We’re happy—and a little surprised—to be able to offer a selection of Halloween movies this year that ranges from family-friendly to classic to offbeat to hardcore shockers. The selections also range from features to series to specials and from true reference-quality (The Shining) to decent enough but worth watching just for the experience (The Masque of the Red Death). Since we don’t choose films for review anticipating rounding them up by theme, it was a nice to see them fall into place here with a decent balance and variety. With 21 films to choose from, there should legitimately be something for everyone.
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Fright Nights
Alien has never lived up to its potential on the home screen. DVD and LaserDisc versions were overly grainy and noisy, and the previous remastered Blu-ray version couldn’t do the shadow and black-level detail justice. All of that is made right with this 4K HDR version, which looks fantastic. Fortunately, the restoration isn’t heavy-handed, getting rid of the bad bits of noise and deterioration while keeping Scott’s look and stylistic feel solidly intact. read more
If the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a B movie, then Carnival of Souls is a solid C—a wild fling at moviemaking by a bunch of naive and repressed Midwesterners meant for second, or third, billing at Kansas drive-ins, a kind of Bergman-goes-to-Topeka thing that must have confused the hell out of the 2 a.m. hangers-on expecting to get off on something like Chain-Gang Girls. And yet somehow out of that impossible equation came art. read more
I told myself I was going to make this one a quickie and not belabor my points. So, Point No. 1—this is the only good Tim Burton movie. Point 2—it features Johnny Depp’s best performance, by far. Point 3—it’s astonishing Martin Landau did such a great job of playing Lugosi without getting much help from behind the camera. Point 4—Ed Wood died at the box office, not because it’s not a great film—it is—but because it doesn’t fit within the all too predictable definition of what a Burton film is supposed to be. And because it committed the unforgivable sin of being in black & white. read more
This is a better movie than the original—better acted, more artfully shot, with a more coherent script and more competent direction, but such praise is relative. This is still a glorified after-school special with a false edge, filled with out-of-touch musical numbers and lazy references to modern culture that will lose what chuckle-worthiness they have before the inevitable Hocus Pocus 3 comes out in a few years. read more
Muppets Haunted Mansion ends up being a pretty good time, mostly due to the antics of Pepe combined with the gorgeousness of the imagery. If you have kids, I’m also pretty sure they’ll love the whole thing. And that is the thing I like best about this special. Fun Halloween specials that can be enjoyed by the whole family are few and far between and it’s nice to see another one added to the mix, even if it’s not quite as good as it could have been.
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A Quiet Place 2 is like a classic horror film where suspense and what you don’t see provides much of the scares, which is perfect for people who don’t like what the modern horror genre has become. The violence is mostly bloodless, and not the focus of the film. Not only does it make for a great night at the movies, I think it actually plays better in a well-designed home theater outfitted with an array of Atmos height and surround speakers for the full experience.
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This latest Scream is the first film in the series not directed by franchise creator Wes Craven. But it remains true to the spirit of the franchise and brings back key cast, including Randy Jackson returning to voice Ghostface, with some quick cameos and voiceovers from actors that have been in the earlier films. I did find the violence to be a bit more brutal and gorier, and the language to be a bit saltier, so definitely not suitable for younger viewers. read more
Anyone can come up with a list of scary movies, but here are 21 Halloween films that are big on both scares and quality
by the Cineluxe staff
updated October 10, 2022
Beetlejuice is one of the worthiest UHD HDR remasters I’ve seen to date (almost on par with The Wizard of Oz), and the film itself is such a joyous (and ironic) celebration of life that it stands on its own. read more
The series is slow in parts but definitely picks up near the end. There are some nice King-esque jump scares along the way, along with tons of general creepiness as we slowly move towards solving the mystery of who is The Kid and how did he get here, along with the overall question of, “Why is Castle Rock so rotten?” read more
If there’s an inherent value in a piece of pop cinema being able to both capture the angst of an era and use it as a springboard to perfectly project the trajectory of the culture, then Body Snatchers has that, and in spades. The film was too easily dismissed at the time and subsequently as an expression of Red Scare paranoia. It’s not. It’s a low-budget B-movie depiction of the loss of self, or soul—depending on how you want to parse that—uncannily prescient, and done with a power that lends it a continuing relevance it never would have achieved as an A-list project. read more
