 Halloween is upon us, but you still have time. There is still time to catch up on a couple Halloween classics. I'm gonna give you some right now. Not only classics, but movies I think are underrated or just movies that I appreciate and think are a little different, a little out there. Let's start with one of my favorites. It's a movie everyone knows, Poltergeist. Written by Steven Spielberg, directed by Toby Hooper. To most, that name means very little. To horror fans, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, of course. You got Craig T. Nelson in there. Mr. Incredible himself taking on a Poltergeist. Something demonic has taken over the house that they just moved into. Turns out that place was built on an ancient burial ground. That's the first red flag. The second is when a giant tree goes through your window and there's a huge vortex inside the kid's closet. Pack up the bags and leave, or you get your hands dirty. You roll up your sleeves and you tackle the problem head-on. This is a fantastic film for the whole family. I'd say 11 and up. Probably okay to watch this one. As long as they're not too impressionable to begin with, it's a good time. Check it out. This next one, I don't even actually have to say the name of, I can just go, you get what I'm putting down. The Terminator, the first one. The only one that I really consider a straight-up horror. Now, T2 definitely has horror elements, especially that sequence with the T-1000 going through the psychiatric ward. But the first movie, Front to Back, you have Arnold Schwarzenegger slaying people down, trying to get to Linda Hamilton to kill her before her precious newborn fights off the machines in the future. This is a James Cameron vehicle. What has he done? That's noteworthy that you can put to pen? That you can put your name on? I don't know, Titanic. That doing anything for you? How about Avatar? True Lies, also with Arnold? I think that's fair. What about Aliens? What about The Abyss? Another movie that I almost would recommend watching on Halloween if you had time, but you don't. Put The Abyss on your list though for another day. Sorry, kids. Trick or Treatings canceled this year. We're watching The Terminator. Since I'm kinda going through the basics, here's a starter pack for anyone wondering. What films should I truly go back and watch? Which ones hold up? With Stand, Father Time himself? Jaws, the original. Stay out of the ocean because there's great white sharks in there that wanna eat your face off, kill your kids, and ruin beach day. Truth of the matter is this. You're about as likely to strangle yourself with a yo-yo than you are to get eaten by a shark. But because of Jaws, people are scared out of their minds to go in the ocean, let alone take a bath. Steven Spielberg, what do you expect? Perfection. Once upon a time, director Ridley Scott made good films. One such film is Alien, The First. Aliens, all so great. I mentioned it, James Cameron, but the first one truly is horror. Not horror, like kind of a promiscuous girl. Nelly Furtado. No, we're really deep now. We're really, we're so far gone. When a mining crew receives a distress signal on an unknown planet, they do the wrong thing and head down there. Check it out. What comes back on the ship with them is not human. It's an alien, if that wasn't clear. And this xenomorph opens up a can of whoop ass on the crew, ripping through chests, bursting through faces. It's got a double mouth, gross, but also Halloween worthy. Also, Sigourney Weaver is a national treasure. The only one that really even gets close to rivaling her badass is the next one on my list, which is of course, Halloween. The original, directed and scored by John Carpenter. Amazing score. Amazing villain with Michael Myers. Kick-ass mask. Some cool deaths. Has it aged? Yeah, it's aged. Like a fine wine. Watch it on Halloween because it's called Halloween. It makes sense. I'm gonna give you another family one. And no, it's not Halloween town. Halloween town can jump off a cliff. That's trash. I'm talking Adam's family. Wednesday, Gomez, Fester, Morticia, Pugsley, the whole family's there. It's a great movie. The sequel, Adam's Family Values, obviously even better. But I put that as a Thanksgiving movie. There's not a lot of them out there. So when you get a Thanksgiving film, you gotta appreciate it. You gotta hang on to a planes, trains and automobile style. Adam's family, the first, is a fantastic movie. Not that animated garbage. Don't you dare watch that. This movie's dark. It's got some playful humor throughout. The whole picture is beautiful like a Tim Burton wet dream, not directed by Tim Burton. Although he is doing this new one Wednesday and I have high hopes for it. Watch Adam's Family. You won't regret it. You don't have to tell me three times to watch this next pic. Beetlejuice. Before Michael Keaton was a bird man. Before Michael Keaton was a Batman. Before Michael Keaton was another bird man, AKA Vulture, he was a disgusting undead freak who if you said his name three times would come to your service and really make your life miserable. The film also has like a 16 year old Wynonna Ryder, Gina Davis, Alec Baldwin, and then there's Catherine O'Hara who absolutely steals every scene she's in. Kinda playing her character from Schitt's Creek like 40 years earlier. This is a Tim Burton vehicle before he got into the awful CGI work. So this is a great film. Check it out. It holds up. When there's something strange in your neighborhood, what are you gonna call? I'm genuinely asking. I really don't know because there's some weird crap going on next door. Neighbors a little sus thinking about calling the cops but I don't think they're really gonna do anything. As far as ghosts are concerned, you go to the ghost busters. