Four Obscure Horror Flicks for Mischief Night

by Samuel Antezana

Halloween is approaching, and for those of us who don’t go out to costume parties or trick r’ treating, the age-old issue of finding a horror movie that we haven’t already seen for the thousandth time is a real one. Fear not, because I’m here to tell you that there is life beyond the purgatory of Hocus Pocus and Beetlejuice (no disrespect towards my favorite of Tim Burton’s filmography). Here are some of my go-to horror recommendations for those that want to explore the stranger side of what the genre has to offer, but be warned, some of these are a bit extreme in content.

1. Grapes of Death (1978), directed by Jean Rollin - Available to Stream on Amazon, Hoopla and Kanopy

A woman takes a train to the Cévennes mountains of France to meet her fiancé at the vineyard he works in. Her peaceful train ride is violently interrupted when a madman attacks her and her friend. After the woman barely escapes with her life, she slowly discovers that the villagers within the mountain region are all showing similar signs of madness. Grapes is a French horror film that revels in its nightmarish setting Even the camera following our protagonist maintains a low focus as she walks through the desolate mountainside, creating a slight blur effect that further amplifies the dream-like state of the character. Rollins’ film is one of the first to introduce the idea of the infected or infection, inadvertently putting it on the same footing as such films like David Cronenberg’s Rabid (1977) or more famously, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). However, in Grapes’ more unique situation, the infection is spread through the wine created in the region and the side effect is a violent madness.

The mood that Rollins creates is entrancing, and the acts of complete insanity that the infected villagers inflict on those who have yet to be turned is sure to send a shiver up your spine, that is, if the film’s creepy locale doesn’t do it for you already.

2. Sheitan (2006), directed by Kim Chapiron - Available to Stream on Shudder, Hoopla and Kanopy

Ah yes, another French horror flick! What can I say? The French know their stuff. Don’t worry though, this is the final French production on the list. The story follows a young group of friends who get kicked out of a club after one of them acts belligerently. In the hopes of continuing to party elsewhere, they follow a girl from the club to her family’s farm in the countryside, where they meet her strange relative, Joseph (played to perfection by Vincent Cassel). As the night continues, Joseph’s behavior gets more erratic, and the group of friends become suspicious of a darker underlying purpose to their arrival at the farm.

Who knew Vincent Cassel could be such an animal? Chapiron utilizes every facet of Cassel’s physical capabilities to create one of the strangest and most overlooked characters in horror history. In fact, Sheitan itself is criminally underappreciated. I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty details of the story for fear of spoiling its wilder moments, but trust me when I say that this film is utterly deranged! If you were to take the off-beat humor of Midsommar (2019) and criss-cross it with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), up the insanity tenfold and you would get Sheitan . This is a must for the season!

3. Headless (2015), directed by Arthur Cullipher - Available to Stream on Amazon Prime

This list wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of a slasher, and that slasher happens to be one of my favorites. Headless is a film within a film. It’s a low-budget fake film from the 70s that can be found within a disturbing indie horror film called Found (2012). The film within a film gained the interest of Cullipher and he made it into a full-length feature. Headless revolves around a highly disturbed individual with a traumatic past, whose only given name is “The Killer” (per IMDB). He prowls the streets with a skull mask and machete, in search of his latest female victim.

You know how I mentioned that some of these films may be a bit extreme? Well, this is the most extreme of the four. Most slashers from the late 70s and 80s are already violent, but the killer in Headless is incredibly malicious with how he goes about his killings. I won’t go into the particulars as to how he kills his victims, but I will say that he is turned on by severed heads… the title really says it all. The acting might be a bit stale at times - and the set-up a tad typical - but the hallucinatory scenes involving the killer and his little mascot, Skull Boy, give this slasher a unique spin. Add an extra grainy filter and a synthy electronic score, and you have yourself a film that feels straight out of the 70s.

4. The Wailing (2016), directed by Na Hong-jin - Available to Stream on Amazon Prime, Shudder and Hoopla 

Last but not least, I present to you one of the best horror films to come out in the past decade, The Wailing. This Korean horror film takes place in a small village where a strange illness starts to spread when a Japanese stranger arrives. A dimwitted policeman is sucked into an investigation of the man’s arrival when his daughter begins to show the horrific symptoms of the Illness.

Hong-jin’s two and a half hour film is a mind-melting experience that combines religion, race relations, and the supernatural to an unnerving culmination of paranoia leading up to one of the most hair-raising twist endings in a movie, period. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but perfect for a Halloween night.