To state the obvious, “Beetlejuice” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” are not horror movies or even slightly scary to anyone over the age of 6. Tim Burton, who directed both, contributed a genuine classic horror film with “Sleepy Hollow” (1999) and Walt Disney gave us the single scary animated Halloween classic, the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” half of “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mister Toad.” Burton borrowed/celebrated several sequences from that 1949 masterpiece (wonderfully narrated and sung by Bing Crosby, who didn’t make the “Greatest Vocalists” list). I watch the Disney movie every Halloween without fail, and unlike many of the movies on Rotten Tomato’s “watchlist,” it impresses me every time I see it.

“”Friday the 13th” is junk, a rip-off of “Halloween” with a big scare at the end that had already been introduced by “Carrie” (why isn’t that far better horror film on the list?”), and marred by several amateurish performances, but OK, I’ll grant it “classic” status. Grudgingly. But with that exploitive B movie stinking up the list, it is impossible to justify the absence of any of the science fiction horror genre classics. Where are “Alien” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing”? What about Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds”?

And zombies! The absence of a single zombie movie when zombies have overrun the horror genre is just weird. There may be no horror movie more deserving of “classic” status than George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”(1968). You want fast zombies? Fine: the remake of Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” (2004) and Brad Pitt’s “World War Z” (2013) are both scary and superb. I’d rate “Dawn of the Dead” ahead of any film on the Rotten Tomatoes list other than “The Exorcist,” “The Shining,” and maybe “Poltergeist.”

The shut-out of monster movies is similarly damning. Both the first “King Kong” (1933) and the elaborate re-make by Peter Jackson are classics, especially the original. Heck, “Jaws” (1975) had people terrified of the ocean for a whole summer: I witnessed a “Jaws”-style panic on Cape Cod when a few dolphins stampeded bathers out of the surf on Cape Cod.

As you can already tell, I could go on for days. Without pretending that such a list could ever be complete, here are some of my favorite horror movies that should be on any Halloween “watchlist,” in no particular order, some in particular categories:

• “The Howling” ( 1981) Best werewolf movie!
• “The Changeling” (1980) and “Exorcist III” (Best George C. Scott horror films)
• “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992) and the original “Dracula” with Bela Lugosi.
• “Sinister” (2012)
• “The Conjuring” (2013)
• “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
• “It Follows” (2014)
• “Joy Ride (2001) Best crazy trucker movie!
• “The Haunting” (1963)
• “Scream” (1996) Best horror-comedy hybrid, but “Re-Animator” (1985) is really good.
• “The Mist” (2007) Best “Oops! We opened the door to parallel universe!” movie.

Happy Halloween!