It seems like just last year we were dreaming up new entertainments for our readers (actually, we were yelling “OMG HOW DO WE FILL NEXT WEEK’S ISSUE?!?”) when inspiration struck. We would round up all the scariest, strangest or downright absurdest horror films we could find on home video, plumb them for quality and recommend our faves in easily scanned category-nuggets of unbridled terror. Ten years later, it’s still our favorite Halloween tradition.

We marked the anniversary with a special contest: Entrants described the movie that scared them most in their lives, in order to win tickets to this weekend’s Mission Creek Players Haunted Theatre. Those three lucky people are also advised to clip or print out this article and pin it to their windowsill — it keeps out vampires. Thanks for clinging to us through 10 years of scares.

The Redneck Menace

Down-home horror often strikes in the rural heart of real America.

“Night of the Hunter” (unrated, 1955)

“There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.”

A traveling preacher (Robert Mitchum, in a defining role) preys on the widows and children of his new Southern parish.

“Inbred Redneck Alien Abduction” (unrated, 2004)

“I’ve been trained to deal with any type of potential threat, but I’ve never been to Arkansas.”

Low-budget and doesn’t care, it looks like it was edited in iMovie and shot with only one lavalier microphone to go around. Agents investigating an alien threat team up with propane-huffing hillbillies, and spoof “The X-Files,” “Twin Peaks,” “Star Wars,” “The Matrix” and “Deliverance.”

“Creature From the Hillbilly Lagoon” (R, 2005)

“I swear, if he ain’t the cutest little half-fish I ever did see.”

Researchers checking contamination in a backwater lake encounter gene-altering chemicals, and things get gilly. Another microbudget project, which cleverly cuts corners using EC Comics-style art panels for transitions between scenes.

Undead and loving it

The zombie menace shambles on, unimpressed by your attempts to laugh at it.

“Versus” (R, 2000)

“I can kill the bastard twice!”

A Japanese genre mashup that features samurai, gangsters, cops, escaped convicts and zombies, shot for a low budget but with John Woo-vian camerawork.

“Re-Animator” (R, 1985)

“Who’s going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.”

A gory cult hit that opened the floodgates of H.P. Lovecraft adaptations. Herbert West’s special serum brings the dead back to life ... but not in the way one might wish.

“Boy Eats Girl” (R, 2005)

“A book of pagan trickery has gone missing from my crypt.”

An Irish schoolkid wants to impress the girl of his dreams, but along the way, he looses a plague of undeath upon the student population.

The insanity defense

Mental illness: The random villain generator of Hollywood.

“Vertigo” (unrated, 1958)

“Here I was born, and there I died.”

Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological masterpiece about a man obsessed with a woman neither alive nor dead.

“The Black Torment” (unrated, 1964)

“There’s no one to be found — the servants have all disappeared!”

An English nobleman returns to his ancestral home to find ghostly forces framing him for murder. A nearly forgotten but quite compelling Gothic flick.

“Raising Cain” (R, 1992)

“The cat’s in the bag, and the bag is in the river.”

Brian DePalma does an homage not only to Hitchcock, but also to himself in this tale of a child psychiatrist (John Lithgow) with a non-therapeutic agenda.

They know they’re doomed

What do you do when the inevitable comes for you?

“Final Destination” and “Final Destination 2” (R, 2000/2003)

“People are always most alive just before they die. Don’t you think?”

Teenagers evade destruction via premonitions, and Death itself becomes a metaphysical Jason Voorhees to take them out.

“The Ring” (PG-13, 2002)

“Everyone will suffer.”

A malevolent child becomes a media virus that dooms everyone it touches. The only way to forestall death: Pass the sickness to someone else.

“White Noise 2” (PG-13, 2007)

“If you save a life ... you are responsible for it.”

After surviving a near-death experience, genre fave Nathan Fillion can tell when people are about to die, and Katee Sackhoff is high on the list.

What’s in a name?

Sometimes, all a movie needs is a creative title to draw viewers. If the weirdness in the moniker follows through at all in the film, you’ve got yourself a winner.

“The Cars that Ate Paris” (unrated, 1974)

“I reckon he hates cars.”

Director Peter Weir’s (“Dead Poets Society”) first feature film depicts the eeriness of small-town folk in the fictional community of Paris, Australia. Motorists frequently die in car accidents in the area, but one survivor learns some secrets of the town during an extended, involuntary stay.

“Over-Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars” (unrated, 1989)

“It’s not normal to carry on mature relations with a household appliance.”

The low-budget cult hit begins with Martians on a mission to mate humans with vacuum cleaners.

“Psycho Beach Party” (unrated, 2000)

“Some people were born to die.”

Spoofing 1960s thrillers, “Psycho Beach Party” stars Lauren Ambrose as a late-blooming teen caught up in murders within the boys’ surf club on Malibu Beach.

True boos

Things get just a little bit spookier when they’re supposedly based on a true story. If anything is possible, then nothing is escapable.

“The Amityville Horror” (R, 1979)

“Houses don’t have memories.”

A newlywed couple score a great deal on a home be-cause of some murders that happened there the year prior.

“The Haunting in Connecticut” (PG-13, 2009)

“It’s all around us all the time, the living and the dead.”

Undergoing drug trials to treat his leukemia, a young man moves with his family to an old house closer to the trial clinic. The house used to be a mortuary.

“The Mothman Prophecies” (PG-13, 2002)

“Things have just been a little strange around here lately.”

When a reporter finds himself in a small West Virginia town with no idea of how he got there, he learns that the townspeople have been seeing the same entity that preceded his wife’s death two years before.

Fangs from afar

All mythical monsters claim some level of international fame, but the vampire certainly contends for the title of most feared.

“Let the Right One In” (R, 2009)

“I’m 12, but I’ve been 12 for a long time.”

The dark wintry atmosphere complements a tale about a young boy who befriends his strange and elusive neighbor girl. She turns out to be a bloodsucking fiend, but her heart and conscience humanize her. (Sweden)

“Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires” (unrated, 1979)

“There’s something malignant here.”

Professor Van Helsing travels to China to put an end to an ancient crew of vampires who feed on topless women. What the film lacks in character development, it makes up for in unnecessarily drawn-out combat sequences. (Hong Kong)

“Dinner With a Vampire” (unrated, 1988)

“I think it’d be better to talk over a bite to eat.”

Four young aspiring performers are invited to a director’s mansion for their first filmmaking session. When they meet the silver fox, he explains that they’re actually there to put an end to his immortality. (Italy)

Nature wails

If people are brutally attacked in the woods, and no one is around to hear them, do they make a sound? They sure do. It sounds something like, “AHHHH!!!! AHH AHHHH AHHH!!!”

“The Last House on the Left” (R, 2009)

“I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality.”

Think of it as a public service announcement for teens: Don’t accept things from strangers, and don’t do drugs. After two girls meet a young man, his homicidal family members return unexpectedly to the hotel room where the three are toking up.

“Andre the Butcher” (unrated, 2005)

“Whatever happened to southern hospitality?”

What we have here is a group of cheerleaders, some escaped convicts, straight and crooked cops and a knife-wielding maniac all against each other in the Florida wilderness. It’s amateur filmmaking at its .... standardest.

“Dog Soldiers” (R, 2002)

“We glue people’s guts together all the time out here.”

A group of soldiers on a training mission find themselves pursued by mysterious beasts in the Scottish highlands, and fend them off from a secluded house in the woods.