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SPECIAL GUESTS AT THE NEXT STOKERCON

The HWA is pleased to announce all of our 2025 Guests of Honor:
 

Joyce Carol Oates 
Adam Nevill
Scott Edelman 
Paula Guran
Tim Waggoner
Gaby Triana

YOUR TOP 20 FAVORITE CHRISTMAS HORROR MOVIES!

Jeani Rector queried folks on facebook (probably you!) to ask what is your favorite horror-themed Christmas movie? Below are the top 20 picks, in order according to the amount of votes they each received.

Also listed is trivia about each film.

1

Gremlins (1984)

The idea of a “gremlin” dates back to the Royal Air Force during World War II. When something went wrong with a plane, they would blame it on little monsters called “gremlins.” Author Roald Dahl, who was in the RAF, wrote a book called “The Gremlins” in 1943 that put the idea of gremlins into the popular culture.

The set for Kingston Falls is the same one used for Back to the Future (1985). Both movies were filmed on the Universal Studios backlot. Originally, Stripe and Gizmo were the same character. This changed when executive producer Steven Spielberg insisted that one of the Gremlins be a "good guy" with whom the audience could identify. Director Joe Dante expresses that this decision was the reason why the film is fondly remembered.

At the time he conceived of “Gremlins,” Chris Columbus was living in a loft that had a bit of a rodent problem. He could hear mice coming out at nice and skittering around in the dark, which he found quite creepy. This gave him the idea for the bones of his horror-comedy.

2

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Tim Burton is the producer and creator of the story; but he tapped his former Disney animation colleague, Henry Selick, to direct the film. It was Selick’s directorial debut. At first, the Disney company didn't like that Jack Skellington didn't have eyes, but Burton was adamant that Jack remain an empty skull.

Althought it didn't win, Nightmare received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects. It was the first time an animated film had ever been nominated in that category. 

3

A Christmas Carol (with Alastair Sim, 1951)

According to Biography.com, the character Tiny Tim was based on the author’s sickly brother, known as Tiny Fred, and also upon a nephew with a disability, Henry Burnett Jr.

Towards the the end of the 1951 film, when Scrooge wakes up in his bedroom on Christmas day and is elated to know he is still alive, he goes over and looks in the mirror twice. Both times you can see someone in the mirror reflection in the background, possibly holding a script.

Despite people buying this book in the masses when it was first published in 1843, Dickens wanted costly materials used for its publication, so he did not make much of a profit. Despite his personal financial failing, the book spurred the well-off Britains to begin giving alms to the poor. This tradition of alms giving at Christmas still continues to this day.

4

Black Christmas (1974)

The audio for the demented phones calls was edited into the film during post-production. While shooting the footage for the phone call scenes, the actresses were actually just reacting to threatening dialog being spoken from director Bob Clark from off-camera.

Although some have accused John Carpenter of ripping off Black Christmas for his movie Halloween, Clark himself disputes that by saying, "The truth is, John didn’t copy Black Christmas, he wrote a script, directed the script, did the casting. Halloween is his movie. He liked Black Christmas and may have been influenced by it, but in no way did John Carpenter copy the idea."

5

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

The movie is an anthology film adapted from short stories from the classic EC Comics series "Tales from the Crypt". Peter Cushing's character was a widower who uses an ouija board to contact his late wife, who was named "Helen" after Cushing's real wife. Cushing's wife Helen had recently died, so Cushing was actively grieving at the time the movie was made. Cushing was originally offered the role of the Crypt Keeper, but chose to play Grimsdyke instead.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, while Vincent Canby of The New York Times felt it lacked style.

6

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

This film was known as Slayride throughout its production. Tri-Star decided to change the title to Silent Night, Deadly Night at the last minute.

The release of this film in theaters was picketed by angry parents who were not happy to see Santa Claus depicted as an ax murderer, despite the fact that Tales from the Crypt (1972) had done the exact same thing 12 years earlier, and Christmas Evil (1980) had done the exact same thing 4 years earlier. As a result of the protests, the film was pulled from theaters after barely two weeks. From there, it went straight to VHS.

Nonetheless, it was a success during its opening week, grossing $2.5 million on a budget of $750,000. Over the years, it has developed a cult following.

7

Krampus (2015)

Krampus was shot in Wellington, New Zealand. The movie was originally scheduled for release on November 25, but was delayed until December 4 to coincide with Krampusnacht, an Austrian festival that celebrates Krampus's arrival to punish children. In Austrian and German folklore, Krampus is a half-goat, half-demon monster who is the devilish companion of St. Nicholas. His name comes from the German word Krampen, which means "claw".

The movie's cold exterior scenes used digital breath, but also involved filming people reading dialogue while in freezers. The breath was then isolated and added optically to the shots.

8

Scrooged (1998)

Bill Murray and director Richard Donner reportedly didn't enjoy working together. Murray said that the script was good, but they made the movie so fast that it was like doing a movie live. Bill Murray falling on his way out of the restaurant was unscripted and a genuine accident, but it was decided to keep it in the movie. 

Filming began in December 1987. With Christmas approaching, director Richard Donner asked if the production could have Christmas Day off, but Paramount Pictures executives refused, insisting that filming should continue on Christmas Day. However, Donner outwitted them. At the end of the day on December 24th, he fired the entire cast and crew. Two days later, on December 26th, he rehired everyone. The break allowed the cast and crew members to spend Christmas with their families.

9

Violent Night (2022)

The logo on the catering company van is called "Farkus and Dill" after the bullies in A Christmas Story (1983).

In a 2022 interview, Tommy Wirkola spoke about referencing Home Alone (1990): "Obviously when I was a kid I loved that one, but as you get older you think, 'Oh they would DIE if you did those things to them', so that was basically the approach to the scenes in Violent Night. All right, let's just do traps very similar to Home Alone and see what it does to a human being."

10

Don’t Open Until Christmas (1984)

Don't Open Till Christmas suffered a lot of setbacks during its making and almost didn't get made at all. The film took two years to complete after original director Edmund Purdom quit the job and Derek Ford took over. Then Ford was abruptly fired after only two days.

The distributors hired Ray Selfe to complete the direction and Alan Birkinshaw to rewrite parts of the script. The original ending was put back into the script after it had been removed by Ford. Because of the changes Selfe and Birkinshaw made to the film, much of the footage had to be completely re-filmed.

The movie was released after the death of actor Alan Lake, who portrayed Giles Harrison. Lake committed suicide after the death of his wife, Diana Dors, who died from ovarian cancer.

11

Santa’s Slay (2005)

This movie ironically stars famed wrestler Bill Goldberg, who is Jewish, playing Santa. He recently announced that he will have his retirement match in the WWE in 2025. 

After the film's end credits, Santa breaks the fourth wall and says, "Who's next?" During his wrestling career, Goldberg made that his catchphrase after pinning his opponents.

Three local banks in Wetaskiwin, Canada, were redressed for the movie. BMO became Bank of Snow, TD Bank became Hell's Bank, and RBC became Stink Neckula Software.

James Caan had an uncredited role as Darren Mason.

12

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (Finland 2010)

The film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale was filmed in Tromsø, Norway and produced in Finland, Norway, France, and Sweden. The movie stars real-life father and son Jorma Tommila and Onni Tommila as Rauno and Pietari.

Character Brian Greene's passport number is 314159265, which are the first digits of pi. Pietari's stuffed animal, "Vuupe", translates to "woof" in English.

The movie won several awards in 2011, including Best Cinematography, Best Music, Best Sound Design, Best Editing, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design at the Jussi Awards.

13

Dead End (2003)

The movie was originally titled Crossroads, but was changed to avoid confusion with the 2002 Britney Spears movie of the same name. Here's a mistake at (01:05:20): when Frank yells 'stop' to Marion, you can see the marks on the road from a previous take.

The end credits includes the message, "To everyone still with us at the end of these credits, thank you! God bless you. You sure do like movies!"

