BAMPFA SC's October Recommendations!

Whether you're out cavorting with your fellow ghouls or taking tea with the house spirits, BAMPFA SC has media recommendations for all levels of spookiness this Halloween.

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃: Nightmare

• Rotten Mango: Watch this true-crime podcast on YouTube, or listen on Spotify!
• Our favorite episode: Episode #325: 33 crew members went deep sea squid hunting, turned MAD and started hunting EACH OTHER.

🎃🎃🎃🎃: Conjuring Terror

• The Magnus Archives: episodic horror, ranging from hair raising to nightmare causing. Listen on Spotify.
  
• Our favorite episode: Here's a mid-season episode which reliably conjures some terror of the dark. Transcript can be found here.
  

🎃🎃🎃: The Creaking Under the Bed

Movies

• Sinners (2025): Set in the 1932 Mississippi Delta, two twin brothers return home from their life of crime, only to discover a greater evil awaiting them. Sexy vampires, sexy soundtrack. 
  
• Bonus picks:
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
  • Barbarian (2022)
  • Get Out (2017)
  • Psycho (1960)

TV Shows

• Midnight Mass: a beautiful, alluring limited series set on an isolated island on the east coast. Gothic horror, religious imagery, small town secrets.
  
• Bonus picks:
  • Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018)
  • Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (2011)
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022)
  • The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

🎃🎃: Goosebumps

Movies

• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): A classic horror film that is perfect all year round. Both sexy and outrageous, it’ll leave you wanting to visit a live Rocky Horror Picture Show performance and experience it in person. 
• Bonus picks:
  • Coraline (2009)
  • Knives Out (2019)
  • Practical Magic (1998)
    
  • Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010)
    

TV Shows

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997): Spike. Enough said.
  

Books

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson: Past haunting the present, anyone? Another chilling gothic novel, this short read considers family, otherness, and a shocking mass-family death with two lovable sisters, Merricat and Constance, at the story’s center.
• Bonus pick: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: This perfectly spooky gothic narrative takes place in one central house and explores themes of grief, the complexities of familial relationships, and is a perfect companion to the equally brilliant Netflix show of the same name.
  

🎃: Trick-or-Treating

Music Videos

• Sabrina Carpenter - Tears: Enjoy The Rocky Horror Picture Show? You’ll love this!
  

Movies

• Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009): A childhood classic novel transformed into a sucker-punch of a movie that forces you to rethink and appreciate your life and loved ones. 
  
• Bonus picks:
  • Dead Poets Society (1989)
  • Girl vs. Monster (2012)
  • It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
  • Juno (2007)
    
  • When Harry Met Sally (1989)
    

TV Shows

• The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell (2018): Eccentric baker Christine McConnell and her equally “zany” friends Rose the re-animated raccoon, Rankle the mummified sphynx, and Edgar the werewolf make addictively horrifying and delicious confections. 
• Bonus picks:
  • Gilmore Girls (2000)
  • Over the Garden Wall (2014)