Discover spine-chilling delights this Halloween season with Video Librarian's curated recommendations for your library, classroom, or watchlist.
Whether you're in search of eerie fiction narratives, classic horror gems, or thought-provoking documentaries exploring terrifying topics, our recommendation list has it all.
Featuring titles from renowned distributors such as Green Planet Films, PRAGDA, Marshall Publishing, Dark Star Pictures, and BayView Entertainment, our selection guarantees a diverse range of high-quality content.
Don't miss out—scroll down to find your next addition to your horror shelf. Click the link to purchase and give your audiences a chilling Halloween experience they'll never forget! 🎃
Home Is Where I Lay
Directed by Sam Mason-Bell | 2022 | United Kingdom | 74 MIN
The night before Lily and Joe move into their new home, Lily has a premonition of her death. Can she stop it, or will the house take her? It needs her to know, this is HIS house.
This is a perfect title to show at an adult Halloween party, particularly if couples are invited. It’s the perfect spooky mix of domestic thriller, psychological horror, and ghostly scares to creep people out, and sure to inspire discussion afterward.
King on Screen
Directed by Daphné Baiwir | 2022 | France & Belgium | 105 MIN
Stephen King..the Master of horror. This new documentary takes a behind-the-scenes look at the filmmakers who have adapted the works of the master and turned them into unforgettable, iconic cinema.
Go behind the scenes of classic titles such as IT, Carrie, The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, and more.
King on Screen pulls back the curtain and offers an intimate sit down with the filmmakers who brought King's stories to life.
What better way to spend Halloween than to celebrate the films that scared you for decades?
4 R
La Llorona
Directed by Ramón Peón | 1933 | UNITED STATES | 83 MIN |
A new restoration of Mexico's pioneering horror sound film, La Llorona is a romantic melodrama with expressionist and supernatural elements based on the chilling tale of the ‘wailing woman’.
A ghost from Hispanic American folklore that originated in the pre-Hispanic world, she is the grieving soul of a woman who drowned her children. Repentant and cursed, she searches for them at night by rivers, towns, and cities, frightening those who see or hear her with her overwhelming cry. Her legend has a great diversity of versions.
The technical mastery it demonstrates is nothing less than admirable, and its attachment to Mexico's folkloric tradition and history is an essential sign of its identity. The film was newly restored from a single 16 mm projection print in 2021 by The Permanencia Voluntaria Archives, in collaboration with Filmoteca UNAM, Academy Film Archive, and Cinema Preservation Alliance.
The story behind the filming and the legacy of this iconic film is explained in the Pragda documentary film “Behind the Scenes: La Llorona,” directed by Viviana García Besné. The great granddaughter of La Llorona producer Jose Calderón, García Besné is the founder of The Permanencia Voluntaria Archives, whose main objective is to rescue, preserve, and restore Mexico's popular cinematographic history.
⮕ DSL License available on PRAGDA
⮕ Also available on PRAGDA Stream
Spine-Tingler! The William Castle Story
Directed by Jeffery Schwartz | 2007 | United States | 82 MIN
Filmmaker William Castle created horror films filled with outrageous audience participation gimmicks. From buzzing seats to flying skeletons, and glowing ghosts to life insurance policies, audiences loved them!
For an all-ages Halloween party, this is great for the whole family, showing how vintage horror films were marketed with fun gimmicks. It’s short enough to pair with a campy horror classic from Castle or other vintage horror films for a full evening’s entertainment.
Family of Fear
In the months leading up to October, up to 200 volunteers come together to run one of the best haunted attractions in America. Arx Mortis in Killen, Alabama (population 972) brings together people of all ages and walks of life to scare the bejeebers out of its patrons.
However, after a string of successful seasons, the haunt finds itself reeling from a weak season littered with poor reviews. In this story, the family has to come together again even stronger than before to bring the haunt back to its former glory.
With the help of a 50,000 sq. ft. Halloween attraction, this small-town group of ragtag misfits find inclusion and community in the scariest of places - and learn to lean on each other after years of dealing with bullying and depression.
Family of Fear shares the story of a group of people brought together by their love of haunted houses. They come to scare people. Some come from broken homes, are bullied in school, and have depression, loneliness, and other concerns. But in the Arx Mortis haunted house, they found a family. This documentary is about finding inclusion and community in one of the scariest places in the USA.
If you are looking for a great documentary to watch this Halloween season but you don't necessarily want it to be super creepy or about True Crime, this documentary is a good choice. You get to meet the owners, how they operate the place, some of the creative team and their ideas for designing the space. One of the more heartwarming parts of the film is the stories and the backgrounds of some of the teens who help out at this place. I could not help but relate to them. I used to volunteer at a haunted house in college and some of those stories were very touching."
by Kate Bailey @KateReviewsDocs
⮕ Purchase from Green Planet Films
Lugosi: The Curse of Dracula
Directed by Mark Gilman Jr. & Dave Stuckey | 2023 | UNITED STATES | 81 MIN
Follow the life and career of legendary film actor Bela Lugosi, known as Hollywood’s vampire, Dracula.
Features footage from 20 of his biggest films - outtakes, clips, trailers, interviews with Hollywood co-stars and family and friends, rare childhood photos, and his career on Broadway through the Hollywood era. Hosted by Forrest J Ackerman. The only documentary authorized by the Lugosi estate.
