Any unimaginative buffoon can get into the Halloween spirit by watching A Nightmare On Elm Street, cueing up Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead", or sticking rosemary sprigs in a bunch of olives and call them "edible coffin spiders". 

On the other severed hand, coming up with a bunch of left-field fright flicks, obscure horror-rock records, and more-terrifying-than-your-mom's-cooking snack ideas takes some geniune work.

Don't stress yourself because we've done all that for you. Sit down, pour yourself another Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale, and get ready to get seriously into—sorry Bing Crosby—the most wonderful time of the year. 

Movies

Some not-so-well-known horror films that won't fail to make you scream. Or cry.

Dead & Buried (1981) Dead & Buried looks like it was shot on a B-movie budget, but director Gary Sherman does a lot with a little in this understated but shockingly clever obscurity. Set in a quaint backwater called Potter’s Bluff, the film makes an argument that David Lynch would appreciate: few things are more flesh-crawingly creepy than small-town America. To say too much is too spoil a plot that revolves around a parade of lovingly executed murders, the victims being mostly of the just-passing-through variety. The message of Dead & Buried? That would be, if you’re going to travel, save up and go to Europe, rather than loading up the hatchback and hitting a small town where visitors star in the daily horror show. (MU)

Raw Meat (1972) At the risk of starting a Gary Sherman fest, the American filmmaker’s debut is another too-little-seen classic, and by far the best entry in the London-tube-station cannibal genre (population: 1). A subway construction collapse in the 19th century has left its trapped workers to breed like rats far below the streets of England’s capital. Being in the vicinity of the red-light district, it’s an upper-class politician, naturally, who falls victim when the last cannibal surfaces in the dirty ’70s, looking to eat the rich. His only words? An anguished cry of “Mind the doors!” Featuring Donald Pleasence and a blistering cameo by Christopher Lee (RIP), this dank and grimy little fucker of a movie will leave you feeling sicker than a Kings Cross gyro. (AM)

Hour of the Wolf (1968) Coming after his masterpiece, Persona, this insanely creepy hallucination-on-film has been sidelined as a minor work by Ingmar Bergman. But it’s an awesome midnight movie. Dread informs every pristine black-and-white frame of Wolf, the mesmerizing tale of a painter in the midst of profound spiritual crisis, tangling with a family of aristocrats who may or may not be demons (or birds). Jaggedly rendered scenes of child murder, flashes of Swedish art-house boob, and a pummelling sense of despair gave the eggheads just enough Bergman to keep them interested. A dizzyingly sick climax had them cowering behind their copies of Sight & Sound. (AM)

Martyrs (2008) Some movies—The Human Centipede, A Serbian Film—try their very, very best to upset you. And they look utterly pathetic next to Martyrs. Not because it’s outrageously gory or scary (it is), but because this French-made descent into hell is built on a premise so irredeemably sick and yet so forceful in its logic that it probably should have prompted a new category of film classification, perhaps something along the lines of a serious health warning for the emotionally fragile or a label cautioning against total ontological collapse. It’s all spoilers after an opening scene in which a battered young girl escapes what looks like years of torture in an abattoir, so we’ll leave it at that and say a tiny prayer for those of you still willing to proceed. (AM)

Macabre (2009) Quite possibly the bloodiest horror film ever made, Macabre’s great trick is that it offers up something more than endless geysers of piping-hot plasma. Written and directed by Indonesia’s Mo Brothers, the nonstop splatterfest combines grainy, ’80s-style atmosphere with the kind of severe emotional trauma that made the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre so terrifying. Take a house in the middle of the Indonesian countryside, combine a group of weary travellers with a host family that’s weirder than Carrie White’s mother, and then strap on the butcher’s apron. If this is what goes on in the Far East, were spending our next vacation somewhere peaceful like Northern California’s Willow Creek. (MU)

Music

Creepy tunes to make your spine tingle with fear. And your neighbours wonder if the Devil just moved in with Jason Voorhees

The Residents, The Third Reich ’n Roll   Time might have diminished the queasy power exerted by this infernal document, the second album by San Francisco’s venerable, eyeball-headed art weirdos—but then again, probably not. The Third Reich ’n Roll still sounds like an unwanted broadcast from the diseased soul of the 20^th century, a “covers” album that submits an era of feel-good pop to the deranged spirit animating old weird America and the ancient monsters that preceded it. The Residents were tapping into something very disturbing at this point, and while they might be coming from the same jazzily surreal and inky-dark place that gave us Eraserhead and Barnes & Barnes, this is the artifact that poses the most credible threat to your sanity. (AM)

