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Monthly Archives 2026
October
8 Spooky Movies based on Books &
15 Family Friendly Movies
Practical Magic - A cult classic based on the book by Alice Hoffman. Practical Magic, the movie stars Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as witchy sisters.
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic... (A second movie is out now as well)
Hallowe’en Party - A classic murder mystery by Agatha Christie. Inspiration for the movie, A Haunting in Venice. A Hercule Poirot Mystery.
At a Halloween party, Joyce - a hostile thirteen-year-old - boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the evil presence. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double murderer...
The Witches of Eastwick - by John Updike. The movie, adapted into a film starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer, is quite different from the book.
Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, productive, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick, and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche.
Coraline - by Neil Gaiman - a dark novella. An animated, fantasy, horror film.
When curious, precocious Coraline Jones moves into a new house, she finds a door that leads to another world, where everything is like home, only better. Things seem marvelous, but there's another mother there, and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Coraline will have to fight with all her wit and courage if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - by Washington Irving. A classic 1820’s gothic short story.
Ichabod Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate the decapitations of three people; the culprit is a legendary apparition, The Headless Horseman. Sleepy Hollow is a film by Tim Burton, the ultimate foggy, headless-horseman harvest-season movie to watch.
Silence of the Lambs - by Thomas Harris. Psychological horror/thriller.
This horror/thriller stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out. An Oscar-winning horror film.
The Shining - by Stephen King. A horror novel.
In the movie, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) becomes winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer's block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and his son, Danny, who is plagued by psychic premonitions. As Jack's writing goes nowhere and Danny's visions become more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel's dark secrets and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hell-bent on terrorizing his family.
The Haunting of Hill House - by Shirley Jackson. The Haunting, the movie starring Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Own Wilson was a supernatural horror film.
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
15 Family friendly movies to watch this fall season:
Hocus Pocus/Hocus Pocus 2 - The Addams Family - Poltergeist
The Nightmare Before Christmas - The Witches - Ernest Scared Stupid
Beetlejuice/Beetlejuice 2 - The Haunted Mansion - Halloweentown
Young Frankenstein - Ghostbusters - The Sixth Sense - Corpse Bride
Happy Fall - Solitaire
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