It’s time for a Halloween movie marathon. Here’s what AP had to say…

Sometimes you just have to go back to the classics.

This is particularly true as Halloween is approaching. While you’re waiting in line scary movie marathon, Here are 10 iconic horror films from the last 70 years for inspiration and what AP writers had to say about them when they were first released.

We’ve brought excerpts from these reviews back from the dead, edited for clarity – have they stood the test of time?

“Rear Window” (1954)

“Rear Window” is a wonderful trick by Alfred Hitchcock. He breaks his hero’s leg and places him in an apartment window where, among other things, he can watch a murder on the other side of the court. The panorama of other people’s lives is presented to you, seen through the eyes of a peeping Tom.

James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and others are a lot of fun.

– Bob Thomas

“Halloween” (1978)

At 19, Jamie Lee Curtis stars in a spooky little thriller called Halloween.

Jamie’s biggest success so far has been his regular participation in the television series “Operation Petticoat”. Jamie is much prouder of Halloween, even though it’s obviously an exploitation film aimed at the thrill market.

The idea for “Halloween” came from independent producer and distributor Irwin Yablans, who wanted a horror story with a babysitter. John Carpenter and Debra Hill wrote a screenplay about a madman who kills his sister, escapes from an asylum and returns to his hometown to murder his sister’s friends.

– Bob Thomas

“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)

“The Silence of the Lambs” moves from one exciting sequence to the next. Jonathan Demme spares the audience nothing, including close-ups of skinned corpses. For the squeamish, it’s best to stay home and watch “The Cosby Show.”

Ted Tally has adapted Thomas Harris’s novel with great skill, and Demme cranks the tension almost to the breaking point. The climactic confrontation between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is taken a little too far, although it is undeniably exciting with well-edited sequences.

A story like “The Silence of the Lambs” requires skilled actors to bring it to life. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are highly qualified. She offers steely intelligence, but also enough vulnerability to keep the tension going. He delivers a classic portrayal of pure, brilliant evil.

– Bob Thomas

“Scream” (1996)

In this clever, funny homage to the genre, students at a suburban California high school are killed in the same gruesome ways as the victims in the slasher films they know by heart.

If it sounds like the script to every other horror film that comes and goes to the local cinema, it isn’t.

By turns frightening and funny, “Scream” – written by newcomer David Williamson – is as taut as a thriller, intelligent without being self-congratulatory, and generous in its nods to Wes Craven’s rivals in the gore department.

—Ned Kilkelly

“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)

Imaginative, intense and breathtaking are a few words that come to mind for “The Blair Witch Project”.

“Blair Witch” is the alleged footage found after three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods of western Maryland while filming a documentary about a legendary witch.

The filmmakers want us to believe that the footage is real, that the story is real, that three young people have died and we are witnessing the last days of their lives. That’s not it. It’s all fiction.

But Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick, the film’s co-writer and co-director, bring us to the edge of belief, fidgeting in our seats the entire time. It’s an ambitious and well-executed concept.

– Christy Lemire

“Saw” (2004)

The horror film “Saw” is, if nothing else, consistent.

This serial killer story is insanely plotted, poorly written, poorly acted, crudely directed, terribly photographed and clumsily edited, and all of these ingredients lead to a yawningly surprising ending. To top it all off, the music is also bad.

The film could be forgiven for all (well, not all, or even a fraction of many) of its flaws if there were any chills or scares in this sordid little horror affair.