Ø is Island in Danish. One of the very earliest animated shorts was actually "Øen" (The Island) by Storm P, which remained unfinished and unreleased until it was edited together for its inclusion in the Documentary Eventyret om Dansk tegnefilm in 2008.

And finally my personal favourite new watch of this spooky season:
Tod Browning's The Unknown (1927). You'll know Tod Browning as the director of Dracula and Freaks. This earlier silent effort is another carny feature, but goes to some even darker places than Freaks and has some big reveals.

Oh, and as another bonus if you're into bad B-movies: Check out The Bees ('78), which is the kind of movie shown on a TV in other movies. It only gets progressively more unhinged as everyone in it continues speedrunning death by bees, with some heavy anti-capitalist and environmental messaging.

Finally the hidden gem: The Bloody Lady (1980) aka Krvavá pani is a Chechoslovakian animated feature fim animated entirely by Viktor Kubal, as such the art style is simple but effective, and tells the folk tale of Countess Elizabeth Báthory. You will probably never see anything like it.

On the lighter side of things there's the anthology horror The Monster Club (1981) where a vampiric Vincent Price is the host to a series of cozy horror shorts in a monster night club. Very cozy spooky vibes, well suited for those who want to get in the Halloween mood but aren't used to horror.

I was really surprised by Amityville II: The Possession. Usually with haunted house flicks you start with some low level supernatural happenings and slowly turn the dial up. This one starts at 9 and only goes up from there. It's genuinely frightening and a definite improvement on the first one.

I followed that up with The Lair of the White Worm (1988) a personal favourite starring a very young Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi in a darkly comedic Bram Stoker story of a snake-vampire serving some incredible looks.

Yesterday I did a Halloween movie night where I showed off a couple of animated shorts before the main feature. I really recommend putting on Hallowe'en (1931) and Wot a Night (1931) to get in the mood.

Let's see... Starting with something at least theoretically similar to Incantation (which I've yet to see, as I don't have any streaming services) check out Noroi: The Curse (2005), which is a Japanese found footage folk horror film, and one of the rare found footage films that I feel really works.

Go watch some movies with Meiko Kaji. Ya'll have no idea what you're missing out on!

Happy birthmas!

I recommend giving up on the idea of having walls that aren't covered by bookcases. If this already sounds like rookie advice, then you might be ready to start considering rolling archive shelves on tracks.