THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN: Tapeheads Horror Picks on VHS!

With October finally upon us, there's nothing the hosts of Tapeheads like more than popping a few spooky tapes into the VCR to usher in the Halloween season!

Here are thirteen tapes to check out leading up to October 31st. Some of these films have been featured on our show, others have not. As the beloved VHS format died in 2006, you won't find contemporary treasures like Trick 'R Treat on this list, but the ghosts of these thirteen tapes can be found roaming your local yard sale.

Happy haunting!

1. Hocus Pocus (1993)
Covered in our 10th episode, Hocus Pocus is the perfect kiddie-friendly Halloween flick to ease you into the spooky season.

2. Pumpkinhead (1989)
Kick it up a notch with Lance Henriksen awakening an ancient revenge demon (and instantly regretting it).

3. Frankenstein (1931)
Despite its many differences from the novel, James Whale’s classic is still the definitive film adaptation of Mary Shelley's masterpiece, with Boris Karloff giving an unforgettable performance as The Monster.

4. Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989)
This campy made-for-TV entry in the long-running Amityville Horror series focuses on a possessed lamp. No, seriously.

That damn lamp from Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes.

5. Ginger Snaps (2000)
If our American Werewolf in London episode whetted your appetite for wolves, check out this excellent horror flick about a death-obsessed Canadian girl who runs afoul of a werewolf.

6. The Witches (1990)
A never-better Angelica Huston is the grand high witch... and she wants to turn all the kids in England into mice! Listen to the episode here!

7. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
George A. Romero’s racially-charged zombie classic only gets better (and more relevant) with age.

8. Child's Play (1988)
As you may recall from our Child's Play episode, Chucky is one of the meanest (and chattiest) slashers out there. Give his inaugural feature a watch and maybe even pop in some of those sequels too!

Meet Chucky, your friend 'til the end from Child's Play!

9. Idle Hands (1999)
It may just be Evil Dead II’s "possessed hand" gag stretched to feature length, but this late-nineties horror comedy is extremely entertaining.

10. Dead of Night (1945)
The 1940’s gave us one of the best horror anthology films of all time, right up there with Trick 'R Treat and Creepshow! This one gets bonus points for a truly chilling wraparound story too.

11. Jeepers Creepers II (2003)
If you can, try to forget the serious controversy surrounding this film's director and enjoy this silly sequel on its own terms: a huge bat monster slaughtering a bunch of dumb kids on a school bus.

Jeepers Creepers II: That's Not A Scarecrow!

12. Scream (1996)
In 1996, the late master of horror Wes Craven gave us a self-knowing slasher masterpiece. This Halloween season, it's due for a re-watch.

13. Halloween (1978)
Needless to say, John Carpenter’s original classic is the perfect horror film for October 31st. For extra credit, do what we did in Episode 36 and make it a triple feature with Rick Rosenthal’s immediate follow-up Halloween II and Steve Miner’s woefully underrated Halloween: H20.

Why VHS?

A VHS cassette, by virtually every standard, is an awful way to watch a movie.

From the 1980's to the early 2000's, the Beta-killing "Video Home System" delivered movies to the masses with poor picture quality, muddy sound, and cropped frames that left much of the filmmaker's original intent "adjusted" right the hell off your screen.

Thanks to giant leaps in digital technology, VHS has long been a relic of the home video history. So why are we dusting off our old tapes and making a podcast?

Could it be that we've committed the "Coming Soon to Videocassette" prologue from Surf Ninjas to memory, and like the first track of a classic album, it's just not complete without promises of Mr. Nanny and Mortal Kombat being totally worth our time?

Or perhaps it's because these black plastic shells of magnetic tape were the vessels through which we first saw our favorite films?

Or maybe Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade just doesn't feel right unless the edge of the frame is jittering violently due to years of over-loving?

Whatever the case may be, one thing we can all agree on is that this is beautiful: