10 Campy Halloween Films To Enjoy This Season
The movies where the horrifying and the terror-inducing meet the silly, delightful and fun...
If there's one thing Tim Burton has taught us in his many, many years directing in Hollywood, it's that you can have just as much fun as you can have heart palpitations when it comes to spooks and frights.
Halloween, especially the kind kids grew up with, always had a flair for the dramatic, fun, and colourful. Costumes, parties, candy, and putting faces on things that you probably shouldn't be putting faces on—people have always had a morbid sense of humour, and equally morbid fascination with the unusual, even transgressive content everyone's encouraged to enjoy in the fall season.
Celebrating the unusual and the outrageous has always been a staple of Halloween. That's reflected in all the parties, all the Halloween-themed food and items in stores, and, of course, in the movies.
For some, this holiday is the biggest one in their year, and it doesn't just come down to how terrified they are. So here's a list of films, both horrifying, and not even a little spooky, that viewers can enjoy, that are fully dedicated to maximising the season's revelries.
10. The Halloween Tree
What most consider to be the "animated Christmas special" of the Halloween season, The Halloween tree is like a childhood memory most kids didn't think was real when they grew up, but with one google search will realise that—yes! There was indeed a Hannah-Barbera film that was both enjoyable and existentially troubling, showing on TV when they were young.
Based on a novel by Ray Bradbury, the film follows children trick-or-treating on Halloween night, finding out their friend Pip was hospitalised and seeing his ghost on their way to visit him, eventually realising they have to catch him, or else lose him forever.
The children are then taken on a journey to learn about celebrations of death all over the world, from Ancient Egypt to Stonehenge to France's Catacombs to Dia de los Muertos in Mexico.
Disturbingly, Pip is meant to die, his soul taken by a being named Moundshroud, but the children give up a year of their lives each to get him back. It's one of those films that was both meant for children, but would probably scar both them and adults watching it.
Still, it's largely a fantastical adventure, and worth watching for the ride.