Run for your lives! It’s October, the unofficial horror movie month! Horror is consistently one of the most popular genres in film, with even middling movies guaranteed to make money. Why? Because audiences want to feel emotion from their entertainment, and no emotion is easier to evoke than fear.

Fear comes in many forms, everything from being startled to deep psychological terror. Few movies reach that final level, but when they do they leave a scar on our culture. With that in mind, let’s talk about the twenty most significant horror films. These aren’t necessarily the best or the most scary or even my favorites, but when you die . . .  these will be on the test.

Father Merrin had come to save Regan from Satan’s fluorescent lightbulbs.

1. Night of the Living Dead (1968): The importance of this film cannot be overstated. This film brought horror movies to adult audiences. Before ‘Dead,’ horror was costumed monsters aimed at kids. The film also kick-started the zombie craze which continues unabated today in film and within the Democratic party, and it established all the conventions for the zombie subgenre. “Yes we can . . . yes we can.”

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The hardest part of compiling this list was in trying to define what does and does not qualify as a horror picture. Most every definition out there has a slippery slope that can lead to all kinds of similarly-plotted films that don’t fit the genre. For instance, if you include Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” why not “Silence of the Lambs” and therefore “The Bone Collector,” “Kiss the Girls” and “Se7en?” What’s the difference between a slasher film and a violent thriller like Brian DePalma’s “Dressed to Kill”? And if you include “Halloween” why not “Shadow of a Doubt?” Furthermore, if you stick only to the supernatural, then you have to ask yourself if zombies qualify as supernatural, which I think is a road we’d all prefer not to go down.

Since coming up with this countdown idea, this particular question has consumed my days and nights to the point that what was going to be a Top 31 list is now a Top 25. But then a revelation struck: Who cares? And for the record, that happens to be my favorite revelation.

So what we have here is nothing more than a daily countdown – one film at a time (with a few cheats) – of my favorite scary movies to watch during the season of Halloween. As good as they are, as suspenseful as they are, films such as “Jaws” and serial killer procedurals just don’t qualify. In my mind there’s a certain kind of horror perfect for this time of year when the wind’s cold, the leaves turn brown, and the sky is overcast. Yes, I live in L.A. where the season only change from rush hour to not, but in my own mind I’m twelve years old, living in the Midwest, and my parents have let me stay up way past my bedtime because “Shock Theatre” is on… (more…)

When in 1918 D. W. Griffith asked Lillian Gish to star in a tragic story of love, opium, dreams and death, all set against a Dickensian backdrop of poverty and despair, she was intrigued. But when he told the twenty-six-year-old actress that she would be playing a twelve-year-old girl, she was incredulous. Gish was a grown adult now, and fairly tall –  what possible trick of camera or posture could create the pixyish physique and innocent features that such a part would demand?

After much arguing, Griffith grudgingly agreed to raise the character’s age from twelve to fifteen, while still insisting that she play the part as a child. Lillian wasn’t convinced she could pull it off: “Virgins are the hardest roles to play. Those dear little girls — to make them interesting takes great vitality.” But seven years together had given the director full confidence in her abilities: “I gave her an outline of what I hoped to accomplish, and let her work it out in her own way. When she got it, she had something of her own.”

Sometimes events that look like setbacks prove to be fortuitous. On the way home from being fitted for her costumes, Gish collapsed with Spanish Influenza, a deadly pandemic then spreading throughout the United States which ultimately killed over thirty million worldwide. By the time she rallied and recovered, her already svelte frame had degenerated so dramatically that her costumes had to be refitted. But in hindsight, this pathetic and emaciated look proved perfect for the role. (more…)

“Wax on, wax off.” “He slimed me.” “Fortune and Glory, kid.” “I’ll be back.” “Don’t get him wet. Keep him out of bright light. And never feed him after midnight.”

It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has passed since that magical movie summer of 1984. The calender year of George Orwell’s dire dystopian nightmares had arrived, but instead of a nation writhing in servitude to Big Brother, America was delighting in the prosperity engineered by Big Gipper. Throughout the summer of ‘84, the greatest president of the twentieth century was cruising to the single largest electoral total ever amassed by a presidential candidate in our history, and “It’s Morning Again in America” commercials were playing on TV’s across the land to widespread approval. (more…)