Halloween season films we watched during October 2025

 Hello Plan9Crunch readers, myself, Doug Gibson, and my fellow blogger Steve D. Stones, and fellow blogger Joe Gibson, logged the genre films we watched during the month of October. The graphics you see below are posters of some of the films. Below that is a list of films we both watched. Note the films you also watched, and see if you watched scary films that we missed.

FILMS WATCHED BY DOUG GIBSON

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Halloween genre films, 2025

From last day to first films

Oct 31

Halloween-season films watched today.

- The 7th Victim, 1943

- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1931

- Sleepaway Camp, 1983

- Insidious 3, 2015

- The Legend of Hell House, 1973

Oct. 30

Halloween-season genre films watched today.

- The Mummy's Curse, 1944

- Guru the Mad Monk, 1970

- King of the Zombies, 1940

- I Walked with a Zombie, 1943

Oct. 29

Halloween-season films watched today.

- Strangler of the Swamp, 1946

- The Cat and the Canary, 1927

- Nosferatu, 1922

- Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, 1966

- Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, 1966

Oct. 28

Halloween-season films watched today.

- It: Chapter 2, 2019

- The Mummy's Hand, 1940

- The Mummy's Tomb, 1942

- The Mummy's Ghost, 1944

- The Phantom of the Opera, 1925 (viewed at Egyptian Theatre, Ogden, UT)

Oct. 27

Halloween-season films watched today.

- The Monster, 1925

- Werewolf of London, 1935

- Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, 1943

- The Mummy, 1932

Oct. 26

Halloween-season films watched today.

- The Unknown, 1927

- House of Frankenstein, 1945

- House of Dracula, 1946

- The Haunting, 1963

Oct. 25

Halloween-season films watched today.

- Son of Dracula, 1943

- Ghost of Frankenstein, 1942

- Dracula's Daughter, 1936

Oct.24

Halloween-season films watched today.

- The Black Scorpion, 1957

- 13 Ghosts, 1960

- The Tingler, 1959

Oct. 23

Halloween-season films watched today.

- You'll Find Out, 1940

- The Invisible Ray, 1936

- Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, 1968

- It, 2017

Oct. 22

Halloween-season films watched today.

- Stephen King's It, 1990

- The Body Snatcher, 1945

- Son of Frankenstein, 1939

Oct. 21

Halloween-season films watched today.

- Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, 1969

- Horror of Dracula, 1958

- The Ghost of Yotsuya, 1959

Oct. 20

Halloween-season films watched today.

- Night of Terror, 1933

- The Human Monster (Dark Eyes of London), 1939

- The Return of the Vampire, 1943

Oct. 19

Halloween-season films watched today.

- The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957

- Isle of the Dead, 1945

- The Curse of the Cat People, 1944

Oct. 18

Halloween-season films watched today.

- Dead Men Walking, 1943

- The Screaming Skull, 1958

- The Ape, 1940

Oct. 17

Halloween-season films watched today.

- The Mystic, 1925

- Mark of the Vampire, 1935

- Devil Doll, 1936

Oct. 16

Halloween-season films watched today.

- Bowery at Midnight, 1942

- War of the Colossal Beast, 1958

- The Vampire, 1957

Oct. 15

Halloween-season films watched today.

- The Thirteenth Chair, 1929

- White Zombie, 1932

- The Creation of the Humanoids, 1962

Oct. 14

Halloween-season films watched today.

Macabre, 1958

Murders in the Zoo, 1933

Blood Bath, 1966

House on Haunted Hill, 1959

Oct. 13

Halloween-season films watched today.

The Bat, 1959

Scared to Death, 1946

The Vampire Bat, 1933

Oct. 12

Halloween-season films watched today.

Cat People, 1942

The Masque of the Red Death, 1964

Halloween, 1978

Oct. 11

Halloween-season films watched today.

Black Dragons, 1942

The Mummy, 1959 (Hammer)

Face of the Screaming Werewolf, 1965

Oct. 10

Halloween-season films watched today.

Bride of the Monster, 1955

Final Curtain, 1957

Night of the Ghouls, 1959

Oct. 9

Halloween-season films watched today:

Mad Monster Party? 1967

Vampire Over London (Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, 1952

Vampyr, 1932

Oct. 8

Halloween-season films watched today:

The Vampire's Ghost, 1945

Return of the Ape Man, 1944

Good Boy, 2025 (in the theater)

The Brain That Wouldn't Die, 1962

Oct. 7

Halloween-season films watched today:

Frankenstein, 1931

Bride of Frankenstein, 1936

The Invisible Man, 1933

Friday the 13th Part III, 1982

Oct. 6

Halloween-season films watched today:

Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning (1985)

The Cyclops, 1957

Tower of London, 1962

Oct. 5

Halloween-season films watched today:

Spooks Run Wild, 1941

The Black Cat, 1934

The Raven, 1935

Oct. 4

Halloween-season films watched today:

The Return of Dracula, 1958

Ghosts on the Loose, 1943

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, 1966

Oct. 3

Halloween-season movies watched today.

