4 - The Evil Dead

3 - The Shining

2 - The Exorcist

1 - Halloween

                      Not the guy who created Austin Powers

There may be no better movie night in the year than Halloween. It's tailor made for getting the hell scared out of you in the dark. Because of that, there are a million ways we could have gone with for this Top Five list. I think the top two have to be represented in your viewing party, or you're just doing it wrong.

We didn't go with any of those, and with the exception of The Evil Dead - which I see is now rated NC-17 - we avoided the heavy, heavy gore. Still, isn't that one too much fun to take seriously? It's not like it's Hostel or something. We think the list feature good thrills, the right amount of bloodletting, original takes on the horror genre, classic moments, and some very high quality films.

Poltergeist comes in at number five because it's a great ghost story - one of the best, really - but also because it's one of the very first modern horror movies for mainstream audiences. Yes, several slasher flicks made tons of money before, but they were all aimed at teenagers and with rare exceptions, they're not good movies. Poltergeist is suspenseful film that is clearly more for adults, and it's playing by a slightly different set of rules.

It would probably be number four, if not for those horribly tasteless DirecTV ads making money of Heather O'Rourke's death.

That opens the door for Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, a symphony of blood and mayhem that's really just window dressing. While that's what people know the film for, but the story's pretty interesting, at least as a jumping off point. I love the whole Book of the Dead thing, because it really opens up Raimi's imagination to include anything he wants. It doesn't have to be a straight slasher movie and it certainly isn't. Probably not as scary as some of the others on this list, but a nice intermission with real staying power.

I debated whether or not The Shining was good for Halloween. It's so specifically a winter's tale that it made me wonder if it was cut out for the list. I decided that it was because it has three of the creepiest kids in movie history...and they share a scene! Danny Torrance, of course, is gold. But those twins in the hotel - freaky deaky. The other determining factor for me with The Shining is Jack Nicholson. If there's a man for all occasions, it's Jack.

They use expressions like "fraught with tension" to describe movies like this one, and it never gets old. And when Jack Torrance finally loses it, he's scarier than just about every faceless killer in movie history.

As I said earlier, there's something wrong with you if the top two films on our list aren't also on yours. You can have them in a different order; clearly, The Exorcist is the better film. But you've got to have them both. They're essential.

I love so many things about The Exorcist, both as a movie and as a legend, that I don't really know which part of the experience makes it a necessary evil on Halloween. Clearly, you've got the best demons and demonic possessions we've ever seen. You've got the spider walk. You've got the pea soup. You've got all of that. And then you've got "the curse," which supposedly claimed, what, half a dozen lives or something. Billy Graham preached that there was evil on the actual celluloid of the film. People collapsed while watching it. It was banned in the UK until 1998. And it's the best horror film ever made.

But Halloween gets the win this week. Is it a cheap pop because the movie takes place on Halloween and the villain wears a Halloween mask (actually a William Shatner mask painted pure white)? Sure, to a degree, that has to be part of it. But it's genuinely the scariest of that era of American low-budget horror, which includes Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, among others. It's also the most efficient of those movies, and watching it today, it holds up better than its major competition of the time. Almost all of the sequels are pure garbage but the original, with the original stalking, faceless menace is the way to go tonight.