Round up the eggs, candy and clever costumes and prepare for a horrifying Halloween. The only missing ingredients are our favorite scary movies …

‘Scream’

I remember the first time I saw ‘Scream,’ because it’s also the first time I snuck into an R-rated movie. It was December of ’96, and my two friends and I, clutching tickets to ‘Beavis and Butthead Do America,’ bravely headed into the wrong theater. The word of mouth on ‘Scream’ was huge, so the theater started filling up quickly. I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for the movie to start, praying that the ushers wouldn’t start checking stubs. Another friend of mine grabbed my shoulder and growled, ‘Can I see your ticket please?’ I must have jumped a couple of feet in the air. Needless to say, I was freaked out even before Drew Barrymore was quizzed about her favorite scary movie.

‘Scream’ ushered in a whole new wave of horror movies in the ’90s – and most were terrible. But it also reinvented the slasher genre by ridiculing familiar elements like chaperone-free parties, knife-wielding masked men and slutty cheerleaders. Moments after Jamie Kennedy’s movie geek Randy tells party-goers never to say ‘I’ll be right back,’ Rose McGowan’s bosomy Tatum does just that – and ends up crushed by a garage door. Winks like that let the audience know that the filmmakers know that films like ‘Scream’ are predictable. It’s that knowledge that makes ‘Scream’ such a fun film.

‘Blair Witch Project’

I saw ‘The Blair Witch Project’ in a completely different environment than ‘Scream.’ It was a rainy day at my lifeguarding job, and someone thought it would be a good idea to watch a bootleg copy of the film in a loft above the first-aid office. Bad idea. The film’s creepy enough on its own, but the summer day definitely turned colder while sitting through the final moments, hearing the doomed filmmakers scream their final screams. As the sound cut out completely, rain splattered ominously on the roof above us.

‘The Blair Witch Project’ gives you second thoughts about going on a camping trip. The panic naturally rose among lost stars Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams as they drifted further and further into the woods. ‘The Blair Witch Project’ preys on the same human weakness that makes reality television so appealing – the movie puts its characters in a situation into which anyone could accidentally wander. By showing less of the Blair Witch and instead relying on testimony from frightened locals, creepy sounds and stick figures, ‘The Blair Witch Project’ proves that you don’t need special effects or bloody wounds to inspire fear.

‘The Ring’

After catching a screening of this movie last year, I actually remember shaking as I walked back to my car. And for several days after that, my friends and I had fun calling each others’ phones and whispering, ‘Seven days …’ I was pretty relieved when a week passed and I didn’t end up a twisted, blue corpse.

The scares in ‘The Ring’ come from a mysterious video tape that causes anyone who watches it to die a horrible death seven days later. Naomi Watts stars as a newspaper reporter desperate to save her young son and her ex-husband from that fate. Like ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ the power to scare in ‘The Ring’ comes from subtlety. The rainy and gloomy Seattle setting perfectly sets the tone of the movie, contrasting the violent scenes like a horse rampage on a ferry. There are no jump-out-of-your-seat scares in this one. Instead, ‘The Ring’ lets a feeling of unsettled nervousness build throughout the film. There’s no big scream, no release, so that feeling stays with you even after the credits roll.

‘Halloween’

The granddaddy of all slasher movies. It’s spawned many imitators and several crappy sequels, but ‘Halloween’ remains a classic even after 25 years of scaring teenagers. A man in a spray-painted William Shatner mask is more terrifying than you’d think. Michael Myers has become one of the most recognizable villains in cinema. Jamie Lee Curtis got her big scream queen start here as a nubile babysitter on the run from the white-masked psycho. The deaths might not be as spectacularly bloody as in modern horror films, but the slow build-up to each gruesome death is what is important in ‘Halloween.’ You’ll be screaming at the stupid on-screen characters to go this way, to go that way, to avoid the creepy laundry room or stay out of the kitchen for a post-sex snack. But they’ll end up skewered on a big knife anyway – and that’s the fun of ‘Halloween.’

Published on October 30, 2003 at 12:00 pm