We’re down to the good stuff now! We start with Bride of Frankenstein (1935,) the best of the series IMHO. Then chilled to Psycho (1960). Current generation just doesn’t “get” this movie, and it ODES raise some questions in our current trans culture! Suspiria (1977, not the remake!) Although the new one isn’t bad it just doesn’t bring the Giallo like this one. And that SCORE! James Wan’s best The Conjuring (2013) is the newest movie of the month. The Innocents (1961) made our list again this year after being on the unseen list a year ago. A strong telling of James’ The Turn of the Screw. Time for some lighter fare. Young Frankenstein (1974.) Genius. Then off the beaten path for Season 4 Episode 2 of the X-Files. “Home.” You can’t keep a Peacock down!

Three days to Halloween. Three solid standards to get us there!

We’ve said goodby to the “new” stuff and dip into the classics.

The Wolfman (1941). Frankenstein (1934). Dracula (1931). The Old, Dark House (1932). Since we’d already seen the “new” one, The Haunting (1963). Lingering we have The Sixth Sense (1999). Still solid, even with ALL of the rewatchings. And finally the original Ghostbusters (1984). Sheer Libertarian fun.

And just for fun this week the ADORABLE Practical Magic (1998).

Notice the dearth of ANYTHING from the last 25 years or so! Because MOT of it is drek. Change my mind.

Started off with Plague of Zombies from 1966. Hammer Films but none of the Hammer notables. Not a distinguishing face in the bunch. But NOT a bad effort. Costumer. Zombies. The evils of colonialism. Anti-fox hunting. All MANNER of things. But I gave it a 4.9.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife. A cute film. A tribute film to Harold Ramis and a fitting one at that. Lot’s of Easter eggs. Hits all the right notes. 6.7. Not necissarily a great “Halloween” movie, but fun if you have kids of the right age who have seen the original.

The Exorcist. Timeless. And solid. GF doesn’t like it so I watch it alone, which is how I FIRST saw it, in a mobile home outside of Ada Ohio in the middle of a thunderstorm on a tiny maybe 14″ portable tv half a dozen years after it came out. Was a 9.8 but I reranked it this year. Held solid, right between The Green Mile and The Alamo!

Ju-on: The Curse. Nope. Still not a fan of Asian horror (with a few exceptions.) Not gonna tell you what I ranked it. Just don’t waste your time.

1999’s The Haunting. Will watch the ’63 version next week. ’99 works better on a big screen but it’s still solid with a GREAT cast playing interesting rolls – even Luke Willson who I don’t normally appreciate. 9.2

Stardust. Because … witches. Claire Danes has fun. Sienna Miller is unlikable. Kate McGowan is solid. And “Michelle Pfieffer that white gold.” Throw in appearances by David Kelly, Ben Barnes, Henry Cavill, Peter O’toole, Rupert Everett, Ricky Gervais and Robert DiNiro’s best part since Taxi Driver! Not really “seasonal” but at 9.6 why say no?

Peter O’Toole makes another appearance in our final movie of the week which is also our last “previously unseen.” High Spirits. Another solid cast. A fun movie. 5.0. Ends like it should. But next year – no comedy movies made after 1958!

In the “also watched” department I’d recommend “No One Will Save You.” Brings together SO many good elements from SO many good movies. And does it well. 9.6

Week 1 of the Halloween movies list. We opened with Season of the With from 1972, an early George Romero feature. Filmed in Pittsburgh of course. Neglected middle-class wives turn to witchcraft for satisfaction. AKA Jack’s Wife and Hungry Wives. We’ll give it a 5.5 but can’t recommend it for Halloween vieweing.

Next up was the Polish effort Mother Joan of the Angels. 1961. Dealing with a 16th Century possession of a nun. Good but not great. gave it a 3.3. Again, cannot recommend for Halloween viewing. And that’s what happens with so many of my “not previously seen” movies.

Next up was the more traditional Dracula AD 1972. Cushing and Lee on Carnaby Street. And anything with Caroline Munro is watchable. Surprises with a 6.4 rating. Watchable in the background but nobody was proud of this.

2016 brought us Under the Shadow, set amidst the Iran/Iraq war. Good but not great. 3.2

1973 gives us Don’t be Afraid of the Dark with Kim (True Grit) Darby, Jim (Nero Wolfe) Hutton and William (My Three Sons) Demorest. 6.5 Watchable but formulaic. Nothing special to recommend it.

