31 Days of October

[greennui]

https://letterboxd.com/greennui/list/ph ... e-2-watch/

I watched too many bad giallo's last year so it'll be a mostly giallo free month, instead I've thrown in some rewatches and famous horror films I've yet to have watched.

[MrCarmady]

Conversely, I plan to watch a shitload of gialli, should throw a tentative list together. Have we ever done a giallo poll?

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Conversely, I plan to watch a shitload of gialli, should throw a tentative list together. Have we ever done a giallo poll?

I don't believe so. For that to work, I'd recommend more of an Italian horror poll, or perhaps more broadly, a European horror poll. There aren't that many gialli and what does or doesn't count is going to be quite the judgment call.

[MrCarmady]

Looks like we've done a general horror poll, I've seen 36/100:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... scfz-poll/

Featuring a delightfully understated burn from flip:


Not a lot of gialli on there, though.

[greennui]

I've actually been thinking of suggesting an update of the horror poll, it'll give me even more reason to watch more horror. European horror could be a nice niche poll too.

[MrCarmady]

Gonna throw a list together:
https://letterboxd.com/mrcarmady/list/o ... atch-list/

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I'm planning to focus on watching/re-watching pre-Code horror films this Halloween. Hoping to have a top 20 favs list I can produce at the end of it, or shortly thereafter. I currently have a watchlist of 32 titles, so if I was diligent I could watch one day starting Sep. 30th. I won't have enough viewing time to do that this semester, but it'd be nice to get through 10 or so, with special emphasis on Bela . Will report back here as I view!

[Silga]

Some of the titles from my watchlist for this year's 31 Days of October:

Something Evil (1972), Phase IV (1974), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Sentinel (1977), Someone's Watching Me (1978), Terror Train (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Chopping Mall (1986), Maniac Cop (1988), Arachnophobia (1990), Body Snatchers (1993), Below (2002), The Midnight Meat Train (2008), The Visit (2015).

[nrh]

as fond as i am of a lot of films that fall under the giallo umbrella i do kind of think it is the horror genre (tradition? tendency?) that has the biggest drop in quality once you get past a handful of more or less canon films and interesting oddities. but then it is also a genre that is both about fetishism and invites it (the clothes, the music, the cities, the fashion...).

[thoxans]

Chopping Mall (1986)

you're in for a real treat (halloween custom pun unintended)

[rischka]

we're doing this already? i've just ordered a pumpkin mask

[Lencho of the Apes]

i've

Not one of these, I hope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2D0kDFKaxE

[Silga]

i've

Not one of these, I hope.

Silver Shamrock! I remember this weird film.

Definitely not what I expected from the Halloween franchise.

[pabs]

Here's my list for this upcoming witching season:

Lemora - A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Blackburn, 1973)
Litan (Mocky, 1982)
The Mummy's Curse (Goodwins, 1944)
The Mummy's Tomb (Young, 1942)
The Queen of Spades (Dickinson, 1949) with commentary
The Seventh Victim (Robson, 1943)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Fuest, 1971)
The Body Snatcher (Wise, 1945)
The Company of Wolves (Jordan, 1984) with commentary
We Are Still Here (Geoghegan, 2015)
Village of the Damned (Rilla, 1960)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (Boorman, 1977)
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (Fowler, 1958)

And I should add The Texas Chain Massacre too, as it's one from the canon I've never seen.

I've been hopeless with my past Halloween watchlists, so if I get to see four of these, I'll be happy.

[Curtis, baby]

i don't like horror that much, but i'll look at a few:

Snake Woman's Curse (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1968)
The Lady Vampire (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1959)

Begotten (E. Elias Merhige, 1990)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Victor Fleming, 1941)

Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, 1968)
Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden, 1945)

The Fog (John Carpenter, 1980)

Illusion of Blood (Shiro Toyoda, 1965)

Svengali (Archie Mayo, 1931)

that oughtta do it

[thoxans]

my list

nice list! lemora is a really neat little film. so eerily spectral in atmosphere that it all feels really immersive, even as the narrative just kinda floats by you. the seventh victim is just all-time great, rivaling even the best of tourneur's horror output. while i have a soft spot for exorcist ii, i think it's also just an objectively exceptionally well-made film, whatever anyone's gripes might be about the rest of it. didn't like the first one at all, just found it loud and grating and annoying, but the sequel is much more subtle, even subversive in approach. how anyone can't delight in the darkly comic machinations of richard burton is beyond me. and the texas chainsaw massacre is just a flatout perfect piece of horror. keep in mind one thing: it's paced very deliberately, so ya gotta give it a little while to settle into something truly horrifying, but once you're there, it'll steamroll you

[rischka]

I will watch slumber party massacre and I married a monster from outer space ×D

[pabs]

I married a monster from outer space

Hardly surprising. Most women do.

I'm adding that one to my list too after grabbing it today on KG.

If anyone else wants it let me know and I'll put it you-know-where.

my list

nice list! lemora is a really neat little film.

