2023 October Horror Marathon

The cool, crisp air is hopefully arriving (I write these articles quite a bit out, so right now it's a 96-degree day in Minnesota so I'm channeling this into existence), but for sure we are beginning the month of October today, and with that, we are welcoming back one of my favorite annual series on the blog: our October Horror Movie Marathon, this year in its fifth incarnation!

For those of you who have read this blog for a while, I have not always been a horror movie aficionado...indeed, I'm historically something of a wimp when it comes to horror movies.  I started this series less to fight that stigma, and more because, especially during our first season, some of the most egregious titles missing from my movie classic viewings included films like Dracula, The Wolf Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon...horror movies all.  Last year, though, thanks to the help of my friend Cody (who hosts the marvelous podcast Halloweeners which I insist you check out if you like witty takes on horror movies both old & new), I finally started to brave some of the biggest modern titles that I'd never seen in the horror movie pantheon...

...And I loved it.  Movies like The Blair Witch Project and Poltergeist quickly got the 4+ star of approval from me, and I became so enamored with the Scream franchise that not only did I watch every film in the series, I even saw the latest one in theaters, something unthinkable for me a year ago.  This year, we're going to continue the theme of last year (because what is a horror movie without a sequel?).  Our first three seasons we encountered movies from the Silent Era all the way to the end of the studio system, and last year we focused principally on movies that came out of New Hollywood all the way to the end of the 1990's.  This year, we're going to stay in that wheelhouse, with our first movie a horror classic from the 1960's, and then we'll continue forward into the early part of this century (though ending before the "elevated horror" concept became a thing).  In the process, we're going to watch not only some of the biggest missing films from my personal horror filmography (all of this month's movies I have either not seen at all or not seen in one sitting), but also a couple of takes on classic horror movies we've seen in the past.  Fifteen films in all, each on odd-numbered days leading up to our big closer on Halloween (with a movie that I remember being terrified of just by the trailers when it first came out!)-I've got loads of fun in store as we move through October.

So don't let any strangers in the house, keep all of the doors locked & the lights on, and don't answer any unknown calls...things are about to get scary!