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Halloween Movie Month 2015
It’s that time of year again — October 2015 kicks off the fifth annual Halloween Movie Month (formerly known as “Scary Movie Month” but changed because I just didn’t want to review only scary movies)!
You might think that for such an auspicious occasion, I will have something special planned. Well… you’d be wrong. I don’t. I’m planning on winging it, quite honestly. Why? Because life. Lately, I’ve been pretty busy, and this has led to me being very tired, and so I basically have been writing reviews based on what I feel like, and I plan on continuing that for the month of October in regards to season-appropriate movie choices.
That being said, though, I am definitely looking forward to reviewing movies for this year, and I do at least have some things in mind that I want to get to. The first movie I plan on reviewing is a pretty big one, too, and is one that I’ve been meaning to watch for years but have, quite honestly, been a bit too intimidated by to really feel like I could give it its due. However, with the movie exiting Netflix streaming services at the beginning of the month, I felt like it was a sign for me to just do it before it’s too late. Which movie is it, you ask? Well, fine then, I’ll tell you: it’s The Exorcist!
So yeah, no formal plans for this milestone month, but, as with every subsequent year I do this, I increasingly look forward to expanding my exposure to the horror genre and other Halloween-related movies. Seriously, I’ve really grown in my appreciation for these things, and I always find myself holding back on reviewing certain movies until I can do it for this time of year. As always, though, I’m going to start the month off by leaving you with a convenient list of previous Halloween-appropriate reviews for you to peruse.
Happy Halloween!
Dawn of the Dead: Director’s Cut (2004)
Halloween (2007, Unrated Director’s Cut)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Last House on the Left (2009)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Halloween Movie Month 2014 & The Viewer’s Commentary Fourth Anniversary!
Well, it’s been just a little over four years since I started this blog, and can only mean one thing: It’s time to start reviewing Halloween movies! This theme month, formerly known as Scary Movie Month, was once a time when I begrudgingly made myself watch a bunch of scary movies in order to better understand a genre I did not typically enjoy.
Funny enough, however, in the few years I’ve actually been doing this, I’ve actually grown pretty fond of this month and of the movies I watch in the process of figuring out which ones to review. Are they all good? Not by a long shot, but it’s still entertaining since horror is still not a genre I’d typically find myself in the mood for if not for the oncoming Halloween holiday.
As always, October will be a month of reviewing nothing but Halloween-appropriate movies — not just the scary ones, but also the funny ones, the sad ones, the weird ones, the ones meant for family, and, yeah, even the musical ones (hence why I moved away from the “Scary Movie Month” monicker).
This year, in particular, I plan on returning to a series or two that I’d reviewed previously. One that I know for sure that I’ll be doing is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, particularly because the series was responsible for The Viewer’s Commentary getting its first spike in views thanks to a group of fans flocking to the site to gawk at my not-well-received review of the first film. The exchange we had on their forums encouraged me to explore other areas of the Elm Street series and surprised me in how, in the right mindset, yeah, these movies could be pretty entertaining. Freddy’s Revenge is, unfortunately, nowhere near as good as Dream Warriors or New Nightmare or even the original, which I honestly did not care for the first time around. But, hey, it has an interesting subtext to explore thanks to the switch up in the lead character’s gender, and at least it’s not the terrible remake, right? Speaking of remakes, I also hope to get around to reviewing Rob Zombie’s remake of John Carpenter’s slasher classic Halloween. Why not the original movie’s sequel, you ask? Because I watched the remake out of morbid curiosity recently when I saw it on Amazon Prime, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that experience go to waste, dammit!
And so, as always, I leave you with a list of previous Halloween-appropriate films I’ve reviewed since September 2011. The list is only going to get longer, so I don’t know how much longer I can continue to do this, but here they are all together for at least one more time! And, as always, enjoy a free movie, the public domain zombie film that started it all, Night of the Living Dead below that!
Dawn of the Dead: Director’s Cut (2004)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Last House on the Left (2009)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Halloween Movie Month 2013 & The Viewer’s Commentary Second Anniversary!
Happy Halloween, everyone! Welcome to The Viewer’s Commentary’s third annual Scary Movie Month – now redubbed Halloween Movie Month! Why the name change? Because the “Scary” in the title of Scary Movie Month just didn’t seem appropriate when the true spirit behind this theme month is not that I review just scary movies, but I could also include comedies, dramas, or even musicals! As such, I figured that it was time to make the title skew more towards the holiday theme, rather than make it seem like I was sticking to just the horror genre – I’d even broken the “rule” in the past, so it was already fairly inappropriate. That being said, you can pretty much still expect most of the movies being from or at least touched by the horror genre – but you’ll also see that I’m opening up to a wider range of movies, as well.
It’s funny — I had originally started out this theme month to broaden my horizons and explore a genre that I never really was that fond of. Now, in only two years, though, it’s actually one of the things I actually look forward to the most every year, even if I still wouldn’t necessarily call myself a horror connoisseur. Go figure!
October 2013 also marks the beginning of my third year writing for this blog, which had its first post all the way back on September 13, 2011! It’s been a fun couple years writing – though it’s still just a hobby, I’ve become rather well known amongst my small circle of people for being the guy who writes about movies, and I couldn’t be prouder of myself for having stuck with it so long and for still having such a passion for writing about the movies I watch, love, and even loathe – in total, I have written 197 posts, not counting this one, and about 147 reviews of individual titles have been written for this blog as of this writing, including an unprecedented mini-review of an animated short, Paperman. In the future, I hope to continue writing reviews as well as get back to more analytical articles and a few fun lists, as well, which I have admittedly gone away from for quite some time.
Until then, below is not only an alphabetical list of past scary movie and Halloween-appropriate movies that I’ve reviewed in the past, but also a very low quality upload of the hilarious Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode where they riff on the convolutedly titled The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies to sate your appetite until my next review, Zombieland, is posted. I cannot guarantee how long that video will be up, so my apologies if it’s no longer up by the time you get there. If that’s the case, I’ve also embedded the official YouTube video of the original movie itself, sans snarky commentary. (Your mileage may vary on that one…) Thanks again for reading The Viewer’s Commentary, and I hope you all have a great Halloween!
MST3K Version
Original Film:
Halloween Movie Reviews: Sept. 2011 – Sept. 2013
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Last House on the Left (2009)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
The Viewer's Commentary 