Neil Smith of BBC wrote "Dead End—feels like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone, but it's witty and chilling enough to offer some spine-tingling surprises en route."

14

A Christmas Tale (2008)

When steely French matriarch Junon (Catherine Deneuve) learns she has leukemia, she asks her children and grandchildren at the family Christmas gathering to see if they are eligible to become bone marrow donors.This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #492.

Staff members of the Lille Hospital appear as themselves. The movie that Faunia watches while bored a few evenings before Christmas is Funny Face (1957). And on Christmas Eve, the whole family watches The Ten Commandments (1956).

15

Terrifier 3 (2024)

Director Damien Leone said that several big studios showed interest in financing this movie based on the unexpected success of Terrifier 2 (2022), even without a full script, but he turned them all down because he is certain that they would never let him film the opening scene alone, which he describes as "very controversial". Leone commented that the only reason that he can be so uncompromising in his depiction of horror and gore is because he finances his movies independently, creates all the special effects himself to keep costs down, and has no big studio breathing down his neck to make the movie more mainstream.

Legendary makeup artist John Caglione Jr most famous for working on The Dark Knight's Joker makeup told Damien Leone he was a fan of Terrifier 1 and 2 and offered to work on the film which Leone quickly accepted.

The rat tube scene truly made Art The Clown actor David Howard Thornton nauseous and he had to prevent himself from throwing up.

16

Christmas Evil (1980)

Cult filmmaker John Waters considers Christmas Evil his favorite Christmas-themed movie and often recommends it. This movie was the film debut of actress Patricia Richardson, who is is best known as Jill Taylor on Home Improvement (1991). 

Director Lewis Jackson came up with the basic idea for this film after smoking marijuana one night during the 1970s and seeing a vision of Santa Claus holding a knife.

All the snow was fake, and actually were cut-up pieces of plastic bags blown around by a fan. When Harry slips and falls while running, it was unscripted.

17

A Christmas Carol (with Patrick Stewart, 1999)

This made-for-television Hallmark Entertainment production is a faithful interpretation of the Dickens novel, except in this movie, Scrooge's sister is named "Fran", but in the book she is named "Fan". This may be a deliberate change because in the United States, "Fanny" is slang for buttocks.

This version (starring Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame) depicts rather severe weather for Great Britain in December, with accumulated snow on rooftops and in the streets. However, despite the snow and bitter cold that is mentioned repeatedly throughout the movie, nobody's breath condensation is ever visible when speaking, laughing, singing or shouting outdoors. This is due to the fact that the movie was filmed during the spring and summer of 1999.

18

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

The film closes with a dedication to Ryan McHenry - McHenry (who sadly passed away in 2015) wrote and directed the short film Zombie Musical (2011) from which this feature film was adapted.

The school that Anna and her colleagues attend was filmed at the recently demolished (2019) St. Stephen's High School in Inverclyde, Scotland. This movie has 3 versions: the USA cut, which is 93 minutes long, the UK/International Cut, which is 98 minutes, and the Festival Cut, which is 108 minutes.

19

The Lodge (2019)

Although the film is set in Massachusetts, USA, it was filmed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The lodge featured in the film was located on a golf resort, which was closed for the winter season. Grady the dog is named "Wally" in real life. As of 2024, this film is his only acting credit.

On the way to the remote cabin in the mountains, the Jeep is driven through snow-covered roads and frequently has frosted windows. When the Jeep is approaching the "private" driveway/road, it has somehow been plowed (but is still snow-covered). Despite all the driving through snow and the windows usually frosted over, the Jeep looks clean and dry upon arrival and there is no snow on the tire treads.

20

Await Further Instructions (2018)

The movie is about a family that is forced into an obedience experiment by an unearthly entity. The surname of the family, Milgram, refers go the Milgram test of obediance to authority, a theme dominant throughout the film. It is also revealed that the family resides on Stanford street, a reference to the Stanford Prison experiment which studied similar themes of perceived power and authority.

Ghost Stories To Shudder: The Haunted Season

The first episode of The Haunted Season, a festive new horror series from renowned author and filmmaker Kier-La Janisse (Severin Films, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, House of Psychotic Women), is set to hit Shudder just in time for Christmas.

