Hatchet director Adam Green picks his favorite Halloween movie

How much does horror-loving director Adam Green (Hatchet, Digging Up the Marrow) enjoy celebrating Halloween? A lot. Every year, he makes a short film to mark the horrifying holiday, and his latest mini-movie, “Monster Problems,” dropped Tuesday on the official site of his company, ArieScope.

Actually, this year is shaping up to be a red letter-Halloween (or a deep pumpkin-orange one, anyway) for Green, who can also be seen in the new anthology movie, Tales of Halloween, which is released in theaters and on VOD and iTunes on Friday.

But what does Green himself like to watch on Halloween? Turns out the answer is the suprisingly un-bloody 1983 horror film Something Wicked This Way Comes, whose cast includes Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd, and Pam Grier.

The filmmaker dropped us a line to explain why…

ADAM GREEN: One of my absolute favorite films that I watch religiously every Halloween season is the criminally overlooked 1983 Walt Disney movie Something Wicked This Way Comes from Academy Award-nominated director Jack Clayton (Room At The Top, 1959) and the master of the macabre and true Halloween aficionado, writer Ray Bradbury. For me, Something Wicked… is like the A Christmas Story of Halloween movies with it’s absolutely gorgeous period-piece fall setting and atmosphere that captures the true essence of the Halloween season like no other. With stand-out performances from the great Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce as the terrifying Mr. Dark, this gem bleeds the spirit of Halloween in ways that no standard horror film or modern fright-fest can equal. Without an ounce of onscreen violence or gore and only one joyfully gruesome effects sequence during the film’s harrowing finale, Clayton managed to make a film that continues to haunt me and also serve as an annual reminder about what it means to stay young at heart forever. After all, isn’t that what Halloween is really about?

You can see the trailers for Something Wicked This Way Comes and Tales of Halloween below, where you will also find Green’s latest Halloween short.