31 Days of Classic Horror

Following on from our previous October surprises, 31 Days of Horror (2018) and 31 Countries of Horror (2021), we’ve opted to turn the clock back and cover one film from each year, beginning in 1957. Why that year? Well, mostly because it was the one in which Chris was born, but it was also the year in which Hammer Films really took off, with their iconic The Curse of Frankenstein. It also gives us room for a second helping of not-quite-so classic horror at some point down the road, beginning 31 years later, in 1988.

We did not select the films in question ourselves. The process involved searching the IMDb for the highest-rated, English-language feature film in the year in question, which was a) in the horror genre, and b) had received at least a thousand votes. The language limitation is because, having done foreign horror last year, excluding the US and UK, I wanted to give them their chance to shine. The vote limitation was there were some cases where the top-ranked horror had, literally, seventeen votes. The only exception made was if the top movie had already been fully reviewed (for some arbitrary definition of “fully”! But generally, that meant within the last decade) on the site. Where that’s the case, the “true” #1 is listed on the line below the choice. In those cases, the #2 movie was then chosen, with the same conditions: repeat as long as necessary.

Looking at the list in advance of starting the project, it’s an interesting collection, demonstrating the broad range of “horror” [or, at least, what the IMDb classifies as within the genre]. Everything from Carry on Screaming! to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, via The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Eraserhead. There’s a couple I was startled by: who’d have thought I had never reviewed American Werewolf? Definitely looking forward to writing about that, and The Wicker Man. There are also several I flat-out have never seen, so those will be interesting. I expect a number of sacred cows will be slaughtered, because I definitely do not like everything. Eraserhead is probably the one I winced most when it came up, as I hated the film the last time I saw it. Lynch is always very hit or miss for me, so we’ll see…

So, here are are the 31 movies we will be reviewing in October. I’ll update the list with the reviews as they are posted.