Poltergeist (1982)

Trouble on set is an unfortunate fact of the filmmaking process; fights can break out, equipment can malfunction, important cast and crew members can quit, and so on. What isn’t particularly “normal” in the filmmaking process is a string of horrific events including random deaths of cast and crew members and their families, strange sicknesses, or other freak accidents surrounding or within the production that can’t be reasonably described. Shudder’s newest mini docu-series, Cursed Films describes some of the most “cursed” production cycles within the horror industry, detailing some of the most infamously violent, disturbing, and tragic events during the production and release cycles of western horror’s most iconic movies.

There is no such thing as watching too many movies. I know that since my family and I have enacted social distancing, the amount of movies we’ve watched has skyrocketed. And if there can be a silver lining in the messiness and ugliness of the situation we’re all in right now, it’s that we have an opportunity to watch a lot of the movies that we’ve been meaning to watch and re-watch a lot of the movies that we’ve been meaning to re-watch. I know the other day I was looking through my Blu-ray collection and picked out the 1933 King Kong, a movie I’ve owned for about a year but never watched. It’s one of those movies I always said to myself, “Not now, I’ll watch it another time.” But because we’re stuck indoors with nothing to do, I finally said, “Screw it, it’s time to watch King Kong!” And I loved it!

With the popularity of my previous list (you can check it out here), I wanted to recommend another 19 movies for people to check out across Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Hulu. So here you are; go watch some movies! You can’t really go wrong with any of them.

1 | Apocalypse Now (1979) | Amazon Prime

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola