The big day is finally here! Halloween itself, where Dracula and Boba Fett walk hand in hand down the street with ballerinas and Ariel. Where free candy abounds and it’s considered perfectly acceptable to jump out from behind a blind corner wielding a knife in an effort to traumatize children. (I do that all the time, of course, but today it’s acceptable.) Until it’s time to hand out candy to all the wee boogeymen that come to the door, I’ll be watching a boatload of horror movies—and probably a few “Treehouse of Horror” episodes, to boot. To add to the celebration here’s a list, in no particular order, of my ten favorite scary movies.

1. The Omen

2. Alien
While not specifically buttonholed as a horror film, Alien is still a movie that’s scary as all hell. Though the series managed to stay excellent after shifting its focus to full-ahead action, this first suspenseful entry is my favorite. The agonizing buildup to the first monster attack keeps you glued to the edge of your seat and reduces you to a quivering shell of a human, drained by the tension. Then, once the alien bursts loose and starts roaming the ship, it’s one perfect scare after another. James Cameron’s sequel was so high profile and so wonderful that we sometimes forget just how effective this incredibly frightening movie was.

3. The Shining
Jack Nicholson is creepy enough under normal circumstances, but when you give him an axe it’s guaranteed scared shitless time. Though it takes place in a massive hotel, it’s still an almost unbearably claustrophobic film, with something to make your heart skip a beat lurking around every corner. Add to that a few creepy looking children and you’ve got yourself a terrifying good time. For a number of reasons, Stephen King (author of the novel on which the movie is based) was unhappy with this adaptation, leading him to create his own TV miniseries version years later. As obsessive a King fan as I am, you’d expect me to be on his side in this debate, but I’m not. Kubrick’s version of The Shining is phenomenal, and second in that director’s canon only to Dr. Strangelove.

4. The Exorcist

5. Dracula
While the 1931 version of Bram Stoker’s novel isn’t really “scary” by today’s standards, my lifelong fascination with vampire fiction—check that, with good vampire fiction—has always afforded this movie a warm spot in my heart. How can you not love the thing that basically established everything we’ve associated with the vampire mythos for the past seventy-five years, the cape, the bats, the widow’s peak and the mysterious sex appeal. Bela Lugosi remains the ultimate embodiment of the vampire. Interesting note: A Spanish language version of the movie, filmed after the English-speaking cast and crew had left for the night using the same sets and essentially the same script manages to be a vastly different but equally high-quality experience.

6. Rosemary’s Baby
Given my fascination with The Omen, are you at all surprised to see this movie make this list? A picture about the son of the devil? Yes, please! Director Roman Polanski makes this a slightly more “arty” movie than your standard scary flick, but that’s okay. It lends the movie a seriousness and weight that only help draw you in to the story. The Ira Levin novel that was the basis for the screenplay is excellent, too.

7. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Some people say this movie doesn’t really hold up, that the goodwill people have for it is based more on nostalgia than on the merits of the movie itself. Those people, I’m here to tell you, are douchebags. It’s a perfectly great movie with an awesome villain and a fully believable heroine that it pains us to see in jeopardy. And what could be better than a monster who kills you in your dreams? Consider: If you see a movie and it really gets under your skin, really gives you the creeps, what often happens? You often have a nightmare about it! A nightmare about a guy who kills you in your nightmares! It’s the perfect way to drive moviegoers to madness.

8. Dawn of the Dead

9. Poltergeist

10. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
No, this movie isn’t really all that great. But it is great at the things that it does—great on a small scale, you might say. For a given value of greatness. The movie’s got this reputation as some kind of horrible gorefest, and that’s just not true. In fact it’s surprisingly ungory, given the quality of the many imitators that it gave rise to. What it does have in place of the gore is a suffocating creepiness all the way through. It’s the eerie atmosphere in which the events takes place rather than the events themselves that make this movie succeed. When the victimized girl is running through brambles screaming in fear and in pain as she gets cut up by branches, it’s because she really is afraid and in pain. The picture’s low budget gave it this realism by necessity that the slicker—and vastly inferior—Hollywood remake didn’t have at all.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Great Books, Shitty Movies
• Halloween Top Ten: Treehouse of Horror Segments
• The Exorcist
• The Alien Standard
• The Omen