First day of October.
In the midwest (USA). It is too hot today to be October. I was going to go for a walk, and would you believe I had to go back inside to take off my sweater and replace it to its spot in my closet?! That's how darned hot it was! Oh, that temperature!
Oh, that Lord of ours, with his bag of tricks!

My wife is pregnant and due sometime this month - could be any day. So in addition to completing the challenge I will also be completing having my first baby/child. For that reason, I have some infant/childbirth/pregnancy horror lined up.

First time viewings in, umm, let's go with: bold green

1.) Baby Blood (1988, France) - woman with a Flea-like toothgap and bonkers set of bonkers gets pregnant by a cruel guy. The baby inside develops as a domineering creature who loves to kill in a manner most naughty and is a bad influence.


Third day of October.
Oh my sweet Lord Jesus (who art in Heaven) (hallowed by thy name) (I love you, God!), every single fucking thing is so hard. Every day is the hardest day of my life. Everything I do is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. You have to give your entire life to other people and no one gives a shit about you personally. But, whatever. Love ya, God. You’re my rockin’ do-good home-boy. Love ya.

Anyway, yesterday, which was the

Second day of October,
my wife and I re-watched:

2.) Rosemary’s Baby (1968, U.S.) - (… and I really liked bold green for first time viewings, so I want to try and see how it feels for repeat viewings too. And... It felt good, so I’m going to keep it like this and find a different color for first-time viewings)

The point in this movie where Rosemary realizes that even her doctor is one of them. And that everyone is conspiring around her, is a great expression of terror based on alienation. I think that’s why it resonates with me so much - the feeling that everyone else is onto something and you’re completely isolated from it - and what they’re into isn’t something very jolly at all. It’s seriously how I feel about society in general. And I’m right.

Also the realistic pace of this movie, the decor, the mood, the infectious suspicion - are part of why (and it’s not fair to compare, but) it makes most other horror movies look like total shit.

Then we watched
3. False Positive (2021, U.S.) - (gonna be listing my first-time-viewings in bold red from now onward.)
As a writer, I wondered how this movie was conceived - did it begin as a plot idea for a story or was its impetus a specific social point the writer wanted to imprint upon viewers? There are three credited writers, so maybe its its purpose was jumbled up in its creation.

It’s a didactic movie, like Spike Lee’s joints. It’s about reproductive rights and male control over the female body, and a damning of patriarchy in general. This agenda found a fully sympathetic audience in both myself and my wife. But we agreed it was conveyed awfully by a disjointed narrative.

It seemed like a horror movie presented by someone who had never been pregnant, never been to a fertility clinic, never felt the physical pains of pregnancy, and worst of all, wasn’t even INTO horror movies. It felt like a stoned idea - “Men control women’s reproductive rights to protect the patriarchy… It’s so creepy… Like, it’s basically like men are forcing you to have babies you don’t want. Right, like what if what they want is, like, you go to a doctor and they just implant their own sperm in you to perpetuate the patriarchy?… Yeah.. that would be horrific… That could be, like, a horror movie! Yeah, that should totally be a horror movie!” And then someone is privileged enough to actually make the movie.

It even contained an extraneous mystical negroid whose function was simply to break the 4th wall and tell the writers themselves to “be better,” which I guess - at least they’re self-conscious that they suck.

Whatever the story was in this movie, if it even mattered, was obscured by its proselytizing. Which, I like sermons - but if you’re going to frame your sermon as a horror movie then come through with your vessel looking sharp and make it classic, otherwise you’re just wasting your point and your tale. Telling a horror story is harder than people think; it can't just be put on like a costume. Without effectively employing genre, it turns the whole production, including the social point to dust.

Finally, one point about this that specifically annoyed me - was in its depiction of how pregnant women are treated in the workplace - a fair and needful issue. But the main character here worked in advertising; a go-get’em type. Advertising. Marketing. What she found to be her drive in life was defining sexy images of people to sell fucking products… to manipulate imagery to commodify people and thus participate fully in the capitalist and oppressive culture that a movie like this is supposed to critique. Pick a side. Ya’ could put her in a more sympathetic role other than fucking commercial tool. Back in Rosemary’s Baby, her commercial actor husband was presented as unlikeable because he was image-obsessed. He was motived by upward mobility and self-centered vanity. Over in this fucking thing, they made a scenester who promotes that kind of bullshit lifestyle the protagonist! Pick a side! Which side are you on? Write her as a professional public servant, a bus driver, a librarian, a DMV clerk-- something fucking real, a job that participates in a functioning society, not distorts it for its own gain. FUCK YOU.


