10 Great Movies For Halloween You Probably Haven’t Seen

I’ve watched a ton of horror and related movies since I began my Streaming Revenge in 2023. Most of them are from the 1960s and 1970s when I wasn’t allowed to watch the good stuff, either because I was too young to see it in theaters, because it was censored on TV, or because it simply wasn’t available to watch anywhere in the days of three TV channels and two duplex theaters. But now, between streaming services and film restoration companies, I can see pretty much anything I want.

It’s getting harder to make these lists. I’ve already written about most of the good ones… although as this year’s #1 movie shows, occasionally I realize I’ve overlooked something important. Still, there are some gems out there, or at least, some new-to-me movies worth watching.

Are they scary? For 21^st century audiences, mostly no. But I don’t really want to be scared, and I certainly don’t want to be grossed out. I want to be fascinated. These movies fascinate me.

So here is Streaming Revenge III: ten great movies for Halloween that you probably haven’t seen, and that I haven’t written about before.

photo by John Beckett — I only have two of the ten on physical media. The rest were streaming.

10. Dracula (1974)

This is one for the completists, those of us who are trying to see as many film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s classic novel as we possibly can. It’s a reasonably faithful adaptation by Dan Curtis starring Jack Palance as the Count. It’s the first Dracula movie with the reincarnated love interest storyline, something Curtis borrowed from his Dark Shadows TV series and that would be used again in Francis Ford Coppola’s far superior Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).

The script is good and it covers more of the novel than most adaptations, and at 1:38 it never drags. Palance’s Dracula is better than I remembered, although he sometimes comes across as Christopher Lee lite. Fiona Lewis and Penelope Horner are good as Lucy and Mina, respectively, but Murray Brown was far too old (in attitude as much as in looks) to play Jonathan Harker. Mainly, the low TV movie budget makes it look and feel decidedly inferior to the better adaptations.

Still, if you’ve never seen it – or if like me you haven’t seen it since it was on TV a long long time ago – it’s well worth watching.

9. Thirst (2009)

I think this is first Korean vampire movie I’ve ever seen. It stars Song Kang-ho as a Catholic priest who works as a hospital chaplain and who selflessly volunteers to test a vaccine for a plague-like virus. The vaccine fails, but a blood transfusion heals him… for a while. And it leaves him with a thirst for blood.

And for other pleasures.

What happens when thirst compels you to do things you swore you’d never do, and prevents you from doing your life’s work? What other promises might you have to reconsider?

Thirst runs 2:14 and parts of it are slow – and parts of it are flat-out gross. But the story is quite good, and it’s one of the most original takes on vampirism I’ve ever seen.

8. Strange Love of the Vampires (1975)

Also known as Night of the Walking Dead, this is a Spanish movie set in a generic 19^th century European village that is plagued by vampires who literally come out of their graves at night to feed on the local population, and who are gathering at the mansion of the local vampire lord for a grand feast.

Intersecting with this is a young woman who is dying from a disease none of the doctors can figure out – and that’s before she meets the vampires.

Strange Love of the Vampires has the atmosphere of the better Hammer movies, though the story is more complicated and none of the actors have the presence of Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing (though mediocre dubbing probably has something to do with that). It shows the ethical issue of vampires who feed on humans from both perspectives – something few movies and books do today, much less in 1975 – but I found the ending to be sad.

Still, as someone who’s constantly looking for a certain kind of vampire movie that’s also new to me, I thought Strange Love of the Vampires was quite good.

7. Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

If you liked last year’s Nosferatu (and if you didn’t, what’s wrong with you?) there are three other movies you simply must watch: F.W. Murnau’s original Nosferatu (1922), Werner Herzog’s remake Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and Shadow of the Vampire (2000), which is a fictionalized account of the making of the original film. It stars John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe (who played Professor Von Franz in the 2024 Nosferatu) as Max Schreck, who played Count Orlok in 1922.

The premise of Shadow of the Vampire is that Schreck really was a vampire. Which, if you read the accounts of his behavior on set (he stayed in character at all times), isn’t much of a stretch.

Shadow of the Vampire is a good vampire movie, but first and foremost it’s a commentary on the arrogance of some filmmakers. The fact that it was made during the height of Harvey Weinstein’s reign in Hollywood may be coincidental, but probably not.

6. The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974)

A group of guests leave a party to tour an old theater that’s been closed for a century. There’s the family patriarch and owner of the theater, his trophy wife-to-be, and her ex-boyfriend who may not be an ex. There’s his ex-wife, who he reluctantly divorced after her past was exposed and made her an unsuitable spouse for someone in his position, and her new husband who just wants their money. There’s his lesbian sister and her “I’m not sure I’m ready to be out” girlfriend. There’s his drug addict daughter and her drug addict boyfriend. And there’s a tenth guest who everyone assumes came with someone else because no one knows who he is.

And then people start being murdered, and the doors can’t be unlocked, and everyone behaves in the exact opposite of “how to survive a horror movie” rules (which, to be fair, hadn’t been written yet in 1974).

None of the characters are innocent, but some are more suspicious than others. Who – if anyone – will be alive at dawn?