A Taste of Fear aka Scream of Fear also from 1961. More thriller than horror with a very satisfying twist at the end. Susan Strasberg give it her all. 8.5 and recommended.

Jumped ahead a little bit to 1979 with Ridley Scott’s Alien. I’ve strenuously omitted most sci-fi from this list for years but decided to bend a little. Kim loves it and it IS good. Nice to revisit after a while. DID rerank it and moved it from a 9.3 to a 9.8

For giggles we watched the lat of the Francis the Talking Mule movies- Haunted House. Paul Fries spells Chill Wills and Mickey Rooney replaces Donald O’Connor but it’s still a fun romp. 6.6

We started off with the big three (and added the fourth shortly thereafter.) Dracula (9.1), Frankenstein (9.8), Wolf Man (9.8) and Bride of Frankenstein (the best of the bunch at 9.9 IMHO.)

A little diversion into TV land – X Files. Season 4, episode 2. “Home.” Wanna know why? go read the Wikipedia entry after watching it.

On a lighter note – Young Frankenstein. Rated #14 of all time. 10 out of 10. FWIW LTOB is doing the musical version in the spring. Gonna selectively audition for Monster, Doctor and Igor.

Psycho. 9.9. 46th overall.

Then my last fun guilty pleasure: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. A mere 8.3 but I just adore this little bit of fluff

And on the 31st … 1978’s Halloween (9.4) – doesn’t stand the test of time, but what the hell ….. and after the doorbell stops ringing “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” 9.7

Decorated the porch with pumpkins this year …. Kim and I carved a couple. Rain held off and the temps were mild. More kids than the last 7-8 years combined! Too many “olds” but since they’ve missed out lately I overlooked it. It was a good year. Time to button down. November 1 always feels MUCH different to me. Thanksgiving is next. Thankfully no movies, but I’ll be putting the Christmas list together.

We’re into the good ones now. The Exorcist. Kim still can’t watch it. 9.8 from 1973. Stadns up to the test of time.

Next up: a two-fer! The Haunting. ’99 and ’63. Lili Taylor makes her first appearance on the list. Jan de Bont made some … interesting choices with Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character. Luke Willson is misable in the Russ Tamblyn roll. And Liam Neeson is solid. 9.2. Julie Christie and Claire Bloom are stiller on top and Russ Tamblyn does just what he’s asked to do. Richard Compton is ok. And his wife is played by Fay Compton (Miss Moneypenny.) 9.4. A smidge better. The black and white. The shadows. The score. The house is less “beautiful” and more menacing. Watch ’em both.

Nicole Kidman makes her second appearance on the list with a perennial favorite: The Others. I give it a 9.7 even though I dropped it about 100 places this year.

One that was growing on me but I think the growth has stopped: The Shining. 8.9. About as high as it’s gonna get.

Lili Taylor’s second entry – The Conjuring. It’s #131 on my list with a 9.9. Maybe too high but not THAT much too high.

The 1961 version of Turn of the Screw – The Innocents with Deborah Kerr. Odd, quiet, atmospheric movie. Possibly over-rated. #378 over-all. 9.6

And finally from 1977, rated 9.6 – the original Suspiria. The remake isn’t BAD …. it’s just not good enough. The music (by the Goblins), color, cuts, shadows. It just IS a good movie.

Ten more to go, and if you read prior posts you KNOW what they are.

An odd selection of movies this year. One final “new” one, and a variety of re-watches. Some good. Some not so much.

I’ll start with a high point: Hold That Ghost. Abbot and Costello, supported by Ted Lewis and Ohio’s own Andrews Sisters. Richard Carlson at his professorial best. Evelyn Ankers screaming. Joan Davis in the comic roll. Marc Lawrence as the heavy as he did it a hundred times. And Shemp Howard as “the soda jerk.” 7.9. Might be back NEXT year.

The Witch, the 2015 effort from Robert Eggers that launched the career of Anya Taylor-Joy. 8.3.

1977 House. Japanese. Comedy-horror. And does neither (to my Western tastes) well. 1.7 Don’t know HOW it made this list. Hopefully it won’t make it again.

What Lies Beneath. From the man who brought you “Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?” Ghost/haunted house story. With Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer (that white gold.) Dropped it to 8.8 and it still might be over-rated.

Last of my previously unseens: Dark Water, the US version. Just didn’t feel it. Jennifer Connelly. 2.7

Beetlejuice. For the second (?) year in a row. And I’m not liking it any better. But I MIGHT grab some of the music. Sonora! 2.5

Then a GOOD comedy. Ghostbusters. 9.7. VERY Libertarian!

