5 Spectacularly Scary Movies for Halloween Viewing

The Haunting (1963).  Adapted from a novel by Shirley Jackson, a master of the creepy story.  A small group of people goes to an old mansion called Hill House to see if they can observe paranormal activity there.  The viewer never sees ghosts or gore, but the tension and suspense is enough to frighten even the most cynical viewer.  In one scene, the lights go out and two women, one of them a little peculiar, are in the room.  The peculiar one comments about holding the other’s hand in the dark and the second woman denies it was her hand.  Christ, that’s scary!  In black & white.  (Avoid the remake – it’s stupid and entirely dependent on stupid special effects.)

Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986).  A supposedly somewhat true account of the serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas.  Henry hooks up with this guy named Otis whose sister, Becky, comes to stay with them.  Henry and Otis go around and kill people in the most random and horrible ways.  The movie was shot with a ridiculously low budget on 16mm film and that only adds to the horror as there’s nothing slick about it.  The scariest part of this movie is the complete lack of emotion shown by Henry and Otis.  This is the only movie I’ve ever seen where afterwards, I lay awake in bed, wide-eyed, too scared to sleep, wondering how many Henrys I had met in my life and how I could end up hacked into pieces and then packed into a blood-soaked suitcase.  Scary!

Rampage (1992).  Christ, this was disturbing.  It’s another serial killer movie, loosely based on real-life serial killer Richard Chase.  In this movie, also a low-budget-looking feature that gives off the home movie vibe, the killer calmly walks into a nice little house and murders an entire family.  Others, too, are murdered with complete randomness.  It’s more of a gore-fest than Henry, but again, it’s the killing with a complete lack of emotion that is so terrifying.  There’s quite a bit of courtroom drama to this one where the parties haggle over the legal definition of insanity and the pros and cons of the death penalty.  Obviously, the message here is “hang him high.”

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971).  This is my worst nightmare: being totally sane but being made to feel insane by others.  The lead character, Jessica, is freed from a mental institution and her husband takes her to an isolated farmhouse to lead a more quiet life only weird stuff starts happening to her right away.  Jessica can see – and the viewer can see – that there really is something crazy and suspicious going on at the old farmhouse, but everyone around Jessica, her husband and this hippie couple, thinks she’s just imagining things.  Worse, they think she’s just crazy and are letting her know they think that with their patronizing tones and unwillingness to believe what she says.  Who is complicit?  I won’t tell. The viewer never sees anything overtly scary, but the tension is thick and it just makes me nuts to think about this, it’s so freaking scary!

Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).  This was so crazy good with a well-constructed plot that provided so many scary moments.  Poor Charlotte (Bette Davis) is a spinster living in her family’s decaying mansion.  She lost her opportunity to marry decades before when her lover was murdered, his hand and head severed.  Authorities want to tear down the mansion in order to build a highway, but Charlotte won’t leave.  A wonderfully sinister cast of characters plays gruesome pranks on Charlotte (the lover’s hand and head reappear in separate scenes, to my utter horror) and we witness Charlotte’s eventual break-down.  Who’s on Charlotte’s side?  Who’s trying to scare her away?  This movie is great with its suspenseful, shocking moments.  I jumped all the way to crazy town during this one.