The Monster Walks (1932)

Fright Night (1985)

Voodoo Man (1944)

Oct. 2

Halloween-season films  watched today.

The Corpse Vanishes, 1942

The Ape Man, 1943

The Corpse Bride, 2005

Oct. 1

Halloween-season films watched today.

Dracula, 1931

The Old Dark House, 1932

Invisible Ghost, 1940

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, 1955

• 107 films

FILMS WATCHED BY STEVE D. STONES

Films watched in October 2025.

October 1st. 1). The Haunting.

October 2nd: 1). Bell From Hell. 2). Murder Mansion. 3). The Innocents.

October 3rd: 1). Voodoo Man. 2). Lady Frankenstein. 3). The Last Man On Earth.

October 4th: 1). Frankenstein. (1931). 2). Dracula. (1931).

October 5th: 1). Nosferatu. (1921). 2). Hellraiser.

October 6th: 1). Possession. 20. The Mummy. ((1932). 3). The Bride of Frankenstein. (1935).

October 7th: 1). The Wolfman.

October 9th: 1). Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf. 2). Count Dracula's Great Love. 3). The Vampire's Night Orgy. 4). Black Sunday (1960).

October 10th: 1). Bell From Hell.

October 11th: 1). Horror Hotel. 2). Halloween II.

October 12th: 1). Night Fright. 2). House On Haunted Hill. (1959).

October 13th: 1). The Cat & Canary. (1927). 2). White Zombie. 3). The Brain That Would Not Die.

October 14th: 1). The Screaming Skull. 2). Nightmare Castle. 3). Evil Dead. (1981).

October 15th: 1). The Grapes of Death.

October 16th: 1). Creepshow 2. 2). Jeepers Creepers. 3). Beast From Haunted Cave. 4). Night of The Living Dead. (1968).

October 18th: 1). Creepshow. 2). Bell From Hell.

October 19th: 1). Bloodsuckers From Outer Space. 2). I Bury The Living.

October 20th: 1). The Deadly Bees.

October 21st: 1). The Skull.

October 22nd: 1). The Man Who Could Cheat Death.

October 23rd: 1). Sleepaway Camp. 2). Sleepaway Camp 2 – Unhappy Campers. 3). Sleepaway Camp 3 – Teenage Wasteland. 4). Blood On Satan's Claw. 5). Terror Creatures From The Grave.

October 24th: 1). 13 Ghosts (1960).

October 25th: 1). Halloween (1978). 2). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. (1919).

October 26th: 1). Friday The 13th. (1980).

October 27th: 1). A Nightmare On Elm Street. (1984). 2). A Nightmare On Elm Street 2. 3). Friday The 13th Part 2. 4). The Omen.

October 28th: 1). Attack of The Giant Leeches. 2). The Vampire Bat.

October 29th: 1). Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1921). 2). Bluebeard.. 3). The Killing of Satan. 4). Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things.

October 30th: 1). House By The Cemetery. 2). Halloween 4. 3). Halloween 5. 4). Friday The 13th Part 3. 5). Hell High.

October 31st: 1). Dracula. (1931). 2). Evil Dead 2. 3). A Bucket of Blood. 4). The Phantom of The Opera. (1925) 5). The Wasp Woman.

• 70 films

AND SOME HALLOWEEN FILMS WATCHED BY JOE GIBSON

Halloween, 1978

A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984

The Evil Dead, 1981

IT, 1990

Evil Dead, 2013

Halloween, 2018

Three 'other choices' for a Halloween film to enjoy

 

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It's very close to Halloween 2025, and Plan9Crunch offers three somewhat offbeat choices for a Halloween-night flick to lend mood to the sinister season.

We only provide capsule reviews to these films. Perhaps we will explore them in greater detail one day. But we invite our readers to watch these gems.

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First is The Ape, 1940 (above), starring Boris Karloff. This is a Monogram poverty-row film and frankly, Karloff gives only about 50 percent in the film. However, Karloff at 50 percent is still pretty good. It's a kind of mad doctor role, with Boris as an aging doctor obsessed with curing the paralysis of a lovely polio victim. He'll stop at nothing, and, courtesy of those bizarre fever-dream Monogram plots, the good doctor decides to slip into the skin of a recently killed circus ape. He goes off as an "ape" and kills people for their spinal fluid. It's crazy but a fun hour or so to kill. This film is free on just about every stream or video service on the Internet.