Then two love stories. M. Night Rama Lama Ding Dong’s Sixth Sense. 9.4

and Practical Magic. Also 9.4. This one will be back for sure.

And then we’ll throw in a little kitsch. Williams Castle’s House on Haunted Hill. 1959. And somehow it WAS a 9.2. Gotta fix THAT. Re-rated and dropped to a 4.0.

Better than a dozen left but they’re ALL pretty darned good.

took a few weird twists and turns this week

We’ll open with a treat called The Love Witch, an homage to the late 60’s, made in 2016. Samantha Robinson is the leading eye candy. It hits the right notes and does what it tries to do quite well. Gave it an 8/10 but it’ll surely drop over time,

My next trick was a foursome. Poltergeist I, II & III along with the reboot. The first installment was in 1982 (although I didn’t see it for quite some time.) and stars JoBeth Williams’ legs. 7.2. II (The Other Side) came in ’86 and gets a 2.7 due to a LOT of reasons, not the least of which is a decided lack of JoBeth Williams’ legs which are completely absent! III Two more year and Ms. Williams is replaced by Nancy Allen, Tom Skerritt steps in for the coach and the studio tries to make money on Heather O’Rourke one more time. And there’s a young Lara Flynn Boyle. 1/10. 2015 tried to bring it back with the affable Sam Rockwell but we all know the path and have taken better trips down it before. 3/10.

The Orphanage one of the 2-3 best Spanish language movies in the genre (Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labrynth?) Belen Rueda is solid in the lead. Compelling, well told story. 8.3

A double-header featuring Barbara Steele was up next. To me she’s just a little off. Maybe that’s why she dead Euro-horror instead of more “upscale” work. Nightmare Castle (1965) is a solid 5/10. Castle of Blood was a year earlier and a tad better, scoring a 6/10.

George C Scott and his wife Trish Van der Vere show up in The Changeling from 1980 with Melvyn Douglass. Some nice atmosphere in a typical piece for the age. 5.8 And Melvyn Douglass RETURNS in the 1932 classic The Old Dark House. GREAT cast. Good script. Movie done right for 1932! 9/10.

Next up was a trick. Hocus Pocus (which I didn’t like in the FIRST place but made the list again) and HP2. I gave the original a 6/10 for good intentions if nothing else, and I didn’t re-rate it this year because of HP2. For which there was no reason. I gave it a 2.7/10. Actually COULDA been a good movie but too much SJW and tried too hard.

And closed things out with the original Wicker Man. 1973. I enjoy the Nick Cage remake as well but this IS October and you don’t bring the second team. Ed Woodward does what it takes. Christopher Lee has JUST the right touch of … whimsy? While Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt and especially Britt Ekland make it all quite interesting. 7.7

Over two dozen items remain. I LOVE this time of year, and we’re in to the good stuff now.

Regular readers know the drill. I use Flickchart.com to pick a bunch of movies. Witch movies, ghost movies and haunted house movies. I use MY rankings as well as the users rankings. I have ten movies I watch every year, on the list or not. I always include ten previously unseen movies. And there are ten that ALWAYS get included. I used to restrict myself to 31 movies but decided to loosen that up a bit. This year it’s closer to fifty.

The first week sees a lot of new entries. And after doing this for quite a few years they’re pretty poor. Only one came in rated above a 5/10. We started with The Witches from 1966. Joan Fontaine chewing the scenery in a Wicker Man kinda thing. 3.1/10. Next up was an animated short from Disney – The Mad Doctor (1933.) Nothing special. 2.8/10. 1965 brought us The Skull – a Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee pairing about De Sade’s headpiece. 3.4. Some interesting camera work. A newer entry gives us Kristen Stewart doing nude scenes. It does NOT make her a better actor, nor her films more watchable. Personal Shopper (2016) 3.8. Seems like only yesterday but Blair Witch Project was in 1999! 8.0. Lot’s of problems but did much right. Revisited the St. Francisville Experiment. Two years later it was already a tired trope: found footage of kids in a haunted house. Dropped it precipitously this year. 4.3 And we’ll close out the week with another Christopher Lee effort – Crypt of the Vampire. Italian. 1.0. Adriana Ambesi and Ursula Davis as eye candy in a vieled lesbian relationship, as only the Italians can do.

Next week will be better.