31 Demonic Days and Nightmarish Nights of Halloween: 2023 Edition!

[Jared]

Spooky Season approaches once again. Are you prepared, boils and ghouls?! Let's see how you dismember the rules! Though some would say this is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules.


1. Count Your Candy: You mission, should you choose toaxcept it, is (to attempt) to 31 films between October 1 and October 31, and join the select few who get to claim their Hellish No Prize. While a film per day is encouraged, double and triple-billing (or more) is perfectly acceptable and often necessary. Few make it to 31, and fewer still dare to go...beyond 31.


2. Multi-media of Madness: The movies shall not be just theatrical, obviously. original TV, Cable, digital, disc, streaming, Youtube,theatrical, your weird uncle's VHS in the basement, all fine as well. You can even watch the movies on your phone, if you enjoy breaking David Lynch's heart.

3. Leave A Trail: Besides a title, please include some other identifying info for each film, whether it be year of release, stars/director, a description or a link. This will allow the others the chance to add to their watch lists for later or just to compare progress. Feel free to also add poster art and/or trailers as well to put some life into your posts . And of course your own thoughts on film would be nice to hear...before the end.

4. (Episodic) TV Rots Your Brain: Halloween-themed episodes of a regular series don't count towards your final tally. Nor do episodes of supernatural-themed shows like Stranger Things, The Walking Dead, Buffy, etc... TV specials like It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown may count. Use your judgement on if a short film is too short to count as a film in itself or if you want to mark it as a half an entry. If you plan on binging through an entire season of something, that's worth noting but you should count it separately if at all, along with any other series episodes you might want to talk about.

5. The Halloween Spirit is Inside You All Along. It doesn't have to be an actual 'horror movie', per say. Action and comedies dealing with macabre/supernatural elements, are fine, or Burton's stop motion animated films, etc...

666. Feeding After Midnight. Use your own judgement as to whether a film begun reasonably soon after 12 a.m. counts for the previous day or next. But All Hallow's Eve itself can last till the crack of dawn, if you desire.


This may help you find your way: https://www.halloweenmoviesontv.com/

Note that the 13th falls on a Friday. And the Full Moon will be October 28th.

[Vakanai]

Last year I bought all the Halloweentown movies on DVD just for this, and I got an old Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen movie a couple years ago that'll go great I think (Double, Double, Toil and Trouble). So that should start me off on a pretty fun note. To be honest I kind of miss the safe for kids Halloween stuff, most Halloween horrors seem all R rated these days, and while I love some gore every now and then that seems a shame. Kid safe horror and spooky stuff is important for the holiday.

[Mister Mets]

Sounds interesting. I don't know if I'll have time for it.

I remember another forum had a 13 films in 31 days challenge for people who don't have time for a challenge involving one subsection of film.

[Jared]

Sounds interesting. I don't know if I'll have time for it.

I remember another forum had a 13 films in 31 days challenge for people who don't have time for a challenge involving one subsection of film.

To reiterate, it's never been strictly "horror", so it's a pretty big subsection.

[Jared]

Some recommendations from an Oscar winner.


It seems like Jane Eyre is not at all the kind of story I always assumed it was.

[CJStriker]

As Always I plane to participate and Thanks Jared for Doing this Challenge as always!

Each Year I try to do a theme for my movies and while my 1st movie and likely a few will not be part of the Theme, Most of My Movie Themes this year will be the Classs Monster, Sci-Fi, B-Movies & Espcially Ray Harryhausen Movies!

This a Theme I have been wanting to do for awhile and I am looking forward to it, This hits my childhood Hard cause finally I be seeing most of the Movies (Outside of Godzilla) that where fetured on one of my childhood favorite VHS tapes Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies! ^_^

So If anyone wants an Idea of the Movies I will be watching this year or wants more ideas of what to watch, watch my childhood video below!

[Jackalope89]

Honestly, I enjoy watching streamers play horror games year round. But Halloween season makes it extra special.

[Sean Whitmore]

Started this year off with a whimper by finally completing a trilogy I'd never bothered to before: Wes Craven's Dracula trilogy. All currently available on Max.

Dracula 2000 (2000)
Saw this when it first came out, and a couple times since, and I am never able to retain 90% of it between viewings. There's a twist at the end that I've always liked, but the rest of the movie never rises to that same level.




Dracula II: Ascension (2003)
I've seen this one once (well, twice, now), and remembered even less of it. There's one genuinely solid gag at the end involving vampires' obsessive-compulsive disorder, but aside from that, it never makes the leap from boring schlock to fun schlock.




Dracula III: Legacy (2005)

Never saw this one before today, and in fact, I was under the impression this whole time that Dracula 3000 was the third part of this trilogy. And I haven't been missing much. It's action and horror by filmmakers without any particularly good eye for action or horror. Nothing hateful about it, but nothing to recommend, either.

