by Bryan Coates

Created on: May 11, 2011

Let's be honest here. Good horror movies, not just Halloween movies, are hard to find these days. If you are like me, you can find some life saving graces in the more blood ravaged flicks such as the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or other various remakes, but what you really enjoy are the darker films- the ones that keep you in suspense and don't always show you what it is that's out there, waiting for you behind the shed in the back yard. These are the ones that remain part of my Halloween Fright Fest and return to my screen year after year in October.

A classic and potentially overly obvious choice is Halloween. The John Carpenter film, not the Rob Zombie version for all you newbies out there. Something that many horror filmmakers in the 1970s through the early 90s did right was to make the films dark. They played with shadows and used the lack of special effects technology to their advantage. The result is chilling, because what you see on screen is often exactly how you would see it. And there is very little blood- why bother? The seemingly endless bloodbaths that are today's horror films detract from the value of the scare. Halloween focuses more on the scene itself.

Of course the classic Michael Myers character has become a staple of Halloween for over 30 years; the fact that the film (along with every sequel) occurs on Halloween, makes it a perfect choice for watching on October 31st. If you are really in the mood, try the Halloween movie marathon, excluding Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (which has absolutely nothing to do with the Michael Myers plot or any of its characters).

1959's House On Haunted Hill starring Vincent Price is another favorite. (Again, not the 1999 remake starring Peter Gallagher and Geoffrey Rush. You really have to try hard to make a movie that terrible.) Horror movies were at the peak of greatness at this time and Vincent Price was at the tip top of his career. His voice (Yes, that iconic voice that we all love and know so well from Michael Jackson's Thriller, which is a great music video to watch on Halloween.) lent itself so magnificently to the overall tone of horror movies that it was impossible not to love them. House On Haunted Hill is simply a haunted house tale about five people, invited to spend one night in a haunted house. Should anyone survive the night, they will be given $10,000 by the man who invited them: Frederick Loren (Price). Throughout the film, the guests explore the house, attempting to discover

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