What Scares Me Is This …, Night #7 (10/30/25)

email: latenightpickwick@gmail.com

The first intention of a Halloween watchlist is to recommend to its readers a handful of sinister cinematic screenings meant to celebrate the spooky season. But what if a witchy watchlist could inspire more screenings beyond the 10, 20, or 31 that October could otherwise provide?

That’s why Late-Night at the Pickwick is serving up sneak previews of even more movies — so that you may discover ominous films well beyond the month of October. Follow along with our night-by-night double feature viewing recommendations, or dig deeper still into a cavern of carnage, going down a widescreen wormhole that these feature-length & short-form sinister suggestions promise to provide!

So prep the popcorn, settle into your seat, and get ready for a rioutous round of nightly nightmares …

Because terrors await!

TRAILER #1

Hatchet (2006)

Available on Fandango at Home.

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TRAILER #2

Madman (1981)

Available on Fandango at Home.

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TRAILER #3

Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Available on Tubi.

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TRAILER #4

Creepshow (1982)

Available to rent on Amazon Prime.

FEATURE #1

Twilight Zone: The Movie

It took almost 20 years for Hollywood to realize that bringing CBS’ horror-slash-science fiction anthology TV series to the big screen was a great idea, but — more importantly — it took some fantastic writers & four phenomenal directors to bring Rod Serling’s small screen vision to the big screen.

The project would feature four short vignettes directed by cinematic visionaries who had already brought us Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Mad Max (1979), The Howling (1981), and An American Werewolf in London (1982) — bookended by a humorously creepy narrative starring Dan Aykroyd. The final result was an anthology film that captured all of the charm, the chilling dread, and the bloodcurdling screams of the original television program.

Available to rent on Amazon Prime.

TRAILER #5

Tales from the Hood (1995)

Available to rent on Amazon Prime.

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TRAILER #6

XX (2017)

Available on Fandango At Home.

FEATURE #2

Scare Package

An anthology movie framed by the narrative of a horror-fixated manager of a struggling video store, this multi-part collection of stories is just as campy, just as chilling, and just as cool as its creators would appear to be. From stories about a would-be horror film character who can’t seem to be more than a “cold open character” to some friends camping in the woods besieged by both a mutating man & a serial killer to a final girl’s attempt to destroy — once & for all — the slasher who has ruined every aspect of her life over time … this horror anthology breathes some new blood-filled breaths of joy into the genre while remaining faithful to the brief stories that construct the best anthologies.

Available on Shudder.

NEXT TIME …

It’s Halloween, kiddies — and what better way to celebrate one of the greatest cinematic holidays ever than with one of the greatest Halloween-centric films of all time!

Pull up a bucket of popcorn, procure a package of your favorite candy, and settle in with a jumbo-sized soda for an anthology picture that has come to define all films of its kind. If you haven’t figured this one out already, I dare say you may be in the wrong place at the wrong time — just as so many trick-or-treaters unfortunately are, on nights like these.

Now — before the film begins — don’t forget to check the candy that you’ve collected tonight.

Candy may be sweet — but things are about to get a little more sinister …

Chris Kaine is the most amateur film essayist whom you may ever imagine. He earnestly contends that he was named after the actor Chris Sarandon, because he was either conceived while his parents watched Fright Night (1985) in his paternal grandparents’ basement, or because of their love for The Princess Bride (1987), which stars a character by the name of “Humperdink,” which is pretty funny, if you think about it.

Late-Night at the Pickwick Drive-In

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