Stream 2 Iconic Horror Classics Free Before Halloween

Halloween procrastinators, rejoice: if you need a proper scare without paying a dime, Shout! Studios just tossed two bona fide genre heavyweights onto YouTube. No rental, no subscription, no excuse.

What you can watch right now, free-free

• Night of the Living Dead (1968)

  George A. Romero did it all here — directed, shot, and edited — and accidentally redefined the horror playbook in the process. Even though the movie itself calls them 'ghouls,' this is the blueprint for the modern zombie as we know it.

  Cast check: Duane Jones as Ben, Judith O'Dea as Barbra, and Russell Streiner as Johnny.

  The setup is simple and still brutal: a handful of strangers hole up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse while flesh-eaters tear through the East Coast. The part that always surprises people: a filing mistake with the title knocked the copyright out on release, so the film fell into the public domain. That’s why you see it playing in the background of other movies all the time. It’s everywhere — and still a stone-cold classic.

• The Exorcist III (1990)

  The widely agreed-upon best sequel to 1973’s The Exorcist comes from director William Peter Blatty, and it has a mean, unnerving vibe all its own.

  Cast includes George C. Scott as Lieutenant William F. Kinderman, Ed Flanders as Father Joseph Dyer, Jason Miller as Patient X, Scott Wilson as Dr. Temple, and Brad Dourif as James Venamun.

  The plot: a veteran cop digs into a fresh string of murders that perfectly mirror the work of the long-dead Gemini Killer, leading him straight into a psychiatric ward — and into something much worse. It’s talky, tense, and then it hits you with the kind of jolts that stick.

Both films are up now on the Shout! Studios YouTube channel, which makes for a pretty great October double feature: the ground-zero zombie nightmare and the rare horror threequel that actually slaps.