High-Ranking Halloween Bone Rattlers; ‘Lethal Weapon’ and ‘Tin Men,’ Buddy Movies on Cassette

Want a good scare on Halloween night? Rent a spine-tingling movie. Here are some suggestions, accompanied by a Scaremeter Rating--10 being the scariest:

“Night of the Living Dead” (1968, Silver Screen and United Home Entertainment) may be the most horrifying film ever made. It’s about flesh-eating corpses rising from the dead to attack a small group of people holed up in a farmhouse. Watching this alone is inadvisable. Scaremeter: 10.

CBS-Fox’s “Alien” (1979) is considered one of the two or three most terrifying monster movies ever. You’ll be properly horrified as the slimy alien slowly wipes out the crew of the spaceship. The sequel, “Aliens,” by the way, is more of an action-adventure movie. Scaremeter for “Alien”: 9.

OK, so it’s the wrong season for Warner Video’s “Black Christmas” (1975). But that doesn’t take an edge off the chills generated by this story of a deranged killer hiding in the attic of a sorority house, knocking off the unfortunates who decided not to go home for the holiday. A knockout horror movie. Scaremeter: 10.

In “The Omen” (1976, CBS-Fox), a kindly couple (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick) has a baby and has a devil of time with him. It turns out that he’s the anti-Christ. This one is packed with suspenseful sequences. Scaremeter: 9.

CBS-Fox’s “The Fly” (1986) is noted for the gruesome, stomach-churning scenes chronicling a scientist’s slow transformation into a fly. Jeff Goldblum is great as the man-fly. Scaremeter: 8.

“The Fog” (1980, Nelson Entertainment) and “The Thing” (1982, MCA), both by director John Carpenter, are first-rate horror movies. “The Fog,” concerning ghosts of an ancient shipwreck who roll in with the fog, is more of a suspense tale than “The Thing,” which showcases a ghastly looking creature who terrorizes a group of scientists in an isolated Arctic station. “The Thing” requires nearly as strong a stomach as “The Fly.” Scaremeter for “The Fog”: 10; for “The Thing”: 9.

“The Howling” (1981, Nelson Entertainment) is now considered by many knowledgeable horror fans to be the best of all the werewolf movies. Dee Wallace stars as the TV reporter who stumbles into a community full of werewolves. The on-screen werewolf metamorphoses are particularly outstanding. Scaremeter: 9.

“Re-Animator” (1985, Vestron), about a scientist who can bring the dead back to life, is one of the best horror films made in the past few years. Loaded with exceptionally grisly scenes. Scaremeter: 9.

New horror releases:

New World’s “Creepshow 2” (1987), which features three short “Twilight Zone”-style horror tales, has some scary moments. The first one, concerning the revenge of a wooden Indian, is relatively tame but the second, about an eerie oil slick that attacks two young couples stranded on a raft, is fairly chilling. But parts of the finale, in which a woman is terrorized by the body of a hitchhiker she’s just run over, are positively hair-raising. Scaremeter: 8.

MCA’s “The Wolf Man” (1941) is a bit dated but it’s still a fairly frightening werewolf movie. Lon Chaney Jr. stars as the tortured guy who keeps turning into a wolf. Scaremeter: 8. MGM/UA’s “Mark of the Vampire” (1935), directed by Tod Browning and starring Lionel Barrymore, is a great, atmospheric old horror movie about vampires running rampant in a small village. It co-stars Bela Legosi. The closing scene is a classic. Scaremeter: 8.

“Doctor X” (1932) and “Donovan’s Brain” (1953), co-starring Nancy Reagan (then Nancy Davis), are also among the group of old horror movies just released by MGM/UA. Both are worth a look.

NEW MOVIES: Warner Video’s “Lethal Weapon,” directed by Richard Donner, is one of the best movies ever made in the police-thriller genre. It’s also a likable buddy movie, pairing two L.A. cops--one a suicidal loner (Mel Gibson) and the other a 50-year-old black (Danny Glover) whose family life is straight out of “The Cosby Show.” The ripening friendship between these two opposites is the core of the first half of this high-grossing ($65 million) film. The second half, with the cops battling drug dealers, is nearly all action, featuring several sensational set pieces. The cleverly lighted, climactic battle between the Gibson character and the icy Mr. Joshua, a brilliantly conceived villain played by Gary Busey, is a classic.

