Let this be the year—if you haven’t already done so—to finally work up the courage to see Tobe Hooper’s criminally underrated classic, a top-rank satire of American class warfare (survival of the hungriest), teenage misadventure in the backwoods and one of the darkest masterpieces of the ’70s. Though shrouded in a gruesome reputation generated by that title, Texas isn’t particularly gory. It is, however, the scariest movie ever made.
For horror films, October is the great equalizer. It’s the time of year when even the most hardened genre fan stops quibbling about the best horror films of all time and embraces scary movies in all their imperfect forms. Zombie apocalpyses and rampaging monsters finally get their due. Disreputable slashers and schlocky b-movies get pushed to the top of the queue. And horror comedies bridge the gap between the die-hards and the squeamish.
To help you hunker down for your own fright night, we've assembled 40 of the greatest scary movies for the Halloween season, offering up picks for true believers along with less-intense frights for those whose interest in things that go bump in the night starts and stops on October 31. Just remember: if the phone rings, do NOT answer it. Unless it's the pizza guy.
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