I managed to watch 43 movies during Octoblur 2015 — just over 66 hours — a few shy of last year's total, but still enough horror to make the days blend into one giant swirl of perversion. Yet, even though Octoblur 2015 saturated me to the point of burn-out with ghoulish imagery, it still feels like I left out 20 (or more) movies I really wanted to get to. Some of them will have to wait until next year.
While this year I tried to focus mainly on horror movies I hadn't seen before — or so long ago my memories of them had faded — two of my favorites of the month were my Halloween night viewings of The Funhouse and Ringu. I became fond of several new titles over the last month, but this year just didn't have anything that matched last Octoblur's knockout discoveries of Hausu, A Tale of Two Sisters, and Mo (The Boxer's Omen). I'll have to pick my selections more shrewdly next Octoblur!
Here's the run-down from Octoblur 2015, in order from best to worst:
- The Funhouse (1981)
Dir.: Tobe Hooper
- Onibaba (1964)
Dir.: Kaneto Shindô
- Ringu (1998)
Dir.: Hideo Nakata
- Goodnight Mommy (2014)
Dir.: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
- I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Dir.: Jacques Tourneur
- Ugetsu (1953)
Dir.: Kenji Mizoguchi
- Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Dir.: Werner Herzog
- The Loved Ones (2009)
Dir.: Sean Byrne
- Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)
Dir.: Narciso Ibáñez Serrador
- Prince of Darkness (1987)
Dir.: John Carpenter
- Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
Dir.: Barbara Peeters & Jimmy T. Murakami
- The Day of the Beast (1995)
Dir.: Álex de la Iglesia
- Nightmare City (1980)
Dir.: Umberto Lenzi
- The Prowler (1981)
Dir.: Joseph Zito
- The City of the Dead (1961)
Dir.: John Llewellyn Moxey
- Unfriended (2014)
Dir.: Levan Gabriadze
- Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1972)
Dir.: Brian Clemens
- Viy (1967)
Dir.: Georgi Kropachyov, Konstantin Yershov
- The Cure (1997)
Dir.: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
- Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
Dir.: John D. Hancock
- Scanners (1981)
Dir.: David Cronenberg
- Suddenly in Dark Night (1981)
Dir.: Young Nam Ko
- Mad Love (1935)
Dir.: Karl Freund
- Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980)
Dir.: Sammo Kam-Bo Hung
- Black Magic (1975)
Dir.: Ho Meng-Hua
- Bad Ronald (1974)
Dir.: Buzz Kulik
- Stonehearst Asylum (2014)
Dir.: Brad Anderson
- Pumpkinhead (1988)
Dir.: Stan Winston
- Beyond the Darkness (1979)
Dir.: Joe D'Amato
- The Burning (1981)
Dir.: Tony Maylam
- WNUF Halloween Special (2013)
Dir.: Chris LaMartina
- We Are Still Here (2015)
Dir.: Ted Geoghegan
- Ticks (1993)
Dir.: Tony Randel
- The Seventh Victim (1943)
Dir.: Mark Robson
- The Mummy (1959)
Dir.: Terence Fisher
- The Visitor (1979)
Dir.: Giulio Paradisi
- Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)
Dir.: Takashi Miike
- Burn, Witch, Burn (1962)
Dir.: Sidney Hayers
- Annabelle (2014)
Dir.: John R. Leonetti
- Spookies (1986)
Dir.: Eugenie Joseph
- The Gate II: Trespassers (1990)
Dir.: Tibor Takács
- Deep Red (1975)
Dir.: Dario Argento
- The Final Girls (2015)
Dir.: Todd Strauss-Schulson