RIDLEY'S HALLOWEEN HORROR MOVIE MARATHON 2018: THE HISTORY OF HORROR EDITION
THE PREAMBLE
It's October 1, in the year 2009, and I did something on a whim. With the help Netflix, I decided that I was going to watch a horror movie a day for that entire month. At the time, there really wasn't much of a reason than to take advantage of the ease that Netflix provided in being able to watch films in the first place, and as such, I dived into whatever was offered. I remember very little of the films that year, and in the pre-Letterboxd era, it's tempting to question whether they existed at all, but I did my due diligence and was able to accomplish what I set out to do: one horror film a day for all thirty-one days of October.
It's October 1, 2010, and I'm getting ready to watch another batch of films. Thanks to Netflix's licensing at the time that gave them access to the likes of Blue Underground's then-impressive library of horror films, the year certainly felt far more successful. Disaster nearly struck, however, when one night the internet had gone out in the neighborhood and I was left with few options. However, with a Best Buy nearby, I quickly headed over to pick up one of those public domain box sets with horror films in them just to have something for that night. While the film itself was nothing impressive (The Pyx, for those that might ask), it did highlight something that came as a surprise: what started out as a whim had now turned into something far more substantial and worthwhile.
It's October 1, 2011, and I'm in a motel room with my dad as we're staying the night, in the process of moving all of our belongings from one end of the country to the next, and I have The Beyond playing on my iPod Touch. This third marathon was the very first one that I had done proper programming for, and since we were moving, I had made sure that at least the first three films I had lined up were loaded up on there, as the trip was set to last no longer than a couple of days. There was no getting around it at this point: I was dedicated to diving into this wonderful genre, no matter the circumstances. This also turned out to be the first marathon in which I watched more than thirty-one films, if only ever slightly, which laid the groundwork for what was to come.
It's October 1, 2012, and I'm about to watch forty-six films in the span of a month. While I had decided this year to add in rewatches for films I had seen at least once, I had made sure to stick to a rigid quota of seeing at least thirty-one films I had never seen before, with that year winding up with thirty-four in total. This was also the year in which I bought reference books to help me find films I had never heard of before, in the hopes of finding the kind of under-the-radar films that I so long to experience, leading to me programming theme weeks for the first time. And even before the marathon would even begin this year, I was already working on the list for the following year.
It's September 29, 2013, and it has now been five years since I first embarked on this wild adventure. With fifty films lined up for the month, and taking advantage of the extra four days, I would be looking forward to five full weeks of films. This was a major high point as I felt very satisfied with the work I was able to put into the year's programming, and even the week I had done on revisiting films that I was never hot on felt like an achievement. Well, except for once again enduring Cabin Fever for what I can only hope is the last time ever. However, the struggle was definitely real this year with my work-life balance, so it wasn't a complete success, which made me a bit leery of doing something this big the following year.
It's September 28, 2014, and even with the reduced number of films to look forward to from the previous years, I'm very excited for the batch I have lined up this time around. I decided to go back to watching new-to-me films exclusively, which meant that I had little to go on beyond the blurbs I had read about that got me interested in them in the first place. And even though I accidentally started a new tradition this year by establishing October 6 as the day I accidentally watched something terrible, as this was the second year in a row where that happened, the highs were incredibly high regardless. And despite an impromptu vacation weekend, I had once again pulled my resources to ensure I would be staying on top of the marathon by any means necessary, though a laptop is certainly more acceptable than my long departed iPod Touch! There was the sense, though, that I needed to spruce things up a bit to bring back some of the excitement of not knowing what to expect that the theme weeks had diminished somewhat, and I would think on that for the rest of the month
It's October 1, 2015, and I'm getting ready to unfurl my latest ambition. For the first time ever, an entire month would be united under the same theme, and it would be a deep dive into 70s cinema. Rather than coming up with specific theme weeks, I took the opportunity to watch all the films I had lined up without much thought put into when, resulting in an exciting change of pace where I had little to expect. The result was a jolt of energy that I hadn't had before, which meant that this slightly different format seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. If this was this fun, what would happen if I took the logical next step for a year of just the 80s?
