New York City is kind of a nightmare on Halloween.  It’s impossible to get a cab, the subways are filled to the brim and the sidewalks seem like they are overflowing.  Everybody comes to Manhattan on Halloween to get completely wasted, vomit in the street, and maybe hook up.  It’s amateur hour and it’s one of my five least favorite days to go out in NYC (St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s being high up there).  Alas, I’m always compelled to go out and get involved in the festivities, drink too much and then stumble home to see what classic horror films are on TCM.

But book-ending that night of terror, I like to have a few other nights of terror by watching horror movies exclusively, having a marathon in my apartment.  Sometimes friends will stop by and catch a movie or two, but I like to get into the Halloween spirit regardless, and I usually pick out a few old standbys and a few new ones.  I’m still putting together my list for this year, but I usually always watch Brad Anderson’s Session 9, Kubrick’s The Shining, and often Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  This year, I think I’m going to throw in Frank Darabont’s The Mist, Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Troll 2 (I always like a funny one to throw in there) and then I’m still debating which horror films I haven’t seen to add to the program.  At this point, it’s getting harder to weave in new horror films that I actually like.  It’s becoming increasingly harder for me to get truly scared by horror films, so I’m happy just to find something that gives me the chills or at least tells an entertaining story.  So I’ve been looking through Netflix and trying to find horror films I haven’t seen available to watch instantly.  I’m thinking about the recent Carriers, Romero’s Survival of the Dead, and maybe the older Girly.  I also will make time to watch the premiere episode of Darabont’s adaptation of the Walking Dead on AMC.  What else should I add to this list?

But, in the spirit of giving, I wanted to help my NYC peeps find some cool horror festivities during the week and weekend, where they could congregate with fellow horror lovers.  And with that in mind, I think the best idea is to check out the Film Society at Lincoln Center’s horror slate called “Scary Movies” that runs from today (Oct. 27th) through the weekend.  The program they have sounds pretty excellent, including The Creeping Flesh (a Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee flick), the original Hellraiser, Carrie, and the new Australian horror picture The Loved Ones, which is getting excellent buzz.  The Film Society at Lincoln Center has been killing it lately with excellent programs (they recently had a Rohmer retrospective, which was heavenly) and this one is sure to be a lot of fun.  Check out the website for more info: http://filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/scarymovies.html

Elsewhere: The IFC Center is showing midnight screenings of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street through the weekend, Film Forum has Psycho playing all day throughout the weekend as well.  But if you’re looking for something a little bit more underground, my good buddy and filmmaker Shal Ngo has put together a horror movie montage called Brain Bludgeon at the reRun theater in DUMBO.  Shal is a pretty talented up and coming filmmaker and he spent an inordinate amount of time watching and then sewing together clips from literally hundreds of forgotten horror movies.  Check out the trailer.

If you know about anything else going on in NYC for Halloween, let me know and I’ll try to update this post with anything that sounds too good to miss.