I always prefer when All Hallows’ Eve falls on a Friday.

Anytime Spooky Season can conclude on a weekend with an appropriate amount of celebrating — neither dragging it out an extra week or ending it a week early — that is when the calendar Is our friend.

I will be observing Halloween with a double feature this weekend, featuring the masterworks of John Carpenter. I highly suggest all ages — well, adults of all ages — take the opportunity to hit the late-night screenings of Michael Myers’ original escapade and the slow, gory elimination of a crew of paranoid scientist soldiers at the bottom of the world, but I expect it will transport me back to 1978 and 1982, respectively.

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I have seen both “Halloween” and “The Thing” multiple times, but never on a big screen.

That changes this weekend, and I truly can’t wait.

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In anticipation of that cinematic experience, I thought I’d share the handful of things I’ve been watching this week to get myself in the proper mindset. The horror world is a vast spectrum, and while I didn’t exactly plan this progression, it led into this weekend surprisingly well.

Nearly perfect, wrong genre

On Sunday, I screened a DVD of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock suspense film “Rear Window.”

It still holds up in nearly every way, even though it isn’t scary per se, since it was made well before Hitchcock delved into true horror with features like “Psycho,” “The Birds” and “Frenzy,” but it is a very solid low-level thriller, brilliant in its framing.

The story follows the wheelchair-bound LB Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) as he recovers from a significant injury in the line of duty of photojournalism.

(Side note: While it has little to do with the story, it should be noted he stood in the middle of a racetrack to capture the fiery crash, and we should not be applauding him for this level of stupidity.)

In his boredom, Jeffries spies little by little on his neighbors around the courtyard of his apartment building and inadvertently comes across a murder.

The narrative is tight, the cinematography among the most technically proficient of Hitchcock’s career, and it features stellar performances by Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and the rest of the cast.

However, it’s not a film that really ties in with Halloween in terms of atmosphere. The Master of Suspense has plenty of movies in his repertoire that do, or at least, can — 1940’s “Rebecca,” 1958’s “Vertigo” and 1976’s “Family Plot” come to mind, maybe because I’ve watched them all in the past year — but “Rear Window” served as a good appetizer for the rest of the week.

Aged badly but has its charms

On Monday night, I watched “The Tingler”, 1959, one of the weirder yet more memorable entries by Vincent Price from his heyday as the go-to Hollywood horror star.  

He has much better movies — “House of Wax” and Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, to name a few, not to mention his final role as the kindly inventor of Edward Scissorhands — but Price could sell any schlocky story, and he actually makes this one work against all odds.

He plays a scientist who discovers a parasite that feeds on fear in humans but is paralyzed by screaming. The creature in question ranks among the worst rubber monster props of its day but is easily overlooked in it corniness thanks to its presentation.

Director William Castle made this movie — as well as the other Price feature “House on Haunted Hill” a theatrical event in its original run with specially made elements for the audience. However dumb this thing may have looked, spectators were drawn in thanks to electrical wiring in the seats that terrified into believing they might be next to experience this things, however lame it looked.

If you’ve seen the ’90s homage to Castle, “Matinee,” you get it.

Even when we’re long past the point of being able to appreciate this kind of gimmick decades later, the climactic scene in a movie theater is enhanced by Price’s sincerity as a man who knows how to enhance terror among a crowd.

Childhood classic

It was on Tuesday, when I truly got into the spirit of the season, kicked off by “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” It’s not an annual tradition for me exactly, but I will say it is one of the superior installments of the “Peanuts” franchise.

It’s not the utter perfection of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” but this special does have what feels like a Christmas-esque premise of one character keeping their belief in a holiday figure despite mockery from everyone around them.

The difference here is while such a story would end in a miracle in December, the utter disappointment of childhood that is the hallmark of the “Peanuts” milieu rings truer in October.

While normally the most intellectual of the gang, Linus Van Pelt forgoes all Halloween fun for the chance to see The Great Pumpkin rise from his pumpkin patch, feeling no shame at all in his decision.

Though you admire the fervency and sincerity of his belief, by the end of the night, every viewer is apt to call him a blockhead for spending a chilly night among a bunch of gourds.

With the rest of the “Peanuts” kids donning costumes that all share a common simplicity to partake in some truly unjust neighborhood candy-collecting — “I got a rock…” — the social component of Halloween still means something six decades later in that some years you feel like you get treats and some years you get tricked. Yet, either way, it’s still pretty fun.

The addition of Snoopy’s scenes as the World War I Flying Ace, as well as Vince Guaraldi’s jazz score, make a 25-minute TV special a true joy the more times you watch it.

Truly terrified

It feels odd to go from Charles Schulz to Stephen King, but in this particular instance, both works are about kids finding their way in the world.

At any rate, I immediately followed this wholesomeness with the pilot episode of “It — Welcome to Derry.”

The prequel to the two-part saga that saw Pennywise the Clown re-enter the zeitgeist in a big way is set 27 years before the action of the 2017 version of King’s epic novel about childhood fears. It follows another cluster of kids who are misfits for various reasons — some purely cosmetic and some deeply psychological in nature — who want to know what’s happened to a friend of theirs who’s gone missing from their small town in Maine.

I can’t accurately summarize this new project having only viewed the first of a reported eight episodes airing on HBO in the coming weeks, but I am absolutely intrigued.

While these fresh characters don’t feel as organically connected to the Losers Club as they ought to be, I’m more than OK to see where director Andy Muschietti goes with this one.

With a little more literary leeway this time around, it’s delightfully more shocking when you’re not expecting what’s coming, proved conclusively in the first five minutes of this show.

Perhaps even more so in the last five minutes of the episode…

It is far bloodier than it needs to be, but just like Muschietti’s films took the 1990 miniseries as a launching pad, so too does the director escalate things immediately from where he started.

Keep viewing, people — that’s my advice. If you were curious enough to start the series, at least finish it.

Ahead of its time

My final spooky viewing experience this week was a presentation of Turner Classic Movies — yes, I’m that old and have been since 1998 — with “Carnival of Souls.”

I love when TCM offers special introductions and post-film discussion, and this one featured both with banter between mainstay Ben Mankiewicz and actor Paul Giamatti.

Giamatti, one of my favorite actors of all time, has talked about the effect this movie had on him during his childhood — brought up multiple times on his now-defunct podcast, “Chinwag” — and now I see what he means.

“Carnival of Souls” follows a young woman who walks away from an otherwise fatal car crash, relocates to a new part of the country and tries to embark on a career as a church organist, only to have everyone around her not quite in sync and flummoxed by her sudden outbursts.

Between eerie music and a sense of dread that never fades, this is an ideal movie for those who appreciate a story that takes its time and confounds you before devastating you in the final moments.

And yes, even a cinephile like myself needed the hosts to explain some elements to me…

I can’t describe too much without spoiling it, suffice it to say that it’s hard to miss the level of influence a sleeper like this had on horror giants, ranging from George A. Romero to M. Night Shyamalan.

Whether you’re discovering some new fright or viewing the same Halloween content for the 100^th time, I hope that you get all the thrills you want as well as plenty of sugar this weekend. Happy viewing, everyone.