[Astral Disaster]

Back again for 2023, and kicking things off with the following...

1. The Thing From Another World (1951) - Adaptation of the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, which deviates from the original story by making the alien into a humanoid vegetable creature which feeds on blood. A US Air Force crew and research scientists at a remote arctic outpost discover a flying saucer frozen in the ice and inadvertently release the craft's alien occupant.

2. I Sell The Dead (2008) - Horror-comedy period film about a pair of grave robbers who discover there's a more lucrative, but risky, market in trafficking the undead.

3. Seven Notes In Black (1977) - Lucio Fulci directed giallo about a woman who experiences psychic visions of what she believes to be a past murder, but as she experiences events from her visions that are more than simply coincidental it becomes increasingly obvious she's been witnessing her own future.

4. Maniac (2012) - Remake of the 1980 film of the same name about a schizophrenic serial killer who stalks and murders young women and takes their scalps to attach to his collection of mannequins. The movie is shot almost entirely from the first-person POV of the killer (played by Elijah Wood), which does make some of the murder scenes feel much more uncomfortable.

[Scott Taylor]

Ok here goes:

1. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978). Pure silliness, but also intelligent parody of many things from the government and government contractors to animal-related horror movies. Provided inspiration for many movies that followed it in the 1980s through to today.

2. Dracula (1931). Not the greatest Dracula film, in my opinion, but it had a great Renfield. Lugosi's performance didn't thrill me, they just didn't give him much to do other than look cryptic. I think he was just typecast at that point due to his successful run on the theatre production and he pretty much hated the role.

[Jared]

October 1st. 1- The Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (2023)



I usually start with a very old movie, but scheduling dictated something short and readily available. I chose...poorly. This can barely even be called a movie. Apparently this is a re-edit of a 2020's Conjuring: Book of the Dead. It may have some other variant titles. In any case, I'm sure it was just trying to cash in on more popular franchises. It feels like there was no script, not even a treatment, just an outline for a potential movie, but that's what they shot! There's a nonsensical opening that seems to be footage from a Grand Theft Auto with invincibility on, and a narrator badly green-screened into the interior. I'm no occultist or historian, but I could tell that much of the lore in this movie was poorly researched, like somebody skipped Wikipedia while drunk. And that's really a problem when most of the dialogue is exposition. Multiple characters mispronounce "Necronomicon" the same way, suggesting it was spelled wrong by whoever scribbled words on the back of a menu for them. There are some real actors in this, but not pay them the disrespect of naming them.

[Moon Ronin]

Woo Hoo back again! I've been really busy this year so Hope I can get 31 this year

Was working most of the Day on the 1st so just flipped through and found something on BBC America, ending up staying up too late.
1, Underworld: Evolution (2006) BBC America
1b, Underworld: Awakening (2012) BBC America
1c, I, Frankenstein (2014) BBC America

[Sean Whitmore]

1a. Dracula 2000 (2000)
1b. Dracula II: Ascension (2003)
1c. Dracula III: Legacy (2005)

2. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)



I picked up this blu-ray a number of years ago, and just never got around to watching it. The stop-motion monster stuff is great, as I imagined it would be, but the stuff around it is very rough, even by the standards of this kind of movie. Godzilla came just a little over a year, and did a much better job of keeping the story interesting while the monster isn't onscreen.

[Astral Disaster]

5. The Exorcist (1973) Not much I can say about this fim that hasn't already been said multiple times over the last half a century (crazy to think it's now 50 years old), a classic of the horror genre which easily stands the test of time.

6. The Ninth Gate (1999) - An unscrupulous rare book dealer is tasked with authenticating one of three identical volumes allegedly written with the aid of Lucifer and capable of summoning the dark lord. He soon realizes he is being followed and the bodies begin to pile up while he attempts to uncover the secret hidden within the three satanic tomes. Pretty much panned by US critics and audiences upon release, it had a more favorable response internationally. The film does have its issues, a glaring one is in how haphazardly supposedly rare and priceless books are handled, also, a lot of the green screen composite scenes look really cheaply made and bad, despite that I definitely enjoy the film and it's become a Halloween season staple (although I did skip it last year).

7. Baskin (2015) - Turkish surrealist horror film about a group of five police officers who find themselves trapped in a stylized Hell after responding to a call for back up.

[Moon Ronin]

2, The Mist (2007) on Peacock



After a violent storm, a dense cloud of mist envelops a small Maine town, trapping artist David Drayton and his five-year-old son in a local grocery store with other people. They soon discover that the mist conceals deadly horrors that threaten their lives, and worse, their sanity.

Just an after thought after watching this movie (again). If you have a huge decision to make give it some time to mull it over a bit before doing anything really rash. Just saying this is one of the most gut wrenching endings ever.