Halloween is just a few short days away, which means we’re in the thick of scary movie season. Once you’ve passed out all of the candy and turned off the porch light, the glow of the TV calls. If you’ve run through all of the Elm Street sequels and Shudder just isn’t speaking to you, use this list as a jumping-off point for some deeper-cut offerings of Cult Classic Horror, all of which have endured with cult audiences for their various charms and eccentricities.
We’ll start with the most accessible movies and work our way toward those reserved for only the truest of weirdos.
Psycho II (1983)
If you’ve ever looked over Psycho II because you couldn’t get past the fact that it’s called Psycho II, I encourage you to work past that hesitation. Alfred Hitchcock‘s original film isn’t just a prototype for the slasher subgenre; it’s one of the greatest suspense films ever made, and, fun fact, it was even selected by listeners of The Rolling Tape to be the subject of the show’s first Halloween special. Though I couldn’t make the same influence and impact claims about its successor, the follow-up is more than just cash-grab crap.
After 20 years in a mental institution, Norman Bates is considered no longer a threat to himself and others and is released back into the world. Anthony Perkins returns to his greatest role while his son, Longlegs (2024) director Osgood Perkins, gets to play “Young Norman.” Bates moves into the old home he shared with Mother, and it doesn’t take long for him to start hearing her voice again. When murders on the property start up anew, Lila Crane (Vera Miles also returns to her role), whose sister Marion was killed in the famous shower scene years before, begins the crusade to lock him back up.
It’s shocking to me that the sorta-prequel series Bates Motel gets so much love and Gus Van Sant’s nearly shot-for-shot remake of the original film is even seeing a reappraisal, while Psycho II is sitting right there waiting for the spotlight.
Toolbox Murders (2004)
You probably know filmmaker Tobe Hooper‘s most famous outings, from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to Poltergeist (1982), tried and true classics of the genre. But Hooper was working all the way until his too-soon passing at age 74, and his ’90s and ’00s films are, for some reason, typically looked at only as filmography finishers. That’s totally unfair, as his work never dropped off and was always at least interesting.
Toolbox Murders gives you the same grimy and gross feelings that Hooper pulled off so well in TCM, which in turn inspired the original 1978 film The Toolbox Murders. The remake has that ’70s feel, but with the added bonus of the pee-yellow early-aughts aesthetic that has become nostalgic in its own way.
The film takes place in a Los Angeles apartment building, one that is mostly home to movie-making wannabees and hopefuls. Genre icon Angela Bettis (May (2002), The Woman (2011), the first Carrie remake in 2002) moves in, and it doesn’t take long for her to get the willies. She notices that neighbors are going missing. After the police are no help (shocker), she begins investigating on her own. We get a variety of murder scenes with weapons from the eponymous toolbox, and those kills are mean-spirited, crude, and not at all gimmicky. It’s fairly clear, in a pretty funny way, that Hooper has some disdain for Hollywood and the people who inhabit it. This isn’t someone getting hit over the head with a metal chair in WWE; this is a hammer claw throat-slitting. And then there’s the character called Coffin Baby, but you’ll have to watch the movie to find out more about that.
Sleepwalkers (1992)
Obviously, you’ve seen the premier Stephen King adaptations: Brian De Palma‘s Carrie (1976), Andy Muschietti‘s It (2017), and Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining (though King himself has been open about his disdain for that one). If you have AMC A-List or Regal Unlimited, you’ve maybe seen The Long Walk, The Monkey, and the non-horror The Life of Chuck this past year alone. But the grossest and meanest and dirtiest Kings, at least cinematically, come from the ’90s.
Sleepwalkers, which is the first film written by King not based on one of his stories, needs at least one warning, because if you’re not down for this, you’ll never be down for the movie: cat/human hybrid people, mother-son incest. That’s right! That happens in this film! Director Mick Garris (who, coincidentally enough, directed Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), which I will not go to bat for) is one of the filmmakers who gets King’s work the most, so much so that you walk away from the movie not even really thinking about the cat/human hybrid people mother-son incest! It doesn’t even end up being that big of a deal, and without it, Sleepwalkers would probably be the most accessible movie on this list.
In a small Indiana town (it’s not set in Maine!), new kid Charles (Brian Krause) lives with his shut-in mother (Alice Krige), who is constantly begging him to go out and find a nice girl—so she can suck up all of the girl’s virgin innocence and remain a shapeshifting feline-person “sleepwalker.” The girl he chooses is Mädchen Amick (of Twin Peaks fame), who is an obvious target because she’s one of the cutest small-town cuties in cinema history. It’s bizarre and funny and perverted. Be careful, there’s some pretty intense cat cruelty in this one, but some of those cats might just save the day.
Deranged (1974)
There’s a chance that Deranged is just for the true sickos, but stay with me here. If you liked any or all of the horror classics Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), this is the deep-cut for you. It’s got both the Norman Bates mommy issues and the flesh-wearing featured so prominently in Leatherface and Buffalo Bill’s movies. That’s because it’s based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein, who inspired those movies and countless other pop culture depictions, including Ryan Murphy‘s most recent Netflix show, Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
Roberts Blossom plays Ezra Cobb (if you thought he was creepy enough as Old Man Marley in the 1990s Home Alone, just wait…), a lonely farmer who lives with his cuckoo mother. She’s basically raised him to be what we would now call an incel, repulsed by women and compelled only to her. As you can see with this and Sleepwalkers, horror is just full of this stuff! When she dies, Ezra doesn’t handle it well. About a year later, he digs up her body, only to discover that she doesn’t exactly look the same after 12 months six feet under. The only way to put her back together is to get some, uh, fresh faces to replace her decomposing body parts.
Not only did Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre completely overshadow this film in 1974, but I’m not sure how many people were going to see a film with the full title Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile anyway. For many years, the only way to see the movie was on its double-feature DVD release with Motel Hell (1980), and I don’t think many folks made it past that gross-out comedy. I had to see it on a pink-washed 35mm print that stopped and started a million times, at a 24-hour horror marathon. Luckily, the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome just put out a 4K disc, and the movie looks better than ever.
Nightmare Weekend (1986)
Speaking of Vinegar Syndrome, if you’ve made it this far, you’re ready for one of the cult curiosities that’s kept the boutique label in business. Nightmare Weekend is probably the least “scary” movie on this list (few of us watch horror for that anyway), but it does have the scariest thing featured in any of these films: puppets.
I’m not exactly sure we could say that this movie is “so bad it’s good” because I don’t think we could ever really classify it as “good,” but if guilty pleasures do exist, flicks like this are what fill up the calorie limits of our cinematic diet. This is, for all intents and purposes, trash. If I’m generously estimating this movie’s budget, I’d say it’s about $400. A release from the prolifically low-budgeted Troma Entertainment, it’s an excuse for the filmmakers (and us) to see barenaked ladies, explosions, and yes, a weird sentient puppet. Apparently, it’s about a killer computer program and the foot-tall guy that controls it, but really it’s just a Phantasm riff with barely enough material to get it to the 80-minute mark.
The best part, by far, is when a guy sneaks his flask in between two pieces of bread to make it look like he’s eating a sandwich. You might be inclined to try that yourself if you actually paid Vinegar Syndrome’s $39.99 MSRP price tag because you just had to have the limited edition slipcover. But if you’re a horror movie freak now, you have to accept that this is just what we do. Welcome to the club.
List Courtesy of Patrick Regal (Find him on Letterboxd here.)
Feature Image Still from ‘Sleepwalkers’, Credit to Columbia Pictures