Halloween
Movie Recommendations
Film & Video | Horror-ble
Films Index | Halloween
Store Index | Halloween
Haunted House Movies see all Horror Film DVDs An abandoned building. A spooky mansion. A dark submarine or an insane asylum? Ok, so maybe they technically are not all haunted houses, but they are definitely haunted places with some supernatural spooky stuff going on or "people" that shouldn't be there giving chills to the unsuspecting characters in the movie, and thrills to you as you watch these scary movies that fit into that old famiiar "haunted house" genre film. Perfect movies for Halloween viewing or for a dark and stormy night... |
|
More Horror Movie Posters |
|
Buying
DVDS of your favorite films is always fun. But if you're short on cash
for new DVDs and even the great deal Netflix offers is beyond your budget,
you might want to try Peerflix,
a peer-to-peer trading network for DVDs. It's the new popular way to get
the most out of the DVDs you own by trading those you already watched and
no longer want, for others that you'd like to watch. There are no subscription
fees and we offer a risk-free trial, followed by one free complimentary
DVD sent to the user on account activation.
Haunted House Movies
A
Tale of Two Sisters-DVD (Deluxe Edition)
Two young sisters recovering from an unnamed trauma must face a mysterious past in this excellent South Korean shocker. A worldwide hit upon its release and based on an old Korean fairy tale; two sisters (wonderfully played by Su-jeong Lim and Geun-yeong Mun) come to live with their cold and distant father and turn-on-a-dime stepmother in a house where nothing is as it seems. A wonderfully haunting score, starkly beautiful imagery, and a labyrinthine plot that twists and turns at every dark corner all set the stage for a riveting and often terrifying guessing game of a movie. Equal parts drama, mystery, and ghost story, A Tale of Two Sisters is a richly complex and challenging cinematic treat that may very well demand repeat viewings.
see More Asian Horror films | More Foreign Horror Films
A welcome throwback to the spooky traditions of Jack Clayton's The Innocents and Robert Wise's The Haunting, Alejandro Amenábar's The Others favors atmosphere, sound, and suggestion over flashy special effects. Set in 1945 on a fog-enshrouded island off the British coast, the film begins with a scream as Grace (Nicole Kidman) awakens from some unspoken horror, perhaps arising from her religiously overprotective concern for her young children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley). The children are hypersensitive to light and have lived in a musty manor with curtains and shutters perpetually drawn. With Grace's husband presumably lost at war, this ominous setting perfectly accommodates a sense of dreaded expectation, escalating when three strangers arrive in response to Grace's yet-unposted request for domestic help. Led by housekeeper Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), this mysterious trio is as closely tied to the house's history as Grace's family is--as are the past occupants seen posthumously posed in a long-forgotten photo album. With her justly acclaimed performance, Kidman maintains an emotional intensity that fuels the film's supernatural underpinnings. And while Amenábar's pacing is deliberately slow, it befits the tone of penetrating anxiety, leading to a twist that extends the story's reach from beyond the grave. Amenábar unveiled a similarly effective twist in his Spanish thriller Open Your Eyes (remade by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky), but where that film drew debate, The Others is finely crafted to provoke well-earned goose bumps and chills down the spine.
If Clive Barker had written an episode of The Twilight Zone, it might have looked something like Cube. A handful of strangers wake up inside a bizarre maze, having been spirited there during the night. They quickly learn that they have to navigate their way through a series of chambers if they have any hope of escape, but the problem is that there are lethal traps awaiting if they choose their route unwisely. Having established some imaginative and grisly punishments in store for the hostages, cowriter and director Vincenzo Natali turns his attention to the characters, for whom being trapped amplifies their best and worst qualities. The film is, in fact, similar to a famous episode of Rod Serling's old television series, though Natali's explanation for why these poor people are being put through hell is a lot closer to the spirit of The X-Files. Cube has some solid moments of suspense and drama, and the sets are appropriately striking: one is tempted to believe at first the characters are lost inside a computer chip.
More Science Fiction Horror Films
Based on the Robert Marasco novel of the same name, Dan Curtis's eerie movie puts a spin on celluloid haunted-house sagas. The well-adjusted Rolf family (father Oliver Reed, mother Karen Black, aunt Bette Davis, and young son Lee H. Montgomery) rent a huge old summer house only to find that its spirit is in control of the estate. The requisite sinister proceedings appear--including a possessed pool and the vision of a sinister hearse driver following Reed--that disrupt the family's unity. Black also falls under the spell of an elderly woman whom she is required to take care of, but no one ever sees. While it may not be as overtly shocking as other ghost tales, Burnt Offerings has a creepiness that gets under your skin thanks to good performances and the dreamy, soft-focus photography.
