Halloween With Skippy

The days are getting shorter, the leaves are changing colors, and the air is getting crisp. It would seem another October is upon us.  And, of course, the gigantic plastic lich already hanging in the corner of my living room is an unmistakable reminder that with October comes Halloween. (The Wife has always been an avid – and early – decorator.) Now I don’t know what Halloween means in your household, but ‘round here that means one thing: horror movies.

Well, okay, it also means candy, but I’m only here to talk about horror movies.

As I’ve mentioned on the blog more than once, my love affair with scary movies began at a fairly young age with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.  As I got older this interest expanded to throughout the genre, from the classic Universal films through the width and breadth of slasher flicks and on to foreign fare, such as Italy’s gritty cannibal films to Japan and Thailand’s creepy supernatural tales.  When it comes to horror flicks I’m not so much a gourmet as a gourmand.  Nightmare City and the other red-headed stepchildren of the genre sit on my shelf alongside such legitimately good films as The Exorcist and An American Werewolf in London.  Mine is a big tent, and there’s room for almost everyone inside.

Because of my love for the season and horror flicks in general I wanted to do something special to mark the first October since the blog made the transition to primarily discussing movies.  At one point I had entertained a grand vision of posting an in-depth movie review every single day in October.  Unfortunately, that’s the kind of thing that you really need to get an early start on, and for me that was made entirely impossible by the release of Borderlands 2.

Therefore, instead of posting a review every day, I’m going to be posting a countdown of my top five Halloween flicks.  These aren’t my favorite horror movies per se, but instead they’re the five films that get me into the best Halloween frame of mind, the ones that get me in the mood for the whole season.  There’s one small caveat though: I’ve totally excluded all of the Halloween films from this list.  That’s not a jab against the series – the original is an undisputed classic and several of the others are pretty good – it’s to keep me from getting too lazy in my choices…and because too many of these lists inevitably end with Halloween as number one. 

It wasn't easy to pick just five movies, but I've confined myself to a number of films that I realistically think I'll sit around and write up.  I'll also tell you up front that most of these movies are fairly well-known and one is much more recent than you'd probably expect out of me.  One way or another, I hope to have the first review up by later this week.  

Also, be sure to check out the podcast Joe's Awesome and Tommy Hates Everything, on which I'm occasionally a guest, all October long.  I've spoken to Tommy and he has some pretty cool Halloween stuff planned for the show.  Halloween is big around here.  Stick with us and we'll take good care of you.