(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974). It's putting it mildly to note that when this horror flick was first released back in 1974, it caught audiences completely off guard. Even coming on the heels of The Exorcist, which did its own share of theater-clearing, this one emerged as a lightning rod of controversy; like the earlier Night of the Living Dead, it succeeded largely because of its gritty, low-budget shooting style, and its influence on subsequent (and inferior) slasher flicks cannot be overstated. Loosely based on the real-life exploits of serial killer Ed Gein (whose sordid tale also served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho), it centers around five college-age kids whose ill-advised road trip through a desolate part of Texas puts them in contact with a murderous, cannibalistic clan whose most terrifying member, tagged Leatherface, is a silent, hulking psychopath with a nasty habit of peeling off his victims' faces and wearing them as masks. The movie itself has worn many faces over the years, representing the disillusionment of the nation after Vietnam and Watergate; pushing a pro-vegetarian stance by decrying the brutality of eating meat; serving as a bastardization of the comforting image of the all-American family as a wholesome, reliable entity; and further supporting the big-city mindset that views rural America as a haven for inbred illiterates. The bottom line is that the flick remains a genuine classic of the genre, a punishing, unrelenting nightmare that never allows viewers even a moment of sanity or security. Much of the credit goes to lead actress Marilyn Burns: There's a touch of madness in her third-act emoting, and her wide-eyed terror — as primal as anything I've ever seen in a motion picture — remains with you long after the film is over. Ignore the 2003 remake (produced by the clueless Michael Bay), a feeble retelling that guts the integrity of the original and wears its own cynicism like a ragged mask.

Incidentally, the 1986 sequel is pretty wretched, but ya gotta LOVE the Breakfast Club-inspired poster:

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

SPIDER BABY OR, THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD (1964). It's easy to see why cultists have a soft spot for this ragged, low-budget effort from the 1960s. Also making the rounds under the more gruesome (and less accurate) titles Attack of the Liver Eaters and Cannibal Orgy, this black-and-white curio — filmed in 1964 but released in 1968 due to monetary and distribution woes — possesses a quirky sense of humor as it relates the story of the Merrye family, two sisters (Jill Banner and Beverly Washburn) and one brother (Sid Haig, later Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects) who all suffer from a peculiar form of mental illness. Only Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.), the family chauffeur, can keep them in line, but when distant relatives arrive at their dilapidated mansion with the intent of collecting an inheritance, even he can't stop the siblings' murderous antics. Chaney's career had long since disintegrated at this late stage (he would pass away in 1973), but here he delivers a fine performance in a sympathetic role. As an added bonus, he even warbles the opening theme song, with lyrics like "Cannibal spiders creep and crawl/ Boys and ghouls having a ball/ Frankenstein, Dracula and even the Mummy/ Are sure to end up in someone's tummy." Lennon-McCartney it ain't, but it sets the proper schizophrenic tone for this one-of-a-kind oddity.

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31. Here are the films that were selected Oct. 15-21. Click on the title to be taken to the review.)

Oct. 15: The Host (2006)

Oct. 16: I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Oct. 17: Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Oct. 18: The Mist (2007)

Oct. 19: Horror Express (1972)

Oct. 20: Phenomena (1985)

Oct. 21: Slither (2006)

And here are the Week 1 & 2 picks:

Oct. 1: Day of the Dead (1985)

Oct. 2: Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

Oct. 3: The Thing from Another World (1951)

Oct. 4: Count Dracula (1970)

Oct. 5: Cat People (1942)

Oct. 6: Homicidal (1961)

Oct. 7: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Oct. 8: Piranha (1978)

Oct. 9: Willard (2003)

Oct. 10: House of Wax (1953)

Oct. 11: Dead Alive (1992)

Oct. 12: "Manos" The Hands of Fate (1966)

Oct. 13: Island of Lost Souls (1932)

Oct. 14: The Body Snatcher (1945)

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

SLITHER (2006). While this horror yarn offers gore by the bucketful, it’s also in the spirit of those enjoyable, us-against-them monster yarns that ran rampant from the 1950s straight through to the mid-1980s. Starting out as an "invader from outer space" opus (think The Blob) before switching gears to become a quasi-zombie flick (think Night of the Living Dead), the film involves a gelatinous E.T. that turns hicksville businessman Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) into its agent of evil on earth. The master plan eventually involves a mass assault by hundreds of slugs that take over humans' bodies by entering through the mouths; naturally, the entire planet is doomed unless double-Grant's wife (Elizabeth Banks) and an amiable sheriff (Nathan Fillion) can figure out a way to shut the otherworldly operation down. Slither takes its time getting started, but once it does, it never lets up, throwing blood, slime and one-liners (some woeful, most of them witty) at viewers with feverish abandon. Banks is touching as the wife who doesn't comprehend why her husband has morphed into a human squid. The worst part of the picture is the unnecessary coda tacked on after the closing credits have run their course, so be sure to turn off your player before then.

