Note that the key here is “spooky” season. There’s a playful side to this. It’s not all blood and gore or psychological torment. It’s about having fun with the possibility of those. So, no Halloween here.
I mostly went for weird themes here. A little subversion for the season with some good ol’ international WTF moments thrown in. In chronological order, which means that we might get the most WTF moments at the very start.
Häxan (1922)
This was way, way ahead of its time and probably on multiple levels, although it might be hard to figure out the true motives behind this. This is partly a fake documentary based on Malleus Maleficarum, the Witch Hammer, an late medieval period book on how to hunt witches. However, it is also partly an exploration of what might have lead to the behavior on which the witch accusations might have been based, like mental illnesses. Its wild that this was, at the time, the most expensive Swedish film production of all time. They actually gave this a huge budget back in the day and in return it was banned in multiple big markets.
Hausu (1977)
Whether this or the previous movie earns more of a WTF is up to you, but they are definitely both competitive in this regard. A group of schoolgirls visit the aunt of one of them and the house attacks them. Everything here is weird, but it is funny. The special effects are something to behold onto themselves. I mean, this is the year Star Wars came out and they didn’t have that kind of money when making this movie, so the superimposed animations are… interesting.
El día de la bestia aka Day of the Beast (1995)
A priest who has been isolated in his studies has discovered that the Devil is about to rise. So, he needs to figure out how. But he has an idea: How about sinning so much that he can seem like a loyal soldier of Devil’s and thus get the information straight from the source. Since he doesn’t really know how to do this, he needs help and ends up recruiting a heavy metal fan and a TV occultist to his cause. There is actually a lot not to like here, but I still do. There are just some jokes here that are so stupid that I couldn’t just leave it out.
Trick ‘r’ Treat (2007)
A Halloween themed movie. Yey. This is kind of an anthology. There’s multiple stories happening more or less simultaneously in the same little town with one mysterious kid witnessing them all. The stories are your pretty run of the mill anthology stories, short and simple with a small twist to make them interesting. However, this is just more appealing than other such anthologies. The director, Michael Dougherty, seems to have been working on a sequel forever. Considering how great Krampus, his followup to this movie, is, I would hope he gets a chance to do it at some point.
My Name Is Bruce (2007)
Bruce Campbell is mistaken for his character, Ash, and fooled into defending a small town from an impeding monster. His ego takes over, so can he overcome that in time? This is kind of a stupid movie and I wouldn’t normally recommend this, but it is good enough for a laugh if you are looking for something lighter.
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)
This one is pretty well known. Its a subversion of the slasher genre in that the two men who would be the obvious killers in many movies are just the most pleasent people around. It just happens that the kids in the next cabin over don’t trust them and the misunderstandings cause gory accidents which are then misread by the kids as killings.
The Final Girls (2015)
I like this movie much more than I assume most people would, so I would not recommend this normally either, but it is a subversion again, so it fits my theme. And I do like this very much. A young woman is sucked into a movie her former scream queen mother starred in back in the day. There they must figure out how to survive while the young woman learns to understand her mother better.
Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)
A musical about coming of age in a zombie apocalypse. We have a very sympathetic main character and the relationships within the movie are not traditional, which makes this interesting as well. It was based on a short made as a high school project inspired by High School Musical. So, if you want to see people sing about their dating problems while bashing in zombie heads, this is your movie. (I don’t remember if this is something that actually happens in the movie, but you know…)
The Banana Splits Movie (2019)
There was a short-lived “craze” around these movies after Five Nights at Freddy’s. This is just one of those movies based on some IP from back in the day. Again, I would not recommend this otherwise, but it is a decent movie and fitting for a night of watching horror with your friends. You can with it at times and at it at other times.
Psycho Goreman (2020)
Finally, Psycho Goreman is a movie about an intergalactic invader arriving on Earth to discover a little girl has the gem used to control him. So he’s stuck as her pet while her brother has some concerns about this, it’s not really helping. There’s some Troma DNA here, but it is much tamer in many ways than the Troma movies I’ve seen at least in the sex & nudity department. On the gore department… well, it is in the name, but it is also very cartoonish, so I would assume most people can laugh at it or find it cringe-y.