Fifth day of October:
Ya' know, I wasn't really feeling bold red for first-time viewiings so let's try bold orange henceward.

.... I said BOLD ORANGE

fuck you, nevermind. Every time I try to change the color of the text, all that happens is my page jumps up to the top of my post and I lose my place. From now on I shall eschew colors of all kinds.

4. The Girl Who Dared (1944) - well, fuck me, that kinda worked. Except when I changed the color, I had already formatted it to "Bold" and it lost that formatting and still threw me back up to the top of my post. From henceforth, my First-Time viewings will be in regular orange!

12th day of October:
I'm in the hospital now, middle of the night, next to my wife who is in a moment of rest during induced labor, waiting for contractions to begin.

Before she fell asleep, we sat in the deliver room and watched - and I'm going to take Mr. zedzeek's advice from below and try to use BBCode to make FIRST-TIME VIEWINGS bold orange from now on -- not just plain regular orange as I had settled for earlier -- we watched:
7.) The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1972, UK)
and holy cow, was it ever more bonkers than I'd expected. I'd started watching this about 2 times earlier, but never got past the opening 'cause I found the imagery so striking that I knew I wanted to share it with someone. My wife picked it out tonight and we found that stylistically, it just continues in that vein, expanding it and digging in harder and harder. Very lovely macabre picture show. I'm really surprised I hadn't felt compelled to watch it earlier in life. It's a bit "camp" - intentionally and not wholly scary, but it's tradiontally grotesque and gothic in a way that entranced me!

BUT, in the days preceding right now, I watched some other movies.

I forgot which colors I'd decided on for REPEAT VIEWINGS, and with BBCode, the text box is all small and I don't want to scroll up reading all of this long-ass post to find what it was. So I"m just going to mentally commit now to REPEAT VIEWINGS being in bold blue.

5. It's Alive (1974, U.S.)
and holy shit typing all the formatting code in manually fucking sucks. This is 2013 - no, wait, it's 2021, that's even worse - what am I doing typing all this shit on this site full of people whose opinions I detest one and all? I guess it's this or dreadit, as far as I know, and those kids on dreadit are all, like, two. So I can post this for intelligent children there or dumb adults here. Myself being a dumb adult, I guess I'm doing it right. Anyway, I was going to talk about how weird it was in It's Alive is, especially the couples procedure in the beginning as they prepare for childbirth. The woman wakes up calmly and says "It's time," like saying "it's time to open Christmas presents." Then they get up in the middle of the night and casually - the man puts on a suit and the wife puts on a nice dress, they relish together the sight of their coming baby's empty crib, take the time to have a talk with their son and drop him off at some guy's house - there's no chaos and the pain of the experience appears minimal. The numbness is disorienting and inadverently helps the movie. Sort of minimalized the mother's experience which should be wholly enveloping. Instead it focuses pretty much on this surprisingly callous father and his staid decision-making once the child is born. At one point the wife shows some emotion so he just goes ahead and hits her. The strike is depicted like it's nothing, revealing how times have changed. Also, the superbly creepy score underscores the emotional detachment and deliberation of the (male) characters - which left a spookier, uneasily solemn impression upon me.

and holy shit yet again, friends (whose opinions I detest one and all), you don't know this but my wife is beginning to have contractions now so I've gotta get the fuck outta here. You don't know this but I am not gonna be able to finish telling you about my other Halloween viewing for a while. I LOVE YOU BYE FOR NOW


.... Okay, there. We've administered the epidural and she's fallen fast asnooze, pleasantly and painlessly.
As I was saying, I also watched, earlier:

6.) - and I really didn't like how bold blue looked on that last movie, so I'm going to try, um, bold green for FIRST TIME VIEWINGS now and forevermore. I think that's one I was originally doing anyway. Also, I just figured out I can just highlight the text now and then click the color and I won't have to type the [ color blah blah] and all that jizz. Not sure exactly how I have it set up, 'cause there are some buttons that are half-hidden, obscured by the format options and I forgot/never knew what they were.