⮕ Purchase from Marshall Publishing
Santo vs. the Evil Brain
Directed by Joselito Rodríguez | 1963 | UNITED STATES | 83 MIN
This newly restored Cuban-Mexican horror-action cult classic opens with three gangsters cornering El Santo in a deserted alley and knocking him out. He is then taken to the laboratory of a crazed Doctor Campos and turned into a docile servant through a series of injections and electric shocks.
Filming was done in late '50s pre-Revolution Cuba and ended just the day before Fidel Castro entered Havana, and declared the victory of the revolution, forcing the filmmakers to flee prematurely (with the unprocessed 35mm negative smuggled inside a coffin).
Santo vs. the Evil Brain marks the cinematic debut of El Santo (Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta) and solidified his status as Mexico's quintessential masked luchador through a whole network of pop culture spinoffs, including a comic book series and, most notably, the 52 wrestling-themed films that cemented his legend on the silver screen.
Praised by Tarantino and B-cult movie lovers, Pragda’s El Santo film collection also includes Santo vs. the Riders of Terror (René Cardona, 1970) and Santo vs. the Infernal Men (Joselito Rodríguez, 1961), both in their newly restored versions.
Restored by The Permanencia Voluntaria Film Archive, in collaboration with the Academy Film Archive, allowing an important piece of Mexican pop culture to return to cinemas.
⮕ DSL License available on PRAGDA
⮕ Also available on PRAGDA Stream
Megalomaniac
Prepare to be shocked. Enter the world of "Megalomaniac," a brutal and dark serial killer film.
Winner of the Top Prize at the very respected Fantasia International FIlm Festival.
Martha and Felix are the children of the Butcher of Mons, a notorious Belgian serial killer from the 1990's. Felix, crushed by the family legacy, takes over their father's killings. Martha, once insecure, falls into madness after a violent assault at work and joins her brother in his strange and murderous world. Based on a true story.
Megalomaniac is the perfect title for adults who want a full-throttle horror experience that is truly terrifying. It is also suggested for those with a preference for "true crime" tales.
Hollywood in the Atomic Age - Monsters! Martians! Mad Scientists!
Directed by Mark Gilman Jr. | 2021 | UNITED STATES | 120 MIN
From 1950 until 1962 and beyond, Atomic Age Horror reigned supreme at the box office. Here is the complete oral history of the genre as told by the actors, writers, directors, and historians who lived through it. Six years in the making, Monsters! Martians! Mad Scientists! Horror and Sci-Fi In The Atomic Age leaves no stone unturned.
Postwar America. The 1950s. A prosperous time for the nation. But underneath the happy façade, fear was lurking. The horrible devastation left by the Atomic Bomb weighed heavily on the minds of the average Americans. Could such a disaster happen here? The Cold War with Russia began heating up. Nuclear arms proliferated. The fear of a communist takeover was very real. Science and technology were progressing at an alarming rate. The Age of Innocence was coming to an end.
Inevitably, Hollywood stepped in and utilized these fears to produce more than a decade's worth of horror and science fiction films that played up this undercurrent of terror. Giant Monsters born out of nuclear war, Martian invasions as a metaphor for communism, and Mad Scientists unleashing death and destruction across the land: this was The Atomic Age.
Part One - The Atomic Age
Post-war, Cold War, communist infiltration, bomb shelters, UFOs, fear-mongering, science and technology gone mad, nuclear proliferation, the birth of a new genre in movies.
Part Two - A World Gone Mad
Three Dimensions, Alien invasions, giant bug-eyed monsters spawned from nuclear disasters, teenagers run amok, and mad scientists' experiments with disastrous results. A tidal wave of terror from movie producers.
Part Three - Fade To Red
The early 60s. Real fears came to the surface. The Vietnam War, Civil Rights, corrupt governments, and color film. Horror films turned the corner with sex, gore, violence, and realism. Hammer Films rose and the Atomic Age was over.
⮕ Purchase from Marshall Publishing
Summoning the Spirit
Creature feature meets cult thriller in this genre blending horror film.
Carla and Dean decide to escape the city, only to find themselves on the remote land of a strange cult claiming a connection to the flesh-eating bigfoot. Now, they must save themselves and uncover the terrifying truth of the cult's prophecy.
Horror meets retro thriller in this exciting revisit to the classic "Bigfoot" which is perfect for a relaxed Halloween at home.
UFOs Invade Hollywood
Directed by Tom DeMichael | 2021 | UNITED STATES | 82 MIN |
People have always watched the skies. They often saw unidentified flying objects. Accordingly, 1950s Hollywood started making sci-fi films with UFOs as their focus. The public just couldn’t get enough.
The 1950s saw Hollywood making sci-fi films with UFOs as their focus. Capitalizing on the hysteria brought on by the UFO crash in Roswell and other sightings that followed, alien invasion films captured the attention of movie fans everywhere–they just couldn’t get enough.
UFOs Invade Hollywood takes a close-up look at 25 of everyone's favorite sci-fi UFO films from the 50s. There are trailers, stills, posters, & lobby cards, along with production facts and rare behind-the-scenes stories – it's out of this world!