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

PHENOMENA (1985). Even folks who don't generally like movies that can broadly be categorized as "gore" or "slasher" flicks should be able to get a kick out of the works of Dario Argento, the Italian filmmaker whose oeuvre has inspired countless budding filmmakers and thrilled audiences held captive by his mastery behind the lens. Phenomena represents as good a starting point as any. In between her film debut in 1984's Once Upon a Time in America and her breakthrough role in 1986's Labyrinth (and long before her Oscar-winning performance in 2001's A Beautiful Mind), 14-year-old Jennifer Connelly toplined this absolutely loopy yarn in which a lonely American student at a Swiss boarding school is revealed to possess a strange hold over all insects. Can she use her powers to catch the serial killer who's been bloodily offing the school's nubile young girls? Formerly making the rounds under the moniker Creepers (and usually in an edited version), this engaging oddity — Argento's favorite of all his own films — also finds room for a heroic, razor-wielding chimpanzee, a deformed kid who bears an eerie resemblance to Chucky, and veteran actor Donald Pleasence as a kindly entomologist prone to making grandiloquent declarations about bugs.

• Summit Entertainment
• Alex Cross

Click on the title to be taken directly to the review.

Alex Cross

Beauty Is Embarrassing

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

HORROR EXPRESS (1972). Also known as Panic on the Trans-Siberian Express, this Spanish-British co-production managed to build a sturdy cult following during the 1980s — it still deserves that standing, thanks to a crafty premise and the presence of two genre superstars. Set at the start of the 20th century, this stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as rival scientists who team up once a monster long frozen in ice breaks loose on the Trans-Siberian Express and starts murdering the crew and passengers. There's much more to the film than this deceptively simple synopsis — should I drop a hint that a dinosaur makes an appearance? — but part of its allure is that it takes all manner of detours, both fun and far-fetched. Telly Savalas appears briefly as a thuggish Cossack, and there's a suitably loopy turn by Robert De Niro look-alike Alberto de Mendoza as a fanatical priest. It's always a pleasure to see Lee and Cushing perform together, and here they're especially ingratiating, with Lee projecting authority and Cushing getting off some amusing quips — when someone suggests that one of them might be the monster in disguise, he retorts, "Monster? We're British, you know!"

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

THE MIST (2007). The Mist marks writer-director Frank Darabont's third adaptation of a Stephen King property, and because he's not shooting for Oscar gold this time around (the previous titles were the reasonably enjoyable but grotesquely overrated pair, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile), he's able to ease up on the pedal of self-importance and deliver a "B"- style genre flick, albeit one offering some evaluations of human nature in between all the bloodletting. Owing a nod in the direction of John Carpenter's The Fog, this concerns itself with a group of people who are gathered at the local supermarket when a mist envelops the entire area. It soon becomes clear that something evil resides in the fog — oh, about the time that a bag boy gets shredded by a monstrous tentacle — and the shoppers decide that they should remain indoors rather than venture out into the parking lot. It's here that Darabont's script reveals its cynical roots, as a religious zealot named Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) converts many of the frightened survivors to her mode of thinking, a path that leads to a Jim Jones-like environment and at least one human sacrifice. Propelled by Harden's scary performance, Mrs. Carmody is a genuine threat, and she validates Darabont's contention that times of crisis are as likely to turn people against each other as they are to unite them against a common enemy. His pessimism also extends to other areas of the script, most notably a powerhouse ending.

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977). Like those Biblical epics of yore, here's a motion picture that can boast of literally presenting a cast of thousands. In this case, though, that number applies to the hordes of spiders seen crawling all over the place — 5,000 seems to be the accepted figure, although at least one crew member later stated that the number was anywhere up to 10,000. At any rate, arachnophobes are advised to steer clear of any TV set showing this effective horror yarn, which managed to produce a handsome return on its half-million-dollar budget during a period when most moviegoers were busy re-watching Star Wars for the umpteenth time. William Shatner, still a couple of years away from the Star Trek movie franchise that would resurrect his career, plays "Rack" Hansen, a small-town veterinarian who teams up with a big-city entomologist (Tiffany Bolling) to figure out what's killing animals in his Arizona community. It turns out that the area's spiders, affected by the pesticides that have been destroying their natural food supplies, have set their sights on larger prey — and before long, humans are finding themselves being attacked, bitten and cocooned. John "Bud" Cardos efficiently directs this entertaining picture that was clearly inspired by Jaws (right down to the blustery mayor worried that the intrusive presence of Mother Nature will ruin the town's upcoming holiday weekend), and the script by Richard Robinson and Alan Caillou is capped by a great ending.

(In anticipation of the coolest day of the year, this month-long series will offer one recommended horror flick a day up through Oct. 31.)

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943). This classic chiller has the distinction of being one of the best movies ever saddled with one of the worst titles. As it had done with Cat People, RKO chose a moniker around which Val Lewton had to build a movie. But the producer wasn't about to let the name hamper his commitment to excellence: Teaming again with Cat People director Jacques Tourneur and bringing Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man) and Ardel Wray aboard as scripters, the gang meshed together an article by Inez Wallace with no less than Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre! Frances Dee plays the nurse who journeys to Haiti to look after the ailing wife (Christine Gordon) of a brooding plantation owner (Tom Conway). But as she becomes familiar with the locals and their customs, she begins to wonder if there's any merit to their belief that the wife is one of the undead. The nighttime march through the sugar cane fields is incredibly atmospheric, the high point in a film that's as poetic and dreamlike as it is suspenseful.