It's October 1, 2016, and I'm about to watch fifty films in thirty-one days from the decade I was born into, and all without a single slasher film among the ranks. Indeed, that little caveat turned out to be the linchpin for the entire operation, as I had to get creative in the films to look at and find stuff that would have otherwise been a bit outside of what I mistakenly assumed was my comfort zone. I even managed to find four animated films to join the festivities, which I had never done before and enjoyed immensely. But it did weigh heavy on my mind that if I was going to keep this going on its logical track, that my ninth annual marathon would focus on the 90s, would I be able to find enough films to make the marathon worthwhile?
It's October 1, 2017, and I've got what will wind up being fifty-four films, all from the 90s, ready to go. While a certain website drama did tamper with me getting reviews written for every film this time around, I could hardly not believe it that when by the end, I had watched my most satisfying marathon to date. Whether it was the thrill of rising to meet the challenge of finding a troubled decade's most worthy films or the intentional uptick in international content to delight the budding cineaste in me, it resulted in a resounding success in terms of enjoying so many of the films that were on offer. But where do I go from here, heading into the tenth consecutive year for the marathon, one where I unexpectedly topped my previous high score for amount of films to watch and already being someone well versed in the offerings of the beginning of the twenty-first century until now? It's a question that weighed heavy on my mind, and one that I didn't find the answer to for a while. That is, until a particular book gave me a bolt of inspiration and madness that I had never considered up until that point...
THE THEME
At my local book store, I came across a copy of the book Horror! The Definitive Companion to the Most Terrifying Movies Ever Made. What caught my eye was seeing that it was a collaboration between well-respected horror critics Kim Newman and James Marriott. Always on the lookout for new reference material, I had instead made an important discovery in this tome's format. As they had gone over the history of horror films chronologically, every section was separated by decade, and even before I had gone through the book for new films to peruse, I had decided on the theme for marathon right then and there.
The history of horror films, from the beginning up until now.
THE CHALLENGE
What I was about to embark upon was no small task, as I knew already I had never attempted anything like this before, and as such, that meant I had to be sure that this was what I wanted to do. The entire 122-year history of horror on film is virtually the history of film itself, and diving into its origins and seeing what it would eventually shape itself into was daunting even for normal number of films that I watched this month. But such a feat had to be even bigger than that, as this genre has taken such a hold of me that I couldn't allow myself to a halfhearted treatment for something so near and dear to my heart. My original thoughts on keeping it simple had now turned into a project so ambitious that I'm still not sure if I'm up to the task. But I am willing to meet it head on and see just what I'm made of.
THE PROCESS
The book I already mentioned was instrumental in not only its inspiration for this year's theme, but for also suggesting films I wouldn't have heard about otherwise. Combine that with my long-lasting resources from previous years still being quite helpful, Letterboxd's own lists that helped me out immensely on a particular style of film that would help to ensure that I would get the full scope of what this genre began as and what it continues to evolve into.
