Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Summer is wafting on the air, and this is the month we celebrate our fathers and our freedom forever from high school. It’s also the month that the more morbid of us fire up our DVD players and have some fun with the whole shebang.

1) Bad Dad: Jack Torrance, The Shining (1980)

Jack Nicholson put in one of his most memorable performances as a diabolical dad who’s driven by the spirits of the past to kill his wife and child.

2) Gruesome Grads: Graduation Day (1981)

Some kids are dying to graduate from Midvale High, especially after a strange, hooded figure starts hanging out with the track team.

3) Bad Dad: Jerry Blake, The Stepfather (1987)

Terry O’Quinn is sorta-kinda creepy as Locke on the hit show Lost, but if you haven’t seen him in The Stepfather, then you’re in for a terrorizing treat with "Scary" Jerry!

4) Gruesome Grads: Carrie (1976)

Pigs’ blood, prom queens, high school haters, and Sissy Spacek as a murderous redhead who can kill with her mind.

5) Bad Dad: Lucas Buck, American Gothic (TV series) (1995)

Dad’s the devil (or maybe just the devil’s disciple?) dressed in a Sheriff’s uniform in this quirky supernatural thriller that centers on Muck trying to get his illegitimate son, Caleb, to come to the dark side.

6) Gruesome Grads: Hello, Mary Lou (1987)

In 1957, Mary Lou Maloney went up in flames before she could graduate. Now she’s back. And she’s burning mad.

7) Bad Dad: Dad Meiks, Frailty (1980)

Bill Paxton played the bad dad, and made his directorial debut with this dark thriller about a single father raising two sons. Dad just happens to think that he alone can see demons dwelling inside human beings, and he sets about - with the help of his kids - to eradicate them all.

8) Gruesome Grads: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Graduation Day, Pt 1 & 2 (TV series)

Poisonings, stabbings and major bloodshed are all part of the ceremonies when Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) graduates from Sunnydale High.

9) Bad Dad: Merle "Daddy" Wilkins, KatieBird (2005)

Serial murderer Daddy (Lee Perkins) proudly oversees his daughter Katie’s first killing, which she does with slow, torturous relish in the family barn. No detail is spared in this unrated indie.

10) Gruesome Grads: Prom Night (1980)

It’s time for the senior prom... and time to die. A masked killer stalks four teens responsible for the accidental death of one of their playmates six years earlier.