The Best Halloween Movies You Can Watch For Free
It's Halloween weekend, and that means kicking back with friends and watching scary movies. But if you don't want to shell out $15 to see the new Paranormal Activity (12% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and your old roommate finally changed his Netflix login, don't stress — some of the best and best-worst horror movies are already in the public domain. Free movies? Hell yeah.
Night of the Living Dead
Every modern zombie movie owes a debt to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Luckily for us (and for the creators of another movie with a very long title1) a copyright error allowed this movie to fall into the public domain almost immediately.
House on Haunted Hill
Probably the earliest cinematic example of the "stay in this spooky house and get a bunch of money" trope. Also — Vincent Price!
Nosferatu
An obvious classic, and arguably the very first horror film ever made. Fun fact: the reason Max Schreck's character is called Count Orlok instead of Count Dracula is because Prana Film couldn't obtain the rights to Bram Stoker's novel.
White Zombie
The first ever feature-length zombie flick! As well as the obvious inspiration for Rob Zombie's first band. It stars Bela Lugosi, who's probably best known for his starring role in…
Dracula
Almost a decade after Nosferatu (and after Stoker's estate sued and won for infringement), the proper rights were obtained. And although the result is much less memorable that Nosferatu it helped cement Lugosi's career.
The Last Man on Earth
Another Vincent Price vehicle, and the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, which you can read over here.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
The archetypal shlock movie from Ed Wood, the ultimate hack director (and later memorialized in the Johnny Depp vehicle Ed Wood), Plan 9 was shot on a budget of $60k, and contains numerous continuity problems, bad acting, and some worst special effects put on celluloid. It's a masterpiece, but not in the way it was intended to be.