So the other movie I watched was:
Prevenge (some year, UK) - oh shit, I pressed the buttons and the code just showed up normal for once, like I wanted it to. Okay. I feel like this this October Challenge is 3 things: (1) the 31 movies in 31 days, (2) the log of my first-born cursed child's birth, and (3) figuring out how the fuck to actually use this site efficiently.

My wife has been recommending Prevenge to me for a long time, way before she was pregnant, when it was still new back in some year. She expressed that she liked how she expressed how a woman can feel like her body turns against her in its reproductive state. So, that's fair. But, also to be fair, it was just a standard modern murder-horror, almost twee. And I don't like that. (I like other things instead (when it comes to my (personal) preferences).)

THEN, before I started typing all this on the 12th day of October, back on the 11th day of October, after watching Abominable Dr. Phibes, I put on

8.) Castle of Evil (1966, USA (I assume))
I expected it to be lame and it was, so I was satisfied. Like, halfway through, my wife had fallen asleep in her hospital bed and I realized my mind had been wandering the whole time yet the story was still pretty much where it had been at the beginning, just a bunch of people having conversations about some dead guy who - is he dead? Doesn't look like it, because there he goes killing someone. Now they're dead. So, who's the dead person now? Not the living people.


Twelfth Day of October:
Baby born! Happy and healthy.

Extra night in hospital.

Came home.

A week in, just taking care of my wife and child now in the house. Every night I start watching a new movie but fall asleep half way through, so I can't count them for the challenge. Hopefully this week I can find an afteroon and evening to finish each of them. Then I'll be caught up with the challenge. We're trying to keep the television off with the child around - myself, especially, I want to give the kid a mostly screen-free childhood. Or, rather, at least a screen-lite childhood. I watched tons of TV when I was little and it made me dumb. I'm dumb now. I'm looking at a screen now, being dumb. My baby's actual thoughts right now, not knowing anything, are probably literally just the word "Duhhhh." And that's smarter than me.
It's the 21st Day of October now, by the way.

Smoochies to all of you. I love you!


27th Day of October
I did some catching up, but I'm still behind. I'm not listing these in order I watched them, but in the order that I remember them. Here, lookit:
8.) It Lives Again (1978, U.S.A.)
9.) Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later (1998, U.S.A. - bad)
10.) The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970, UK - infant in a man's body!)
11.) Embryo (1976, U.S.A. - infant in a woman's body!)
12.) Pedro Paramo (1967, Mexico)
13.) APT. (2006, S. Korea - lame)
14.) The Medium (1951, Italy/U.S.A. - atmospheric/a musical)
15.) Dr. Phibes Rides Again (1972, UK - fun)
16.) Halloween: Resurrection (2OO2, U.S.A.)


17.) Antebellum (2O2O, U.S.A. - disappointing)
18.) Elvira - Mistress of the Dark (1988, U.S.A. - I finally have a crush on Elvira too)
19.) Earthbound (1940, USA)
20.) El bosque del lobo / The Ancines Woods (1970, harrowing at times. And different. Like Lokis)
21.) I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957, USA - surprisingly engaging)
22.) I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957, surprisingly dul after the previous movie)
23.) Teenage Monster (1958, USA - I can't be sure the monster in this movie was even really a teenager. It wasn't even really a monster, it was just a dumb ugly hairy guy. Unless the monster was supposed to be the girl who was the real black heart of the picture.)
24.) Teenagers from Outer Space (1959 - I was going to wrap up this 50's teenfest with a rewatch of Teenage Zombies too... but our God (Lord), e'er the tide-turner, willed another way upon mine head's route. Oh, oh!)

