![\"raven](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2016\/10\/raven-pumpkin-2013.jpg\")
<\/a>I love the Pagan holy day of Samhain<\/a>. I also love the secular holiday of Halloween. For all the religious difficulties I had growing up in a fundamentalist church, my parents weren\u2019t killjoys. We lived in a rural area, so every year we\u2019d go to my cousin\u2019s house in town and go trick or treating in his neighborhood. I loved dressing up, seeing all the other costumes, and of course, getting candy. It was the one time of year when I felt like I actually fit in.<\/p>\nLilith Dorsey of the Voodoo Universe<\/a> blog is running a #31daysofsamhain Instagram challenge, and as part of that she\u2019s posted a list of her favorite seasonal movies<\/a>. I\u2019m not on Instagram, but this seems like a fun thing to do, and after all the serious stuff I\u2019ve been writing lately, I could use some fun.<\/p>\n Lilith has a master\u2019s degree in film from NYU. I\u2019m just a guy who likes horror movies. These aren\u2019t necessarily the best made or most influential movies, they\u2019re the ones I like. They\u2019re the movies that are on my shelf or that I\u2019ll stop and watch if I see them on cable.<\/p>\n There are no slasher films or torture porn here. I don\u2019t really want to be scared and I certainly don\u2019t want to see gore. I want to be fascinated<\/em>. I want to see magic and the supernatural. I want to see beautiful gothic settings and costuming. And if the monsters can win for a change, so much the better.<\/p>\n I divide horror films into four eras. There are the Universal classics of the 1930s and 40s. There are the Hammer and AIP films of the 50s and 60s. There\u2019s the dry spell of the 70s and early 80s, when nobody was making the kind of horror movies I wanted to watch. And there\u2019s the current era, which for me began in 1987.<\/p>\n Here are my 31 favorite movies for Halloween, in chronological order.<\/p>\n The Classic Era<\/strong><\/p>\n 1. Dracula<\/em><\/strong> (1931). This is where it begins, with the midnight carriage ride, the castle, the coffins, the Brides, and with Bela Lugosi\u2019s unforgettable line \u201cI am\u2026 Dracula.\u201d This isn\u2019t the greatest film ever made. Director Tod Browning didn\u2019t seem to understand he was making a movie and not filming a stage play, and he cut some scenes that are really needed to tell the story. But none of that matters. This is the classic of classics and I\u2019ve watched it dozens of times.<\/p>\n