No stranger to folk horror, Janisse worked as executive producer on To Fire You Come at Last that stars James Swanton (Apartment 7A, Tarot, The First Omen, Host) and had a successful festival run last year.

The chilling short form horror tales will follow the classic tradition of telling ghost stories for Christmas, with different directors helming an episode each which will hit the streamer each December.

The first episode of The Haunted Season comes from director Sean Hogan, and is titled To Fire You Come at Last:

"In rural 17th century England, a group of men gathers to carry a coffin to the graveyard for burial. Much ancient folklore and superstition surround the pathway to the church, and several members of the party are afraid to walk it after dark. The grieving father promises to double their wages if they make the frightening journey."

The Haunted Season: To Fire You Come at Last premieres on Shudder on December 1 and will continue as a series. Don't miss it!

See more HERE

Stephen King's THE MONKEY

New Poster For THE MONKEY Promises A F’d Up Flick

By Dave Dreher

SEE THE MONKEY TRAILER HERE

Several reasons to be looking forward to THE MONKEY. An adaptation of Stephen King’s epic short story that appeared in his 1985 collection SKELETON CREW. First up – it’s a Stephen King story, that alone is enough for me. But, add in that it’s been adapted by Osgood Perkins – and is being directed by Osgood Perkins and it quickly expands into must-watch territory. And the icing on the cake – this great poster art that proclaims just how scary it’s going to be.

The film stars Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy.

If you’ve never read the story, the film follows "twin brothers Hal and Bill discover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths starts occurring all around them. The brothers decide to throw the monkey away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years. But when the mysterious deaths begin again, the brothers must reunite to find a way to destroy the monkey for good before it takes the lives of everyone close to them."

THE MONKEY will hit theaters on Feb. 21st, 2025.

Jeani Rector queried folks on facebook (probably you!) to ask what their favorite horror movies of all time were. Below are the top 20 picks, in order according to the amount of votes they each received.

Also listed is trivia about each film.

The number ONE movie chosen by the most votes

THE THING (1982)

John Carpenter's The Thing didn’t go over well when it was released in 1982. Ignored by movie-goers, it was a box office failure. Reviled by critics, it even saw Carpenter being labeled a pornographer of violence by some reviewers. It was such a disappointment for the studio, they took another project away from Carpenter as punishment. But it gradually found its audience, building up a cult following. And soon, a legion of fans and critics alike began calling it one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It didn’t take long for The Thing to go from being known as reprehensible trash to being considered an all-time classic.

Actor Kurt Russell would take drags off of cigarettes to make his breath visible as though he were in cold temperatures. It has become a tradition in British Antarctic research stations to watch The Thing as part of their Midwinter feast and celebration held every June 21.

TWO

HALLOWEEN (1978)

The 1978 horror film Halloween was not an immediate success, but it eventually became one of the most successful independent films of all time. The movie, directed by John Carpenter and shot in Southern California on a budget of $325,000, had disappointing sales numbers during its first weekend. However, word of mouth helped the film gain popularity, with audiences telling their friends to see it. By the following weekend, sales had doubled, then tripled, and eventually increased tenfold.

Because of the film's tight budget, the production designer Tommy Lee Wallace had to use whatever he had at his disposal, or had to buy materials cheaply. When he created the Michael Myers mask, he made two versions. The first was an Emmett Kelly smiling clown mask that they put frizzy red hair on. They tested it out but it didn't achieve the desired effect. The other mask was a 1975 Captain James T. Kirk mask that was purchased in a costume shop on Hollywood Boulevard for $1.98. It had the eyebrows and sideburns ripped off, the face was painted bluish white, the hair was spray painted brown, and the eyes were opened up more. After testing out the mask, the crew decided that it was much more creepy because it was emotionless.

