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Halloween Movies to Scare the %*&! out of Yourself - a list by tatorandtots
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About this list:
Some new, some old, all scary.
Qualifications:
I've hidden under a lot of blankets.
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An American Werewolf in London
2 people recommended this item
Description
This movie was majorly traumatic for me. Majorly. As in, to this day I can't walk the 1/4 mile from my cottage in Ireland to the neighbor's at night. I honestly can't. Logically, I know that werewolves don't exist. But that doesn't seem to matter in the moment. Sigh. It effed me up. Big time.
Now, that wouldn't have happened if I had been able to sit through more than 20 minutes of it when I first saw it at age ten. I would have discovered it was fairly campy and unrealistic in its close-ups of the werewolf. But I didn't find that out until college, when the damage was already done.
Nope, that first 20 minutes messed me up and it messed me up big-time. It was the scene with the guy from the old Dr. Pepper commercials- David Naughton- and his friend. Silly boys. They had to go and venture off the moonlit path. And I, an innocent child, paid the price when one of 'em got ripped apart. Oh well. Enjoy.
Updated Oct 16, 2008
The Shining DVD
6 people recommended this item
Description
Heeeere's Johnny. Theeeeere goes Fiona under the blanket....
Amazon.com essential video
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King's bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King's book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick's movie is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel's labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer, who's settled in for a long winter's hibernation. As many have pointed out, King's protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick's Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him--all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director's fanatical demands for take after take after take.) The Shining is terrifying--but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV miniseries (reportedly because of King's dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there--but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick's The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there's no place to hide... --Jim Emerson
Updated Oct 16, 2008
Halloween
4 people recommended this item
Description
More disturbing to me than the fact I can't watch this without spending 68% of the time under a blanket is the fact my 10-year-old daughter can.
Great background for a Haunted House/Halloween party.
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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Killer Klowns from Outer Space
First to recommend
Description
Suffer from a fear of clowns? Welcome to my world. You're a coulrophobe.
This movie won't help.
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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Pet Sematary
4 people recommended this item
Description
As with most things in life, once you revisit something- in this case a pet- it's never quite the same.
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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Christine (Special Edition)
First to recommend
Description
A little tale about a car that is not very nice. To put it mildly.
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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Children of the Corn
2 people recommended this item
Description
If you long to spend your life unable to pass a cornfield without fear, this movie is for you.
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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Sometimes They Come Back
First to recommend
Description
Another successful attempt by Stephen King to rob you of your sanity when the lights go out...
Amazon.com
Desperate for work, troubled high school teacher Jim Norman (Tim Matheson) relocates his family to his rural hometown after procuring a much-needed job there. Once home he must relive and confront a childhood nightmare: the high school hoodlums who murdered his older brother in a tunnel ambush, and were killed themselves by an oncoming train, are slowly rising from the grave to finish the job by killing Norman. The ghostly hooligans, who appear as flesh and blood to students, start "transferring" into school when some of Norman's students mysteriously perish; however their phantom, fire-spitting car is invisible to all but their victims. Suspicion for the inexplicably rising student-body count soon falls squarely on Norman, who must find a way to protect his wife and son from danger, vanquish the supernatural hoods, and cast off the shackles of his past. It's a fairly straightforward plot with some obvious elements, but Matheson and his supporting cast (including wife Brooke Adams) create a suspenseful, fear-inducing atmosphere under the able direction of Tom McLoughlin from a screenplay adaptation by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. --Bryan Reesman
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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The Exorcist
5 people recommended this item
Description
You may never have seen this version... ask yourself, do you really want to? It's scary. Very scary.
DVD features
Although it was endorsed by director William Friedkin (reportedly with some reluctance), this "new" version of The Exorcist was criticized by many as a marketing ploy, and now exists for perpetual debate among horror fans. In addition to a few more subtly inserted "subliminals" of demonic imagery, 12 minutes of previously unseen footage focus on four new scenes: the series of physical tests (spinal tap, etc.) that Regan (Linda Blair) must endure; a post-ritual scene between priests Karras (Jason Miller) and Merrin (Max von Sydow), in which Merrin postulates that Satan is targeting them in order to make them despair and doubt their faith; a different version of the famous "spider-walk" scene (shown as an outtake in the previous special edition DVD's making-of documentary), in which Regan eerily walks down stairs in an upside-down, crablike movement, with blood dripping from her mouth; and a new ending, in which Father Dyer (Rev. William O'Malley) meets Lieutenant Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) and the two of them share a casual chat about movies, echoing Kinderman's earlier talk with Father Karras. This final change was viewed by many as the most egregious, destroying the closing note of the original version. Fans and critics alike found much more to praise in the spectacular remixing and remastering of the film's original soundtrack, which is now scarier than ever in Dolby Digital 5.1-channel surround sound. --Jeff Shannon
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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The Blair Witch Project
5 people recommended this item
Description
To this day, I can't go into my basement to do laundry without picturing bloody hands and thinking about children facing the wall. That part alone scared the hell out of me.
Updated Oct 21, 2008
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