Thanks for your encouragement. Pretty sure Lemora's a leftover from my 2019 watchlist that I didn't get round to seeing. I may even have gotten the recommmendation from you if you had it on your last list (?).

[rischka]

https://letterboxd.com/rischka/list/hal ... watchlist/

i have made a watchlist

[Curtis, baby]

i'm seeing hooptober stuff on ... god damn, i'd forgotten about hooptober, and how much i hate hooptober. need to find a way to mute all mentions of hooptober on there

[Silga]

https://letterboxd.com/rischka/list/hal ... watchlist/

i have made a watchlist

You're in for a real treat with The Reflecting Skin. One of my favorite films of the 90s. It is a somber yet captivating story only made better by the gorgeous cinematography by Dick Pope who later won an award in Cannes for Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner. And just like in Mr. Turner, every frame is like a painting that you can just pause and admire.

I'd describe it as a coming-of-age/psychological terror film rather than a spooky horror. There's a lot of mythology in there and I don't think that I've got it all at once so I might need to re-watch it again some time to absorb everything that lies beneath the surface of the brilliant script by Philip Ridley. Its mood reminded me a bit of the Stephen King stories - Hearts in Atlantis in particular.

Great performance by Jeremy Cooper in a leading role. I'm often very critical of child actors and their performances, but he brings a unique and rather unsettling presence to the screen. There's also the always magnificent Lindsay Duncan and Viggo Mortensen.

Here are the first 5 mins of the film as a clip from the restored version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiNLjUbwQQ


I also thoroughly enjoyed The Slumber Party Massacre. I might watch the sequel (Slumber Party Massacre 2) this October. Both parts were directed by women (Amy Holden Jones and Deborah Brock). Something you wouldn't normally see in the slasher genre.

[FLABREZU]

I will be watching at LEAST 31 horror movies this October. This year the franchise that I'll complete will be Final Destination. A list of horror franchises that I have conquered:

Halloween
Alien
Predator (AND Alien vs Predator)
Friday the 13th
Nightmare on Elm Street (AND Freddy vs Jason)
Saw
Resident Evil
The Purge
[REC]
Scream
Night of the Living Dead
Malevolence trilogy
Hannibal Lecter (I would NOT consider this to be a horror franchise but sites always have it so woteva)

[greennui]

Dusted off the ol scary handle.

[thoxans]

thinking about going as erika jayne this year, but then i'd have to change my gravatar, which is always a pain in the ass, since i can never remember my pw, cuz i don't use gravatar for anything other than here

[Silga]

Started this month with Val Lewton's Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson, 1945) 6/10

Another from the master producer of horror films, Isle of the Dead may not be as well-made as The Seventh Victim or The Leopard Man, but the atmosphere and the unsettling horror is still there. That one scary moment near the end of the film had me properly frightened.

[rischka]

gonna watch slumber party massacre. am excited

ok this is more of a comedy than horror

[MatiasAlbertotti]

I'm going to create a list of horror movies from the 40s and go from there, since this year I've been trying to watch 40s movies. We'll see what we find.

[thoxans]

kicked off the month with tobe hooper's lifeforce (completely coincidentally, and not cuz of the hooptober nonsense i see scrawled all across boxd), and omfg why is this amazing thing not talked about more!? a trip to outer space? check! vampire-esque zombie-like humanoid aliens? check! b-grade sfx and top-notch puppetry? check! thoroughly over-the-top acting? check! cute naked girls? check! patrick stewart? check! and here i thought that the texas chainsaw massacre 2 was hooper's gonzo opus. spielberg can have poltergeist. this is the tobe i can't get enough of

[Silga]

Great! I'll make sure to watch Lifeforce this month too. I've been checking out what sci-fi horror I could watch. The Hidden (1987) and Leviathan (1989) being other possible choices.

[thoxans]

possible choices

the hidden was really fun! haven't seen leviathan, but i see it on the tv guide a lot, and every time i do, i think to myself, 'oh neat i wonder if that's that russian movie, or maybe it's that experimental documentary from the early 2010s,' but nope, every time i scroll to it, it ends up being the peter weller movie, and i get disappointed

watched black cats and broomsticks last night. decidedly not a horror film, despite the title. it's a humorous short about peoples' silly superstitions. so, to make up for it, i ended up also watching the lawnmower man, which is one of those films i remember seeing a lot of back in the video store days, and i always wondered what it was. well, 20+ years later, here i am, finally watching it. it was mostly meh. starts off bonkers. then has a slog of a slow buildup. gets a little bonkers again toward the end. but none of it really comes together. jeff fahey's character is just unforgivable for half the film, even if his ass does look great in those jeans. he's basically simple jack, and maybe that was supposed to make his eventual transformation all the more badass, but it doesn't. kudos for its extreme '90s-ness though! part of that brief subgenre of technohorror flicks, along with ghost in the machine and virtuousity. oh, did i mention that pierce brosnan wears an earring?