THE FILMS
The Haunted Castle 1896
A Terrible Night 1896
The Vanishing Lady 1896
The Haunted Castle 1897
The Bewitched Inn 1897
The X-Ray Fiend 1897
The Astronomer's Dream 1898
The Cavalier's Dream 1898
The Devil in a Convent 1899
Faust and Marguerite 1900
Bluebeard 1901
The Haunted Curiosity Shop 1901
The Devil and the Statue 1901
The Monster 1903
The Infernal Caldron 1903
The Infernal Cakewalk 1903
The Merry Frolics of Satan 1906
Satan at Play 1907
The Sealed Room 1909
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1912
The Student of Prague 1913
The Avenging Conscience: or 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' 1914
The Golem: How He Came Into the World 1920
The Phantom Carriage 1921
Danse macabre 1922
The Unknown 1927
Prelude 1927
The Cat and the Canary 1927
The Skeleton Dance 1929
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1931
Vampyr 1932
The Old Dark House 1932
Danemon Ban: The Monster Exterminator 1935
Mad Love 1935
Song at Midnight 1937
Phantom of the Opera 1943
The Uninvited 1944
The Picture of Dorian Gray 1945
Dead of Night 1945
The Beast with Five Fingers 1946
Scaredy Cat 1948
Isabelle aux Dombes 1951
House of Wax 1953
It Came from Outer Space 1953
The Tell-Tale Heart 1953
Lust of the Vampire 1957
Terror Is a Man 1959
The Ghost of Yotsuya 1959
Black Pit of Dr. M 1959
Mill of the Stone Women 1960
The Curse of the Werewolf 1961
Opus 5 1961
Hands of Purple Distances 1962
Thanatopsis 1962
Kwaidan 1964
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul 1964
This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse 1967
Viy 1967
Hour of the Wolf 1968
Horrors of Malformed Men 1969
Ashes of Doom 1970
Why Try to Escape from Which You Know You Can't Escape from? Because You Are a Coward 1970
Don't Deliver Us from Evil 1971
Malpertuis 1971
Demons 1971
The Demon 1972
The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water 1973
Bell from Hell 1973
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom 1975
The House with Laughing Windows 1976
God Told Me To 1976
The Signalman 1976
The Shout 1978
Within the Woods 1978
Fisheye 1980
Living Dolls 1980
The Ravishing of Frank N. Stein 1982
Human Lanterns 1982
Seeding of a Ghost 1983
Mr. Vampire 1985
Geometria 1987
White of the Eye 1987
Evil Dead Trap 1988
Baxter 1989
The Awakening 1990
The Guardian 1990
The Sandman 1991
The Monster 1993
Aftermath 1994
Tokyo Fist 1995
Habit 1996
Katasumi 1998
4444444444 1998
Genesis 1998
Outer Space 1999
The Nameless 1999
Spiral 2000
Catharsis 2001
Pulse 2001
Chambre jaune 2002
Dark Water 2002
Ju-on: The Grudge 2002
The End of Our Love 2003
The Strange Portrait of the Lady in Yellow 2004
The Ordeal 2004
Marebito 2004
Haze 2005
Santos Palace 2006
Fido 2006
Left Bank 2008
Embodiment of Evil 2008
Cold Fish 2010
The ABCs of Death 2012
We Are What We Are 2013
WolfCop 2014
Evolution 2015
Cat Sick Blues 2016
Always Shine 2016
Another WolfCop 2016
Slice 2018
Apostle 2018
Halloween 2018
With a mix of feature-length films and, for the first time ever, a very healthy smattering of short-form films, I wound up with a preliminary list so large that I had to go the extra step further to ensure a proper celebration. It was decided then that the final count for films this marathon would be as many years as there have been since the birth of the genre on screen, for a grand total of 122 films!
That's right, we've hit the triple digits for the very first time, and if you decided to cut out all the short films, we're still looking at an unprecedented 70 feature-length films for the marathon this year. It's a gargantuan set of films no matter how you shake it, and I've come up with a way to help ensure the path to victory:
1. A head start! Rather than squeezing this into five weeks, I'm going to start this year's marathon on September 23 for a whopping six weeks of horror films.
2. No viewing limits! Each day will have at least one film being watched, of course, but with such a big list to get through, there are no caps on how many to watch per day. To help establish that goal, the early silent era films will be watched on the very first day of the marathon, for a total of twenty-two films! Though it helps that the first twenty would struggle to fill two hours total, it is nevertheless the setter of pace and tone for the rest of the marathon.
3. No crazy typing goals! I love to type at length about films, but I realize that it's not only not possible in six weeks time to write at great length on every film, but with some of the films this year clocking in at just a couple of minutes in length, there's really not much one can type about them in the first place. This certainly doesn't preclude lengthier reviews if the film calls for it, and I can already see a few films where that will have to be the case (anthologies in particular), but I'll be typing up my thoughts immediately on completion of a film and do my best to write something brief yet satisfying about them.
This is undoubtedly the most ambitious thing I've ever done as a watcher of film, and while I can't say at this point just how successful I'll be in the end, I do know that I've already come this far and my passion burns with a intensity of a star, and I know that's all I need to get me going to stay on the path for what's already the biggest marathon I've ever done, but what I feel deep down will be the most accomplished one ever.
