I love this time of year more than anything! I love everything about this Halloween month. I love the pumpkins and the costumes and the traditions. I love how Halloween seems to take over the month of October. But most all, I love all the horror movies! Every year I looked forward to the Halloween specials on TV. The horror movie marathons. The late Elvira movie nights. The midnight screening at the movie theaters. The horror movie remakes that are sometimes not as horrible as you would expect. The newest Saw movie! I also love the special Halloween episodes of my favorite sitcoms. Roseanne did a Halloween episode every year. Roseanne is now long gone but you can still catch it all the time in repeats on TV or you can get all the Halloween episodes together on one DVD. This is one of the many things that I watch every October. I also watch all the old Elvira Movie Macabre movies that were put out on DVD. Now Elvira is back with her show on TV! She looks exactly the same and she is just as funny as ever. Her show is on at midnight on Saturdays. And she was also nice enough to film a little episode of What's In My Bag. It just got put up on the website...so check it out here. I love Elvira and love just hearing that theme music! I remember watching Elvira as a kid late at night. I just thought she was the coolest thing. She for sure was instrumental in my love of horror movies....

There are certain horror movies that I love to watch around Halloween time. I obviously like to watch the Paul Lynde Halloween Special. It is an amazing piece of television history. I watch Mad Monster Party every year as well. The original Halloween movie is still one of my favorites too. It is still scary even after watching it one hundred times! I just love the feel of the first part of the movie -- so brilliant and perfect. The best horror movies came out of the 70s and 80s...at least, that is my opinion, but I guess it just really depends on what decade you grew up in.

In honor of the season, I present to you my list of my top favorite 30 movies to watch around Halloween...Some of these are guilty pleasures, like Final Destination. Many of them are movies I saw when I was younger that still manage to freak me out. They are all classics, to me at least. They are essential movies that everyone who loves horror movies should see....


Ghostbusters
Nightmare Before Christmas
Shivers
Witchboard
Sleepaway Camp



Slumber Party Massacre
Final Destination
Saw
Martin
Scream



Amityville Horror
Manhunter
Friday the 13th
Jaws
The Omen



The Birds
Phenomena
Poltergeist
The Fog
The Thing



Children of the Corn
Dawn of the Dead
Nightmare on Elm Street
The Shining
Psycho



Carrie
Rosemary's Baby
The Exorcist
Silence of the Lambs
Halloween



Many of these films are starting to come out on blu-ray. Both The Exorcist and Psycho are two of my favorites and they both just came out on blu-ray this month! I also just watched House of the Devil for the first time last week. It came out last year but has the feel of a late 70s or early 80s horror movie and it was brilliant. House was just released by Criterion this week. It's a haunted house horror thriller movie from Japan that originally came out in 1977. You can read Kelly's excellent review of it right here. The Slumber Party Massacre 3 DVD set also just came out from Shout Factory. I also highly recommend the new documentary Never Sleep Again. I just finished watching it this morning. It is a new super in-depth documentary about the Nightmare On Elm Street series. I love these movies and it was super fun learning more about the making of all them. It is narrated by Heather Langenkamp and features interviews with most every cast member from all the movies. They really did a great job of tracking everyone down! They even found the hall monitor from the first movie! Hope you all have an awesome Halloween week! I have some movies to go watch now. You can find all the above movies at any of the Amoeba stores. Some are available on our website with special pricing just for you...




buy Never Sleep Again-Collector's Edition DVD








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buy Psycho 50th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray








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