John Carpenter shares his Halloween movie recommendations

Who better to recommend movies to watch over Halloween than Halloween director John Carpenter? No one, that’s who!

When EW asked the filmmaker to point us in the direction of some fearful films last year, he suggested a couple of doozies with 1951’s The Thing From Another World — which, of course, Carpenter himself remade as 1982’s The Thing — and 1958’s The Fly.

But what if you have followed his advice and already checked out those classic terror tales? No worries! When EW recently spoke with the director about his comic The Joker: Year of the Villain, we asked him to give us two more recommendations. His response was to point us in the direction of two vintage British movies, 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein and 1958’s Horror of Dracula, (a.k.a. Dracula), both of which starred horror legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

“Yeah, two moves from the ’50s,” said Carpenter. “The Curse of Frankenstein and the Horror of Dracula. Both Hammer films, and they’re both really fun. They were groundbreaking at the time, they were also extremely violent at the time.”

Indeed, Curse of Frankenstein appalled some critics in the U.K. “For years I have rushed to defend the cinema against the charge that it debases,” wrote Dilys Powell in The Sunday Times. “In the case of the current series of horror films I have changed my mind.”

Carpenter’s response?

“Any time you can outrage British critics, you’re doing something right,” said the Master of Horror.

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