have that as an option. I've always liked the movie because about 60 percent of it is new animation and the classic material was carefully chosen by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon, so it feels more like a "real" movie than the previous Looney Tunes compilation films. It's also noteworthy as being the last Looney Tunes project that Mel Blanc was involved with before he passed away. I wish they'd release another Golden Collection set though. 

I dunno, with all the bad things happening to children and Wilder's freak-out at the end (in addition to that tunnel of terror), I think it works much better at Halloween.

I'll agree that those elements are certainly there, but it's much more of an undercurrent than something that's really in your face. When you get right down to it, it's still a musical for kids with primary colors, upbeat songs, and a kid inheriting a chocolate factory while flying in a glass elevator. I'd say that the Tim Burton version feels a little more like a Halloween movie, but that's just because almost anything Tim Burton does feels like it would be appropriate for Halloween. If you want a Halloween movie based on a Roald Dahl story, I'd go with The Witches.

[Imrahil]

Ugh, I hate meeting neighbors.  Just because I happen to be geographically proximate doesn't mean I have anything else in common with you.

[kete00]

I am mistaken.  Clearly Courtney and Kate00 are tied for Queens of Halloween.

It's Kete, not Kate, so I'd prefer not to be called a queen.   

Since Courtney still had more picks, maybe I'll be the court jester.

[Edgewriter]

I did pretty good for my first time submitting 16 made it!

1. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
2. Evil Dead 2
3. Dead Alive
4. Nightmare Before Christmas
5. Monster House
6. Beetlejuice
7. Night of the Living Dead preferably with Rifftrax, but still good without
8. Monsters Inc
9. Poltergeist
10. Frighteners
11. Disney’s Halloween Treat
12. The Blob original with Steve McQueen
13. Nosferatu
14. Hellboy
15. Silent Hill
16. Army of Darkness
17. Monster Squad
18. Slither
19. Phantom of the Opera (silent version)
20. The Birds
21. The Thing 1980’s
22. Abbott and Costello: Hold That Ghost
23. Young Frankenstein
24. Original Bela Lugosi Dracula
25. It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

[Courtney]

I am mistaken.  Clearly Courtney and Kate00 are tied for Queens of Halloween.

It's Kete, not Kate, so I'd prefer not to be called a queen.   

Since Courtney still had more picks, maybe I'll be the court jester.

You are the queen of mistaken gender identity and that's something.

[Smoky]

I love a specific scene in Arachnophobia...

Ok, I'll bite (pun intended), what scene is it?

These are a few of my honerable mentions, incidentally: Vincent, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Dead Again, Flatliners, Interview with The Vampire, Manhatten Murder Mystery, Aliens, Alien, Wuthering Heights ('92), House on Haunted Hill, Creature on The Campus, The Haunting, In The Company of Wolves, Nosferatu, Willard, Frankenweinie... God, I love Halloween.