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats is considered a giallo, the Italian serial killer murder mysteries of the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike most other gialli – including those by directors with legitimate horror credentials, like Mario Bava and Dario Argento – this movie has actual supernatural elements, instead of teasing the supernatural only to disappoint with a Scooby Doo ending.

As befits a giallo, The Killer Reserved Nine Seats contains some rather gruesome murders. And as you might expect for 1974 (and sadly, much later) the lesbians get the worst of it. But as with the better gialli, it’s glamourous and fascinating and quite entertaining.

5. The Lure (2015)

I don’t know where to place this movie on this list, so I’ll put it here in the middle. It’s a Polish musical reimagining of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” only with folkloric mermaids who eat human hearts. Two young mermaid sisters decide to try living on land. They end up singing, stripping, and transforming in a Warsaw nightclub act. This is definitely not a Disney production.

One of the sisters falls in love with a human boy, and she’s willing to do anything – anything – to be with him. But human boys can be fickle.

I don’t cry at movies. Well, that’s not exactly true – Keira Knightley’s “what shall we die for?” speech in Pirates of the Caribbean – At World’s End never fails to move me to tears. But tears of sadness? I just don’t.

Until I saw the last quarter of this movie.

The Lure – original title Córki dancingu, literally “Daughters of the Dance” – is unlike anything else on this list. Reviews are all over the place, from great to horrible to everything in between. It’s hard to follow the details of the story, and not just because of having to read subtitles. But it’s also not hard to see where the main plot is going… even if you wish it wouldn’t.

4. I Married A Witch (1942)

Somehow, despite my lifelong love of movies that feature magic and witchcraft, I had never seen I Married A Witch until this year.

It stars Veronica Lake as a witch who is burned at the stake in puritan New England (I know, I know: the people thought to be witches in puritan New England were hanged, not burned – when did Hollywood ever let history get in the way of a more convenient story?). She comes back in present times (which is now 83 years in the past!) and goes after revenge against the descendant of the man most responsible for her death. Things don’t go exactly as planned…

I Married A Witch is silly but cute. Along with Bell Book and Candle from 1958 (which, in my opinion, is a much better movie), it was one of the direct inspirations for the 1960s Bewitched TV series starring Elizabeth Montgomery.

3. The Old Dark House (1932)

Legendary director James Whale made this movie a year after Frankenstein. It stars Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, and a young Gloria Stuart, best known to our generation for playing the old Rose in Titanic (1997). It’s a horror-comedy about a group of travelers whose car breaks down on a stormy night and are forced to take shelter in the titular old dark house – a trope that would be used over and over again in everything from Dracula Prince of Darkness to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The infamous Hays Code had come out in 1930 but it wasn’t enforced until 1934. The Old Dark House is loaded with queer coding, gender bending, and challenges to established religion.

Because of complicated rights issues, The Old Dark House was not included in the “Shock Theatre” package of Universal horror movies I grew up watching (and loving). This was the first time I had ever seen it. It’s a fun movie and I would have enjoyed it as a 10-year-old, but I don’t think I would have appreciated it as much then as I do as an adult.

2. Burn Witch Burn (1962)

Also known as Night of the Eagle (a greatly inferior title) this movie stars Peter Wyngarde (who I will always remember as the leader of the Hellfire Club in the Diana Rigg Avengers episode “A Touch of Brimstone”) as a young sociology professor, and Janet Blair as his stay-at-home wife who had a magical experience in Jamaica and now uses witchcraft to protect herself and her husband from jealous academic colleagues.

Until the thoroughly-materialist professor discovers his wife’s charms and amulets and burns them all in front of her, claiming they’re dangerous delusions.

And then, deprived of her protection, bad things start happening.

Burn Witch Burn is a direct adaptation of Fritz Lieber’s 1943 novel Conjure Wife. It’s one of the few movies of its time to present witchcraft both as real and as morally neutral. The opening voiceover and invocation of protection are silly, but the movie itself is quite good. It’s fast-paced and full of action and the print I watched was near-perfect.

1. The Ninth Gate (1999)

I don’t know how this movie never made any of my lists before now. Not only is it excellent, there was a period in the late 2010s when I was practically watching it on a loop.

Johnny Depp plays a “book detective” who specializes in authenticating rare books. One of his clients – played by Frank Langella, who looks nothing like he did in Dracula 20 years earlier – pays him an exorbitant amount of money to investigate his copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a 17^th century book supposedly co-written by Lucifer himself. People are willing to kill to get that book, and they do. Along the way, Depp’s Dean Corso picks up a mysterious protector known only as “The Girl” played by Emmanuelle Seigner.

Who is The Girl? Where is Corso going at the end? To hell? To “equality with God”? To enlightenment? The movie is unclear. Director Roman Polanski is an atheist who’s said he has no definitive answers. Neither does the source material, the novel The Club Dumas (1993) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I read it and I enjoyed it, but this is the rare case where the movie is better than the book.

The director and both major stars have been credibly accused of inappropriate sexual conduct. Polanski fled the U.S. in 1977 to avoid going to prison for statutory rape and has never returned. If you choose to avoid this movie because of that, I completely understand. If you choose to separate the art from the artists (in this case I can – in other cases I can’t, and I can’t explain the difference) you’ll find The Ninth Gate to be one of the best occult thrillers of all time.