October 31, 1912: The D.W. Griffith-directed short The Musketeers of Pig Alley, regarded as the first gangster film, opens.
October 31, 1925: France’s star of silent slapstick comedy Max Linder, 41, and his young wife are found dead in a Paris hotel, victims of an apparent suicide pact.
October 27, 1928: The Paramount talking short The Dancing Town, with Helen Hayes, marks the film debut of a Broadway stage actor named Humphrey Bogart.
October 30, 1948: A major shift in the shape of the film industry begins as RKO becomes the first major to split off its theater ownership from its production wing.
October 27, 1955: Less than a month after stars James Dean’s shocking auto crash death, his iconic teen angst drama Rebel Without a Cause opens
October 31, 1962: Screen divas Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’ feud on (and off) the screen fuels the horrific black comedy What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
October 30, 1968: ’20s and ’30s “Latin Lover” Ramon Novarro, 69, is beaten and murdered in his Laurel Canyon home by two brothers.
October 25, 1978: John Carpenter’s low-budget shocker Halloween opens in select cities and will become one of the top independent films ever, taking in over $50 million.
October 26, 1984: Bodybuilder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career takes off when he opts to play the villainous cyborg in James Cameron’s The Terminator.
October 28, 1986: Paul Newman returns to the role he played 25 years earlier in The Hustler, pool shark “Fast Eddie” Felson, in The Color of Money.
October 25, 1993: Missing Halloween by six days, horror movie icon Vincent Price dies at the age of 82.
October 31, 1993: The maestro of Italian cinema, La Dolce Vita director Federico Fellini, dies at 73.
October 25, 2002: Irish-born actor Richard Harris, whose credits ranged from A Man Called Horse to the Harry Potter film series, dies from Hodgkin’s disease at 72.
October 29, 2004: Horror movie fans are put to the test–as are the on-screen victims–with the debut of the graphic psychological shocker Saw.