JOHN EVERSON'S TOP HALLOWEEN PICKS

John Everson is the Chicago-based Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Covenant (Leisure Books, 2008) and Sacrifice (Leisure Books, 2009). http://www.johneverson.com

FAVORITE HALLOWEEN MOVIES

OK, so I've watched hundreds of horror movies, but after the fact, I rarely remember very much about them besides whether I loved or hated. So some of these may not actually have anything to do with Halloween except in my mind; hence my rationalizations afterwards...

1. Beetlejuice - aside from the classic melding of ghastly dancing to Harry Belafonte and including Michael Keaton's most memorable performance EVER, this move features ghosts "dressing up as ghosts" in sheets to scare people. That gets me every time.
2. Edward Scissorhands - Tim Burton is my Halloween visual hero and Edward offers Vincent Price as a "Frankenstein" and a boy with blades for hands. Brilliance!
3. The Nightmare Before Christmas - You can easily justify watching this animated flick over and over again from Halloween to Christmas - extending the pumpkin love a full quarter of the year!!!
4. Halloween - OK... serious horror. And one of the best - not because of blood, but because of the THREAT of it -- plus, a perfectly simple, creepy theme and a gutload of suspense. Now that's a horror movie.
5. House of 1,000 Corpses -- a lot of people panned this flick but for me, it was a non-stop haunted house ride on film. Love it!
6. Suspiria -- another movie that's like living through a haunted house, as our heroine survives hell in a girl's school and the first of Dario Argento's "three witches".
7. Evil Dead 2 - OK... this may or may not take place on Halloween, but it's in an old shack in the woods in the fall.. so it has to be NEAR Halloween. And there are ghouls and chainsaws and a Book of the Dead... it's the perfect film to watch ON Halloween whether the film's events take place then or not.
8. The Shining -- Where Zombie's haunted house flick is a hatchet to the head, Kubrick's is more like a thin needle through the ear -- this is the ultimate "haunted house" on film. Only Kubrick could make a monolithic hotel feel claustrophobic.
9. Ginger Snaps -- one of the only werewolf movies out there with real bite. And of course, it begins during the full moon of October when a bite and subsequent werewolf transformation serve as the metaphor for Ginger's first period and transformation into womanhood. Can any girl survive that?
10. Shaun of the Dead -- just because, nothing says Halloween like a zombie flick. A really, really funny zombie flick. With ascerbic social commentary, love on the rocks and a last stand in a bar. This actually ties on my list with Dead Alive, but my son's name is Shaun so... Shaun wins!

FAVORITE HALLOWEEN CDS

Music should set a mood. It doesn't have to overtly be songs about skeletons and witches, but rather, just set a vibe that makes things feel a little off-kilter... spiralling downward... I could have picked out lots of fine goth bands to populate this list -- from Joy Division to Bauhaus to Cruxshadows... but here are the things I light a candle to most when I want to take a midnight ride...

1. This Mortal Coil - It'll End in Tears -- beautifully haunting, melancholy renditions of both old and new songs by the most avant garde 4AD label artists of the '80s. With the sonic loops, cryptian strings and echoing vocals, this is great Halloween season fare. Play this graveside with a guttering black candle and you'll raise the dead.
2. This Mortal Coil - Filigree and Shadow -- do you sense a theme? This one's a double album of dark disturbing grace.
3. Various Artists - Lonely is an Eyesore -- an early 4AD compilation featuring some of the hippest darkest acts of '80s pop -- Colourbox, This Mortal Coil, The Wolfgang Press, Throwing Muses, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Dif Juz and Clan of Xymox.
4. Elysian Fields - Bleed Your Cedar -- slipstream ethereal beauty with a dark core of hidden fire.
5. Dream Theater -- Scenes From A Memory-- a hard rock concept album about someone going under hypnosis to rediscover a past life where a love triangle went wrong and resulted in murder - it's like listening to a black and white noir horror movie turned 3D.
6. Nick Cave - Murder Ballads. It's Nick Cave. Singing about murders. Need I say more?
7. The Cure - Bloodflowers. I was going to say Disintegration, but you know... they did that disc one better with the layered pathos of 'flowers. It's a dark mood album, start to finish.
8. Rob Zombie - Hellbilly Deluxe-- because when he's not making haunted house movies, he's making haunted house albums.