It's always the right time to watch a good horror movie. But October is prime spooky season, and to stream a merely OK horror movie just seems wrong. To avoid doing the scariest month of the year dirty, Watch With Us has compiled a list of the 10 best horror movies of the 1980s, when the genre was at its peak in popularity, output and quality. While some fan-favorites didn't make the cut (sorry, A Nightmare on Elm Street!), plenty did, with an appropriately terrifying assembly of masked killers, flesh-eating zombies, ghosts, ghouls and John Carpenter movies faithfully representing the best the genre had to offer in the Regean era. 10. 'Demons' (1985) Movie theaters are supposed to be safe spaces, right? Well, not in Lamberto Bava's world. The Italian director set his seminal zombie classics, Demons, almost entirely in a single-screen theater in Berlin, where moviegoers get a lot more than they bargained for when they attend a free screening. When one patron is cut by a mysterious metallic mask displayed in the lobby, she turns into a demon. Chaos ensues, with a lot of the film's cast turning into the undead or being ripped apart by them. At some point, a helicopter crashes into the theater. It's that kind of film. This New Netflix Horror Film Gave Me the Chills - 'Nosferatu' Fans Will Love It With a barely-there plot, paper-thin characterization and English dubbing that's borderline laughable, Demons really shouldn't work. But what saves the film is the still-impressive makeup effects, which depict in graphic detail scalps being ripped from heads and guts spilling out of split-open stomaches. Then there's the messed-up narrative, which keeps upping the ante on how bad things can really get. Demons is totally insane, and that's what makes it one of a kind. 9. 'Lady in White' (1988) Lady in White is probably the gentlest horror movie ever made. When 9-year-old Frankie (Lukas Haas) is locked in his classroom coatroom on Halloween night, he thinks he sees the ghost of a little girl before being nearly strangled to death by an unseen assailant. Frankie survives and learns that the little girl is the latest victim of a serial killer targeting young children. If Frankie can't find out who the killer is, he could be his next victim. Set in small-town America circa 1962, Lady in White effectively uses its idyllic period to underline the truly terrible things that lie just beneath the surface. Haas is terrific as a junior boy detective who knows more than most adults and keeps getting ignored due to his size. The film's climax combines true terror and dramatic lyricism in ways most films in the genre could only dream of. 8. 'The Blob' (1988) Who would've thought a remake of the 1958's The Blob would be so effective - and so gross? A minor hit when it was first released, the sci-fi/horror redo has grown in critical stature over the years, and it fully deserves its cult classic status. The film's creative use of practical effects and its take-no-prisoners approach in depicting how the blob doesn't care who it kills make this movie just as terrifying and unrelenting as more praised genre flicks like Aliens and The Terminator. When a meteor crashes in an isolated field, a homeless man discovers a small jelly-like substance at its center. The alien entity soon consumes him and everyone else in its path, growing exponentially until it threatens the entire town. Only cheerleader Meg (Shawnee Smith) and biker Brian (Kevin Dillon) know the Blob's weakness - it can't stand the cold. But as the Blob grows bigger after each kill, will that be enough to stop it? 5 Best Horror Movies to Watch in October 2025, Ranked by IMDb Score Directed by Chuck Russell, The Blob is funny, frantic and fast-paced, which is exactly what you need in a movie called The Blob. There are several action setpieces, like one in a nearly empty diner and another in a crowded movie theater, that top anything made in the '80s - and even today. The practical effects are effectively gory, and answer any questions you might have about what it would look like if someone were pulled through a kitchen sink drain pipe. (It's not pretty, folks.) 7. 'Friday the 13th Part II' (1981) Among the major horror franchises, Friday the 13th gets the least amount of respect. Its formula is too simple, its aims are too basic and it's frequently more of a collection of carefully orchestrated deaths rather than a truly scary narrative. But the first four movies hold up surprisingly well, and the best of the lot is Friday the 13th Part II, which delivers the most scares per minute thanks to some surprising kills and an unsettling, burlap-sack-wearing killer. Five years after the events of the original, a new group of teenagers arrives at Camp Crystal Lake to prepare for a new summer season. Unsurprisingly, they are killed one by one, with only Ginny (Amy Steel) possessing enough survival instincts to realize what's going on. She's the only one who can stop this mysterious killer, w