THREE

JAWS (1975)

Jaws, the American suspense and horror film of 1975, was directed by Steven Spielberg and is considered the first summer blockbuster ever due to the fact that over 67 million people in the USA went to see this film when it was first released. Based on the 1974 novel of the same name by author Peter Benchley, the film not only broke box office records at the time of its release, but also changed the way Hollywood marketed and distributed films, especially those released during the summer.

Peter Benchley himself can be seen in a cameo in the film as the news reporter who addresses the camera on the beach. Benchley had previously worked as a news reporter for The Washington Post before penning Jaws. Steven Spielberg also makes a cameo in the movie: His voice is the Amity Island dispatcher who calls Quint’s boat, the Orca, with Sheriff Brody’s wife on the line.

FOUR

THE LOST BOYS (1987)

As filming began, the comedic points in the movie were made up on the spot. The comedy confused Warner Brothers, and they would ask Joel Schumacher (the director) if he were making a horror film or a comedy. He responded with “yes” every time. The executives seemed confused about the combination of those two genres, and weren’t sure that a horror-comedy would work. The city of Santa Cruz, California, did not want to be connected to the crime that happens in the movie, so they asked the production to change the name of the town in the film. So the movie takes place in the fictional city of Santa Carla. 

See movie trivia about The Lost Boys HERE

FIVE

ALIEN (1979)

Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigouney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to Special Order 24 (Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded) is: "How do we kill it?"

The blue laser lights that were used in the alien ship's egg chamber were borrowed from the rock band The Who. The band was testing out the lasers for their stage show in the soundstage next door.

SIX

HELLRAISER (1987)

Based on the Clive Barker book titled The Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser was an orignal film in an era of cliches. Famous critic Roger Ebert panned it HERE, but moviegoers loved it. The movie was originally going to be called Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave or Hellbound, but producer Christopher Figg suggested Hellraiser instead.

Since the movie was filmed in England, there was a law that stated that cockroaches of both sexes were not to be allowed on movie sets because they could cause an infestation. So, Barker decided to hire someone who could manage the cockroaches. He explained, “They were all male. And we had a fridge…we chilled the maggots and the roaches.”

SEVEN

THE FLY (1986)

Directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jeff Goldblum early in his career, the movie is about a scientist who accidentally merges with a fly during a teleportation experiment. Although most people prefer the 1986 version because of the lead character's charm and also because the film has great heart and soul, there can't help be some comparisons to the original 1958 version.

The first The Fly (1958) was a film that surprised even its producers. They knew the original story was a little silly and expected only a modest return on the film from a mostly young audience. Even the film’s name stars, Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall, could not take The Fly seriously. The audience, on the other hand, found that there was much to respond to in the film. The Fly cost $350,000 in 1958 dollars and only took 18 days to make, yet it grossed $3,000,000 (also in 1958 dollars), considerably outstripping any expectation at the time.

EIGHT

THE HAUNTING (1963)

The 1963 horror film The Haunting had a budget of $1.05 million in 1958 dollars but only made $1.02 million at the box office. The film was shot at MGM-British Studios near London, with exteriors filmed at Ettington Park in Warwickshire. It was based upon Shirley Jackson's famous book The Haunting of Hill House.

At the time it was released, The Haunting was considered to be a flop because it originally lost money. But over the years, it became a classic because of word of mouth and because of TV showings. There were some clever uses of lensing effects to heighten the strangeness of Hill House. By adjusting the props in the sets so that they are off by a few degrees, it helped to unsettle the viewer.

NINE

FRANKENSTEIN (1931)

Frankenstein is a Pre-Code film. Pre-Code movies are American films produced between the late 1920s and mid-1934, before the Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code) censorship guidelines were strictly enforced. The term "pre-Code" is a misnomer because the Hays Code was adopted in 1930, but Hollywood filmmakers often ignored it, and oversight was poor until July 1, 1934. Before then, local laws, negotiations between studios, and popular opinion had more influence on movie content.

