Spooky Movie Night
Last week, I asked for your favourite spooky, Halloween season films. Below I share your recommendations, along with some favourites of my own.
Like Nicole, I think The Watcher in the Woods, the 1980 live-action Disney film, is the best scary movie. When I was a small child, every weekend we would go to our second home in rural Connecticut—down the road there was an old general store that had a little back room of VHS’s. Among them was The Watcher in the Woods, in that original white puffy case. Even though it scared the living daylights out of me, I rented it over and over again. Supernatural and spooky, it was the first film that affected me psychologically. Originally released in 1980, it was pulled out of theatres after 10 days due to negative reviews and the end reshot—if you’ve seen the original theatrical ending (available on the DVD and YouTube), you’ll know that it would have made for a far less disturbing, scary film. Thank God they changed it!
An Instagram post I wrote about it 8 years ago:
In the comments, Will recommended The Devil Rides Out and Hammer Horror films in general, which I am also a huge fan of. My favourite is Twins of Evil, likely because it was the first one I saw—I came across it at random as a child, late-night on the telly in London, when I was supposed to be in bed, and was captivated primarily by the beauty and clothes of the stars, twins Mary and Madeleine Collinson. Always gorgeous and buxom, often powerful, with historically inaccurate yet very covetable revivalist clothing, the women of Hammer Horror were among my first beauty inspirations. Below are a few pages from Hammer Glamour: Classic Images from the Archives of Hammer Films (2009), which features biographic spreads on each Hammer leading lady—among them Edina Ronay, who I interviewed for my podcast a few years ago.
Probably my best Halloween ever was spent alone watching all of Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy at Anthology Film Archives. Spending the day in a movie theatre is not something I—or many of us—have the luxury of anymore, but even if you were to watch one a night this week, it would be the proper gateway to Halloween.
Below is a very random group of psychological, spooky and horror recommendations—those offered by you in the comments, along with some additions of my own.
Hello new Weekend Viewing queue! 🩸♥️