By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
Telegram-Tribune

Horror doesn't have to be bloody.

Adults looking for Halloween entertainment need only browse their favorite local video store for frightening but bloodless encounters with the Prince of Darkness and his minions.

Paranoia, sexual repression, fear of the unknown and other monsters hiding in human psyches can attack the mind with a vengence no amount of blood and gore can match for sheer terror.

Obsessions like acquiring great wealth or knowledge or achieving artistic success can turn seemingly mundane folk and situations into Faustian packs with the Devil.

Hollywood has always known that terror sells and found many an artistic and box office success by borrowing plots from novels that explored the darkest reaches of psychic terror.

In the next few weeks, major Hollywood releases are planned of films based on Anne Rice's cult-classic "Interview with the Vampire" and Mary Shelley's original "Frankenstein."

The fright film genre was defined by Bela Lugosi's creepy yet seductive "Dracula" (1931), Boris Karloff's archetypal misunderstood monster in "Frankenstein" (1931), Frederic March's Oscar-winning "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1932) and Charles Laughton as H.G. Wells' misguided Dr. Moreau in "Island of Lost Souls" (1933).

Many of these landmark movies generate more terror than today's high-tech and obsessively gory attempts at fright films.

"Island of Lost Souls" depends on atmosphere, dialogue, makeup and great acting to convey the terror of a shipwrecked passenger sharing an uncharted, fog-enshrouded isle with a tribe of monstrous man-beasts created by Laughton's mad scientist.

Director Roman Polanski needed no special effects to turn Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) into a tricky Halloween treat.

Unsuspecting Mia Farrow and her conniving husband John Cassavetes -- an actor who'll do anything to get a break -- move into a New York apartment house with a haunted reputation.

Beneath the placid exterior of seemingly harmless senior citizens getting together for coffee and cake, a witches coven grants Cassavetes his wishes in exchange for borrowing his wife to incubate Satan's only child.

The film never spills a single drop of blood. It builds tension from facial reactions, camera angles, people tiptoeing through the background and chanting heard through walls.

Producer-director Steven Spielberg used similar subtleties in "Poltergeist," which Tobe Hooper got credit for directing, though the film bursts with trademark Spielberg touches.

Maybe the ultimate haunted house film, "Poltergeist" (1982) digs under a Norman Rockwell-like Los Angeles suburb to expose the demons human greed can uncover.

The nightmare begins simply. Kitchen chairs move by themselves. But soon such commonplace items as bare trees, dark clouds and a child's puppet seem menacing and an angry force from the darkness reaches through a TV set into our dimension to snatch the youngest child of Craig Nelson and JoBeth Williams.

Some of the film's most suspenseful moments involve watching paranormal investigators react to phenomena so inexplicable they can only shiver, shake and abandon their profession.

Many a Halloween horror film relies on black humor to balance the terror humans feel confronting the unknown and unknowable.

"Tremors" (1990) tracks a weird pack of humans living a bored but free-spirited life in the high desert until an inexplicable quartet of giant sandworms undermine everything.

These aren't your everyday killer worms. They're smart enough to block the only exits from town, leaving their prey geographically isolated and living on roof tops because the "tremors" caused by walking on the ground attracts the worms to their victims.

This film enjoys itself and generates more humor than tension.

Characters develop names like "snakoids" and "graboids" for the beasts, but quickly abandon their plans to create a tourist attraction when they realize that the hungry monsters from below have turned their "Pleasant Valley into one long smorgasbord" with town folk as the only meal served.

There is nothing humorous about "The Entity" (1983) or "The Sender (1982).

Based on a true incident that occurred in 1976 in Los Angeles, "The Entity" builds suspense by offering realistic explanations for the weird events besetting Barbara Hershey.

Hershey plays a divorced mother of two who suddenly finds her average suburban home invaded by a demon sexually obsessed with her.

Her psychiatrist, Ron Silver, explains away the bites and bruises on her body and the vibrations shaking her house as psychological manifestations of unresolved sexual repression.

In "The Sender," a fatherless, sheltered boy can't control his telepathic abilities. He projects suicidal nightmares into his psychiatrist's mind and throughout the hospital Both film suggest that it's not that important to discover if monsters come from within our minds or are supernatural forces. Evil is something people just must deal with.

In the end, the only thing that really matters about a nightmare is that you wake when it's over.

Happy Halloween.

Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter. They'll be watching "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for All Hallows Eve.

Other Halloween Highlights]

• After Hours (1985)
• Alligator (1980)
• Altered States (1980)
• Bedazzled (1967)
• The Birds (1963)
• Brazil (1985)
• Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
• Cat People (1942)
• Dead Again (1991)
• Dead Calm (1989)
• Dead of Night (1945)
• Dead Ringers (1988)
• The Dead Zone (1983)
• Devil Doll (1964)
• Don't Look Now (1973)
• The Exorcist (1973)
• Fire in the Sky (1993)
• Freaks (1932)
• The Haunting (1963)
• The Hidden (1987)
• The Howling (1981)
• The Innocents (1961)
• The Last Wave (1977)
• The Other (1972)
• Paperhouse (1988)
• Psycho (1960)
• Seconds (1966)
• Vampire's Kiss (1989)