Aliens, witches, zombies and one very bad Christmas
By Rory Jackson
We are opening the alphabet with seven movies that cover nearly everything horror does well: cosmic dread, folklore, urban legends, zombies, demonic possession, body horror and small creatures destroying an entire town during the holidays.
That is a ridiculous amount of damage for the first week.
The complete ABCs and 123s of Halloween challenge gives you one featured movie for every night of October. These follow-up articles dig deeper into each selection while providing six Horror-Fix alternatives for anyone who has already seen the featured movie, hates our choice or simply wants to turn one night into an irresponsible seven-film marathon.
Let’s begin.
A Is for Alien
Some movies give you a monster.
Alien gives you an entire nightmare ecosystem.
Ridley Scott turns a working-class space crew into prey, then traps us in the corridors with them. The xenomorph is iconic, but the movie still works because it takes its time. The silence, machinery and suspicion that something is moving just beyond the light do as much damage as the creature itself.
The Nostromo does not feel like a sleek vehicle carrying heroic space explorers. It feels like an industrial workplace operated by tired people who would probably prefer better pay, warmer food and considerably fewer organisms attached to their faces.
That ordinary humanity makes the horror work. These are not soldiers trained to confront an extraterrestrial killing machine. They are employees trapped inside a failing workplace with the worst possible health-and-safety violation.
If October should begin with a reminder that horror can be beautiful, intelligent and mean as hell, Alien is the right opening shot.
Horror-Fix alternatives: The Autopsy of Jane Doe • Audition • Annihilation • An American Werewolf in London • Apostle • As Above, So Below
B Is for The Blair Witch Project
Before found footage became an entire section of the video store, The Blair Witch Project made audiences wonder whether they were watching fiction at all.
The movie is stripped down to woods, arguments, terrible decisions and three people slowly realizing that the missing map may be the least of their problems. What you do not see becomes the weapon. A pile of rocks, strange bundles of sticks and noises outside the tent accomplish more than an expensive digital monster could have managed.
Some viewers still hate it.
That is almost part of the fun.
The Blair Witch Project is not a roller coaster. It is the feeling of becoming lost after dark and hearing something answer from farther inside the trees. It understands that imagination becomes crueler when the movie refuses to provide a complete picture.
You may not see the witch.
By the end, you do not particularly want to.
Horror-Fix alternatives: Black Christmas • The Babadook • Barbarian • Basket Case • Braindead • Bride of Frankenstein
C Is for Candyman
Candyman understands that the best urban legends survive because people need them.
Bernard Rose’s film is a slasher, ghost story and tragedy wrapped around one of horror’s greatest performances. Tony Todd never plays Candyman like a thug wearing an expensive coat. He is romantic, terrifying and completely certain that belief belongs to him.
The movie has blood, bees and one hell of a Philip Glass score, but its real power comes from the way it treats reputation as immortality. Candyman exists because people continue telling his story. Every frightened whisper gives him another breath.
Virginia Madsen’s Helen begins the film believing she can safely examine that mythology from the outside. She treats the legend as an academic subject until the legend decides to make her part of it.
That is the danger of studying monsters.
Eventually, one may notice you staring.
Say his name if you want. Just do not act surprised when the story answers.
Horror-Fix alternatives: The Cabin in the Woods • Carrie • The Changeling • Child’s Play • Cure • Creep
D Is for Dawn of the Dead
George A. Romero did not merely make the definitive zombie sequel.
He built a bloody playground inside a shopping mall and asked whether the survivors were hiding from the dead or returning to the only religion they understood.
Dawn of the Dead is funny, ugly, exciting and smarter than it ever needs to announce. The makeup can look wonderfully dated during one scene, and the violence can still make you wince during the next. That unevenness has become part of its personality.
More importantly, the characters feel alive enough that the mall eventually begins to feel like home. They eat, sleep, argue and briefly convince themselves that consumer abundance can protect them from the ruined world outside.
It cannot.
The zombies drift through the stores because some fragment of memory has drawn them back. The living remain for essentially the same reason.
