10 Old School Horror Movies Perfect For Halloween

Something went badly wrong with horror cinema when the studios took over the multiplexes.

Content was required to be mainstream, which meant no lampooning of religion, no Nazi villainesses and no power tools shown entering a man’s head above the tagline "The blood flows in rivers, and the drill keeps tearing through flesh and bone."

Toning down horror movies for mass consumption, however, seems to be missing the point. As Frank Henenlotter notes, they’re supposed to have an attitude you don’t find with mainstream Hollywood productions. They’re meant to be a little ruder, a little raunchier, to deal with material that people don’t usually touch on.

Instead, modern viewers got remakes of Prom Night and Poltergeist, plus a succession of Paranormal Activity sequels. Films for short attention spans with absolutely nothing at their core (no wit, no satire, nothing to upset a modern viewer), these pictures almost defy description as “content.”

If you’re looking for movies with attitude, you have to be willing to embrace the kind of films your local multiplex would pay not to show. Movies from the old school of horror filmmaking may lack technical polish, but they’ve atmosphere and low-budget ingenuity to spare, and a surprising amount of heart. They’re goofy, shocking, silly, disarming and loads of fun, which is more than most modern movies can pull off.

Speaking of old school, here’s a whodunit that could only have been made in the 1970s: five suspects, one of which is a werewolf, are lured to an eccentric millionaire’s electronically bugged estate so that the culprit can be apprehended. “After all the clues have been shown,” announces the film’s narrator, “the viewer gets a chance to name the villain during the ‘werewolf break’.”

Combining elements of horror, whodunit and Blaxploitation, The Beast Must Die is so fast-paced and endearing that most viewers will be willing to forget the fact that that the ‘werewolves’ are actually German shepherds. That’s old school movie magic: if you haven’t got the technology to transform a man into a wolf, cheat a little.

No matter how bizarre the movie becomes – how many films give the audience 60 seconds to guess the werewolf’s identity? – the cast (which includes Peter Cushing, Charles Gray and Anton Diffring) maintain a straight face throughout, with Cushing a standout as a mannered German doctor. Anyone who doubts the movie’s entertainment value is invited to watch the Kevin Williamson-scripted Cursed instead.