31 Days of Horror

Have you ever stumbled, unwittingly, into a really fun project? You know what I mean—you’re repairing a small piece of drywall, and you accidentally cut out too much, and the next thing you know you’ve decided to rip out the entire wall and convert your closet into a fourth bedroom. While this example may not be the greatest (I’m about as handy as a rhesus monkey trying to change a lightbulb with a crowbar) I think you get my point. Sometimes exciting personal projects just fall into your lap unexpectedly, which is exactly what happened to me at the beginning of October.

On some level my October project was really the product of a happy calendar accident. As luck would have it, October 1st fell on a Friday. Seems innocuous enough, I know, but in this case it was rather serendipitous. (FYI—According to my extensive writing logs, this is the first time I’ve ever used the words “innocuous” and “serendipitous” in the same sentence. Bully for me.) Friday nights is movie night in the Schwartzberg household and it was my turn to pick the movie. Since it was the start of October, I decided I’d show the kids their very first horror movie, but I figured I’d ease them in slowly, so I went with Young Frankenstein. Before I started the movie I gave them a lot of build up about how terrifying it would be and told them to let me know if they got too scared and needed me to stop it. I think it took about ten to fifteen minutes of watching the movie before it finally dawned on both of them that I was yanking their collective chains and there would actually be a lot more laughing than screaming during this flick. I never know how it will go when I show the boys a movie from decades ago, but in this case it was a success; both boys thought the movie was hysterical, particularly the “Putting on the Ritz” and Gene Hackman scenes.

The following morning I did what I do almost every Saturday morning—I watched a movie before everyone else in the house woke up. My new Netflix disc arrived in the mail a couple of days earlier (yes, I’m one of the 37 people who still gets Netflix in the mail) and I was excited to watch the 2018 film, Halloween, with Jamie Lee Curtis. The film, which I had wanted to see in the theater when it first came out, but never got around to, addresses how Jamie Lee Curtis’s character turned out 40 years after the original Halloween, when faced, yet again, with a rampaging Michael Meyers, newly escaped from the institution he’d been locked in for decades. While nowhere near as good as the classic film that started the series in 1978, it was actually quite well done and I was glad I rented it. But the best part was the eureka moment I had after watching the film. Having watched a horror movie the first two days of October, I decided that I was going to watch one every day for the entire month, in celebration of Halloween. My personal project had launched and no drywall was involved!

I have long been a horror movie fanatic and have, in this very blog, expounded upon the idea that this trait was passed down to me from my father. (Click hereto read said blog post.) As such, any excuse to watch more horror movies excites me. But, while exciting, the idea of watching a horror movie a day for an entire month presented a significant challenge. How was I going to find the time to watch a full-length horror movie every day? With work and familial responsibilities, I realized I would have to watch most of the flicks either really early in the morning or really late at night. Burning the candle on both ends is not new for me, so I was able to more or less pull this off. I will confess, though, that there were four days in the month when I was simply too tired to do it. At 52 I just don’t have the stamina I did at 22…or 32...or 42…or 51, for that matter. Really, I seem to have less stamina ever year. I think the technical term for that is “ageing.” In any event, when I simply didn’t have it in me to watch a movie on October 11th, I refused to throw in the towel. Instead, I decided to transform my project from a horror movie every day in October, to 31 horror movies throughout October and have some days (primarily the weekends) where I watched two horror movies in the same day. Hey don’t look at me that way—it’s my project, so it’s my rules. I’m not telling you what grit of sandpaper you need to use on your drywall project (assuming people use sandpaper on drywall projects—I really have no idea) so leave me alone.

Choosing which movies to watch presented its own challenge. As a horror movie fanatic, I’ve already seen all of the major ones, but I’m forever seeking out new scare flicks that I haven’t seen. I will admit that finding good ones that I haven’t seen isn’t always easy. For every great horror film, there are 50 horrible ones. So, in an effort not to watch a bunch of duds, I decided to mostly watch movies I’ve seen and liked and throw in some new stuff here and there. In the end, I watched 21 horror movies I’d already seen and 10 new ones.

I also took a little bit of liberty with what I was defining as a “horror” movie. Obviously, Young Frankenstein is a comedy, but it centers on the Frankenstein monster and takes place in a big, ominous castle, so I counted it. Along the same lines, I decided to count movies that had a monster or scary looking creature, even if it wasn’t a horror movie in the strictest sense of the word. Using that loophole, I counted Venom, Edward Scissorhands, and Pan’s Labyrinth. (Again—my project, my rules.)

I’m not going to get into a deep analysis of all 31 horror flicks I saw this month, because nobody would stick around for that, not even me. I will provide some highlights, though.