30th Day of October
Well, I thought I was going to be able to catch up easily. And maybe I can still catch up with a day and a half left, but it won't be easy. My newborn got sick and we're back in a hospital after 2 weeks. Going to have to be here for at least another week. Most of what I'm doing is sitting around and waiting. The intensive care unit has a TV to watch. However, AMC is just showing these dud Halloween sequels, 2 of which I've already watched recently - and I've gotta say, having seen enough of these movies now, so far I find Halloween so far the least intriguing and most head-shake-at-able of the slasher franchises. Then the TCM channel is no longer available on basic cable as of this month, so I can't turn that on, but the TV here does get that old-timey MOVIES! channel which actually shows some decent stuff. Last night they did a Vincent Price marathon so I was able to rewatch some stuff. I think I've already gotten in enough first time viewings but I can't tell for sure with all the dumb random colors I've been designating them in. I do have a laptop here, phone, a righteous Plex collection and some earbuds - but not very good reception here and it just doesn't feel like the right environment for putting on headphones which is too isolating when you're also caring for an ill crying baby and a scared wife.

25.) what color was I doing re-watches in? bold orange? I'm pretty fucking sure it wasn't, but that's what they are now.
The Fly (1958, USA - I first read the "novelette" in a collection my mother had when I was a little boy called Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?1846 which also included Ray Bradbury's "The Whole Town's Sleeping," John Collier's "Evening Primrose," "The Sound Machine" by Roald Dahl, "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby (The Twilight Zone story), M.R. James' "The Ash Tree" and a story called "Our Feathered Friends" which was basically The Birds before Daphne du Maurier's The Birds - anyway these were formative tales for my childhood, like a horror-honing elementary school. A lot of classics; check 'em out. Also, am never fucking doing this challenge on this site again because of how much extra little coding I have to type in because the buttons barely work in the year of our Lord, our Shepherd, 2O2I. I am not a coder. I am a casual fucking turd using a toilet paper site. I can barely toop, I mean type. I spent like 20 minutes trying to get the simple link to that book to attach to the title and still can't get it to the title to display the color purple and contain a link at the same time, no matter what method I use. And the text box size is all dinky under BBCode and I have to do too much scrolling because I'm such a 'tard / turd that I have to write uninteresting novels for each irrelevant thought I have on here. I'm using Firefox for mac, if that makes a difference. This sucks, everything sucks.

??.) The Last Man on Earth (1964, USA)
??.) The Bat (1959, USA)
I don't know if I am going to actually count those last 2, unless I end up absolutely needing the number of viewings in order to complete the challenge. I technically saw them as they were on TV in the same room as me, but my attention was also diverted at some points by talking to hospital staff, family and tending to a crying baby at the same time, so I wasn't entirely watching them with total focus. But I am certain that none (no, not one) of you other butt-individuals watching more movies than me are actually sitting down and watching all all of the movies you're reporting either. So if I need to count these, you may be God-darn-ed ensured that I shall.


31st Day of October: Halloween Day (the day of Halloween)
26.) Halloween (2018) (2O18, U.S.A.)
27.) Halloween Kills (2O21, U.S.A - zero stars out of any stars for both of these)
28.) Halloween II (1981, USA - rewatch, nothing special itself, but compared to the new movies it shines like heaven (where God lives); rating: half of a star out of a star (it half exists))
29.) It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive (1987, USA)


First day of November

I'm going back to count those 2 movies I was debating counting and I'm snatching them for the challenge. I watched them. They were on TV, I was in the room, I was watching them, I had some conversations and baby-changing during it. If I was in a movie theater with those movies playing while I did all that stuff, I would consider those movies "watched" movies.
So, here:
30.) The Last Man on Earth (1964, USA)
31.) The Bat (1959, USA)

There, I did it:
31 Total Horror movies (I win. I beat all of you.)

6 Repeat Viewings
25 First-Time Viewings

But what I didn't do is, I got a pumpkin but didn't carve it. So, what's the fucking point?

Nah, you're good. You made your comment before my baby was born. I watched Baby Blood in anticipation of the childbirth.

I said it all right fucking there. Nobody pays any attention to me. I'm just an old mushroom in the bottom of a forgotten cupboard. No one sees me, no one cares, I'm going to cut my own head off and feed it to a bunch of horny pigs. They won't even eat me then though because who gives a shit. I wish I'd never been born. Horny pigs won't even fuck my old decapitated head.