Halloween: Classic horror to chill your bones this season
The film criticism ghost is back, floating through the canon of classic horror with the same mix of reverence and mischief. This time the spotlight stays on the foundational pictures that still shape what scares us, from silent shadows to late-1960s paranoia. The ghost rattles off the details, and the bones still chill.
The Mummy (1932)
Karl Freund directed this 1932 Universal entry, with Boris Karloff as the revived Egyptian priest Imhotep. The film introduced the bandaged-mummy archetype that later pictures and theme-park attractions still recycle. Restorations keep the desert-lighting sequences and the slow, deliberate pacing intact, so modern viewers can see how the curse formula took shape.
Dracula (1931)
Bela Lugosi’s velvet-voiced count in the 1931 Universal production set the visual template for cinematic vampires. The film’s fog-shrouded castle and theatrical staging influenced every subsequent adaptation, including the crossovers the ghost already mentioned. Fresh prints and festival screenings keep the original cut circulating.
Nosferatu
This 1922 German expressionist film remains the earliest surviving unauthorized take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Max Schreck’s Count Orlok moves through pools of shadow that still read as menacing. A recent 4K restoration from Kino Lorber restores original tints and a reconstructed score, while Robert Eggers’s 2024 remake earned multiple Oscar nominations and grossed roughly 182 million dollars worldwide.
Cat People
No, not the David Bowie song. This 1942 horror film is when absurdist horror and sexual exploration collide. It follows a spooky story of a young lass named Irene who believes she can turn people into cats when provoked. It’s often a silly film, and hasn’t aged all that well, but there’s still a few scares here and there to satisfy your horror appetite. The ‘Lewton Bus’ from this film has been a mainstay of horror films ever since. Named after the producer, Val Lewton, it’s a technique that shows a character in surprise. Here it happens when Irene looks shocked and terrified by what sounds like a hissing panther, before cutting to show it’s just a bus arriving. It’s what’s used as a basis for most ‘boo!’ moments in horror film history.
The Fly
The Fly was originally a 1958 film from Kurt Neumann. It’s about a scientist whose DNA is fused with that of a fly when an experiment goes wrong. The legendary Vincent Price (House of Wax) shows up in this and is pretty fun. It’s a pretty horrifying film, although some of the make-up is hit and miss. The 1986 remake starring Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park), and filled with revolting imagery from the mind of David Cronenberg, is probably the superior specimen. In 2024 Nikyatu Jusu was announced as writer-director of a new film set inside the Cronenberg universe.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Don Siegel’s 1956 adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel turns suburban conformity into body horror. The pod people replace neighbors without raising alarms, a premise that later remakes and alien-invasion stories keep revisiting. Its paranoia theme feels freshly relevant whenever collective anxiety spikes.
Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein is a 2015 film directed by, no wait not that. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a 1994 film from Kenneth Branagh (Dunkirk). No, wait. Nope. Hold on. Frankenstein is a 16-minute short film from 1910 that is adapted from the Mary Shelley novel about a guy who procrastinates for a bit before rebelling against God in creating life. It’s filled with a radical departure of a story from the original novel. The monster here actually follows around the young doctor for a bit like a dog, before things get really spooky. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube as it’s in the public domain. It’s more an artefact of film history than anything else. A full Library of Congress restoration completed in 2018 now streams on the LOC platform, giving clearer access to the Edison Company’s earliest take on the myth.
The Night of the Hunter
This 1955 thrillride, from Charles Laughton, is about a minister turned sinister serial killer. With Robert Mitchum (Cape Fear) in the lead role, it’s a thriller from the tip-edge of the black-and-white edge of Hollywood, but it’s a seriously psychological incision of a film. It puts you deep in the heels of this bloke as he goes about seducing widows and destroying lives. There’s a lot of commentary at play underneath this flick, and many critics even consider it to be in the same league as Citizen Kane! Recent Criterion Blu-ray editions and critical essays trace its influence on David Lynch and Spike Lee, confirming its place in the psychological-thriller lineage.