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Next is The Ghost of Yotsuya, 1959 (above). This is a classic Japanese story about an amoral samurai who murders the father of the girl he lusts after. With his criminal friend they cover up the crime and the samurai marries the daughter. His friend marries her sister. A year or so later, impoverished and with a baby, the samurai, tired of poverty, murders his wife and their baby. Again, his friend is a confederate in this. The samurai marries a rich heiress, but discovers that his betrayed first wife has become a ghost. She won't leave him alone in her quest for retribution. This film can be rented on various streaming sites.

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Finally, we have The Mystic, 1925 (above). This was one of Tod Browning's more obscure silents until it was released as part of a three-film Browning Blu-Ray recently. It involves a group of Roma in Hungary. One is a fake mystic. A traveling con man catches their act and takes the group to the United States to bilk a heiress out of her fortune. But once there, the con man develops a conscience, and wants to call off the swindle. Naturally, his confederates are not pleased.

This film stars two now-obscure actors, Aileen Pringle as the fake mystic Zara, and Conway Tearle as Michael Nash, the con man. Browning always portrayed carnival life so well as he once worked in carnivals. For those who have seen a very young Joan Crawford in Browning's The Unknown, Pringle is a more mature, cynical and sexual version. She's quite striking and compelling in the role. Tearle occupies a role that usually would go to Lon Chaney. He's no Lon Chaney, but he knows that and doesn't overact. He ultimately gives a solid performance. You can rent this film on streaming services and it can be found -- for now -- free on YouTube.

So enjoy these three films, and Happy Halloween

-- Doug Gibson

40 More Cult Movies offered up by film scholar Jon Towlson

 

Review by Doug Gibson

A while back I reviewed on Plan9Crunch blog Jon Towlson's 40 Cult Movies. It was an informative 21st Century version of the fascinating cult movies books Danny Peary produced in the 1980s. You can read the review here. Mr. Towlson is a Britiah academic who has many genre books published. He has written screenplays, worked on films, including directing and acting. His Amazon page is here.

Our YouTube page, Plan9Crunch, has interviewed Towlson. The most recent interview was right around the time a sequel, 40 More Cult Movies, was published. Perhaps tongue in cheek, Towlson told me with a smile that he embarked on the second cult movies book in part because I had suggested it in the 40 Cult Movies review.

Whatever his inspiration, 40 More Cult Movies is another interesting provocative read in which Towlson recounts unique films worthy of a cult. One film I want to highlight is a too-overlooked horror film that would be ideal for an October rental or buy. It's Frankenstein (2015) directed by Bernard Rose, who includes the 1992 cult horror film, Candyman, in his resume.

Set in 2015 and shot in the Los Angeles area, I agree with Towlson that this Frankenstein is the finest film adaptation of the original novel. Scientists create an attractive young man and provide him an infant's brain. DNA starts to corrupt and the creation (Adam) becomes grotesque. Overcoming an attempt by his creators to euthanize him, he traverses the rural and urban wastelands of Los Angeles seeking love, which he associates with a female scientist who helped create him.

There are nods to the Universal classic. One includes Adam befriending a young girl and then rescuing her after tossing her in a lake. Police regard him as a criminal and shoot a dog he befriended. Eventually caught, Adam calls the woman scientist "mother" and the police notify her. But she denies knowing him.

Adam has super-human strength and cannot be kept in captivity. In a poignant scene he tells police his name is "Monster" because that's what people call him. Later Adam encounters a friend, a blind street person played by Tony Todd, of Candyman. Adam is a vulnerable creation, seeking acceptance from his creators and those whom he enclunters. They are invariably repulsed by him, fear him, and ironically help prompt Adam to becoming a "monster" who kills.

Towlson has a strength of drawing societal mores and perceptions to film. In his review of Frankenstein (2015) he writes this:

"While Boris Karloff's 1931 creature stood in for war veterans, unemployed homeless men and homosexuals increasingly persecuted as a result of the 'sex crimes' panics which swept through the United States during the Depression, Rose's Monster is representative of the urban poor in modern America. His allegorical function is emphasized by his seeming indestructibility: he repeatedly returns to life after attempts are made to kill him, seeking redress from a society that demonises him and others who are similarly disenfranchised."

Besides providing interesting analysis, Frankenstein (2015) is simply a damn good 89-minute film that merits a cult following. It can be viewed streamed on Amazon Prime and Xumo.

There are 39 other films in 40 More Cult Movies. Tthe lineup will keep cult film fans reading through the early-morning hours. They include: Basket Case; The Black Cat (1934); The Crazies (1973); Curse of the Cat People; Dawn of the Dead (1978); Deathdream; Last House on the Left (1972); I Was a Teenage Wolfman; Rosemary's Baby; The Sorcerers; Targets; Tourist Trap; Witchfinder General. ...

You want to know the rest of the movies featured? Get the book.

Here is Jon Towlson's most recent interview on Plan9Crunch YouTube page.

Here is our first Jon Towlson interview on Plan9Crunch YouTube page.