Halloween Movies and Music
Aug 13
For a generation of viewers, October meant more than costumes, candy, and jack-o’-lanterns. It meant turning on Cartoon Network and discovering a schedule suddenly crowded with ghosts, witches, zombies, skeletons, monsters, and some of the strangest animated movies on television. Cartoon Network built a particularly memorable relationship with spooky animation. Shows such as The Grim …
Aug 13
The 1960s were one of the most transformative decades in horror movie history. At the beginning of the decade, Gothic castles, supernatural curses, and traditional monsters were still familiar territory. By the end, horror had become much more unsettling. Killers could operate from roadside motels. Ordinary neighbors could belong to sinister cults. The dead could …
Aug 12
Halloween movie night does not have to mean serial killers, demonic possessions, or spending the rest of the evening checking dark corners of the house. Sometimes October calls for something softer: glowing pumpkins, friendly ghosts, eccentric witches, Gothic mansions, lovable monsters, autumn adventures, and just enough supernatural mischief to make the evening feel like Halloween. …
Aug 12
Some horror movies become instant classics. Others disappear into the shadows. For every Halloween, The Exorcist, or The Shining, there are dozens of strange, unsettling, beautifully made horror films that never reached the same audience. Sometimes they opened with little publicity. Sometimes they were too unusual for mainstream viewers. And sometimes they simply had the …
Aug 12
For more than a century, horror movies have transformed our deepest fears into unforgettable images. A shadow moving through a silent German street. Count Dracula descending a castle staircase. Frankenstein’s monster opening his eyes. A screaming woman in a motel shower. The dead surrounding an isolated farmhouse. A masked killer stalking suburban streets. A supernatural …
Aug 12
Halloween movie night can mean very different things depending on who is holding the remote. For some people, October demands Michael Myers, haunted houses, demonic possessions, and movies frightening enough to make every creak in the hallway suspicious. For others, Halloween is about witches, pumpkins, friendly ghosts, Gothic fantasy, stop-motion animation, and the comforting nostalgia …
Aug 11
Choosing a scary Halloween movie sounds easy—until one person wants a few playful ghosts and someone else wants a movie terrifying enough to make the hallway feel suspicious afterward. Not every horror movie is frightening in the same way. Some rely on Gothic atmosphere and creepy imagery. Others use jump scares, psychological dread, slashers, supernatural …
Aug 11
Halloween is the perfect time to commit to more than a single scary movie. Horror franchises let you spend an entire October weekend following masked killers, supernatural entities, unfortunate final girls, chainsaw-wielding maniacs, and paranormal investigators from one terrifying chapter to the next. Some Halloween movie series helped define the horror genre decades ago. Others …
Aug 10
The 2000s were a remarkably inventive decade for horror. After the self-aware slashers of the late 1990s, filmmakers pushed the genre in several very different directions at once. Japanese horror influenced Hollywood. Zombies became terrifyingly fast. Found-footage filmmaking moved from an experiment into a major horror format. Extreme horror grew more prominent, while ghost stories, …
Aug 10
The 1990s occupy a fascinating place in horror history. The decade began with psychological thrillers, Stephen King adaptations, and the tail end of the slasher boom, then gradually moved toward self-aware horror, international terror, supernatural mysteries, and the found-footage revolution. Some of the decade’s greatest horror movies barely resemble one another. Misery traps its audience …
