Though it falls on Oct. 31, Halloween has evolved into an autumn Lollapalooza that spiritually lasts somewhere between a month and six weeks. The Byrd Theatre, as always, is doing its part, programming a selection of horror movie classics and cult favorites to get Richmond in the mood for creepy season.

With more than two weeks left of the month, I decided to offer a few notes on several of the Byrd’s picks, including with each film a pick of my own that can contribute to a companion festival in your home.

“Friday the 13th” (1980)

Showing at the Byrd Theatre this week on, well, Friday the 13th at 7 p.m.

A cash-in on John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th” is duller than you may remember. No Jason until the end, little narrative momentum, and acting that’s on the level of most slasher movies. It does have atmosphere up the wazoo though: those woods, that lake, the urban legend motif, and an ending that effectively rips off Brian de Palma’s “Carrie.” Best of all is Henry Manfredini’s end-credits theme, which is mournful and tragic and better than much of what has preceded it.

At-home: Mario Bava’s 1971 horror film “A Bay of Blood,” a gruesome, stylish slasher movie that beat all of its American counterparts, including “Halloween,” to the punch by several years. Available on various streamers.

“Psycho” (1960)

Showing at the Byrd on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 2 p.m.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” is one of the great American films … period. It may have anticipated the slasher genre, but it’s an intensely personal American gothic about the traps we build for ourselves while living among a repressed and puritanical society. Ferocious, agonizing, essential, and still scary.

At-home: George Sluizer’s 1988 “The Vanishing.” If Hitchcock’s masterpiece suggests a blend of German Expressionism with the eerily plain visual style of 1950s television, “The Vanishing” sacrifices directorial sizzle in order to ease us into a psychopath’s unforgettably pragmatic idea of murder. In some ways it’s less comforting than even “Psycho,” which climaxes with a macabre haymaker that brings America’s sexual sickness to the surface for all to see. In “The Vanishing,” there’s no catharsis, no there there. Some people die, some people live, and there’s neither rhyme nor reason. A mad man proves his suspicion of godlessness with the ease of fashioning a fake arm cast. Streaming on the Criterion Channel, among others.

“Night of the Living Dead” (1968)

Showing at the Byrd on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m.

American filmmakers have tried endlessly to top George Romero’s singular horror movie, and no one has come close to capturing its wormy intensity, its uncanny mixture of banal docudrama with surreal imagery worthy of Cocteau or Buñuel. Oh, and it’s funny as hell and freighted with a social message that actually has conviction.

At home: I said this at the time of its release and it bears repeating: Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die” is ridiculously underrated, as apropos to our era as “Night of the Living Dead” was to its own. Jarmusch deconstructs meta irony, parodying how we use affected jadedness to live with climate change, classism, murder, racism, and every other atrocity to which we casually submit. Some have mistaken the film for indulging in said jadedness itself, but look closer: the carnage is unmooring, and the sheer beauty of the film is heartbreakingly earnest. Jarmusch honors Romero’s social outrage while continuing to refute the hipster smirk of his earlier work. Streaming on Peacock.

“Hausu [House]” (1977)

Showing at the Byrd Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m.

Ôbayashi Nobuhiko’s insane, unclassifiable genre debauch is truly the work of a free artist. Utilizing all genres and film techniques, repressing nothing, which is a stark departure from the repression that generally pervades haunted house movies, Ôbayashi fashions a kind of slipstream of young girls’ fears. Your first response will be a contact high over the sheer sensory overload of the film’s aesthetic. My advice: just go with it.

At home: Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” would pair well with “House,” and the Byrd seems to agree, as the film will be playing there on Oct. 25. Let’s stick with Japanese cinema, then, that serves as an elegiac counterpoint: Shindô Kaneto’s 1968 “Kuroneko,” an enraged, mournful story of wronged women reborn as avenging ghosts. Their wrath is quiet, subliminal, poetic, whereas the girls of “House” are triumphant and unbridled. Streaming on the Criterion Channel, among others.

“Scream” (1996)

Showing at the Byrd on Friday, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m.

