Horror movies are a staple of the Halloween season. Audiences typically love them or hate them — but does it have to be that way? Film critic William Bibbiani has recommendations for classic movies that balance both trick and treat.
"Some people think that a real horror movie is a movie with a lot of murders in it, or a movie that is oppressively bleak. There is no happy ending. And the simple truth is that the only really defining quality of the horror genre is that they are movies that confrontationally explore our fears and our anxieties. And you can do that without violence, you can do that with violence. … You can do that with humor, you can do that in a very depressing way.”
He adds that he partly wanted to become a film critic to help make the horror genre more nuanced, and show that there’s something out there for everyone.
Bibbiani’s picks:
Cat People
This 1942 classic is about an American man who becomes attracted to an immigrant woman, but she warns him that she has a lot of baggage and won’t be a good partner. He reassures her that everything will be great with the right person, and they marry.
“When this movie originally came out, the general vibe was, ‘Oh, it's so scary that this woman is so unavailable and mysterious. And oh, will this guy survive having married this horrible ice queen?’
Nowadays … you realize this is actually a really potent queer analog. … The horror, the violence, the transforming into a cat — which for a while, you're not sure if it's literal or not — that is something that only comes out when people force her to be something that she's not.
… This is a film that is considered by many historians to have invented … the fakeout scare. So a person [is] walking along and you think they're about to be attacked by a giant cat, and then it turns out it's a bus. And that is what's called the Lewton Bus. And anytime you see a horror movie where someone's like, ‘Oh, what could it be? What could it be?’ Boom, it's a cat. Going back to Cat People. So it's historically significant. It's still genuinely relevant.”
The Fly
Based on a short story by Katherine Mansfield, this film originally came out in 1958 and was remade by David Cronenberg in 1986. Starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, it follows a scientist who develops a means of teleportation. He decides to transport himself, but a common house fly also makes its way into the machine. The tech doesn't know how to handle two things at once, so it splices them.
“In the original The Fly … they are spliced actually into two separate beings. So the doctor gets a fly head and a fly arm, and he's trying to solve the problem before his brain starts to become too much of a fly for him to actually solve anything. It's really really suspenseful. It has one of the best endings in movie history — the original.
… David Cronenberg, in the 1980s, remade it and really zeroed in on the idea of the scientist’s deterioration. It is a story about transforming into a monster, and instead of that being cool and liberating or just scary because they can hurt other people, it's a story about how sad it is to see your body go. It’s got a lot of incredible, really goopy, gross makeup effects in it. But ultimately, the real story is Jeff Goldblum, who at first is so vibrant and alive, just staring at himself in fascination as his body starts transforming more and more into a fly, and realizing that he's dying. This movie came out during the 1980s saga of the AIDS epidemic, and this was really hitting people exceptionally hard.”
Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
In this 1998 flick, Cassandra Peterson stars as Elvira, who loses her job at a TV station, then learns of an inheritance from her aunt, so she goes to small-town America, where everyone is ultra-conservative and afraid that she, as a sexually-forward person, will corrupt their kids. It turns out that her aunt was a witch who left her a spellbook, and in using it to make a casserole, she creates a monster by mistake.
“It should be just a relic of the 1980s. … Cassandra Peterson is so funny. Just her comic timing is impeccable. And the jokes just come so fast. And the innuendo is so like Mae West-charming. … If you're looking for a horror comedy that's really light on the horror, but still has a gothic sensibility, I recommend this movie.”
Ghostwatch
This TV special premiered on the BBC in 1992 and then was banned in the U.K. for 10 years. It was meant to look like a live, Halloween special where a TV crew was investigating an allegedly haunted London location and interviewing supernatural experts.
“Here's the deal. It's not violent. It is scary, though. …This is probably the scariest movie aside from David Cronenberg's that I'm recommending. … This is one of those wonderful movies where once the horror kicks in, you're not entirely sure when it stopped being a fun lark and when it started being genuinely frightening.
...There's a ghost in that movie called Pipes. You can see it 13 times in the movie. To date, people have only confirmed eight of those sightings. There's five sightings of this ghost in the movie that have yet to be confirmed. They're hidden somewhere in a mirror reflection or something. So you can go hunting yourself. And so it's kind of an interactive experience as well.
It was like the Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds. People watched this and they missed the opening where they said it was a movie. They thought it was real. People got really freaked out.”
Over the Garden Wall
This is a 2014 series of 10-minute episodes that all make up one movie. Elijah Wood plays an older brother who’s lost in the woods with his younger brother. As they wander, they encounter scary scenarios that occur in unexpected ways.
“A lot of people watch this movie every single Halloween, I'm one of them. I want people to know just how marvelous this movie is. It's scary in the way that you could show it at a kids slumber party. … The actual emotional core of it between Elijah Wood and his brother is really, ultimately very sensitive. And it feels so complete. .. It's something that a lot of people can enjoy. The music is really interesting and wonderful. The cast is fantastic.”