Prepare to be well and truly terrified with our countdown of the top 10 Halloween movies of all time
Monsters, serial killers and a parody musical – something wicked to watch this way comes
10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Full-on terror not for you? Richard O’Brien’s musical romp is both a loving homage to the horror B-movies of the 1950s and a fantastic film in its own right. The plot is ludicrous, but the songs and cross-dressing costumes make it enormous fun – if not in any way scary.
9. Wolf Creek (2005)
Supposedly based on true events, Wolf Creek is a brutal tale of three backpackers hunted by a serial killer in the Australian outback is not for the squeamish. Visceral, bloody and about as violent as the censors will allow, it’s proper hide-behind-your-hands-on-the-sofa stuff.
8. Paranormal Activity (2007)
Owing much to The Blair Witch Project, this “found footage” movie went on to become the most profitable film ever made. Using amateur cameras to record the weird goings-on at home, the slow escalation of creepiness draws you in and then scares you witless.
7. Halloween (1978)
The essential October 31 evening in movie set the template for many horror films that followed. The plot is simple: popular high-school student (Jamie Lee Curtis) is stalked by masked slasher Michael Myers. The film is so packed full of shocks that you won’t want to watch it with the lights off.
6. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Roman Polanski’s psychological chiller is one of the greatest films ever made – horror or otherwise. When Rosemary (Mia Farrow) falls pregnant but can’t remember the conception, the film becomes just as frightening as the worst of the slasher flicks. Guaranteed to haunt you.
Available on Sky Cinema now.
5. The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece is essential Halloween viewing. As dad to a family looking after an isolated hotel over the winter, Jack Nicholson’s mesmeric performance of descent into madness is scary enough – then add terrifying twins and corridors of blood…
Available on Sky Cinema now.
4. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
This low-budget tale of three friends lost in the woods while researching the legend of the Blair Witch was shot on camcorder and spawned a whole mythology of its own. Simple, harrowing, masterfully paced and with a horribly abrupt ending, it deserved all the hype on its release – and some of us haven’t camped since.
3. The Exorcist (1973)
Some of the special effects may look a little dated now, but William Friedkin’s simple yet utterly terrifying tale of a girl (Linda Blair) possessed by a demon still has the capacity to shock. Intense, claustrophobic and packed full of jump-out-of-your seat moments, it rightly deserved its 10 Academy Awards nominations.
2. Saw (2004)
The film starts with a twisted premise: two men wake to find themselves chained up, with one ordered to kill the other or his family will die. The only escape? A hacksaw – not to cut through the chains, but to saw off their own ankles. From there things only get more gory.
Available on Sky Cinema now.
1.A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
The devastating idea behind this film – that you’re most in danger when you’re asleep – is what made A Nightmare on Elm Street a sensation when it was first released, and what keeps it so scary today. And if serial killer Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) later went on to become a bit of a pantomime villain, for the length of this first film in the franchise at least, he is one of the genre’s most genuinely frightening monsters ever.
Available on Sky Cinema now. The new feature-length film The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again is released on Friday on Sky Cinema.
