The Ghoulish (literally) Plot: A creepy old professor (played by Frankenstein/Grinch narrator Boris Karloff) thinks if he dies holding onto an ancient jewel, Egyptian gods will grant him powers for eternal life and health. Then, as soon as he croaks, literally everybody who ever heard of this jewel decides to rob his grave and take it, forgetting his promise that if he doesn’t possess it at the next full moon, he’ll come back to life and hunt down whoever took it and destroyed it.

This movie was considered one of Karloff’s “Lost” films, and based on the version available on Prime Video, it could have stayed lost and nobody would have missed out. It’s a long, drawn-out film that looks great (lots of creepy shadows and vibes) but it takes nearly 1/3 of the runtime to get to him dying with the jewel, and then the movie is nearly 80% done before Karloff rises from the grave. In the meantime, we get a lot of exposition and a guy yelling at a woman about how to make coffee, for some reason. I get that older movies move at a slower pace and not everything needs to be John Wick with heads ‘sploding within 8 seconds of the movie starting, but this entire flick was a slog to get through.

The Scariest Part of the Movie: before Karloff’s professor dies, his manservant accuses him of never trusting anybody. Then, literally everybody proves him right. For a weird old dude obsessed with Egyptian lore, he sure nailed human nature.

Spookiness Factor: The whole movie LOOKS like a classic old horror flick with lots of creepy lighting and moody music. And Karloff’s makeup looks great as the Ghoul. But keep in mind he’s only in about 15 minutes of the entire thing.

Rating: 3 out of 10 Dark Chocolate Raisinets

The Ghoulish Plot: Rose is a therapist treating a woman who recently saw somebody commit suicide, and she says an entity has been following and tormenting her ever since. Suddenly she begins to panic, and then shockingly becomes calm, smiles in a disturbing way, and kills herself in front of Rose.

The next day, Rose begins to see people in her life who smile at her in the same way and inform her that she will soon suffer the same fate. Rose begins to investigate further and sees a trail of suicides in which witnesses go on to kill themselves in gruesome ways…except for one person who committed a heinous murder and survived.

Rose tries to find a way to escape her fate while being haunted by people who smile like Evangelical Christians who are actively telling you you’re gonna burn in hell for not voting for Trump. As she approached the final moments she thinks she may have found a way to face and defeat her fate.

The Scariest Part: This whole movie is a huge and total bummer. Not to spoil anything, but the ending is so goddamn cynical that it left a bad taste in my mouth. I also think this is symptomatic of what horror movies often reflect in society: the film was written and moving towards production in the tail end of a pretty awful and inescapable political cycle in America where we were all watching a bunch of grinning jackals gleefully abuse power to take away people’s freedoms under the name of moral superiority and it felt like there was nothing we could do. It’s an effective horror movie but depressing as hell.

Spookiness Factor: every Midwest person has had an awful person smile in your face as they say the cruelest, most awful shit you’ve ever heard while you can just tell they don’t see anything wrong with it. That smile is ultra-creepy.

Rating: 7 out of 10 York Peppermint Patties

The Ghoulish Plot: I was already a young adult when the first “Blair Witch Project” came out in 1999, and the internet was still new enough that I saw the movie in the theater with a person who had been convinced that it was actually all real. The movie was already pretty effectively scary, but seeing it with somebody who thought it actually happened took it to another level. The rest of us who knew it was fake were also super kind and spent the rest of the night confirming for him that, yup, that was totally real, there are witches in the woods, dude! And we just let him keep getting increasingly more freaked out. Luckily, in 2024 we’ve all become very smart and discerning media consumers and nobody falls for insane nonsense online anymore and it hasn’t permeated everything in our lives and even affected our Democracy!

This movie was released in 2016 and is meant as a more direct follow-up to the original film than the sequel that followed. One of the original trio’s siblings is still haunted by their sudden disappearance and wants to take a new, younger and more technically-equipped crew into the same forest to see if they can figure out what happened. This is the same found-footage scenario, but instead of just two cameras they now have phones, drones, GoPros and are hauling around memory cards instead of film.

