Oh, folks, it is my most favoritest time of the year: Labor Day is done, summer is effectively over, and now we can get to the good stuff: fall and Halloween!
While we’ll wait a little bit to start decorating (our decorating scheme may have to change a bit to be Duncan-proof, but that’s a conversation for another day), I think it’s the perfect time to start watching some of my favorite seasonal movies. Usually I just start in October, but I think this year I’ll start right now (well, last night) with the various Halloween and Halloween-adjacent movies that I love.
Last night’s flick? Practical Magic. As much as Love Actually inaugurates the Christmas movie season, Practical Magic is my go-to witch movie of choice. Not that I restrict viewing of these or any other movies to only one time of year, mind you, but it’s more special this time of year.
And what will I watch for the next 54 days? In no particular order…
- Halloweentown
- Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge
- Halloweentown High
- Return to Halloweentown
- Hocus Pocus
- The Nightmare Before Christmas (we consider this a dual-holiday movie)
- Scream
- Scream 2
- Scream 3
- Scream 4
- The Craft
- Ghostbusters
- Ghostbusters 2
- House on Haunted Hill, 1959
- House on Haunted Hill, 1999 (I’m usually not fond of remakes, but both versions stand pretty well on their own for different reasons)
- Little Shop of Horrors
- 13 Ghosts
- The Haunting, 1963
- The Haunting, 1999 (again, another stand-along remake that I can get behind)
- The  Birds
- The Addams Family
- Addams Family Values
- Manhunter
- Silence of the Lambs
- Hannibal
- Sleepy Hollow
- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
- The Others
- The Sixth Sense
- The Corpse Bride
- Devil’s Advocate
- It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
- Edward Scissorhands
- Rocky Horror Picture Show
- Beetlejuice
- Monsters Inc
- The Faculty
- I Know What You Did Last Summer
- Skeleton Key
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Idle Hands (a friend of mine’s brother is in this one)
- Teen Witch
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the Movie
- The Worst Witch
- Clue
- The Lost Boys
- The Haunted Mansion
- The Good Witch
- Once Bitten
- What Lies Beneath
- The Woman in Black
- Flatliners
- The Witches
- The Village
I’m sure you can tell I’m not big on the gory side of the horror movie genre. You won’t find me watching slasher flicks or movies intended to give you full-on nightmares. I’d never sleep again! But I like suspense and some tamer horror, along with a lot of fun. Last year I watched several of the Goosebumps movies that were on Netflix, and I’m sure I’ll tumble down some b-movie holes a few times over the next few months.
What are your favorite movies for this time of year? Any must-sees that I’ve left off my list, above?