the following is a short list of scary movies for halloween. i'll post more during the month as they come to me. these aren't reviews of movies but ideas if you want them for films to view for the haunting month. idiosyncratic and highly debatable my idea is to present a few flicks that perhaps impart that sort of vibe and ambiance that i associate with halloween: creepiness and euphoria.

curse of the blair witch

this pseudo-documentary was first broadcast on the sci fi channel as a lead up to the release of the blair witch project and is an extra on the dvd version. with a running time of little less than an hr this film is a rather creepy, yet goofy exposition of the blair witch curse from its beginning in the colonial era and ends with the disappearance of the three student filmmakers that star in the main movie. with stock footage and fake newscasts that round out the ken burns kind of filmmaking i got hooked on it and this short is often on heavy rotation in my house.

house by the cemetery

lucio fulci was a hack director but a sumptuous hack who made some of the most gorgeous and violent horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s. the best of fulci's work are movies with the narrative broken in favor of rich imagery. this flick is the story of a scientist turned into a monster who lives in the basement of the house of the title. a younger scientist and his family rent the house as the father does his research who then discovers the secrets of the house. a hackneyed story is delivered via surrealist techniques that blend past and present so that when you get to the end you'll scratch yr head in confusion and amazement.

killer klowns from outer space

yes, the movie is just as stupid as the title implies. released in the late 1980s this movie hearkens to the era of drive-in cinema where the viewers can nod out then come back to the story with little lost in-between. yet, this flick is a delirious sequence of bad acting and gags that'll have you begging for more. and it capitalizes on the very fact that clowns are just freaking scary.

the eye

asian horror cinema is in a renaissance. this creepy gem is directed by the hong kong bros. pang: danny and oxide and is a prime example of the genre. the movie is about a blind young woman who gets cornea transplants from a dead girl. the film moves from one hallucinogenic vision to the next until we come to the surprising and surprisingly beautiful denouement. i read somewhere that there is a u.s. production in the works. avoid it. like most hollywood remakes of asian horror films such as the ring and the grudge the originals are superior both in style and content to their u.s. remodels. u.s. horror movies would be better served by using writers with original ideas inspired by asian cinema rather than remaking them in an inferior fashion.

evil dead trap

this is another movie that is in heavy rotation in lopezland. released in 1988 this japanese flick is a chiaroscuro of moving cameras, quick editing, pulsing score and lotsa gore. director toshiharu ikeda has an obvious love for dario argento and sam raimi, the latter of which is underscored by the title in english. the plot is rather thin but frankly if all horror movies were made using logic rather than emotion than nothing scary would happen. if the characters in horror flicks used common sense, such as never going into an abandoned house or factory in the middle of the night, then many of the pleasures to be had watching horror flicks would evaporate. instead we would probably get dry treatises on the nature of reality and illusion rather than meaty, sweaty and colorful films such as this. the heroine, nami, is a late-night talk show host who gets a video of a snuff film. evil dead trap opens with this film in all its horrid detail. the filmmaker of the snuff movie also photographs precise directions to a factory on the outskirts of tokyo. nami of couse is a journalist so she gathers up a band of goofballs to investigate. you can guess the rest of the plot. and yet by the end of the movie the plot folds on itself as to what appears to be a straightforward slasher film becomes another thing altogether. if shakespeare had seen this movie we would know the source of his famous line: there are more things in heaven and earth than what is dreamt of in yr philosophy. or something to that effect.