Classic horror movies to add to your Halloween watchlist

NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (1922) directed by F.W. Murnau

Blood, coffins, and bats: nothing says Halloween quite like vampires, and no film has portrayed the vampire quite like F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.” In this illicit adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel “Dracula,” Max Schreck stars as the nightmarish Count Orlok, a performance so believable that it spawned legions of conspiracy theories about Schreck’s own possible vampiric origins.

Filmed in stark black-and-white, “Nosferatu” follows a young real estate agent named Thomas Hutter, played by Gustav von Wangenheim, who travels to Transylvania in order to sell a house to a mysterious count. The film is truly a product of its time: an indescribable terror of "The Other" pervades every frame, the disease-bearing rats ubiquitous in the film reminiscent of those once infesting the battlefield trenches.

Despite clearly being from a different era, the nightmarish atmosphere, excellent lead performances, and easily transmutable story lend it a timeless quality— it’s no wonder that it has yielded a myriad of remakes over time. The latest of these, Robert Egger’s 2024 film of the same name starring Bill Skarsgård as the titular vampire and Lily-Rose Depp as Hutter’s wife Ellen, is proof of the enduring legacy of Nosferatu as one of the most influential achievements in the history of cinema and the horror genre.

Seeing this movie performed with a live score to a soldout audience at the Princeton Garden Theatre last October was one of my best moviegoing experiences. I love this movie not only for the scares and storyline but also its occasional silliness and, ultimately, the influence that it continues to have on film over a century after its release.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) directed by John Landis

Foggy English moors. Local superstitions. Practical effects good enough to award it the first ever Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. “An American Werewolf in London” may have been poorly received upon initial release, but in the years following its release, it has grown into a cult classic of the horror-comedy genre. In it, college students David Kessler, played by David Naughton, and Jack Goodman, played by Griffin Dunne, are backpacking across the north of England when they stop for the night at a pub, where they are cautioned of a mysterious creature who lurks the local moors.

Neither heeds these warnings, however, and what follows is a surreal, grisly comedy of errors. Naughton gives a great performance, transforming from an average good-humored New Yorker into a snarling man-beast. Though Rick Baker’s practical effects are deservedly the most famous aspect of the film, the rest of the movie is up to par. The omnipresent humor balances out the often startling violence that the third act dives into head-first, and the friendship between Naughton and Dunne’s characters, along with a relationship that Naughton forms later on, provides a strange emotional core to the movie.

I love this movie not only for being Griffin Dunne’s breakout role but also for the bizarre, gruesome, giddy amusement-park ride it is. “An American Werewolf in London” is a highly entertaining film that successfully satirizes some elements of the horror genre while dutifully paying homage to others.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) directed by Jonathan Demme

There are few cinematic characters who haunt the public consciousness quite like Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Eerie and restrained in his famously Academy Award-winning 16 minutes of screentime, Hopkins is a force of nature, staring down the camera with a chilling intensity. Despite his undeniable excellence, however, the film is Jodie Foster’s; playing the hard-working FBI trainee Clarice Starling, Foster adopts her secondhand briefcase and West Virginian accent with ease.

Throughout the film, Starling struggles with the sexism imbued in the culture of her chosen profession and her past as a poor orphan growing up on her cousin’s farm following the death of her parents.Strangely enough, Lecter seems to be the only person in her life to respect (or, at least, understand) her unfortunate circumstances. The strange chemistry between the two is a kind of sinister symbiosis that pushes the tightly-paced plot along: Starling is assigned to interview the incarcerated Lecter under the guise of a psychological survey. The assignment quickly reveals itself to be a ploy by her supervisor, Jack Crawford, to get Lecter’s professional opinion on serial killer Buffalo Bill. Intense close-ups on the lead actors’ faces famously characterize the interview scenes, but the camerawork is deft and stylish throughout, drawing the tension out to highwire suspense in the gripping third act.

Though I do harbor a particular fondness for all Hannibal Lecter adaptations, I think that “The Silence of the Lambs” is the best among them. Though the film is now famous to the point of innumerable parodies, to me Hopkins’ Lecter has never lost his ability to frighten. The first (and only) horror movie to ever receive the Academy Award for Best Picture, “The Silence of the Lambs” remains a classic of the genre that will be celebrated for decades to come.