Wes Craven did a very polished and crafts-manly job with “Scream,” which proved to be the seminal American horror film of the 1990s, but it’s awfully smooth and neat. And this smoothness and neatness was what came to define many of the American horror films that arrived in its wake. “Scream” lacks the rank, stank, play-dirty chaos of prior Craven titles like 1972’s “The Last House on the Left” and 1984’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

At home: How about, well, “The Last House on the Left” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street”? The first is amateurish, feral, dangerous – an unhinged reworking of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring.” The latter has gimmicks for the mainstream audience, but the violence and general unease of the picture have not been tamed by the lame sequels, excluding “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors,” which is a delight. All of these are available on many various streamers. The entire “Nightmare on Elm Street” series can be streamed on HBO Max.

“The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935)

Showing at the Byrd on Sunday, Oct. 22 at 2 p.m.

If there’s one kind of movie that Hollywood doesn’t understand how to make anymore, and I would argue that there are, in fact, many lost arts in American cinema, it’s the Universal Studios monster movie. Studios have tried several times, and they are just too afraid of the sense of drawing-room play and elegance and erudition that these movies evoked. Studios don’t trust their audiences to turn out for such sophistication, and so they dumb Universal monster properties down into more of the frenetic chaos that curses our screens. I digress. My point is that Universal monster movies feel alien to our modern culture. “The Bride of Frankenstein” is one of the most adventurous in the canon, with director James Whale channeling the droll, free-wheeling dark humor that was his specialty. It’s not just clever though: Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, embodying Whale’s sense of repression, give it soul.

At home: When contemporary people think of Karloff, they think, best case, of Frankenstein. For my money, Karloff’s greatest performance is as the title creature of Karl Freund’s 1932 “The Mummy,” a Universal monster movie that’s less discussed these days. The film is notably absent of tropes: there are, for instance, precious few shots of the mummy stumbling around, wrapped up, and looking to strangle people. What we get instead is a distressingly human mummy, with effects that are far more special than creature-feature cosplay: Karloff’s agonizingly vast eyes and a voice that conjures timeless rage and longing. Streaming at the Criterion Channel.

“Halloween” (1977)

Showing at the Byrd on Halloween, Tuesday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m.

On its terms, John Carpenter’s film is perfect and unshakable as a cinematic embodiment of the feeling of Halloween in an American suburb. Every prop is perfectly placed, and — as in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” which is also playing this month at the Byrd — its images are so symmetrical and immaculately composed as to suggest evil hiding in plain, ordinary sight. Aesthetically faultless … and cold and mechanical without the gallows humor that lights up many Carpenter movies. It’s kind of a drag, especially for the 20th time, and without the neuroses and ambiguity that course through a truly great and challenging horror film.

At home: I’m one of those zealots who believes that Rob Zombie’s far more uneven “Halloween II” (2009) is actually a warmer and more wrenching experience than Carpenter’s movie. Shoot me. The murder of Danielle Harris has more sting and humanity and effect than any of the killings in Carpenter’s film. Yes, Zombie takes wild and bizarre swings for the fence that don’t make any sense. Michael Myers doesn’t need a white horse symbolizing his lost childhood. But that’s the sort of insanity that I respect, especially in this genre. Rentable at Amazon and other streamers; an edited-for-TV version is available through AMC until Oct. 15.

One to grow on: “Halloween III: Season of the Witch.” I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t cool to like this 1982 oddity, which Carpenter sanctioned and co-wrote, and which abandons Michael Myers for a mixture of witches, robots, and Irish mythology that probably offends someone somewhere. Talk about swings. Talk about insanity. Makes no sense and yet captures the dread of Halloween, the sense on that night of every corner of every building on every street containing some sort of menace. Tommy Lee Wallace directs capably in an imitation Carpenter-style, springing at least two classic scares in the process. Carpenter’s score is nearly as good as what he concocted for his own film. This movie is Halloween. Streaming on Peacock.

Click here for the Byrd’s full October schedule. Tickets for most of these movies cost $8 though check ahead for anomalies.