Pluto TV’s Halloween Hits collection is back with Scream, Jason, a stack of Stephen King and a deep bench of modern and cult horror you can stream without paying a cent.
October is the most expensive month to be a horror fan. Every service you canceled in July suddenly has the one movie you need, and by the second week you’re paying for four platforms just to keep your marathon intact.
Pluto TV went the other direction. Its Halloween Hits collection returned on October 1, free on demand and across Pluto’s channels all month, and the lineup is a lot bigger than “a few old slashers and a Scary Movie.” Pluto apparently looked at October and decided moderation was somebody else’s problem.
We dug through the whole list. Here’s what’s actually worth your time.
Scream turns 30 and Jason never left
Wes Craven’s Scream turns 30 this year, and Pluto has five films from the franchise: Scream (1996), Scream 2, Scream 3 and Scream 4 now, with Scream (2022) arriving October 8. That’s the whole Woodsboro run up through the requel, which is plenty of time to reopen the “which sequel is secretly the best” argument.
Jason gets an even bigger spread. All eight Paramount-era Friday the 13th films are here, from the 1980 original through Jason Takes Manhattan. Yes, including the one where Manhattan mostly turns out to be a boat.
For a full summer camp double feature, Pluto also has the first three Sleepaway Camp movies.
Found footage and a King-sized weekend
Six Paranormal Activity films are streaming: the original, 2, 3 and 4, The Marked Ones and The Ghost Dimension. That’s a weekend of staring at a bedroom corner waiting for a door to move.
The Stephen King lineup is a strong one. Cujo, The Dead Zone, The Dark Half, Secret Window, Silver Bullet, Thinner and Graveyard Shift are all here, along with Carrie (2002) and both Pet Sematary films, so you can compare the 1989 version with the 2019 remake. Maximum Overdrive is also available for anyone who has ever wanted to watch King direct a movie about killer trucks set to AC/DC. Nobody needs a second reason.
The movies you should actually start with
Here’s where Pluto’s lineup stops looking like a franchise dump and starts looking like a proper horror shelf.
The newer end of the shelf gets nasty fast: Hereditary, Midsommar, It Follows, Talk to Me, Sinister and You’re Next. So is Ti West’s full trilogy of X, Pearl and MaXXXine. Add The Front Room and you’ve got a solid A24 run on its own. Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive cover the stranger, sadder side of hunger.
If you want older and grimier, Pluto has the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which might be the most tonally opposite sequel pairing in the genre. There’s also John Carpenter’s The Fog, the original Hellraiser, Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond, The Burning and the 1973 Wicker Man.
The 2000s and early 2010s bring some of the nastiest movies of that stretch: High Tension, The Loved Ones, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Cabin Fever and Evil Dead (2013). Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem is here too, for when you want something that feels like a fever dream about a radio station.
Then there’s Ginger Snaps. All three of them. Watch the first one if you’ve never seen it. Watch it again if you have. And The Faculty is on the list for anyone who needs a late ’90s palate cleanser between the heavy stuff.
If you need something lighter, Shaun of the Dead, Warm Bodies, The Monster Squad, Idle Hands, Anna and the Apocalypse, Cooties, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse and Vampire in Brooklyn are all available. So are all five Scary Movie films, for better or worse.
Double Feature Fridays
This is the smartest bit of programming in the whole collection. Every Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Pluto TV Spotlight, Pluto pairs a recognizable horror title with an indie film making its free streaming debut. Both land on demand after they air.
- October 9: Smile and Rosario
- October 16: Jennifer’s Body and Vampires of the Velvet Lounge
- October 23: A Quiet Place Part II and Diabolic
- October 30: Scream (2022) and Sleepwalker
It’s the kind of thing a good repertory theater does. Get people in the door with the movie they already love, then hand them one they’ve never heard of. A Quiet Place Part II also hits on demand October 11.
The weird end of the catalog
The real fun is in the corners Pluto didn’t put on the poster.
Blacula and Scream, Blacula, Scream! are here. So is Phase IV, Saul Bass’s only feature, which is a movie about ants that is far stranger than a movie about ants has any right to be. Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm is streaming free, which means Hugh Grant fighting a snake cult is streaming free.
Pluto also has Troll 2, Vampire’s Kiss, Repo! The Genetic Opera, the entire Wishmaster series and Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. Some of these are good. Some of them are good in the way a car alarm at 3 a.m. is memorable. All of them are part of horror history, and none of them cost anything this month.
That’s the thing about this lineup. You could build a slasher marathon, a Stephen King weekend, a found-footage night, a body horror bender, a cult deep dive or a modern A24 run out of it. You could also build a deliberately terrible marathon and nobody would stop you. Start with Troll 2. End with Leprechaun 4: In Space, which is also here.
How to watch
Pluto TV’s Halloween Hits collection is streaming free on demand and through Pluto’s channels throughout October. Double Feature Fridays airs at 8 p.m. ET on Pluto TV Spotlight, with titles available on demand afterward.
So what’s first? Scream, Hereditary or the snake cult? We already know which one we’re picking.