The crew pairs up with two local weirdos who claim to know where the witch’s cabin is located, and off they go into the woods. Before long, they find themselves lost, seeing weird stick-men in the trees, hearing cackling and then get lured into a creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere by the promise of a reunion that goes predictably awry, including being chased by something that is either a demon or a weird inbred redneck creature that has NOT been getting the right nutrition for bone growth.

The Scariest Part of the Movie: Just like the 1999 original, it’s the woods. I grew up near the woods. I have spent a lot of time in the woods. The woods are scary. Give me Compton in 1995 any day of the week over being stranded in the woods. In fact, I have been to Compton multiple times and it has always been welcoming and fun; drive around in some super-rural areas and see the shanties covered in Trump flags and “No Trespassing” signs and you know that place is filled with untreated mental health problems carrying loaded shotguns.

Spookiness Factor: we all know it’s fake and the whole “found footage” thing is fairly played out, but by the end of the movie I was jumping and nervous, even though the characters in this one are nowhere near as endearing as the original.

Rating: 6 out of 10 Twix Bars

The Ghoulish Plot: A wanderer obsessed with the supernatural finds his way to a small town and takes up residence at the inn. After his first creepy night, a man enters his room and declares that “she must not die.” The wanderer discovers that the man’s daughter has been bitten by something and is steadily declining in health, and clues indicate that the town may be home to a vampire and to save her, they’ll have to find the vampire and kill it.

Shot in Germany in 1932 between two World Wars and without the special effects of today, this thing is a surreal and spooky-ass film that relies on using lights and shadows and misdirection in order to make every frame just a little…off. There is dialogue but it’s sparse and the whole film creates a very, very spooky atmosphere without having to show anything gruesome or bloody.

Will the hero find the vampire and save the girl, or will yet another soul be captured by the prince of darkness? True to its German roots, our hero may succeed at his goal but the movie ends on a colossal bummer. Gott im Himmel!

The Scariest Part of the Movie: As somebody who has stayed in some pretty cheap-ass motels for comedy and had cleaning staff just barge into the room at 7:30am even with the “do not disturb” sign on, the guy entering his room made me VERY uneasy, as though I was right back in that highway La Quinta in Sacramento.

Spookiness Factor: it’s black and white, it’s German from 1932, it’s shadowy and creepy from start to finish. I’d never seen this and could not believe how effectively weirded out it made me.

Rating: 8 out of 10 Fun-Size Snickers

The Ghoulish Plot: yes, this is a video game. I know this list is mostly movies but hey, it’s my list and I’ll add what I want. And what better game for October than Resident Evil 4, which is available to play on pretty much every platform ever. Got a PS3, 4 or 5? It’s on there. Got an old Wii sitting around? You can play it there, too. Got a phone made in the last four years? Download these shits! RE4 has been a classic ever since it was released over a decade ago. So get with the times, grandma. Put down the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and savor the simple pleasures of blasting a shotgun into a giant man wielding a chainsaw while wearing a pig’s head.

Anyway: you play as Leon Kennedy, who is sent to a weird rural Spanish village to…rescue the President’s daughter? Yes, this seems like a job for one person, and one person only. This is the future those “defund the police” liberals want! Luckily, Leon has experience dealing with crazy situations, as this game is called “Resident Evil 4” and not “Leon Kennedy’s Weird-Ass Spanish Vacation Part 1: No Time for Tapas.”

As soon as you enter the village you start to get the sense that things are not quite right…possibly aided in this assumption by the person you witness burning on a crucifix as soon as you walk in. Within seconds you’re swarmed by brainwashed villagers and it’s a mad dash to survive without getting chainsawed, until something happens and you realize there’s a more powerful and sinister thing in control.