Universal Pictures exists today because of the monster movies. In 1930, Universal lost $2.2 million in revenues (over $36 million adjusted for inflation). Then, in February 1931, Dracula was released and made $700,000 (1931 dollars) in sales. It was clear to Universal producer Carl Laemmle Jr. that horror movies were what the public wanted. By November of that same year, Frankenstein was released. Bela Lugosi, who had shot to stardom at the studio following Dracula, assumed he would be playing the Monster. However, makeup tests showed the actor didn’t have the right look. Instead, the studio went with English actor Boris Karloff, and the rest is history.

TEN

28 DAYS LATER (2002 UK, 2003 USA)

28 Days Later took the traditional zombie movie horror formula and gave it a fresh coat of paint by changing the location, the tone, and of course, the monster in question. To properly give the feeling of a dead Britain shrouded in chaos, the filmmakers had to be careful with how and when they shot. Shots on the M1 motorway were done early in the morning between 7 and 9 AM under police guidance.

A real hospital was used for the filming to create a sense of authenticity. The hospital in question was open during the week but shut on weekends which allowed Danny Boyle and his crew to rent the space for shooting when nobody was around.

An extra benefit of this arrangement was that rental fees went directly towards the hospital's trust fund, representing one of the best kinds of business transactions one could wish for. Nothing like shooting a bloody horror movie and having a portion of the budget go towards a good cause.

See more HERE

ELEVEN

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

Written by George Romero and John Russo, Night of the Living Dead only had a $114,000 budget. It changed the movie world of how zombies were portrayed by using dissociation. Since the film was shot in black and white and had a really low budget, the crew never had to worry what color the blood was, so chocolate syrup was used. For the scene in which Karen Cooper (Kyra Schon) begins eating her father’s corpse, the crew’s leftover lunch was employed.

Both Romero and Russo played cameos in the film. Russo played one of the ghouls who managed to reach into the farmhouse only to be struck with a tire iron, while Romero can be seen in the Washington D.C. sequences as a reporter.

TWELVE

THE SHINING (1980)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, it is widely known that this movie is not loved by its creator, Stephen King. But not many know why. According to David Hughes, one of Kubrick’s biographers, Stephen King wrote an entire draft of a screenplay for The Shining. However, Kubrick didn’t even deem it worth a glance, which sort of makes sense when you consider that the director once described King’s writing as “weak.” Instead, Kubrick worked with Diane Johnson on the screenplay because he was a fan of her book, The Shadow Knows. The two ended up spending eleven weeks working on the script and ignoring King's version.

THIRTEEN

PHANTASM (1979)

Phantasm (released as Never Dead in Australia) is a low-budget cult classic horror film produced in 1977 and released in 1979. The film was originally rated X by the MPAA because of the silver sphere sequence, and due to a scene involving a man urinating on the floor after going down dead. After Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin made a telephone call in a favor to a friend on the board, the rating was changed from the (commercially non-viable) X-rating to R.

This movie was number 25 on the cable and streaming channel Bravo's list of the "100 Scariest Movie Moments."

FOURTEEN

THE EXORCIST (1973)

William Peter Blatty’s novel is supposedly based on the real-life 1949 exorcism of a young boy, known by the pseudonym Roland Doe. The story became national news, and caught the interest of Blatty, who was a student at Georgetown University at the time (hence the change in location). For the 1973 movie The Exorcist, the possessed child was changed to that of a girl.

Though it’s never stated in the film, the demon that takes possession of Regan MacNeil has a name: Pazuzu, which is taken from the name of the king of the demons in Assyrian and Babylonian mythology. Much of Regan’s moaning and grunting were created by remixing pig squeals. When the demon is finally exorcised from her body, the sound you hear is a group of pigs being led to slaughter.

FIFTEEN

CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1963)

Amateurish in many ways (the film does include some stilted performances, bad lip-synching, clunky editing and a few continuity errors), Carnival of Souls nevertheless continues to exert a strange fascination for many viewers. Not a conventional horror or ghost story, this film explores the psychological state of Mary Henry after a car accident as she emerges from the murky depths of a river. 