“Tin Men,” also a buddy movie, covers the same ground as writer-director Barry Levinson’s 1982 “Diner,” pointing out once again that men can talk to each other more easily than they can talk to the opposite sex. But this time Levinson attacks his theme from a unique angle. The heroes (Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito) hate each other. These tin men--a nickname for aluminum siding salesmen--start feuding over an auto accident and are nastily one-upping each other for the rest of the movie. They think so little of women that the wife of the DeVito character (Barbara Hershey) becomes a pawn in their feud. The heart of the movie is the snappy, naturalistic chatter. The heroes, both loud-mouthed hustlers, are always bantering with their buddies, cracking jokes and pelting each other with insults. Despite some slow spots, critics raved about this one, heaping accolades on Dreyfuss and DeVito. But Hershey, possibly the most consistently excellent character actress around, quietly steals the movie.

Nelson Entertainment’s “The River’s Edge” is an eerie, provocative movie about small-town teen-agers infested with anomie. They’re so stoned, aimless and alienated from adults and conventional values that they come across as social psychopaths. Their ties with each other are even more fragile. The movie is about their response when a member of their clique murders his girlfriend. Juxtaposing murder and sex in one sequence, director Tim Hunter makes the chilling point that these confused kids don’t know the difference between death and pleasure. Critics lauded this dark, disturbing movie, which features outstanding performances by an ensemble headed by Crispin Glover and Ione Skye. Dennis Hopper, who’s great at playing sinister kooks, has a pivotal role as a reclusive, one-legged dope dealer who could be the brother of the weirdo he played in “Blue Velvet.”

In CBS-Fox’s “Project X,” which has obvious “E.T.” overtones, a young pilot (Matthew Broderick) is assigned to teach chimps simulated flying. Initially he’s blase about the Air Force project, but then he goes ape for the cute chimps, especially super-bright Virgil, who’s been schooled in sign language by a researcher (Helen Hunt). When the pilot and the researcher discover that the project will be lethal to the chimps, they instigate the world’s first chimp uprising. The credibility of the last part of the movie is dubious, but you’ll be cheering for the chimps. This movie, which grossed more than $16 million, is tear-jerking hokum--but entertaining tear-jerking hokum. A charming chimp named Willie, who upstages everybody, gives the best performance. Jonathan Kaplan directed.

HBO’s “Making Mr. Right,” directed by Susan Seidelman, is a so-so feminist-oriented comedy that makes the snide point that a good man nowadays is so hard to find that a woman might as well get herself an android. A publicist (Ann Magnuson) is hired to alert the public about Ulysses, an android created to last for years in space. Though the android, who’s the spitting image of his creator, supposedly has no feelings, he falls for the publicist, which naturally complicates her life. Since the real men in the movie are selfish, insensitive jerks, you can see why she’s drawn to the android. The ending is a rather silly joke. John Malkovich plays both the android, who sports a dimwitted grin, and his nerdy creator, but seems more comfortable as a real man. The critics gave this one a mixed response.

HBO’s “Malone” is a Chuck Norris movie starring Burt Reynolds. A burned-out CIA agent (Reynolds) gets stranded in a small town, befriends some of the locals and gets caught up in their war with a power-mad, right-wing megalomaniac (Cliff Robertson). It’s a modern version of a standard Western plot--loner rides into town to help a pretty young lady and her father battle the town’s evil bigwig. At first this seems like it might be a cut above the usual genre fare, but the second half degenerates into a standard killerthon, with Malone mowing down a mob of baddies single-handedly. Neither critics nor audiences cared for this one.

CHARTS (Compiled by Billboard magazine) TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, RENTALS 1--”Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home” (Paramount). 2--”Angel Heart” (IVE). 3--”Mannequin” (Media). 4--”Blind Date” (RCA/Columbia). TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, SALES 1--”Lady and the Tramp” (Disney). 2--”Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home” (Paramount). 3--”An American Tail” (MCA). 4--”Crocodile Dundee” (Paramount).