Editorials
The Best Horror Movies You Should Be Streaming On Halloween
The annual holy day is upon us, and you know what that means – binging lots and lots of horror movies. With so many dozens of different channels and physical media and streaming services out there, narrowing down one’s choices during the festivities of Samhain can be a bit overwhelming, but fear not. Below is a list of some of the best and most exciting genre films available, and they’re all sure to create a cozy, blood-soaked night for two, or even serve as a proper background aesthetic for a loud party lit by the warm glow of a dozen jack-o-lanterns.
NETFLIX
Gerald’s Game
With the threat of the the dissolution of their marriage at hand, Jessie agrees to Gerald’s little game, the one where he ties to her to the bed with steel handcuffs and lets him carry out his wildest sexual fantasies. Despite being complicit at first, Jessie soon becomes deeply uncomfortable and picks a fight, only to find herself strapped to the bed with Gerald dead on the floor, and no one around for miles to hear her screams. Now, with no help in sight and time quickly ticking away, Jessie will have to overcome her worst fears and find a way out of this bed, before the cold claws of death come for her once and for all.
Cult of Chucky
He goes by Charles, but you can call him Chucky, and he lives within the confines of a small, mass-produced children’s toy. He says he’s your friend till the end, but what he really means is, he’s your friend until his murderous tendencies kick into high gear and he’s forced to let the serial killer within come to the surface and take you out while you’re sleeping. The latest in a long line of Chucky movies, Cult of Chucky is a fun take on the talking doll, with a wildly unpredictable ending to boot.
The Babysitter
Bee is the babysitter every young boy dreams of having watch him while his parents are away. She’s beautiful, full of life, and happens to on occasion spill the blood of the innocent in the name of the Dark Lord and carrying out his biddings. Don’t double cross her, because this babysitter won’t call your parents, she’ll just sacrifice you to Satan and make it look like an accident – but at least she lets you stay up late without ratting you out.
Raw
It’s only her first year at veterinary school, but already, Justine has discovered herself growing up in new and exciting ways she never thought possible. She’s thriving in all of her classes, getting along with her new roommate, and oh yeah, she’s realized that she has an unquenchable lust for blood.
Baskin
If you’re looking for something ferocious and bloody on this most holiest of horror-fueled days, look no further than Can Evrenol’s Baskin, the wicked crimson stained descent into pure Hell. Like a fever dream played out in real time, a group of policemen answer a call coming from an abandoned warehouse, but once they arrive on the scene, all they find is terror beyond anything they could’ve possibly imagined. Only the bravest will survive this sickening exercise in gore and wildly imaginative mayhem and debauchery.
HULU
Colossal
Down on her luck and recently dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Gloria heads back to her quant hometown, where she picks up a job at the local bar, reunites with old friends and discovers a strange ability to control a giant kaiju monster terrorizing the streets of Seoul, South Korea. Learning how to curve her drinking is one thing, but this newfound challenge in controlling the fates of the masses proves to be the greatest lesson Gloria has ever learned, along with not allowing the men around her to control her, for they prove to be just as toxic as the alcohol she nightly pours into her veins.
Hounds of Love
Here’s a heavier horror title for those who are looking for something a little more meaningful to watch on All Hallows Eve. Possibly based on some real life Australian murderers, Hounds of Love tells the heartbreaking tale of a little girl snatched off the streets and tortured in the dark dungeon of a serial killer couple’s guest room, but soon, it will be revealed that this unfortunate teen isn’t the only victim in this house.
The Blob
A remake of the 1958 classic, Chuck Russell, director of Dream Warriors, one of the best Nightmare on Elm Street entries, proves once again that he knows how to make a fun horror movie, and one that stands the test of time as it boosts some of the best practical effects to ever appear onscreen.
The Faculty
Many people are quick to forget the movie that holds up as one of Robert Rodriguez’s best, but no matter how many times this riff on the old Invasion of the Body Snatchers classic plays, it only grows to be more fun and hilarious with each viewing. It’s perfect for a group looking for a good time on Halloween.
Ghoulies
This is undoubtedly one of the goofiest movies ever made, but it’s hard to think of a better time at the movies than Luca Bercovici’s Ghoulies, the strange and sinister account of a man who becomes possessed by the desire to control demons upon his moving into a brand new apartment complex with his sweet little girlfriend.
AMAZON PRIME
I Bury the Living
Make sure that cemetery man Robert Kraft doesn’t mark your plot with a black pin on the map in his office, or you may be the next body to wind up six feet under on his property. He can’t quite explain it, but every single time Mr. Kraft claims a spot on the tedious representation of his graveyard, the person whose name he pinned soon finds themselves experiencing the big sleep, and if you’re not careful, you could be next.
Society
It’s hard not to feel like an outsider in a world that openly boasts the rich and the famous, but Bill has his own reasons for feeling like he doesn’t belong in this high-class society. He doesn’t seem to look like his parents, or resemble anyone in his family for that matter, especially when they form into a giant hybrid of human flesh and monstrous desire – but that’s what it takes to join the elite rankings of this exclusive club, and if he wants to belong, he’ll have to comply.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
What more do you need in a horror movie than a re-animated decapitated head that won’t stop flapping its jaw? Not much, as Dr. Bill Cortner soon discovers, just as he discovers the key to conducting successful transplants through the trial and error of keeping his lovely girlfriend’s noggin alive long after severing her spinal cord. Now, all he needs is a body to fit the brains.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
This year was a rough one for horror fans, but you can honor the great Tobe Hooper’s legacy with one of his best, and one of the greatest horror films of all time, about a small Texas town and how the peace was disrupted on a quiet evening out in the woods when a lone man with a chainsaw set out to terrorize a group of teens and leave no one standing in his wake.
SHUDDER
Blood Rage
Okay, so technically, this is a horror film that feels more at home on Thanksgiving rather than Halloween, but who can deny the pure power of the wholly ridiculous and delightfully malevolent Blood Rage? Just wait until you hear the line about cranberry sauce.
Count Dracula
Believe it or not, despite the fact that Christopher Lee played Dracula more than any other actor in the history of film, he actually didn’t approve of the most of the incarnations of his famous monster. Witness one of the rare occasions where he actually feels proud of his performance, and watch one of the lesser-known accounts of the legendary creature of the night in Jess Franco’s 1970 flick Count Dracula.
Nightmare City
It’s been a little over a week since we lost master filmmaker Umberto Lenzi. Much of his wonderful work is hard to find, but thanks to Shudder, you can stream one of his very best within seconds.
Almost Human
Like a mash-up of Fire in the Sky and The Terminator, this account of a man being beamed up into the heavens and spat out onto the dusty earth again plays as one of the most thrilling sci-fi action films in quite some time. Mark Fisher may have left this plane as a humble earthling, but what he comes back as doesn’t quite measure up to human. Turn up the volume and throw back a shot for this one.
The Blood Spattered Bride
Newlywed Susan is shocked and saddened to learn that her newfound husband’s sexual games aren’t quite what she had in mind, nor what she deems comfortable bedroom advances. Lost and unsure of how to handle this problem, Susan seeks out the aid of a long deceased partner in crime – Carmilla, the spirit of a woman who killed her husband many years ago in this very same manor.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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