Now past the first week of October, many students may be on the lookout for some unconventional horror content. To help with this search, The Daily Texan compiled a list of underrated, undervalued and under-the-radar horror movies to consider for a Halloween watchlist.
The Black Cat (1934)
For those looking for an old-school thrill, “The Black Cat” deserves mention alongside classics like “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.” Starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, the film follows a couple honeymooning in Hungary who get drawn into a bitter rivalry between two men whose gruesome past from World War I becomes even more horrifying when one man reveals himself to be a mad scientist obsessed with unsavory experiments.
The Beyond (1981)
Italian horror films are famous for their usage of nightmare logic to get under an audience’s skin, and director Lucio Fulci’s “The Beyond” stands as a classic from this regional subgenre. The film follows Liza Merril (Catriona MacColl), a young woman who inherits an old Louisianan hotel that unfortunately happened to be built on the gates of Hell.
Possession (1981)
Co-written and directed by Andrzej Zulawski, “Possession” follows Mark (Sam Neill) as he falls down a rabbit hole of obsessive investigation into his distant wife Anna’s (Isabelle Adjani) possible infidelities and surreal horror once he finds out how she’s really been spending her time.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
This Japanese cyber horror follows a salaryman (Tomoro Taguchi) who accidentally runs over a man credited as a “metal fetishist” (Shin’ya Tsukamoto, also the writer and director) and finds his body undergoing a series of disgusting, painful transformations that tear away his humanity.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
A mid-90s sleeper classic from legendary director John Carpenter (“Halloween,” “The Thing”), “In the Mouth of Madness” follows John Trent (Sam Neill), an insurance investigator who looks into the reclusive novelist Sutter Cane’s (Jurgen Prochnow) death and finds himself in a nightmare seemingly born from the reality of Cane’s horror novels.
Bug (2006)
A riveting late-career psychological horror film from “The Exorcist” director William Friedkin, “Bug” follows Agnes (Ashley Judd), a lonely woman whose isolation breaks when she’s introduced to Peter (Michael Shannon) and becomes drawn into his destructive paranoias concerning military experiments and bug infestations.
Mad God (2021)
Phil Tippett, best known for his special effects work on “Jurassic Park” and “RoboCop,” directed “Mad God,” a fever dream tale of a world torn apart by war, genocide and supernatural horrors that now subjugate all intelligent life for unknown purposes.
