I successfully completed my second 31 Days of Horror Challenge yesterday, even though I spent all day traveling back to NYC from Los Angeles. Without further ado, here is the full list of horror films that I watched.
October 1: The Houses October Built (2014). I first watched this movie early on in my 31 days of horror challenge last year and really enjoyed it, and my second viewing was still just as creepy.
October 2: The Shining (1980). During our 
late September vacation we stayed at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write his classic novel. The hotel has a channel that shows the film on a 24/7 continuous loop, but I waited until we got back to Brooklyn to watch my own DVD.
October 3: The Howling (1981). First time viewing, though I had seen clips of the special effects in a college film class called Genre Transformation and Technology, which focused on horror and sci-fi movies over the years.
October 4: Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015). First viewing, a pretty standard zom-com.
October 5: The Woman in Black (2012). Fairly bland but with some creepy ghost child imagery. Starring Harry Potter and Game of Thrones‘ Mance Rayder.
October 6: Final Girl (2015). Not to be confused with The Final Girls, also from 2015. Starring Wes Bentley and Abigail Breslin…I hate to say it, but I’m still not sold on her acting skills.
October 7: Jaws (1975). I was inspired to watch this classic because I had watched the “King Shark” episode of The Flash the night before.
October 8: Most Likely to Die (2015). Starring Perez Hilton (?!). Actually not as bad as I expected, but certainly not good.
October 9: The Legend of Hell House (1973). Pretty standard paranormal house film by today’s standards, but I can imagine it would have been terrifying when it was released.
October 10: The Witch (2015). I had heard great things about this one, but I thought it was just okay. The creepiest character was a goat.
October 11: Troll (1986). The son in the movie (a character named Harry Potter Jr…haha) is played by Noah Hathaway, who played Atreyu in The NeverEnding Story! Also features Emmy-winning national treasure Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Fun fact: her Seinfeld co-star Jason Alexander also starred in a 1980s horror movie called The Burning.
October 12: The Amityville Horror (1979). It’s a lot less scary when you’ve seen it several times.
October 13: Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988). A few things: 1) Not a crowning achievement for transgender characters on film. 2) The number of mullets that appear in the first five minutes is astounding. 3) Notable for an awkwardly staged but rare-for-the-time scene of a male performing oral sex on a female. 4) The acting is…truly a sight to behold. 5) I believe this movie taught me the word “fornicate” back when I first saw it in high school. 6) PANTY RAAAAIIID!
October 14: Krampus (2015). A fun but predictable Christmas horror from Michael Dougherty, writer and director of one of my favorite Halloween movies, Trick ‘r Treat. It definitely had a similar vibe to TrT. Bonus Movie: Suspiria (1977). Despite the fact that it’s one of my favorite horror movies, I had somehow forgotten to add this one to my list. My husband and I watched it together after going out to dinner. THE MUSIC! THE PRODUCTION DESIGN! So gorgeous and weird—I wonder if it served as an inspiration for the folks who worked on Hannibal.
October 15: Hunting Humans (2002). Very low budget and acting of the worst caliber, but fairly unique in terms of being from a serial killer’s perspective (pre-Dexter).
October 16: Theatre of Blood (1973). Vincent Price in all his glory. A melodramatic but fun 70s serial killer flick, also starring Game of Thrones‘ sassy Queen of Thorns , Diana Rigg.
October 17: The Psychic (1991). Starring Zach Galligan from Gremlins!
October 18: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). A classic.
October 19: Graduation Day (1981). 80’s B-movie all the way. Features Vanna White in a small role!
October 20: Clown (2014). Obviously I had to watch a clown horror movie, what with all the creepy clown shit in the news this fall.
October 21: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2016). It totally counts when “horror” is in the title, right? The TV remake starring Laverne Cox premiered on October 20 so I figured I might as well include it on my watchlist for the month. Not as good as the original, of course, but still fun to watch when you’re a sucker for weirdo musicals.
October 22: House (1977). A super fucking weird Japanese horror film…and it is hilarious. This scene made me LOL and exclaim “WHAT THE FUCK?!”
October 23: Cooties (2015). A recent horror comedy that had some genuine LOL-moments.
October 24: The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014). A “remake” of the 1976 film that I have yet to see…nothing too interesting here, but the cast was pretty solid: Gary Cole, Denis O’Hare, Veronica Cartwright, Anthony Anderson, Edward Hermann.
October 25: Holidays (2016). An anthology of eight short horror films, each themed around a different holiday (duh).
October 26: The Forest (1982). NOT the recent movie starring Natalie Dormer from Game of Thrones. This one’s another totally cheesy 80s B-movie with an awesome synth soundtrack.
October 27: Trick ‘r Treat (2007). One of the best (and most underrated) Halloween movies ever! I pretty much watch this annually around Halloween.
October 28: Goodnight Mommy (2014). Wow…that was pretty fucked up.
October 29: The House by the Cemetary (1981). An Italian horror by Lucio Fulci, who also directed one of the horror movies that freaked me out most when I saw it in high school: The Gates of Hell, aka City of the Living Dead.
October 30: Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972). Yesterday’s movie got me in a 70s Italian mood, so I watched another Fulci flick. It ended up being more of a thriller than a horror, but it still had that some of that classic Fulci gore.
October 31: The Purge: Election Year (2016). I flew home from LA on Halloween and forgot that I could have watched a horror movie on the plane. But when I got home I decided it would be appropriate to rent the newest Purge installment because of our imminent election…which right about now is one of the scariest things happening in our world.
Just for fun, I put together some stats on the horror movies I watched over the past month…
Horror Films By Decade:
- 1970s: 8
- 1980s: 7
- 1990s: 1
- 2000s: 2
- 2010s: 14
Additional Stats and Facts:
- Total number of horror films watched: 32
- Number of films watched for the first time: 23
- Number of sequels or variations thereof: 2
- Number of remakes: 2
- Movies watched with my husband: 4
- Movies watched while traveling: 5