The Day of the Triffids
This 1962 film adaptation of John Wyndham’s novel is about killer plants that come to bite us in the butt. And by butt I mean slit our throats and eat us whole. Get spooked! It’s a real treat of a special effects show-off, although some of it looks more silly than scary. With ecological disaster and climate change constantly appearing in the headlines, one could argue that Triffids is even more of a prescient film. In 2009 a BBC miniseries took to remaking this story in all its horrific glory. We think it’s much more of a hard-hitting take. There’s some VFX work and weird narrative choices with Eddie Izzard showing up and immediately declared dictator. I mean, that would happen naturally in this situation of course, but the odd thing is that this adaptation is much more powerful. Because, spoilers, humanity actually loses in the end of the miniseries. Our heroes are left in exile. It’s much more scary because there’s no salt water solution, as seen in the original film. We fail, as a species, to combat our changing climate. GET SPOOKED! Ongoing discussions of the miniseries and the source novel keep the ecological warning current.
Psycho (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shower-scene shocker reset expectations for suspense and narrative misdirection. The Bernard Herrmann score and the late reveal about Norman Bates still echo through every psychological thriller and slasher that followed. Restorations and anniversary screenings keep the original cut circulating for new generations of viewers.
Night of the Living Dead
The keystone of the entire zombie genre, George A. Romero’s horror film masterpiece painted a picture of 1968’s America as a place in peril. Locked into a consumerist culture and an unpopular war, the film struck a chilling chord with audiences in depicting the true monsters as mobs of people skulking about, wide-eyed, not too different to them. Ooooh! Spooky! It’s the foundation for everything from The Walking Dead to 28 Days Later. The film was hilariously and immediately released into the public domain because the original distributors failed to put copyright logos on the first print. That’s why this film is peppered everywhere, and seen in all sorts of shows and films, because it costs nothing to display it. Hooray for weird copyright law! More like, boo-ray am I right?
The Wolf Man
This 1941 film is the prime influence on werewolf flicks. It’s also been an inspiration to much make-up work for horror films throughout the twentieth century. Bela Lugosi (Dracula) shows up in a supporting role in this one. It’s still a pretty fun film even by modern standards. Check it out! It’s very good! The 2025 reboot underscores how the silver-bullet curse and poetic transformation scenes continue to shape werewolf mythology.
Creature From the Black Lagoon
Here’s a blast from film gimmick past! James Cameron (Aliens) wasn’t the first pioneer of the 3D film genre, oh no, in fact he was resurrecting a trend that keeps raising its ugly head every couple of decades. Creature From the Black Lagoon is a 1954 film about a spooky monster in the depths of a lagoon who terrorizes some academics, before proceeding to do some underwater shenanigans. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds and, at the time, audiences were utterly terrified wearing their 3D viewing glasses, as they were swallowed whole into the screen! Spooooooky! Creature From the Black Lagoon is one of the last remnants of the 3D film fad in the 1950s. Many audiences actually saw this film in flat 2D when it was released. Some of the prosthetics work is a bit silly. But it’s weirdly charming in its own way. In 2024 James Wan entered talks to direct a remake, keeping the gill-man design in active development.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
Yeah! Eat your heart out Marvel! This 1943 horror flick sees two of Universal’s biggest monster movies collide. It’s a real display of, get this, a cinematic universe! Characters from solo films combine into one big meet-up flick. Woah! What’s a novel idea! Although this 1943 film is a little bit too silly to get any spooks out of you, it’s a solid prediction of the future of filmmaking. Universal is trying to capitalize on the current trends from Marvel and whatnot. The Mummy was apparently the launch of their own monstrous film universe. Dr. Jekyll even shows up. I’m still waiting for them to do cinematic universes based on Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot! or Barney’s Great Adventure. Still waiting? But I thought you exist across all of space and time? Yeah but I don’t want to be spoiled anything. Like, imagine if I told you they remake Blade Runner with Michael Cera as the lead. No. And it turns out it was all a dream at the end.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Roman Polanski’s 1968 film, starring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, brought satanic cult paranoia into upscale Manhattan apartments. Its slow-burn dread and ambiguous ending helped define the possession subgenre that later productions, including The Exorcist, built upon. The picture remains a reference point whenever modern horror explores gaslighting and bodily autonomy.
The Exorcist
An absolute cursed film. This 1973 flick from William Friedkin (Killer Joe) had an incredibly troubled production. Injured toddlers, Kubrick’s exit, and sets that spontaneously caught fire. The result is a tremendously frightening film that delves deep into every corner of horror. It’s a hypnotic thrill-ride that really puts you in the room when the exorcisms begin and the horror is dialed up to eleven. We’ve had nightmares about this flick, because gee-wiz is it scary. The 50th anniversary brought 4K restorations and theatrical re-releases of extended cuts, renewing interest in both the production lore and the film’s lasting grip on audiences.