Loosely based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe, The Masque of the Red Death is a heightened and slightly campy tale of a pandemic plague that sweeps medieval Italy. The Raven, on the other hand, has no intention to be authentically scary in any way. Peter Lorre plays the Raven in bird and human form in a highly comedic performance. And it has a fabulous supporting cast: Boris Karloff, a very sexy Hazel Court, and a very young Jack Nicholson—in tights, no less. read more
The Masque of the Red Death
The Raven
It ought to be a mess, and yet Nightmare remains one of the most charming and heartfelt holiday films I’ve ever seen. And, yes, it would be more accurate to call Nightmare a “holiday” film than a Christmas film because although it appropriates all the trappings of our modern commercialized, paganized melting-pot celebration of the nativity, the story makes it abundantly clear the trappings of Christmas are hardly the point. read more
Nobody needs to convince you to watch Rosemary’s Baby. Its reputation as a horror classic is unassailable and secure. But I would urge you to first scrape away as many of the accreted conventions Polanski’s shocker has spawned and try to see it as if all those other films had never happened, as this is the place where it all began. read more
This release of The Shining will quickly become the jewel of any serious film collection. But it’s not there to be revered but watched. This film’s impact hasn’t diminished a jot since the day of its release. And this 4K HDR version takes us all the way back to that first day without compromise.
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JUMP TO
Without The Birds, there would be no Jaws—and, arguably, no Spielberg, since he lifted so many of his filmic mannerisms from this brutal and detached end-of-the-world tale. The really ironic thing is, while this is far from Hitchcock’s best film, it’s still better than Jaws. I realize that conclusion is heresy to the popularity = quality crowd but it underlines the vast difference between what an adult with adolescent tendencies and a perpetual adolescent with no interest in growing up can do. read more
The myth of Dracula isn’t one I think needs retelling. It, and vampires in general, have been done to death over the past couple decades. But whenever Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss write a project together, I’m intrigued. read more
It is a surprisingly good horror movie that thankfully relies more on scares than gross-outs to keep you glued to the screen and huddled under your blanket. Don’t go into it expecting a faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s book (although, given how poorly that one has aged, that’s probably a good thing) but do go in expecting a very satisfying reinterpretation of parts of the novel—one that absolutely works on its own terms, whether you have any intention of watching the sequel or not. read more
One relatively recent trend that warms my dark heart is the reemergence of horror as a legitimate genre of cinema. This isn’t to say that I don’t get a kick out of schlocky B-movie suspense but for most of my adult life, horror movies have been little more than that, leaving legitimate attempts at making serious films in the genre—like Rosemary’s Baby and Kubrick’s The Shining—in the distant past. So to see Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, and Ari Aster’s Midsommar embraced in recent years as art is, if nothing else, a step in the right direction. read more
Anybody who cares about movies beyond junk-food event flicks needs to make the pilgrimage to Hitchcock at some point in their lives, and there are far worse places to start than Psycho (like, say, Family Plot). Whether it gets under your skin on your first viewing is a matter of blind luck, but it will stick with you. If you haven’t seen it in a while, your best chance beyond the local revival house will be these UHD and HDR releases. And if you’re a rabid fan of the film, you should have already hit the download button by now. read more
The teen-slasher genre had been stagnating in the ‘90s when along came Wes Craven of Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare on Elm Street fame to totally upend and breathe new life into the genre with Scream. It’s hard to believe Scream is celebrating its 25th anniversary but the good news is that Paramount has given it a 4K HDR transfer. read more
Stranger Things 3 is such a tonal, structural, and narrative departure from what’s come before that it can take hardcore fans of the series a few episodes to get into this year’s batch of eight episodes. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the first couple episodes. In fact, the show’s creators demonstrate time and again their ability to lovingly mash up, remix, riff on, and reassemble 1980s pop culture in new and inventive ways. It’s simply that this time around, they’re being a little cheeky about it. read more
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