A Seasonal Stew of Spooky Cinema

For the first time in sixteen years' imprisonment, October will be chockablock with shocks, thanks to my move to a new prison with a superior cable package. This Halloween aficionado and movie buff was pleased, after coming through one TV programming guide, to find so many of the suspenseful, horrific, and just plain eerie films that I love filling the weeks leading up to the thirty-first. I'm excited. Not counting the classics that'll show up all month long on the in-house movie channel — stuff like Carnival of Souls and Black Dragons — here's my must-watch list:

 

• The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
• The Lady Vanishes
• The Thing from Another World
• Nosferatu
• The Seventh Victim
• The Night Digger
• Faust
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Return of the Living Dead
• 28 Days Later
• The Old Dark House
• Isle of the Dead
• Bedlam
• The Dead Zone
• The Witches of Eastwick
• Fright Night (1985)
• White Zombie
• Mark of the Vampire
• Hellraiser
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (three different productions!)
• Curse of the Cat People
• The Bad Seed (1985)
• Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte
• Island of Lost Souls
• Mad Love
• Spirits of the Dead
• Black Sabbath
• The Pit and the Pendulum

 

There's also a PBS miniseries, The Woman in White, and my trashy FX pleasure, American Horror Story, to follow. No way could my little stash of movie snacks hold out through all of these. I wouldn’t want it to. Eating too much junk too early would spoil me on that epic junk-fest that is Octoberfeast. (Stay tuned for the fifth of my "Halloween in the Hoosegow" posts, by the way, coming in four short weeks!)