'Omen' overload? Had it up to here with 'Halloween'? Try these nine
Right about now, you probably want to scream when someone suggests another scary movie you can rent, buy or watch for the impending Halloween weekend.
We all know the standard horror classics don't we? Let's see: "The Exorcist," "The Haunting" (1963 original), "Halloween" (1978 original), "Night of the Living Dead" (1968 original), "Psycho" (1960 original), "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1975 original), "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956 original), "Alien," "Rosemary's Baby," "Evil Dead," "The Omen," and on and on.
What about those not-so-classic scary movies? The ones that hover just below the mainstream popular radar?
They may not be regarded as on the same level as Tim Burton's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," but the following alternative scary movies might just fit the bill for something different this weekend.
Ready? Here come nine scary movies for Halloween '09, something for everyone from innocent children to jaded adults, all neatly in alphabetical order.
1. "The Audition" (1999) - Japanese horror meister Takashi Miike tells an unsettling, adults-only tale of a mild-mannered widower who sits in on a friend's auditions for young actresses. He becomes enamored of a youthful beauty and seeks her out, hoping he won't appear to be too anxious. That's before he sees the big, moving sack on the floor of her apartment. Not a movie for people with pacemakers.
2. "The Changeling" (1980) - Not to be confused with Clint Eastwood's 2006 serial killer opus. Peter Medak's atmospheric chiller casts George C. Scott as a composer recovering from the deaths of his wife and son. When he stays at a historic old house for inspiration, he creates a nifty little tune, only to discover an old music box in the attic that plays the same tune. Scariest moment: a ball bouncing down a staircase. See it. You'll know what I mean.
3. "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" (1959) - I was 6 when I saw this Walt Disney fantasy at my local theater, and when the cheesy Coach of Death descends from the sky, I wished I were still wearing diapers. Albert Sharpe plays Darby, a scruffy old Irishman who captures the King of the Leprechauns (Jimmy O'Dea) and forces him to fork over three wishes. Of course, there's always a catch. If the Death Coach and the banshees don't scare the kids, there's always a pre-007 Sean Connery singing at the end.
4. "The Lady in White" (1988) - Independent filmmaker Frank LaLoggia not only directed this superbly creepy tale of ghosts and a child serial killer, he also composed the score, one of the scariest pieces of movie music nobody's ever heard of. In 1962, little Frankie (Lukas Haas) gets locked overnight in his school, and witnesses the specter of a girl re-enacting her grisly murder at the hands of an invisible assailant. who still prowls the streets 10 years later. The original time-altering ending is admittedly terrible. When I revisited the film several years later, the ending had been changed, but not much for the better. Still, except for its disappointing finale, it's worthy of a Halloween viewing.
5. "The Mist" (2007) - A lot of people saw Frank "The Green Mile" Darabont's boldly challenging film based on Stephen King's novel, but a lot more didn't. "The Mist" wasn't a box office megahit by any stretch, so if you're one of those people who missed it on its theatrical run, you should see this tidy little thriller about a group of citizens huddled inside a grocery store when a mysterious mist surrounds the building with monstrous results. Forget about those murderous creatures outside, I'm talking about how people turn on each other in times of crisis and finger scapegoats for their problems.
6. "The Night Stalker" (1972) - You'd never think a made-for-TV movie about a goofy reporter (Darren McGavin) on the trail of an old-world vampire stalking Las Vegas would be that scary. But John Llewellyn Moxey's razor-sharp direction of Richard "I Am Legend" Matheson's screenplay created such a documentarylike atmosphere of realism that the movie became a mini-classic, inspiring a dreadful sequel, "The Night Strangler," plus a short-lived TV series, "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," in which the reporter works for the Independent News Service in Chicago. (We'll ignore the feeble attempt to revive the series a few years ago.)
7. "The Orphanage" (2007) - Easily the greatest ghost movie of the 21st century so far. Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona's haunted house epic is something like "The Innocents" meets "Peter Pan." A woman (Belen Rueda) and her husband buy the old orphanage where she grew up, unaware that the place has many secrets, including invisible playmates for her little son. It's like no ghost movie I've ever seen, and I have seen it at least 11 times since its release. Yeah, it's that good.
8. "Pinocchio" (1940) - Walt Disney's animated classic is still influencing pop culture and entertainment. (See 1977's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," 1990's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and the current "Astro Boy.") You don't think of horror when you think of "Pinocchio," but on its original release, the magical tale of the marionette who dreamed of becoming a living boy packed plenty of fright for youngsters. Forget about being swallowed alive by a giant whale, the shadowy transformation of boys into donkeys on Pleasure Island is primal terrification!
9. "Trilogy of Terror" (1975) - Frequent "Twilight Zone" writer Richard Matheson scripted this three-part made-for-TV thriller, directed by "Dark Shadows" creator Dan Curtis. Park Ridge native Karen Black stars as three different lead characters, who. . . Hey! Skip the first two segments and go right to the coupe de grace: Black starring as a woman trapped inside her apartment by a magic African doll out to kill her with razor-sharp teeth and a mini-spear. The long, eerie ending shot haunted me for weeks. Months. OK, I'm still freaked out by it.