Dead Mans’ Bones, Dead Man’s Bones  Normally, almost nothing is more horrific than an actor leaving the silver screen to moonlight as a rock star (the lone exception being when a famous musician—hello, Mick Jagger and Madonna—gets the idea that the world wants to see them act). The surprising thing about Dead Man’s Bones eponymous debut album is that it’s as self-assured as it is amazing. Tackling all the instruments themselves, the duo of Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields team up for 12 DIY chamber-pop songs about zombie love, werewolf hearts, and bodies buried in cold water. Providing beautifully ghostly backing vocals is the Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir. Cue up the reanimated-’50s-crooner creeper “Lose Your Soul” and prepare for the most spine-chilling thing you’ve heard since the rumour that Dogstar is reuniting. (MU)

Throbbing Gristle, D.o.A.: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle  When it comes to experimental industrial music, there’s a very fine line between clever and unlistenable. Throbbing Gristle walks that line, and often trips onto the wrong side of it. You can almost dance to “Dead on Arrival”, which layers random bursts of clattering noise and feedback over a primitive drum-machine beat, but mostly you’re here for the creep-show atmospherics, from the undead violins of “Weeping” to the zombie punk of “Blood on the Floor”. Looking for something truly disturbing? Put on “Hamburger Lady”, which describes in unflinching detail the horrific injuries of a car-crash victim, and watch as your Halloween partygoers suddenly remember that they were supposed to be somewhere—anywhere—else. (JL)

T.S.O.L., Dance With Me  For pure shock value, few punk records have ever managed to match Dance With Me’s “Code Blue”, which features such unsavoury lines as “’Cause I can do what I want and they don’t complain/I wanna fuck, I wanna fuck the dead.” There’s more here on this SoCal classic than songs guaranteed to offend more the Meatmen, Vandals, and Angry Samoans combined. Branching out from paint-by-numbers hardcore of early numbers like “Abolish Government”, T.S.O.L. offers up 12 distortion-glazed tracks populated by desperate double agents, angels with vermin fangs, and the main players from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But don’t let that distract you from “Code Blue”. All together, necrophiliacs: “And I don’t even care how she died/But I like it better if she smells of formaldehyde.” (MU)

Scott Walker, Tilt  The Straight once made the serious error of taking a dog for a walk in the forest while listening to this awesomely unnerving 1995 album by the one-time pinup idol and full-time musical seer. We soon found ourselves weighing up the chances that we were about to be murdered by an evil spirit. Funny how music can be sometimes. If your Halloween party gets boring, make a game of finding out who can last the longest alone in the basement with the lights turned off and Track 3, the thumping incantation “Bouncer See Bouncer…”, turned up on the headphones. (BL)

Recipes

Halloween treats... delicious but you might lose your appetite just looking at them.

Rice-Krispie Zombie Brains

Heat up your marshmallows, throw in some butter, then add a couple drops of food colouring for that organlike tinge. Instead of forming the age-old squares, mould these suckers into balls about the size of a small orange, then, with your thumb and the help of a butter knife, while the goo is still warm, create an indent right along the top of the “brain”. Ooze in some red gel-icing, teasing it out into cerebral veins, and you’ve a killer snack for all the zombies this Halloween. (JS)

Witches’ Fingers

These look so creepy, we still have trouble eating them. Find a pack of those giant, finger-sized pretzel sticks. Dip them into green chocolate—food-dyeing some white chocolate if you have to. Use a toothpick to etch on hideous knuckles before it sets. Now add disgusting sliced-almond fingernails. (JS)

Stuffed jack-o'-lantern peppers

While I'll admit this one isn't for people who have trouble with their fine motor skills, it's a great way to get your kids to eat their veggies. Look up a recipe for some killer stuffing (ground beef, veggies, and rice make a great combo, but if meat's a no-no, I hear quinoa is still in), cook it up, and, without cutting yourself, carve mini jack-o’-lanterns into orange bell peppers. Fill with stuffing and serve to vegetable-hating children. (AS)

Sure, you can cook from scratch, but there is trick-or-treating to be done, so grab your favourite cake mix. Bake up a batch of cupcakes (red velvet looks the grossest when you bite into it) and coat them in white icing. We found eyeball candies with pupils at Michael’s (various locations), but you can slice up gumdrops or Life Savers Gummies for the iris and fasten a little black candy—we like little black-licorice buttons—to the middle. Use a red-gel-icing tube to form the bloodshot lines. And  try not to get freaked out when you see a whole tray of these staring up at you. (JS)

Guac-puking pumpkin

You don't have to be a master chef to put this easy dish together, and if you're really lazy, you can even go out and buy the guacamole. Carve a nauseous-looking jack-o’-lantern, place the pumpkin in the centre of a platter, and add heaps of guacamole in front of the gourd's face. The goal is to make it look like Jack is recovering from a night of too many green jello shots. Add your favourite tortilla chips (nothing beats Que Pasa), and indulge in a little avacado-flavoured pumpkin vomit. (AS)