October 4: Trilogy of Terror – This is actually a TV Movie that came out in 1975 and scared the jeepers out of a lot kids from my generation. It’s an anthology film with three episodes, the first two of which are complete crap. The third episode, in which Karen Black is stalked and attacked by a one-foot tall Zuni fetish doll carrying a spear, is the one that is forever emblazoned upon our memories. As a kid, this episode freaked me out, but as an adult I just found it deliciously entertaining. That said, the night that I watched Trilogy of Terror, was the most terrifying night of my month-long project. While watching the movie I had three tremendous scares, although none of them had anything to do with what was happening on the screen. Scare 1: During the first episode, while I watched by myself in the darkness, our cat Ping suddenly jumped up on the tray table next to the couch and started intently staring at the ceiling. I paused the movie and followed his gaze and saw, in the shadows by our ceiling fan, an extremely large scorpion. Heart racing, I spent the next ten minutes creating and executing an elaborate plan to capture, destroy, and dispose of the hideous creature, using a broom handle and three feet of packing tape. Once the terrifying ordeal was over, I calmed myself down and continued watching my not-very-scary horror movie. Scare 2: During the second episode, I suddenly had the feeling of being watched and, turning my gaze slowly toward our darkened hallway, I saw two cold, unblinking eyes staring back at me. I jumped with a start and asked my 14-year-old son what in the world he was doing there. He laughed and said he had come out for a glass of water, but then decided to stare at me until I noticed. Once he left, I calmed myself down once again to peacefully watch my horror movie. Scare 3: The exact moment that the third episode ended, a thunderclap, that seemed to be a billion decibels, shook the whole house, as an intense, five-minute storm kicked up. Panting in horror, I turned off the movie and vowed never to watch it again.

October 15: Let the Right One In – The first of three foreign language horror films I watched this month, all of which are great. I hadn’t seen this film since the first time I saw it in the theaters 13 years ago, so I wasn’t sure how it might hold up. While it wasn’t as scary as the first time I saw it (horror films rarely are, since you know what’s coming the second time around) it was still an excellent film and a unique addition to the vampire genre. And while the vampiric attacks by a tween girl are quite frightening, perhaps the most terrifying component of the film to this thin-blooded Arizonan, is how desperately cold Sweden seems to be in winter. Very chilling!

October 23: Double Feature: Creature from the Black Lagoon and I Was a Teenage Zombie – This duo of B-movies was watched with several friends during a “guy’s night.” While we ate pizza and Chinese food (not together—they had pizza and I had Chinese, as I’m trying to watch my cholesterol) we watched the 1954 classic about a half-man, half fish, followed by the 1987 not-at-all classic about a zombie drug dealer who terrorizes high schoolers. Creature from the Black Lagoon, while definitely cheesy and dated, is still a pretty fun watch and the monster costume was revolutionary for the time. I Was a Teenage Zombie, on the other hand, seemed to have been made by a bunch of kids who got their hands on a home movie camera, and made Creature from the Black Lagoon look like Citizen Kane.

October 30: Halloween Kills – This movie, which came out just a couple of weeks ago and is a sequel to the 2018 Halloween, was not all that good. Basically, it was about a bunch of vigilantes hunting down Michael Myers and…well, you can guess what happens to them. The only thing that makes it significant for me is that it’s the first horror movie I have seen in an actual movie theater in almost two years. While the movie wasn’t that great, getting to see it in a large, darkened theater was a treat. (Although having to endure the mother and daughter talking in the row in front of me during the film’s climax wasn’t  much of a treat.)

October 31: Halloween – I decided to close out this project on Halloween by watching the original, 1978 version of Halloween, and I’m glad I did. I’ve probably seen this movie a dozen times over the years, but it has been at least five years since my last viewing. Watching it, after watching horror movies almost every day for an entire month, reminded me just how great it is. The way that John Carpenter builds tension in this film is incredible, and the way that he uses the ominous soundtrack to contribute to the building terror is second to none. There is no better film to see on Halloween than Halloween.

And so, my personal project for October is complete, and nary an ounce of drywall was used. (Is drywall even measured by the ounce? I have no clue.) Below is the complete list of 31 horror films I watched in October, for those who may be interested. Movies that are bolded are the ones I saw for the first time.

31 Horror Films in October 2021

Date	Movie	Year
1-Oct	Young Frankenstein	1974
2-Oct	Halloween	2018
3-Oct	Wishmaster	1997
4-Oct	Trilogy of Terror	1975
5-Oct	The Descent	2005
6-Oct	Aracnophobia	1990
7-Oct	The Changeling	1980
8-Oct	Invasion of the Body Snatchers	1956
9-Oct	Suspiria	2018
10-Oct	The Creeping Flesh	1973
14-Oct	C.H.U.D.	1984
15-Oct	Let the Right One In	2008
16-Oct	Venom	2018
17-Oct	The Wasp Woman	1959
18-Oct	Species	1995
19-Oct	Sinister	2012
21-Oct	Night of the Living Dead	1968
22-Oct	Train to Busan	2016
23-Oct	Creature From the Black Lagoon	1954
23-Oct	I Was A Teenage Zombie	1987
24-Oct	House on Haunted Hill	1959
25-Oct	A Bucket of Blood	1959
25-Oct	Dead of Winter	1987
26-Oct	The Shining	1980
27-Oct	White Zombie	1932
28-Oct	Flatliners	1990
29-Oct	Pan's Labyrinth	2007
29-Oct	Edward Scissorhands	1990
30-Oct	Halloween Kills	2021
30-Oct	Hush	2016
31-Oct	Halloween	1978

Now for my November project I’ll watch 30 movies about Thanksgiving. Um…maybe I’ll try doing some drywall after all.