October Horror Marathon

Today marks the first day of October, and around these parts, that is generally a time when we will go ahead and get spooky.  About four years ago, I launched a series on this blog where we would look through some of the classic monster movies of the 1930's, 40's, & 50's, and fill in some of the bigger gaps in my viewing filmography.  After three such seasons, I have officially seen all of the Classic Hollywood Universal monster movies, as well as horror mainstays ranging from Freaks to Village of the Damned.  However, while I could watch classic horror films until the ends of time (it was a cheap genre to make, and if you throw Poverty Row into the mix, you've got a laundry list of additional titles), with me now finished with the Monster Movies, I wasn't sure if I'd do a fourth season of the series on the blog-it felt like it was all deep cuts and no filling in the gaps, and perhaps this horror movie didn't need another sequel.

But during the pandemic I've made a friend who co-hosts a brilliant podcast called Halloweeners (seriously-check it out, it makes horror films accessible & is hilarious), and he inspired me to strengthen my nerve, and fill in some of my horror movie gaps from the latter part of the 20th Century.  While it's hard to define exactly when horror movies went from the unspoken terrors of the Hays Code era to the more violent, sexually-charged VHS-driven sequels of the 1980's, the best way I can find is Night of the Living Dead, which was the source of much controversy due to its bloody death scenes at the time...and became one of the most profitable movies of the era.

It's also a movie I've never seen.  In fact, truth-be-told most of the biggest titles of this era (and the monsters every bit as iconic today as Frankenstein & Dracula) are completely unknown to me, so for the next month we will be investigating 15 titles released between 1968 and 1999 (essentially covering New Hollywood and up until the turn of the century) that are arguably some of the biggest gaps in my cinematic viewing, at least in terms of mainstream pop culture.  We'll be doing a review every odd-numbered day up until Halloween, so I hope you are ready to hide under the covers, double-check that the doors are locked, and for god's sake don't answer the phone...cause we're in for a fright!