In anticipation of Halloween, we asked two professors and two staff members to share their favorite horror films.

Nancy Schiesari, professor, Department of Radio-Television-Film

Growing up with a father who loved Edgar Allan Poe, Schiesari was introduced to her No. 1 thriller when she was eight.

1. Pit and the Pendulum by Roger Corman (1961)
2. Killer Shrews by Ray Kellogg (1959)
3. Grizzly Man, a documentary by Werner Herzog (2005)

Ed Radtke, assistant professor, Department of Radio-Television-Film

Admitting he’s not into horror flicks as much as he used to be, Radtke still had plenty of thrillers to share.

1. The Haunting (the original) by Robert Wise (1963)
2. Rosemary's Baby by Roman Polanski (1968)
3. Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme (1991)
4. The Exorcist by William Friedkin (1973)
5. The Shining by Stanley Kubrick (1980)

• and the obligatory B movie Texas Chain Saw Massacre by Tobe Hooper (1974)

Laura Schwartz, head librarian, Fine Arts Library

Schwartz immediately named her top horror flicks, and two seemed more than enough for her.

1. Rosemary's Baby by Roman Polanski (1968)
2. Halloween by John Carpenter (1978)

Christopher Palmer, Radio-Television-Film specialist and videographer, Office of Public Affairs

1. Carnival of Souls (1962) — This chilling black and white classic explores the world of the living dead six years before George Romero’s pivotal zombie film Night of the Living Dead.
2. The Evil Dead (1981) — Before directing A Simple Plan (1998) and the widely popular Spider-Man movies, Sam Rami took a small film crew into the woods to shoot a low budget grindhouse masterpiece.
3. Suspiria (1977) — The Italian horror master Dario Argento slowly builds deep atmosphere and razor-sharp tension using rich colors and surreal composition set in an eerie European ballet academy.
4. Candyman (1992) — Clive Barker takes the violent history of American slavery and applies it in the modern world of poverty and crime of Chicago’s infamous housing projects Cabrini-Green.
5. Cemetery Man (1994) — Also know as "Dellamorte Dellamore," Rupert Everett stars as the groundskeeper of a particularly strange graveyard in which every buried body springs back to life as a reanimated corpse. Everett’s character, Dellamorte, is responsible for killing the dead and reburying them a second time.

Watch a video of professors reading their favorite spooky passages.

Please rate this article: