“Halloween” and 10 of My Favorite Scary Spooky Movies

As I mentioned in a previous post, Terri and I had the wonderful experience of catching a string quartet performing Halloween music favorites at the Filter Building on White Rock Lake. It really added fuel to my enthusiasm for Halloween this year.

Honestly, Halloween has long been one of my favorite holidays. Maybe it’s the time of year—cooler temps making for better walking weather—I don’t really know. I think part of it revolves around the costumes and decorations surrounding Halloween.

I’ve always loved a scary story or spooky movie—albeit the horror movie genre feels a little bent these days with sequel after sequel geared to advance sales at the cash register (are there really cash registers these days?) more than they are designed to advance the genre itself.

Listening to precarious Halloween music naturally leads to watching spooky movies. I started my jaunt into scary movies with watching the original “Halloween” movie that birthed an iconic horror character—Michael Myers—and launched a money-making movie machine. The 1978 classic thriller directed by legendary filmmaker John Carpenter—-changed the genre—catapulting the slasher film to the forefront of the modern horror genre.

Taking place, for the most part, in the made-up rural town of Haddonfield, Illinois, the movie’s plot centers around Michael Myers, a mental patient, who was committed to a sanitarium after murdering his seventeen year old teenage sister on Halloween night when he was just a six year old boy. Fifteen years later, Myers escapes and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, where he stalks local teenagers, including teenage babysitter Laurie Strode (portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis).

The late, great movie critic Roger Ebert loved this movie when it came out. I remember watching “Siskel and Ebert” —the long-running, legendary movie review show back when “Halloween” first came out and hearing them rave about how well made the movie was—which is saying a lot considering neither of them seemed to hold the horror genre in high regard.

“There is a difference between good and scary movies and movies that demean half the human race…”

Roger Ebert

For the majority of America, the late Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were the leading movie critics of their day. They generally disliked the slasher genre because of how the movies portrayed women. How ever, the lauded director John Carpenter’s original “Halloween.” Kudos to them, both.

I remember it because it featured Jamie Lee Curtis. What young teenage boy didn’t want her to be his babysitter?

So Saturday morning, while T was off watching our young great-niece playing soccer, I pulled up my favorite spot on our couch and watched “Halloween”—sans popcorn (the soccer game turned out to be sans great-niece). Watching the movie brought home how long ago 1978 is. Talk about pre-COVID!

Anyways, I enjoyed the trip through time as I watched this classic thriller—an independent movie made for less than 300K and grossing over $50 million at the box office.

For me, watching spooky shows proved to be a rite of passage. As a little kid, scary stuff troubled me. I remember that Mom wouldn’t let me watch monster movies after school because of the nightmares they gave me. Yet, each time “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” “The Werewolf,” or “The Mummy,” came on, I pleaded with her to let me watch them.

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My 10 Favorite Scary Spooky Movies?

Glad you asked. Apart from “Halloween,” here are 10 of my favorite scary spooky movies:

1. “The Shining” (1980) – Directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Stephen King’s novel.

2. “Psycho” (1960) – A psychological horror-thriller known for its iconic shower scene and Norman Bates. Directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock.

3. “The Birds” (1963) – A film where ordinary birds turn into menacing foes in a small town. Also directed by Hitchcock.

4. “The Exorcist” (1973) – A film that set new standards for horror. Directed by William Friedkin.

5. “The Fog” (1980) – Inanimate objects spring eerily to life in a small California coastal town. Like “Halloween” directed by John Carpenter.

6. “The Conjuring” (2013) – Set in the 1970s, the film follows the haunting experiences of a pair of paranormal investigators and demonologies. Directed by James Wan.

7. “Poltergeist” (1982) – Strange and creepy happenings beset an average California family. Directed by Tobe Hooper.

8. “Duel” (1971) – A mild mannered electronics salesman, driving cross-country on a two-lane highway, encounters an old oil tanker driven by a mysterious unseen driver. Directed by Steven Spielberg.

9. “The Sixth Sense” (1999) – How did 1999 get to be so long ago? A horror masterpiece piece directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

10. “Christine” (1983) – An unpopular nerd buys a 1958 Plymouth Fury, which he names Christine. Another John Carpenter classic horror flick based on Stephen King’s iconic horror novel.

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“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

Alfred Hitchcock

I’ve loved putting together this post. In some ways, it opened a door to the past for me as I revisited several of my all-time favorite movies in any genre, let alone scary spooky movies.

Heck, I didn’t realize how much I actually knew about this genre and how pivotal some of these movies were in my life. Stories about ghosts and goblins and spooky supernatural things once were an important element in my life. I’m not sure where the time has gone.

I hope you, my dear reader, enjoyed reading this post and that perhaps it took you down memory lane as well.

Abundant blessings,

The Devotional Guy™

Rainer Bantau

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