Enjoy These Off the Beaten Path Horror Movies for Halloween
This Halloween weekend, make some popcorn, settle in on your couch, and watch new spine-tingling horror movies.
My favorite era of horror is back when blood looked like tempera paint and special effects pushed the possibilities of makeup and animatronics before digital technology was the go-to. It’s a time that saw Hammer’s decline and the start of some of the largest franchises–Halloween, Friday the 13th, Alien, Nightmare on Elm Street. These are not those movies.
This list has cutting-edge effects, great performances, stories that push boundaries, and some scenes that will definitely raise the hair on your arms–maybe not all of those things at once, mind you. Even though they’re not really well known, they influenced the decades of movies that came after them.
Deep Red – Dario Argento (1975)
This Giallo horror was released at the height of the genre’s popularity. The camera work is kinetic; you get first-person views of some disturbing and gory kills, and it has an interesting and complex story. Deep Red is also the first partnership between the Goblin and Argento–the band’s sound has become synonymous with director’s films.
A psychic medium is brutally murdered, and musician Marcus Daly feels a need to solve the case, since he was the one who discovered the body. Working with him is reporter Gianna Brezzi, who hopes for a big scoop by solving the case. When one of Marcus’s own friends ends up murdered at the hands of the same killer, the resourceful pair realize they must work fast to uncover the murderer’s identity or they might serve as the maniac’s next victims.
Lifeforce – Tobe Hooper (1985)
Hooper started his career with the iconic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and went on to make Poltergeist. In Lifeforce, he adds an extra-terrestrial element to his favorite genre. This movie is an underrated member of the Cannon Films catalog. It has some fantastic special effects for the era and Patrick Stewart.
When a space mission involving American and British astronauts encounters an alien craft, the humanoids within are brought aboard the shuttle. Back on Earth, one of the extraterrestrials, who appears to be a gorgeous woman, proceeds to suck the life force out of various Londoners, turning the town into a city of roaming half-dead people. When Tom Carlsen, a surviving astronaut, realizes what is happening, he sets out to stop the ruthless alien presence.
Posession – Andrzej Zulawski (1981)
Heartbreak channeled into raw emotion and primal horror. Possession helped spawn art house horror movies like Dead Ringers, Antichrist, Black Swan, and Hereditary. It also includes an early Sam Niell–Event Horizon was not his first foray into horror.
After Anna reveals to her husband, Mark, that she is having an affair, she leaves him and their son. Mark is devastated and seeks out Heinrich, the man who cuckolded him, only to receive a beating. After a series of violent confrontations between Mark and Anna, Mark hires a private investigator to follow her. Anna descends into madness, and it’s soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger secret — one that is both inexplicable and shocking.
The Blood on Satan’s Claw – Piers Haggard (1971)
This folk horror has a Lovecraftian descent into chaos feel to it and a little Hammer attitude thrown in. It’s great as a double feature with Witchfinder General or The Witch.
When a mysterious corpse is accidentally dug up by a boy in a small town, a group of local teens starts acting very strangely. The adolescents, led by a girl named Angel, are convinced the corpse was once possessed. Hoping to get in touch with the devil through the body, the teens act out a series of demonic rituals that causes a stir among the townspeople. When word of the satanic activity spreads, certain parents start trying to lock up the kids behind the spooky stunts.
The Changeling – Peter Medak (1980)
That movie you saw on late-night TV but didn’t catch the title. The Changeling is a mix of classic mystery and haunted house. It’s tense, atmospheric, and has a level of craftsmanship you don’t see in modern horror.
Composer John Russell is vacationing with his family when a car accident kills his wife and daughter. Distraught with grief, Russell leaves his home in New York City for a giant, secluded house near Seattle. Soon Russell starts to feel the presence of a ghost, a boy who drowned in the bathtub there. Russell seeks the assistance of Claire Norman, who led him to the house initially, in uncovering the secrets of the boy’s death.
Santa Sangre – Alejandro Jodorowsky (1989)
Jodorowsky weaves a story of a serial killer and a coming-of-age tale with his love of mime and Gnosticism in what may be his most accessible film. It has heart, gore, and a bunch of weird. If you want to explore a totally different world and push your boundaries, this is your movie.
In Mexico, the traumatized son of a knife-thrower and a trapeze artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless mother – the leader of a strange religious cult – and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name as he becomes “her arms.”
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Martin – George A. Romero (1977)
Serial killer or vampire? Martin is missing Romero’s signature social satire, but it’s no less disturbing. Make it a double feature with Vampire’s Kiss.
Young Martin is entirely convinced that he is an 84-year-old blood-sucking vampire. Without fangs or mystical powers, Martin injects women with sedatives and drinks their blood through wounds inflicted with razor blades. After moving to Braddock, Penn., to live with his superstitious uncle, who also believes Martin is a vampire, Martin tries to prey exclusively on criminals and thugs but stumbles when he falls for a housewife.
The Devil Rides Out – Terence Fisher (1968)
Christopher Lee is the good guy in this movie from director Terence Fisher and writer Richard Matheson. It’s a classic good vs evil story and one of Hammer Horror’s last great movies with fantastic production.
When the Duc de Richleau and Rex Van Ryn arrive at a fashionable party thrown by de Richleau’s protégé, Simon Aron, they soon realize that the party is in fact a gathering of a Satanic cult, led by the high priest Mocata, that plans to initiate the beautiful Tanith that night. It’s up to de Richleau and Van Ryn to defeat the devil-worshiping Mocata and save innocent young Tanith and the others from a terrible fate.
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Tetsuo: The Iron Man – Shin’ya Tsukamoto (1989)
Director/writer/producer/editor Shin’ya Tsukamoto filmed the first Tetsuo over 18 months in his apartment on 16mm. It’s got the hallmarks of low-budget filmmaking, but they all work for the story. It also opened the door for a new wave of Japanese horror.
A “metal fetishist,” driven mad by the maggots wriggling in the wound he’s made to embed metal into his flesh, runs out into the night and is accidentally run down by a Japanese businessman and his girlfriend. The pair dispose of the corpse in hopes of quietly moving on with their lives. However, the businessman soon finds that he is now plagued by a vicious curse that transforms his flesh into iron.
The Beyond – Lucio Fulci (1981)
You can’t make a list like this without including at least one over-the-top Fulci splatter movie.
A young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural “accidents,” she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to Hell.
