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Halloween
Movie Guide
Horror movies, Michael Myers, slashers, VHS memories, autumn nights and everything worth watching when the nights draw in.
The Halloween shelf
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The Please Rewind home of Halloween movies, horror history, Michael Myers, slashers, VHS memories, autumn viewing and everything worth watching when the nights draw in.
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Why Horror Movies Feel Better in Autumn
Every year, horror movies start working differently. It doesn't arrive on October 31. It happens earlier than that. Maybe it's the first evening when you notice it's getting dark before you've finished dinner. Maybe it's the first properly cold night after summer. Maybe it's rain hitting the windows while you're deciding what to watch. Or perhaps it's simply walking through a supermarket and seeing pumpkins where the barbecue charcoal used to be. Whatever triggers it, something changes. Suddenly, watching a horror movie feels right again. You can watch Halloween in June. Of course you can. Michael Myers doesn't become less effective because it's warm outside. You can watch The Lost Boys on a bright Sunday afternoon in May. Freddy Krueger can turn up in February. The Exorcist doesn't check the calendar before frightening the life out of you. But put those same films on during a dark autumn evening and somehow they feel different. The film hasn't changed. Everything around the film has. And perhaps that's why horror movies feel better in autumn.
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editorial
How Halloween and Horror Movies Became Inseparable
Halloween existed long before the movies. But over more than a century, horror cinema and America's favourite spooky holiday have borrowed so much from each other that it's now hard to imagine one without the other.
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editorial
Why Michael Myers Is Still Scary After Nearly 50 Years
Nearly half a century after Halloween, Michael Myers can still make standing at the end of a quiet suburban street feel terrifying. No elaborate costume. No clever speeches. No explanation required. Just a white mask, a kitchen knife and a man who refuses to tell us why.
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Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers — The Sequel That Saved the Boogeyman
Six years after Halloween III dared to leave Michael Myers behind, the Shape returned to Haddonfield. Halloween 4 wasn't revolutionary. It didn't need to be. It simply remembered exactly what audiences had been missing.
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Halloween 5: The Sequel That Wasted Halloween 4’s Perfect Ending
Halloween 4 ended with one of the franchise’s boldest twists: Jamie Lloyd standing at the top of the stairs with a bloody pair of scissors. One year later, Halloween 5 had the perfect opportunity to take the series somewhere genuinely frightening. Instead, it mostly backed away from the idea.
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Retrospective
Halloween III: How the Franchise's Most Hated Sequel Became a Cult Classic
It removed Michael Myers and replaced him with killer Halloween masks, androids, Stonehenge, and the most irritatingly catchy advert in horror history. In 1982, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was the sequel many fans didn't want. More than four decades later, it might be one of the franchise's most interesting films.
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Why the 1980s Were the Greatest Decade for Horror Movies
From The Shining and The Thing to Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, The Evil Dead, The Fly and The Lost Boys, the 1980s didn't just produce great horror movies. It changed how horror looked, how we watched it and who its biggest stars were.
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How the 1980s Turned Horror Villains Into Movie Stars
Horror once asked audiences to fear the monster. In the 1980s, something changed. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Pinhead and Chucky became the faces audiences paid to see — and horror's killers became movie stars.
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Why Practical Effects Made 1980s Horror So Terrifying
From The Thing and An American Werewolf in London to The Fly, Hellraiser and The Evil Dead, 1980s horror put its monsters physically in front of the camera — and more than forty years later, we're still trying to work out how they did it.
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Why VHS and Horror Movies Were Made for Each Other
Before streaming gave us every horror movie at the touch of a button, there was VHS. From video-shop shelves and outrageous cover art to video nasties, sleepovers and cult movies finding a second life, horror and videotape became the perfect partnership.
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editorial
The Video Shop Horror Aisle Was Scarier Than Half the Movies
Before trailers followed us around the internet and every horror movie was a click away, sometimes all it took to scare the life out of you was a VHS cover. For a generation of horror fans, the video shop horror aisle was where the nightmares really started.
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Why Horror Movies Are Scarier at Night — Even When We Know They’re Not Real
We know Michael Myers isn’t standing outside. We know the noise downstairs is probably the heating. And we know the film ends the same way whether we watch it at two in the afternoon or midnight. So why do horror movies become so much scarier after dark?
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Browse the Horror Shelves
Pick Your
Poison
Some nights call for a masked killer. Others need vampires, zombies or anything capable of making you check the hallway twice before bed.
The Whole Shelf
Horror
Explore horror movies across decades, styles and nightmares.
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Someone's Behind You
Slashers
Masks, knives, final girls and very bad nights away from home.
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After Dark
Vampires
Fangs, bloodsuckers and the movies that made the night seductive.
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They're Coming
Zombies
The dead refuse to stay buried. Probably best not to open the door.
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Still Can't Decide?
Let the Horror Movie Finder choose tonight's nightmare.
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Don't Know
What to Watch?
Tell us what kind of nightmare you're after and we'll dig through the Please Rewind horror shelves to find something for tonight.
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Horror Movie Finder
Select your nightmare
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Franchise Archive · Case MM-1978
Enter
Haddonfield
The night he came home became one of horror's defining stories. Explore the Halloween movies, cast, characters and changing timelines of the franchise that introduced Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.
Open the Halloween Archive →Haddonfield Police
Incident Archive
31 · 10 · 78
The Halloween Franchise
The Night
He Came Home
View the complete franchise →