Over the course of the game you dig deeper into the mystery, get infected with a weird entity, rescue the daughter, lose the daughter, rescue her again, lose her again, and eventually have to fight some giant bug/crab creatures armed only with a few guns and knives. Can you make it through? Clear your calendar, quit your job, tell your family goodbye and dive in to find out.

The Scariest Part of the Game: the bear traps. About the time you think you know what you’re doing and can handle anything, another goddamn hidden bear trap pops up as you’re trying to run from something. Bastards. Oh, and the weird creatures you need a special scope to shoot at who sneak up on you are pretty terrifying.

Spookiness Factor: on the lower side for the Resident Evil games as this is more action than horror, but there’s some gross-out body stuff and some pretty gruesome deaths, and enough stuff jumps out at you suddenly to shock the system. The Resident Evil games are the series I’ve played the most of in my entire life and hold a special place in my heart.

Rating: 9 out of 10 Hundred Grand bars

The Ghoulish Plot: Years after a terrible car accident left a man’s wife killed and him suddenly able to see spirits, he uses his gift to con locals desperate for help against a growing tide of supernatural weirdness in the town. As more and more people are suddenly dying of a sudden heart malady, the con man realizes he may be the only one equipped to deal with the problem, which ties into a murder spree at a hospital years ago and a woman who is still alive and who may have been more involved in those murders than people think.

This all sounds like the makings of a pretty spooky and terrifying nightmare, but then Director Peter Jackson cast The Most Likable Man In the World, Michael J. Fox, as the con man, and added in cartoony ghosts like his sidekicks in period costumes and funny animations and zany subplots about malicious destruction of property. This movie could have been a real bummer, but instead it’s more of a silly ghost story featuring some pretty gross special effects for 1996 that ends up feeling pretty low-stakes. On the plus side the bad guy is played by Jake Busey, and anybody who grew up trying to understand the ramblings of Gary Busey is gonna have a pretty good idea about how to play “super duper crazy.”

The whole thing wraps up in a cacophony of silly weirdness and gruesome effects in a fairly satisfying way, including the elaborate death of one character who is mostly annoying and superfluous throughout the rest of the movie.

The Scariest Part of the Movie: after making this insanely weird little horror movie, New Line Cinemas saw it and thought, “this director needs a billion dollars to make a very epic trilogy about dwarves and elves throwing a ring into a volcano.” Hollywood!

Spookiness Factor: this is mostly a comedy-horror, but there are enough gruesome deaths and effects that I wouldn’t show it to kids until they’ve either made it to about 13 years old, or if you found out that when they’re at Grandma and Grandpas they’re forced to watch Fox News all day. After THAT, this will seem like a wacky romp. Sure, there is a ghost crushing hearts but you know what I’m MORE worried about? Comrade Kamala’s plans to crush our economy with regulations and cancel culture!

Rating: 5 out of 10 Starburst

The Ghoulish Plot: Two wacky guys are working as baggage clerks at a train station in Florida, so they’re already used to some macabre situations that usually involve old conservatives, alligators and meth. The movie opens as they’re expecting a shipment to arrive for delivery to a local “House of Horrors,” also known in Florida as “the local Waffle House after 2am.”

Turns out the large packages include Dracula in a coffin and Frankenstein’s monster in a crate. And they say it was Amazon who made it easy to order anything! The two clerks have been warned not to open the delivery by Larry Talbot, aka The Wolfman, aka “Horror’s greatest metaphor for alcoholism” but due to being zany and wacky, the two don’t listen and hijinks soon ensue. And while I’d heard of Abbott and Costello before as a classic comedy team, the joke formula seems to be “average tall man without joy bosses around slightly overweight shorter man who then makes faces” ‘cuz man, people were starved for entertainment in 1948. This was one of the biggest movies of the year, supposedly. I guess anything was better than sitting around chain smoking in doctor’s offices while thinking about how bad WWII was.