|
Director James Whale deftly combined dry, sardonic humor with classic horror elements to produce the richly entertaining black comedy "The Old Dark House". By turns darkly witty and genuinely creepy, the film benefits from a razor-sharp script, moody cinematography, and uniformly fine performances in addition to Whale's creative directorial flourishes. Simply summarized, the plot involves a group of stranded travelers who take refuge in an isolated Welsh mansion owned by a dangerously eccentric family during a terrific storm; before the night passes, members of the group will encounter terror, romance and even death as the thunder, wind and rain rage outside. |
When a recent widower (the wonderfully overemphatic George C. Scott ) moves into an antique Washington mansion, his realization that he may not be the only resident leads him toward a deadly secret that refuses to remain buried....The best haunted-house film since the legendary Haunting, this potent, classy combination of the mystery and horror genres eschews explicit gore and dumb shocks in exchange for a subtle creepiness that occasionally builds to a terrifying peak (watch out for that seance scene!). The result is a satisfyingly intelligent horror film with an intriguing dash of Watergate-era paranoia. |
The Amityville Horror (Widescreen Special Edition) (2005) Most horror movies establish an atmosphere of normalcy, which they gradually rupture with spooky or creepy or stomach-churning images. The Amityville Horror, a remake of the 1979 movie based on the true story of George and Kathy Lutz, about a possessed house that torments them when they move into it--tosses normalcy out the window in the first five minutes, unleashing a nonstop barrage of unsettling camera angles, decaying wood and stained wallpaper, half-glimpsed shadows in motion, fast edits of grotesque ghosts, and dozens of other horror-movie devices. With lucid visions and evil voices swirling through George's head, the house comes alive in a terrifying climax that finds him carrying out the spine-chilling events that would become forever known as The Amityville Horror. |
When a group of criminals on the run after a bank robbery take refuge in an abandoned house, they have no idea what evil they have come upon. Isolated and presumed deserted, the house is anything but safe...As the night wears on and a thunderstorm grows outside, each member of the group begins to have visions of the atrocities that occurred within the house, haunting it forever. Voices in the well, visions of mangled bodies and clawing under the stairs plague their waking hours. As the fear in the group begins to grow and the supernatural forces in the house start to manifest themselves, the group turn on each other and exact the wrath of the soul trapped within the walls. |
The Legend of Hell House-DVD (1973)
Four people enter the Belasco Mansion, the so-called "Everest of haunted houses," hired by a dying millionaire to investigate the possibility of life after death. Physicist Clive Revill leads the quartet, which includes his wife Gayle Hunnicut and two mediums. Pamela Franklin, young and impulsive, immediately makes contact with what she perceives as a tortured spirit, while Roddy McDowall, the only survivor from the previous investigation 20 years ago, closes himself off completely, deathly afraid of the malevolent forces that crushed his former comrades in body and spirit. Science fiction and horror legend Richard Matheson, responsible for penning such horror classics as The Devil Rides Out and Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum, brings a literate sensibility and a refreshing seriousness to the haunted-house genre with this adaptation of his novel Hell House. Director John Hough follows Matheson's lead with a moody but sober approach, balancing the physical threats of objects lethally leaping to life with the slow, subtle possession of the characters by a truly evil spirit. Parts of the script feel like so much scientific mumbo jumbo, with characters discussing the finer points of supernatural manifestation and ectoplasmic activity, but Hough's deliberate direction gives it the necessary solemnity to take it all seriously.
Professor David Ash (Aidan Quinn) is skeptical of the supernatural, yet he is invited by elderly Nanny Tess Webb (Anna Massey) to investigate paranormal goings-on at her country estate. When Ash arrives, he meets her three adult children (Kate Beckinsale among them, who becomes his future love interest) and the family doctor (John Gielgud), all of whom deny anything is going on and claim that Nanny Tess is merely hallucinating. Yet after spending some time there, the professor begins experiencing unexplainable visions that only Nanny Tess, and often only he, sees. Furthermore the ghost of his sister, who died as a child in a drowning accident, begins to roam the estate. Is he imagining it and going mad? Or is the house truly haunted? Adapted by Tim Prager from the James Herbert novel, Lewis Gilbert's highly memorable film is a brilliant haunted-house tale with chilling scenes and an exceptional plot twist.
Night of the Demons-DVD (1988)
If you like 80s styled horror movies, "Night of the Demons" is just what the doctor ordered. The movie is about a group of teenagers who decide to party on Halloween night in some old funeral parlor that is supposed to be "possessed" by demons. Certainly not the scariest movie of all-time, "Night of the Demons" is a rather imaginitive and well done horror flick focusing the possession of human beings by demons.
There is an undeniable black comedy/dark humor aspect to this flick which really overrides any pure element of horror that is present. Nevertheless, the movie has surprisingly good special effects and realistic looking demons.
