Halloween movies

Every year Halloween comes around and I achieve an unreasonable level of giddiness.

It’s finally seasonally appropriate to watch all my favorite horror flicks drenched in buckets of blood and psychotic murderers, monsters and mongrels.

Too often horror is reduced to remakes and gratuitous nudity.

So, when a truly terrifying and authentically artistic horror film is released, it should get attention.

Here’s a selection of essential Halloween movies for your spooking pleasure.

1. Halloween (1978)

The one, the only, the true epitome of the horror/slasher genre. “Halloween” is simply the greatest scary movie ever made.

From the opening reveal where we watch a grisly murder through the eyes of a child killer to the epic “Is he still alive?!” ending that was actually original in the late 1970s, director John Carpenter took horror and independent filmmaking to new heights.

But the true brilliance of “Halloween” is Michael Myers.

Why is the masked man so chilling? We don’t know why he’s killing people.

There’s no motive, no reason. Just unadulterated madness. That, my friends, is true fear.

2. The Exorcist (1973)

Filmmakers have, with varying amounts of success, tried to create the new “it” horror villain throughout the decades.

But who could be scarier than the original bad guy — the devil?

The first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, “The Exorcist” tells the story of a young girl possessed by a demonic being, her actress mother and the troubled priest who must help them.

From the brief flashes of a horrifying demonic face cut into the film to the famous “pea soup” projectile vomit scene, this one is just as disturbing as it must have been 40 years ago.

This is where watching horror between your fingers was born.

3. The Descent (2005)

Neil Marshall’s thriller is the closest someone has come to matching the hey-day of horror films of the 1970s and 1980s.

Beginning as a tale of six friends lost in the caves of North Carolina, the film quickly descends into madness as the women are picked off one by one by blind, caving-dwelling creatures.

Though the monsters are terrifying in their own right, “The Descent” attains better scares when it questions the landscape of human nature and if we have the disposition to help one another or save our own skins.

4. Jennifer’s Body (2009)

I’m counting this one because it was marketed heavily as a horror film, though it’s far from one.

Penned by Academy Award-winner Diablo Cody, this Megan Fox vehicle is downright hilarious.

The movie is filled with the same wit Cody brought to “Juno,” and there are some genuine scares and jumps as Fox’s Jennifer devours boys to stay vibrant, and her best gal friend, Needy,  attempts to rescue her damned soul.

This is the kind of film that will find a cult audience within the next decade, and let’s hope it will be celebrated for the masterpiece it is down the line.