Oh yes, it’s that time of the year again–one of my most favorite times–Halloween time!

12 Spooky Films I Watch Every October

To kick off the sacred Halloween Time, here’s a listicle that I thought would be fun. Like countless others, I love watching classic horror films around Halloween (spooky, atmospheric ones, not those gory slasher films), and there are certain classics that make up my “must see” list. Now, these aren’t just twelve films I watch every October. Oh no, these are twelve films I have to watch religiously every October, or Halloween will be RUINED (maybe). Plot twist: just a few of them are silent, mainly because I had to narrow the list down to twelve.

12. The Cat and the Canary (1927)

A Halloween Post Roundup!

Happy Hallowe’en, everyone!

This wonderful illustration is from Dennison’s Bogie Book, a book of Halloween decoration and party ideas that seems to have been published every year, with updates I presume. This comes from the 1925 edition–isn’t it priceless? Here’s another  illustration:

To celebrate this spooky holiday, here’s a roundup of all my Halloween-inspired posts from the past. Counting my posts from this month, this includes the films:

What Are The World’s Oldest Horror Movies?

Can you imagine a world without horror movies? Their tropes are so familiar–monsters with bloody fangs, screaming teens, tired old jump scares–that it’s hard to imagine pop culture without them. Thanks to Halloween turning autumn into an extended celebration of all things spooky, in many ways the horror genre is part of life’s memories.

As well as being Tim Burton’s reason for life.

But while there were macabre films in the silent era, people wouldn’t start using the term “horror” until Universal started releasing its famous monsters in the early 1930s. Before that, spooky films used to be lumped in under the banner of “mysterious” or “mystery pictures.” In the 1900s, at least. The “mystery” distinction might’ve mattered more to exhibitors than the audiences at your basic moving picture show, who probably just felt that some of the (very) short films in the program were more eerily entertaining than others.

Or simply more pants-wettingly terrifying than others.

Thoughts On Herzog’s “Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht” (1979)

To be unable to grow old is terrible… Death is not the worst… Can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futilities…

My favorite vampire film of all time happens to be an homage to film history’s most significant vampire film of all time. You could call it a remake, but the word doesn’t fit…”homage” is far more appropriate. And to use another appropriate word, it’s deeply haunting: Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979).