It’s almost Halloween, 20 days anyway, so I thought I would tell you where to find some classic horror movies to stream, on Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime!
Netflix has one of the scariest classic horror movies, Carrie, the 1976 original, starring Sissy Spacek. Directed by Brian De Palma, it’s bloody, graphic and thrilling, and gets a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Netflix also has The Witch, from 2015. This is a rather terrifying movie about a family, banished from a New England colony to start a farm on their own, in a secluded spot, where they fear a witch resides. Anya Taylor-Joy stars in this first film directed by Robert Eggers, and it gets a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s still too scary for me, so if you’d like something a little more low key, may I suggest The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan‘s 1999 breakout movie about a boy who sees dead people. It stars Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis, has much less violence, and gets an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.1/10 on IMDb. Oh, and you can even stream 4 seasons of The Twilight Zone, on Netflix. Certainly a classic, and starring great actors like Agnes Moorehead, Martin Landau, Cloris Leachman and Cedric Hardwicke. And it gets a 9/10 on IMDb.
Hulu has some classic scary movies, like Rosemary’s Baby, the 1968 classic staring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. It was directed by Roman Polanski, but has a wonderful cast, with Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer and was based on a bestseller by Ira Levin. It’s not too bloody, but has plenty of tension and gets a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. And if that’s not horrifying enough for you, Hulu has The Amityville Horror, the 1979 original starring Margot Kidder and James Brolin. This is the tale of a young couple who buy a house possessed by evil spirits, as they soon find out. It’s gross and terrifying and gets a 6.2/10 on IMDb. But if you want one of the best scary movies, that’s also scifi, Hulu has Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1978 version. Directed by Philip Kaufman(The Unbearable Lightness of Being), this movie has an amazing cast, with Brooke Adams, Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright and Leonard Nimoy(it even has a cameo by Kevin McCarthy, from the original!), and is super tense, but not too gross. And it gets a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Amazon has one of the scariest recent movies, with the 2018 horror classic Hereditary, starring Toni Collette. Telling the tale of a woman(Collette) and her family, who begin to look into their family history after her mother’s death, Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com called it “creepy beyond belief,” and it gets a 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. But if you want something much more tame, like I do, Amazon has a ton of B movies starring Bela Lugosi-The Corpse Vanishes, from 1942, Night of Terror, from 1933, and The Devil Bat, from 1940– and Boris Karloff— The Ghoul, from 1933 and The Mummy, from 1932.
So, there’s something for everyone this Halloween, so let’s get watching on Amazon, Netflix and Hulu.
Grownups Guide to Streaming 