In honor of the now-concluded Halloween season, a haphazard list of my favorite frightening and/or Halloween-suitable films. It's either got to be psychologically tense or, if it's lighthearted, have a fair amount of gore. For instance, I love Young Frankenstein, but it doesn't really fit on here.
1. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
2. The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)
3. Repulsion (Polanski, 1965)
4. Audition (Miike, 1999)
5. Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977)
6. Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
7. Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997)
8. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
9. Alien (Scott, 1979)
10. House (Obayashi, 1977)
11. The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, 1999)
12. The Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981)
13. Diabolique (Clouzot, 1955)
14. Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2011)
15. The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
16. The Innocents (Clayton, 1961)
17. The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)
18. Jacob's Ladder (Lyne, 1990)
19. Rosemary's Baby (Polanski, 1968)
20. Se7en (Fincher, 1995)
21. M (Lang, 1931)
22. Halloween (Carpenter, 1977)
23. Deep Red (Argento, 1975)
24. The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973)
25. The Babadook (Kent, 2014)
26. The Omen (Donner, 1976)
27. Pan's Labyrinth (del Toro, 2006)
28. Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004)
29. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962)
30. American Psycho (Harron, 2000)
31. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978)
32. Let the Right One In (Alfredson, 2008)
33. The Cabin in the Woods (Goddard, 2011)
34. Suspiria (Argento, 1977)
35. Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
36. A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984)
37. The Others (Amenábar, 2001)
38. Possession (Żuławski, 1981)
39. The Haunting (Wise, 1963)
40. The Orphanage (Bayona, 2007)
41. Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009)
42. Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)
43. The Witch (Eggers, 2015)
44. Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973)
45. The Tenant (Polanski, 1976)
46. The Vanishing (Sluizer, 1988)
47. Eyes Without a Face (Franju, 1960)
48. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (Gessner, 1976)
49. Santa Sangre (Jodorowsky, 1989)
50. Brain Damage (Henenlotter, 1988)
Virtually guaranteed that I missed something and there are a ton of classics that I still haven't seen.