Happy Horror Month! Are You Watching 31 Horror Movies This October?
The pumpkins are out, the nights are drawing in, supermarket shelves are suddenly full of things shaped like ghosts, and horror fans finally have an excuse to behave exactly as we do during the other eleven months of the year. October is here, which means Horror Month has officially begun.
From everyone at Stalk & Slash, we want to wish all of our readers a very happy start to October and, more importantly, a fantastic month of horror as we count down the 31 days to Halloween. Whether October means elaborate decorations, horror conventions, carving pumpkins, visiting scare attractions or simply turning the lights off and putting something nasty on the television, this is our month.
For plenty of horror fans, October also brings an annual challenge: one horror movie every day until Halloween. Thirty-one days, thirty-one films and inevitably at least one evening when you realise at 11:20pm that you’ve forgotten and start desperately searching for something with a running time under 90 minutes.
So, are you taking part this year?
31 Days, 31 Horror Movies
There aren’t really any rules to the October horror marathon, which is part of the fun. Some people meticulously plan all 31 films before October even begins, while others decide what they’re watching approximately thirty seconds before pressing play. You can revisit the movies you’ve loved for decades, use the month to attack that enormous watchlist you’ve been steadily ignoring, or mix the two together.
There’s something particularly enjoyable about returning to old favourites at this time of year. Watching Halloween during the summer is perfectly acceptable, but watching Michael Myers stalk the streets of Haddonfield while the real October wind is rattling the windows just feels right. The same applies to Trick ’r Treat, The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining or whatever films have become part of your own personal Halloween tradition.
But October is also a perfect excuse to go exploring. Horror has more than a century of cinema waiting to be discovered, and even the most dedicated fan has enormous gaps in their viewing history. Maybe this is finally the year you watch that celebrated classic everybody else seems to have seen. Perhaps it’s time to investigate a country or period of horror you’ve barely touched. You might even discover that the supposedly essential masterpiece you’ve been avoiding for twenty years does absolutely nothing for you. That’s part of the fun too.
We’re Going Everywhere This October
Here at Stalk & Slash, we’re planning to spend the month travelling through as much of horror as possible. Rather than watching 31 variations on the same thing, we’ll be jumping between different subgenres and periods every day as Halloween gets closer.
One night might belong to the slashers, with masked killers stalking teenagers through darkened streets, summer camps and places sensible people would have evacuated twenty minutes earlier. The next could take us into demonic horror, possession and the occult before we head across to Italy for some gloriously stylish giallo. There will be ghosts, zombies, vampires, werewolves, serial killers, creatures, found footage, body horror, supernatural horror and probably several people making the catastrophic mistake of investigating a strange noise in the basement.
We’ll also be heading much further back. The Universal Monsters deserve their place at the Halloween table, so Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon won’t be forgotten among all the modern carnage. Horror didn’t begin with Michael Myers putting on a William Shatner mask, and October is as good a time as any to celebrate the films and monsters that helped build the genre we love.
That’s the beauty of attempting 31 horror movies in 31 days. Even if you’ve been watching horror for decades, the genre is simply too enormous to exhaust. You can move from a silent German Expressionist nightmare to a Universal monster movie, a Hammer Gothic, an Italian giallo, an American slasher, a Japanese ghost story and a modern found-footage film without ever leaving horror behind.
Old Favourites or Something New?
If you’re joining the challenge, we’d love to know how you’re approaching it. Are you spending October revisiting the horror films you already love, or are you making your 31 films entirely from movies you’ve never seen before?
There’s a good argument for doing both. A first-time watch can give you that wonderful feeling of discovering something special, but Halloween wouldn’t quite feel like Halloween without returning to a few familiar faces. Some films become traditions precisely because we’ve seen them so many times. You know every scare, every death and every line of dialogue, but when October arrives, you want to see them again anyway.
And nobody is checking the paperwork. If you miss October 12 because you’ve fallen asleep on the sofa, the Horror Police aren’t going to kick the door down and confiscate your Halloween Blu-ray. Watch 31 films, watch 50, watch five. Spend an entire weekend watching Friday the 13th sequels or decide you’re finally going to understand exactly what the hell is happening in Phantasm. However you choose to celebrate Horror Month, make it yours.
Spend Horror Month With Stalk & Slash
We’ll be here throughout October doing exactly what Stalk & Slash was built for. We’ll be bringing you the latest horror news, digging into the genre’s history, exploring films and franchises through our original features, and continuing to fill the Hall of Killers with horror’s greatest, strangest and occasionally most incompetent murderers.
There will be plenty more besides as we make our way towards October 31. Horror is something we celebrate throughout the year, but there is nothing quite like seeing the rest of the world temporarily catch up with us every October.
So turn down the lights, pick tonight’s film and begin working your way towards Halloween.
Whether you’re spending the next 31 nights with old favourites, discovering 31 films you’ve never seen, or simply watching whatever takes your fancy, have a fantastic Horror Month from everyone at Stalk & Slash.
And whatever you do, don’t investigate that noise downstairs.