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, the late Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, and of course one of the most badass females in cinema, Sigourney Weaver. As a bonus, we get the humorous stylings of Rick Moranis. If you have the time, Ghost Busters 2 will give you the slime because that's the main focus of the second movie. A lot of people don't like it. I'm a fan, not as good as the original but still a worthy sequel. It's still a decent follow up considering the quick turnaround time they had on it. However, since we are limited, it is the 31st when I'm posting this video. Watch Ghost Busters the original if you haven't. The outdated effects aren't even bad. They come off as charming because the whole movie's a comedy at its core with some horror elements mixed in. Plus as a bonus, you get some great lore in this movie with Gozer, The Gatekeeper, The Keymaster. It's all there for you to dissect if you want. Otherwise, surface level, great comedy, watch it. I'm gonna throw one more ghost movie at you. This one's not near as popular, but it should be. Directed by Peter Jackson. You may know him from The Lord of the Rings franchise. Kind of a big deal. Also stars Michael J. Fox. Everyone in the world adores and are completely sad every time we see him now because of what amazing work he still could have done. The film is called The Frightners. It's a horror comedy with some of the kookiest characters and craziest concepts you'll see in a film. It's dark, it's funny as hell, it's creative and it has some brilliant monologues. I've seen The Frightners probably a dozen times. I could watch it a dozen more. Really should check this one out. It also had some really state-of-the-art CG for its time where this grim reaper is coming out of the wallpaper and they're marrying it with practical effects. Cubbirds are spilling open and dishes are all over the floor. People are underneath shelving as the CG creatures rummaging around the place trying to find its prey and Michael J. Fox is again perfect here. Really recommend checking out The Frightners if you haven't. I talked about how much I liked this movie recently when Smile came out and that's It Follows. Smile is essentially a carbon copy of It Follows which pissed off a few people. I know I was a little annoyed and rolled my eyes a lot at how much it followed the template of It Follows but if something's done great, might as well copy it entirely. That's the Steve Jobs motto, RIP. Anyway, It Follows came out, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, had this really awesome vibe to it. Essentially, if you had sex with someone who had this nightmarish creature attached to them, it would move on to you. You become the host until you pass the disease onto someone else. Yes, it was very much like an STD ghost and I loved it. It Follows moves quick, has some disturbing moments and has a good ending, has a great ending actually, recommend it. When a few women decide to go spelunking in an unknown cave region, things go from bad to worse very quickly in a little film called The Descent. This film stars a lot of strong female leads. Hollywood loves the buzzword and so do I when it makes sense and in this case it does, these ladies can do it all and sometimes they do each other's fiance's and that's one of the main plot points on this. Two best friends forced to confront each other in a cramped, isolated space. Oh yeah, and also there's scary-ass humanoid creatures down there trying to tear off their faces. Not ideal, not ideal. It kind of has that bottle episode feel. They're just trying to get out of a cave system. Creatures are after them. They've adjusted over the years, they've adapted to the environment and it's up to these ladies to work together or die alone in order to survive. You need to tread lightly with this movie though. I have to warn you, there are dose endings and one of them is far better than the other and honestly, I don't really know how you figure out which is which. All I know is this, I bought the wrong one on Amazon. I don't get that money back. I can't recoup that cost and I showed it to people thinking it was the right version and we got to the ending and I felt like a bag of crap. They loved the movie still but I said, no, this isn't right. This isn't right and then I went to YouTube and showed them how it was supposed to end but the damage was done. That's not the same as living in the moment. Shame on you, Descent, for having two endings and shame on me I guess for not pre-screening the film before I showed it to some unsuspecting viewers. The Descent though, definitely a good time. Being up in Antarctica already sounds like a pretty miserable experience. Especially isolated up in the mountains with a bunch of guys for months at a time researching