Romero allows us to enjoy the fantasy of having an entire shopping mall before reminding us that owning everything means very little when there is nowhere left to go.
Horror-Fix alternatives: The Descent • The Devil’s Backbone • Drag Me to Hell • Dead Alive • The Dark and the Wicked • Doctor Sleep • Dawn of the Dead (2004)
E Is for The Evil Dead
The Evil Dead is what happens when young filmmakers drag a camera into the woods and refuse to accept the word impossible.
It is raw, frantic and held together by ingenuity, punishment and Bruce Campbell’s increasingly terrified face. The cabin feels filthy before anything supernatural happens. Once the Deadites arrive, the movie stops asking permission.
Later entries became funnier, larger and considerably slicker. The original still feels dangerous.
Its imperfections help. The effects, camerawork and performances carry the excitement of people discovering solutions seconds before they need them. Sam Raimi sends the camera crashing through the woods as though the production itself has become possessed.
Campbell had not yet transformed Ash into a chainsaw-wielding action hero. Here, he is frightened, overwhelmed and barely capable of surviving the night.
You are not watching a machine run perfectly.
You are watching Raimi and company shove the machine downhill while sparks fly from every moving part.
Horror-Fix alternatives: The Exorcist • Event Horizon • The Exorcism of Emily Rose • Eden Lake • Eyes Without a Face • The Exorcist III
F Is for The Fly
David Cronenberg’s The Fly is disgusting because it is sad.
Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle does not simply become a monster. He watches his intelligence, body and future rot in front of him. The effects remain stomach-turning, but the tragedy prevents the movie from becoming an elaborate gross-out reel.
This is a love story infected by arrogance and biology.
Brundle initially believes his transformation represents an improvement. He feels stronger, more energetic and liberated from the ordinary limitations of his body. The audience understands the truth before he does, which makes every moment of excitement painful.
Geena Davis gives the movie its emotional center. Veronica does not merely run from a creature. She watches someone she loves disappear one piece at a time.
By the end, Brundlefly is horrifying, pathetic and still recognizably human.
Horror rarely becomes more operatic than this, even when pieces are falling from the lead actor.
Horror-Fix alternatives: Friday the 13th • The Fog • The Faculty • Freaks • Final Destination • Fright Night
G Is for Gremlins
The most important rule is not keeping them away from bright light.
It is not getting them wet.
It is not refusing to feed them after midnight, although nobody has ever successfully explained when “after midnight” ends.
The most important rule is recognizing that Gremlins is absolutely a horror movie.
Joe Dante disguises a monster-movie massacre as a charming holiday adventure, then unleashes an army of homicidal creatures upon a picturesque small town. The result is funny, chaotic and considerably meaner than its cuddly merchandise may suggest.
Gizmo is adorable because the movie needs us to understand why Billy immediately ignores every warning he has been given. Stripe and the other Gremlins are memorable because they behave like every terrible impulse humanity has attempted to suppress.
They drink, gamble, vandalize property, terrorize strangers and take enormous pleasure in making every situation worse.
The film’s Christmas setting makes the destruction even more satisfying. Kingston Falls initially resembles an idealized holiday postcard. By the end of the night, the Gremlins have exposed the madness hiding underneath the lights, decorations and forced seasonal cheer.
Then Phoebe Cates delivers one of the darkest Christmas stories ever placed inside a mainstream studio comedy.
Gremlins can be shown to older children, enjoyed by adults and defended whenever someone claims horror must be relentlessly serious to count.
It is a creature feature, a Christmas movie and a warning against purchasing pets from mysterious antique stores.
That makes it an excellent G.
Horror-Fix alternatives: Ginger Snaps • The Grudge • Green Room • Grave Encounters • Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum • The Gate
The Last Word
Seven nights down and twenty-four to go.
We began in deep space, became lost in the woods, summoned an urban legend, barricaded ourselves inside a shopping mall, opened the wrong book, watched a scientist fall apart and ended with tiny monsters destroying Christmas.
That is a respectable first week.
Next, we move from Haddonfield to a farmhouse under siege, with stops for sharks, killer clowns and vampires along the way.