Before long Dracula decides that Costello’s brain would be the perfect replacement for the monster, so the two are lured to a castle that exists in Florida for some reason, and the film culminates in a battle royale that, despite being shot in 1948, is still lauded for its precision and athleticism. Just kidding, two guys randomly run around wackily slamming doors while Dracula fights the Wolfman with a wooden chair. Bela Lugosi was already pretty old and pilled up at this point, so we’ll take what we can get!

The Scariest Part of the Movie: Despite being surrounded by some of the biggest Universal movie monsters of all time, the most dangerous character is the insurance agent who threatens legal action.

Spookiness Factor: pretty tame. If you have younger kids and they seem interested in the Universal movies this might be a good entry point – the most violent parts are some bonks on the head and funny faces. Although this was made in 1948, so also be prepared for some pretty casual fat phobia and misogyny baked into it.

Rating: 4 out of 10 Sour Patch Kids

Tomorrow night in Trenton, Michigan – catch me headlining this shindig with a lineup of fun comics.

Tickets are available here.

The Ghoulish Plot: It’s the end of the 1970s, and nothing is quite right in America, everything is beige and drunk driving is the rule of the land. An orphaned teenage boy named Mike follows his shithead older brother to a funeral and spots a weird tall undertaker who starts lifting coffins by himself while rocking a pretty intense skullet, even for 1979. Super strength is one thing but dude, know when to let the hair go, man.

Their paths continue to cross with the tall undertaker (whose scary bad guy name is “Tall Man”) until they realize he’s directly involved with the disappearances that have plagued the area, so they team up with their buddy the hippie-dippie ice cream man and break into the mortuary to discover that Tall Man is shrinking bodies and turning them into…something else. He also has access to flying silver balls with spikes that only give you a couple of minutes with tense music to dodge them at most, which is pretty tough when you’re busy making shocked faces.

Over the course of the movie multiple dream sequences and flashbacks make it impossible to figure out what’s actually happening, until it all wraps up in an ending that indeed happens as the movie was running out of film, apparently. It’s something about space midgets being used as slaves for something intergalactic. I dunno, man, people had been doing a lot of hallucinogens for a decade and then this movie got made and Jimmy Carter was President and shag carpeting seemed like a good idea.

The Scariest Part of the Movie: this movie has spawned several sequels, and the Tall Man has been rocking the same haircut for decades. Seriously, dude, accept it and shave your head.

Spookiness Factor: the movie is never really sure what kind of horror movie it wants to be, so just as you start to get into whatever phase it’s rolling in everything shifts and you’re never really all that affected by the scares. This might be one of the funniest horror movies I’ve seen in a while.

Rating: 3 out of 10 Australian licorice pieces for this one.

The Ghoulish Plot: a man from Boston travels to visit his fiancee at her spooky mansion, only to find that her gaslighting brother Roderick (played by a blond-dyed Vincent Price) would rather his sister not get married, have kids, or be happy in general. In 2024 Price’s character would probably be classified as a neurodivergent empath and spend the entire movie wearing Anime and MAGA t-shirts while posting on incel subreddits, but in 1960 he’s just a weirdo who likes to whisper and wear velvet jackets and says the house he lives in is evil, so his sister can never leave — clearly a very logical and reasonable request.

Eventually when Mr. Beantown decides to take his fiancee whether her brother likes it or not, Roderick opts to fake her death and bury her alive. But because he is eager to get back to playing his lute and drinking sherry, he does a bad job and she eventually gets free and may finally cause the ultimate demise of the House of Usher. Ends with a big flaming setpiece that director Roger Corman liked so much he used footage from in multiple movies. Will our lead character escape with his life and go found Dunkin’? Or will he himself be trapped forever in a dysfunctional family?

The Scariest Part of the Movie: The Usher’s manservant has been working in a house of sociopaths for 60 years. Talk about a toxic work environment!

Spookiness Factor: The movie LOOKS very spooky, lots of mist and fog and cobwebs and creaky old mansion shots. And Vincent Price is always reliably creepy, even with dyed hair and asking everybody to tiptoe and whisper at him.

Rating: 6 out of 10 Japanese Kit-Kats