Carnival of Souls was the only feature film to be directed by industrial and educational filmmaker Harold (Herk) Harvey. After completing Carnival of Souls, Harvey was to return to making industrial and educational films before retiring in the late 1980s (he died in 1996). Assembling a crew of just five – himself, cinematographer Maurice Prather, editor Dan Palmquist, assistant director Reza Badiyi, and production manager Larry Sneegas (all of them his buddies at Centron), Harvey managed to generate a budget of $33,000 after approaching local Kansas businessmen, who invested in packs of the production’s stock. He found his lead in the form of up-and-coming actress Candace Hilligoss, who turned down a role in Psychomania (1963) to star in Carnival Of Souls. “I was paid $2,000 for doing the film,” she later recalled. “At the time, it seemed like a fortune.”

SIXTEEN

TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016)

Roger Ebert called Train to Busan "a wildly fun action movie, beautifully paced and constructed, with just the right amount of character and horror. In many ways, it’s what World War Z should have been—a nightmarish vision of the end of the world, and a provocation to ask ourselves what it is that really makes us human in the first place."

Filming began in April 2015 and finished in August 2015, for a total of only four months. The movie is based on an original story created by Park Joo-suk. The film team tried to reference the movements of the zombies from the game 7 Days to Die, and also from the movies Ghost in the Shell and Silent Hill. 

Train to Busan received a 94% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and British filmmaker Edgar Wright, director of the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, highly applauded the film. He personally recommended it on Twitter and called it the "best zombie movie I've seen in forever."

SEVENTEEN

ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)

This wildly entertaining nightmare, faithfully adapted from Ira Levin's best seller, stars Mia Farrow as a young mother-to-be who grows increasingly suspicious that her overfriendly elderly neighbors are in a pact with Satan. With a comparatively small budget of just $3.2 million (1968 dollars), Rosemary’s Baby grossed over $33 million worldwide upon its release, making it by far the most commercially successful of Polanski’s ‘Apartment Trilogy’ films. 

According to Mia Farrow, the scenes where Rosemary walks in front of traffic were spontaneous and genuine. Director Roman Polanski is reported to have told her that "nobody will hit a pregnant woman." The scene was successfully shot with Farrow walking into real traffic and Polanski following, operating the hand-held camera since he was the only one willing to do it.

EIGHTEEN

RE-ANIMATOR (1985)

Re-Animator (also known as H. P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator) is a 1985 American comedy horror film that is loosely based upon the 1922 H.P Lovecraft serial novelette titled Herbert West: Reanimator. Originally devised by director Stuart Gordon as a theatrical stage production and later a half-hour television pilot, the television script was revised to become a feature film. Filmed in Hollywood, the film received an R Rating at the box office, but it garnered its largest audience through the unrated cut's release on home video.

The special effects department went through twenty-four gallons of fake blood during the shoot, and makeup effects artist John Naulin said that Re-Animator was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on. In the past, he had never used more than two gallons of blood on a film. The building used for the Miskatonic Medical School is the same one as the Cyberdine Headquarters in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

NINETEEN

PSYCHO (1960)

Psycho was seen as a departure from Hitchcock's previous film North by Northwest since it was filmed on a small budget in black-and-white by the crew of his then-television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Initially, the film divided critics due to its controversial subject matter, but audience interest and outstanding box-office returns prompted a major critical re-evaluation. Psycho was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Director for Alfred Hitchcock and Best Supporting Actress for Janet Leigh.

When the cast and crew began work on the first day, they had to raise their right hands and swear an oath not to divulge one word of the story. Hitchcock also withheld the ending part of the script from his cast until he needed to shoot it.

TWENTY

NOSFERATU (1922 Germany, 1929 USA)

Nosferatu, also known as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (German: Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens) is a 1922 silent German Expressionist vampire film directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlock. Even with several details altered, Bram Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and would resurface through second-generation reels. The movie was banned in Sweden due to excessive horror. The ban was finally lifted in 1972.

The vampire's unblinking stare was central to the unnerving effect the creature cause for audiences. Count Orlok is only seen blinking once on screen, near the end of Act One.

Today, the film is regarded as an influential masterpiece of early cinema and the horror genre, as reported by Deadline. That’s Friday the 13th. 

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