God knows what. Add on top of that an unknown mysterious creature that's lied dormant in the ice, now freed, roaming through unsuspecting humans like a goddamn virus. Kurt Russell and Keith David star in 1982's The Thing. This is another John Carpenter vehicle and my favorite horror movie of all time. It holds up impeccably well with creature effects the likes you've never seen before, baby. We have people's heads coming off and then turning into spiders and scampering along the floor. There's disgusting dog tentacles shooting out, erupting. My kid couldn't sleep for weeks. Scary movie, sure. Bad parenting, you're goddamn right. This pick is one Marvel's probably gonna drive into the ground but we always have this original ended sequel, Blade One and Blade Two. Wesley Snipes stars as a vampire hunter, a day walker. He can walk between both worlds. Go outside at night, go outside in the morning, head over to a cafe, have a nice cup of coffee, talk to a woman, start a relationship, build a family, screw that, he doesn't have time. He's killing vampires because that's his sole mission. He kicks ass, he takes names. He goes for the big fish. Then you jump into Blade Two. Now directed by Guillermo del Toro himself. I put extra emphasis on the name because A, I can't pronounce it and B, it's cool to say. He now is blending my favorite thing ever. CG characters with real human beings. So you have Wesley Snipes doing some cool martial arts shit with a sword and then bam, next thing you know, he's a CG version of himself flying through the air, stabbing a sword down into a vampire or a reaver who are the cool ass new threats in the second movie and then back to human again. And it has one of the best introductions to a superhero, full stop. I'm talking a vampire rave, complete with blood sprinklers raining down on them in beautiful slow motion. As for Blade Trinity, that movie doesn't exist. Since we're talking Guillermo del Toro, you might as well throw Hellboy one and two on there as well. Ron Perlman's pack and a big gun, a big hand and a big attitude. Joining him on his misadventures is a ragtag crew. You got a fish dude, you got a fire girl. It's a whole thing, it's a whole mood and it's one that you should definitely watch if you haven't. Zombieland one and to a lesser extent two are fun for the whole family. As long as your family has a kid that's like 13 or older because there's some crass jokes, there's some gross humor and there's some violent fun. As a bonus, we got one of the Ghostbusters in this, Bill Murray himself. Plus you got Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin, America's sweetheart Emma Stone and the main protagonist, Jesse Eisenberg, who's incredibly cautious, has his own rule book and he needs to follow him to a tee if he wants to stay alive. I'm a stickler myself when it comes to runtime for films. These ones do not overstay their welcome an hour and a half flies by like that. It makes you want more and that's a testament to a good movie. Speaking of zombie comedy horrors, how about Shaun of the Dead? Our British boys are kicking ass and taking names in one of the greatest zombie battles ever. We watch them as they fend off a horde of zombies while a jukebox plays Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. They are not only hitting these zombies but they're doing it in time with the music. It's hauntingly beautiful. I'm gonna throw out a cult classic of sorts. It's a film about a ship that goes missing in space, lost in a black hole for decades and when this ship is finally found, it is not the one they remember. I'm talking about a ship and a movie called The Event Horizon. Lawrence Fishburne, Sam Neill and a few other rescue crew go aboard this ship from hell and they have to determine how to get off. The movie plays with your psyche. It plays with your emotions as lights are going off in different portions of this beast of a ship. The people aren't sure who they can trust anymore. The ship is giving them visions, making them see things that aren't real and when it's all said and done, things get pretty intense. Things go like full blown hellraiser for a little while. Not a lot of movies at that time were really wowing me in the horror department. This one really stood out and I think it's stayed on people's minds for quite some time so check it out if you haven't. One final pick for the whole family is Monster House. This animated film came out in 2006, has a very goonie-esque style to it. You follow some best friends, one of which his name is Chowder, great name. They and a new Girl Scout love interest they just met are dealing with a problem and that problem's across the street. It's an old creepy-ass house across the street featuring a man that's just as old and creepy, naturally voiced by Steve Buscemi. The movie ratchets up really well, it has some great atmosphere and it has a really cool visual style to it. This is however pretty scary. Under eight, I'd maybe skip, I'd maybe skip it. There's some pretty frightening moments but eight and up, I think you'll be safe. And it's definitely a fun one to watch with the family this Halloween. We talked about a lot of movies, we covered a lot of ground here. Have a happy Halloween, have a safe trick or treating adventure. Take care, see you guys.