Night of the Living Dead
(Millennium Edition)
George Romero's classic 1968 zombie-fest (shot in black and white) offers some disturbing images, even decades later. In a Pittsburgh suburb people are being stalked by zombies ravenous for human flesh. In a house whose occupant has already been slain, two separate groups of people unite and board themselves in, hoping to fend off the advancing ghouls. Through radio and TV reports they learn that radiation from outer space is thought to be responsible for the wave of zombie attacks all over the eastern United States. Once the humans are trapped, Romero shifts the focus to the internal feuding between them as they decide how to handle their dreadful situation. What unfolds is an examination of human nature, and of the fear and selfishness that keep many citizens from getting involved in the world's problems. Elite has made the best even better with this new remaster for the Millennium Edition, and the DVD is filled with even more supplements. Romero and screenwriter John Russo discuss the challenges of the production with coproducers/costars Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman on one commentary track, while a cast party gathers for a raucous reunion on a second track. Other highlights include a gallery of Romero's TV commercials (check out the clever low-budget parody of Fantastic Voyage for Calgon), an articulate and thoughtful 16-minute audio-only interview with star Duane Jones (the last before his death), and heretofore unseen clips from Romero's "lost" film There's Always Vanilla. An essential disc for any horror enthusiast and still the definitive presentation.
More Monster Movies | More Slasher Films
Inspired by the vintage thrillers of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur, Below is a superbly crafted spookfest primed for cult-favorite status. As he did with The Arrival and Pitch Black, director David Twohy revitalizes a B-movie staple--in this case, the World War II submarine thriller--by turning it into a nerve-wracking funhouse of smoke and mirrors, where chilling visions tease the brain and stir paranoia among a close-knit group of terrified characters. When a U.S. sub takes on three survivors from a sinking British ship, its captain (Bruce Greenwood) uncovers secrets while concealing his own. As the sub's recent history unfolds, its crew is increasingly haunted by ghostly images, fleeting and subliminal, while the threat of German attack looms ominously overhead. More of a mood piece than a truly satisfying thriller, Below favors tense atmosphere over cohesive plotting, but it's so visually captivating, and so tautly acted by a fine ensemble cast, that its narrative flaws are easily forgiven.
Lemora - A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1975)
A notorious bank robber kills his wife and flees the police, only to be captured by a mysterious group of figures in an abandoned town. His beautiful daughter, Lila Lee (played by the late Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith), receives a letter stating that Lila’s father is near death and that he needs to see her.Sneaking away at night from her minister guardian (EATING RAOUL co-writer Richard Blackburn, who also writes and directs), Lila embarks on a terrifying journey to find her father that leads her to a mansion run by Lemora, a seemingly loving woman who cares for a group of gypsy children and a witch-like servant. Once the terrifying secret of Lemora is revealed, Lila must uncover what happened to her father and fight for dear life as she tries to escape the clutches of the undead!
The Lunatics Have Taken over the Asylum
Like Jodorowsky's EL TOPO, which features many of the same cast and crew, MANSION is a wild, psychedelic nightmare, imbued with the freewheeling vibe of the late 1960s. Based on a story by famed horror writer Edgar Allan Poe, the film is set in a kind of kingdom of madness - a huge insane asylum presided over by notorious brigand, Raul Fragonard. He has locked up the institution’s director and set the lunatics free. A visting journalist uncovers the secret behind the Mansion of Madness, but soon finds himself on trial before a host of crazed lunatics - whose ultimate aim is world domination.
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, a creature was stirring...In Bedford, several unsuspecting people are about to receive Season’s Greetings - of terror! This 98 minute DVD is a stark and stylish tale that turns everyone's favorite time of the year inside out. Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder star among an ill-fated houseful of sorority sisters celebrating the holiday season. Festivities turn fatal when obscene phone calls break the serenity and it becomes clear that a psychopath is stalking the house.
Few things are more sure-fire creepy than huge abandoned buildings, and Session 9 has one of the eeriest buildings you've ever seen. A hazardous-materials-cleanup company has been hired to eliminate asbestos tiles and other toxic material from a gigantic mental hospital that had been shut down in the 1980s. But as one member of the team starts to nose into old files in the office, he uncovers a series of tape recordings of psychiatric sessions--nine of them--related to a notorious sexual abuse case. Soon, toxic materials and dark spirits start to merge. Like The Blair Witch Project (and most horror movies, really), Session 9 is longer on atmosphere and dream logic than story--but the atmosphere is effectively unsettling. A strong cast (including Peter Mullan, David Caruso, and Brendan Sexton III) do an effective job of slowly cracking under stress and evil influences.
With a fair share of gore, a nicely claustrophobic feel to the whole experience, quite effective ghostly manifestations, some wickedly deft plot twists, and a really cool, darkly surreal opening montage to start things out on the right foot..Madhouse succeeds admirably in setting itself apart from other lunatic asylum-based horror films.