Haunted Summer

Summer also brings to mind spooky stuff. Even more than Halloween which I was never allowed to participate in as a child. Perhaps it’s because my first experiences with horror movies were in the summer, when we were out of school and I was staying with friends. Me and the girls would watch a scary movie then go out in the middle of the night and walk around the countryside on one of my friend’s farms. We would swim in ponds, and explore, all the while being so scared! In the daytime we went to an old falling-down farmhouse and explored it. I remember the back room had a huge hole in the floor and almost no roof. The wallpaper was so thick it came off in giant chunks, and closely resembled the wallpaper in the LSD horse scene from the Twin Peaks movie. Spooky.

Anyway, I love scary movies and with my daughter one day wrote all my favorites from each decade in lists. Everyone has very different movie tastes, and yours probably won’t match mine, but maybe you will find some gems. I am including all scary/spooky/mystery/thriller movies that I would watch anytime, with little hesitation. Many are movies that I had a hard time finding, or aren’t on basic horror lists. There are a lot of kid movies on here because I had to get my kids to love scary stuff without totally scarring them. (P.S. Don’t fall asleep while your kids are awake watching “Watcher in the Woods.” The older DVD automatically plays the alternate endings with an alien very much inspired by the original “Alien!”)

Anyway, this list is very organic, changing as I change, discovering new favorites (recently that would be “Next of Kin” 1982; a great Aussie haunted house movie). I will try to update it periodically.

If you like any of these or have one to add let me know in the comments!

1900-1939
A Trip to the Moon, 1902
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1921
Nosferatu, 1922
The Phantom of the Opera, 1925
The Cat and the Canary, 1927
The Lodger, 1927
The Man Who Laughs, 1928
M, 1931
Dracula, 1931
Frankenstein, 1931
The Mummy, 1932
Freaks, 1932
The Old, Dark House, 1932
The Invisible Man, 1933
The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935
The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1935
The Lady Vanishes, 1938

1940-1949
Rebecca, 1940
The Wolf Man, 1941
Suspicion, 1941
Saboteur, 1942
Shadow of a Doubt, 1943
Gaslight, 1944
The Lodger, 1944
The Uninvited, 1944
Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944
Double Indemnity, 1944
Blythe Spirit, 1945
Spellbound, 1945
Notorious, 1946
The Spiral Staircase, 1946
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948

1950-1959
Strangers on a Train, 1951
The House on Telegraph Hill, 1951
Dial M for Murder, 1954
Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954
Them, 1954
Rear Window, 1954
To Catch a Thief, 1955
The Trouble with Harry, 1955
Night of the Hunter, 1955
The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956
The Blob, 1958
North by Northwest, 1959

1960-1969
Psycho, 1960
Little Shop of Horrors, 1960
Midnight Lace, 1960
Seance on a Wet Afternoon, 1961
Carnival of Souls, 1962
Cape Fear, 1962
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, 1962
Murder, She Said, 1962
The Birds, 1963
The Haunting, 1963
Murder at the Gallop, 1963
Murder Most Foul, 1964
Murder Ahoy!, 1964
Help!, 1965
Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1965
Die, Die, My Darling, 1965
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, 1966
Wait Until Dark, 1967
Spider Baby, 1967
Rosemary’s Baby, 1968
Night of the Living Dead, 1968
Twisted Nerve, 1968

1970-1979
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, 1971
Frenzy, 1972
Endless Night, 1972
Legend of Hell House, 1973
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974
Young Frankenstein, 1974
Black Christmas, 1974
The Strange and Deadly Occurrence, 1974
Jaws, 1975
Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975
Grey Gardens, 1975
The Beales of Grey Gardens, 1975
Escape to Witch Mountain, 1975
Deep Red (Profundo Russo), 1976
Carrie, 1976
The Omen, 1976
Burnt Offerings, 1976
Family Plot, 1976
Suspiria, 1977
Halloween, 1978
Return to Witch Mountain, 1978
The Evil, 1978
Phantasm, 1979

1980-1989
The Changeling, 1980
The Shining, 1980
Friday the 13th, 1980
The Collector, 1980
Inferno, 1980
The Clue According to Sherlock
(The Treasure of Alpheus T. Winterbourne), 1980 (TV)
The Fog, 1980
Watcher in the Woods, 1981
The Fun House, 1981
Friday the 13th, Part 2, 1981
The Haunting of Harrington House, 1981 (TV)
The Haunting of Julia (Full Circle), 1981
The Nesting, 1981
The Thing, 1982
Next of Kin, 1982
Poltergeist, 1982
Christine, 1983
Gremlins, 1984
Ghostbusters, 1984
The Goonies, 1985
Return to Oz, 1985
Clue, 1985
Haunted Honeymoon, 1986
The Lost Boys, 1987
Phantasm II, 1988
Alice (Neco Z Alenky) 1988

1990-1999
The Reflecting Skin, 1990
The Silence of the Lambs, 1991
The Addams Family, 1991
Dracula, 1992
Twin Peaks, 1992
The Witches, 1992
Candyman, 1992
The Addams Family Values, 1993
So I Married an Axe Murderer, 1993
Manhattan Murder Mystery, 1993
Interview with the Vampire, 1994
The Frighteners, 1996
The Haunting, 1999
The Blair Witch Project, 1999
Stir of Echoes, 1999

2000-2009
28 Days Later, 2000
What Lies Beneath, 2000
The Devil’s Backbone, 2001
Session 9, 2001
Shadow of the Vampire, 2001
The Others, 2001
Identity, 2003
Shaun of the Dead, 2004
Frailty, 2005
Wolf Creek, 2005
High Tension, 2005
Tideland, 2005
Skeleton Key, 2006
Cloverfield, 2008
The Orphanage, 2008
A Haunting in Connecticut, 2009

2010-2019
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, 2010
Lake Mungo, 2010
Insidious, 2011
The Awakening, 2011
The Conjuring, 2013
As Above, So Below, 2014
Housebound, 2014
Crimson peak, 2015
Train to Busan, 2016
10 Cloverfield Lane, 2016
A Quiet Place, 2018
Us, 2019

2020-2029

???