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🔪🎃 SGTDF #4: SHOCKTOBER 2022 🎃🔪

I grew up with siblings who are all much older than me, which is both a blessing and a curse, I think?

A curse in that I never got to have the prototypical sibling relationship with someone close in age. Someone you go to school with, share similar hobbies with, play sports with, go to the mall with, fight over toys with, etc. 

As an adult I’ve come to realize this is something I’ve long desired, but also realized that as a result, my closest life-long friendships are essentially sibling relationships in most respects.

On the flip side, one of the main perks of having older siblings is you get to be privy to some cool stuff early on in life (plus, they have jobs and can buy you good presents on your birthday), or at the very least get exposed to things earlier than you should (watching Pink Floyd’s

The Wall

at six will change you).

A horror origin story

For me, my love of horror starts, in part, with my sister Nancy (an important horror name in and of itself), who has always been the biggest horror fan that I know.

Coupled with my mom being employed at a local pharmacy with a connected video rental business upstairs—this was the late eighties/early nineties, remember—and you’ve got a cocktail for an addiction to all things gruesome. 

When I was a kid, I’d often go to work with my mom, either on a day off from school or in the evening when dad worked late, and “help”/hang out.

Part of this meant wandering through the video racks and, like many people my age, getting thoroughly freaked out by absolutely grotesque VHS covers peppered with fluorescent “HORROR” stickers or cardboard standees of Freddy Krueger that were double my size. 

Where Nancy came in handy, though, was being able to tell me what these movies were about before I was ready to actually watch them.

Some snuck through—one time my mom thought she was renting

The Goonies

for us to watch when it was, in fact,

Ghoulies

. Very different.

Also, Nancy scarred me for life watching David Cronenberg’s

The Brood

while babysitting. I only just brought myself to rewatch it for the first time since in 2021—and it still fucked me up!

Very different.

Through Nancy, I learned how

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

didn’t feature Michael Myers and was therefore not worth watching (2022 take:

Halloween III

is actually great and most fans have come around on it), let alone filling me in on the Myers/Strode/Lloyd family lineage. 

Without watching a single frame, I learned not only the go-to favorite horror trivia fact that Jason is not actually the killer in the original

Friday the 13th

, but also that he doesn’t acquire his iconic hockey mask until

Part III

.

I learned that the guy from

Cry Baby

(Johnny Depp in the 1990 John Waters musical I watched on repeat as a kid) got his start facing off against Freddy Krueger in the original

Nightmare on Elm Street

.

The first horror movie I remember actually watching all the way through was Steve Miner’s

House

(1985) starring William Katt of

Greatest American Hero

fame and George Wendt (Norm from

Cheers

).

House (1985).

A movie I’m obsessed with to this day; it’s the perfect amount of creepy and zany to appeal to a kid. It’s got gags like the hero babysitting a toddler while also trying to wrangle a sentient disembodied hand.

But it’s also got the hero breaking through a mirror into a dark nightmare dimension to save his dead son, while coping with the destruction of his marriage and PTSD from Vietnam.

I’d always leaned toward the macabre in some way—growing up at the height of Tim Burton, it was hard not to. From

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

to

Beetlejuice

to

Batman

‘89 and on, it was easy to be sucked in by things that were a little spooky and weird but ultimately safe.

On weekends, my dad and I used to stay up late and sleep in the basement to watch

Tales from the Crypt

. Most winter breaks consisted of never-ending marathons of

The Twilight Zone

.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

was more beloved than anything else on Nickelodeon (though

Doug

was pretty close). I read

Fear Street

and

Goosebumps

 and Christopher Pike with a religious fervor. 

Come play with us

The tipping point, where I turned from horror movie-curious to horror movie-obsessed came somewhere in the mid-90s where I saw Stanley Kubrick’s

The Shining

for the first time.

It was on network TV one weekend, which I’m sure means it had some of the more graphic imagery cut for S&P reasons, but it didn’t matter. It 

wasn’t

safe. Not for a ten-to-twelve-year-old who had never seen a movie where every frame of celluloid was completely fucking haunted. It's a testament to the movie that even adhering to network TV standards didn't sand down its fangs.

The Shining (1980).

I literally couldn’t sleep for days, yet I also went directly to the library to dive deep on Stephen King.

Around this time also happened to be the post-modern resurgence of the slasher horror film that started with

Scream

in 1996 (or, arguably, with Wes Craven’s

New Nightmare

in 1994), and suddenly, between Nancy, my own (early Internet) research, and the references laced throughout

Scream

, I had a horror movie syllabus (starting with John Carpenter’s

Halloween

, obviously). 

The magic of a horror movie syllabus is that it never ends. There are always new horror gems popping up, even—perhaps especially—in the world of streamers.

There’s even a whole horror streaming service in Shudder (I got it for Nancy for her birthday, duh)! But even better, there’s a never-ending backlog of horror movies waiting for you to discover them. 

Even just recently, I watched Anthony Hickox’s

Waxwork

(1988) for the first time and it was one of the wildest movies I’ve ever seen. If David Lynch’s name was on it I’m convinced it’d be revered in the same way as

Twin Peaks

.

Prince of Darkness (1987).

I also filled in a John Carpenter (the GOAT) blindspot with

Prince of Darkness

(1987), which is severely underrated and is a fascinating return to clever low-budget filmmaking following

Big Trouble in Little China

the year before.

Last year I saw

Event Horizon

(1997) for the first time, and holy shit, what a bonkers, hardcore movie. Point is, there’s always more to watch, even when it’s from your all-time favorite directors.

A non-horror example: I’ve been watching a lot of

Columbo

, the first regular (non-pilot) episode of which… directed by a mid-twenties Steven Spielberg! 

So once the leaves start turning, Halloween candy usurps grocery store end caps, and Sam Adams Octoberfest is flowing, I know it’s time to start building one of my favorite annual watchlists: Shocktober.

Of course, everyone (or at least reasonable people) watches horror/spooky movies during the Halloween season, but for the last ten years or so, I’ve been committed to October being 31 days of deliberate, carefully planned programming. 

The rules of horror movie watching

There are a couple of guidelines that I’ve worked out over the last decade: 

1. There should be a healthy mix of new-to-you movies and classic staples (I prefer about 70/30, which means some traditional faves may be left out).

2. There should also generally be a good variety of subgenres (slashers, vampires, zombies, ghosts, etc.), though I don’t force myself to watch things I know I’m not interested in (James Wan-adjacent stuff like The Conjuring universe of movies, torture porn like Saw and Hostel, etc.). However, I will admit this year is slightly heavy on vampires, thanks to one of my favorite podcasts, The Evolution of Horror, being in the midst of a terrific vampire season.

3. There must be some palette cleansers in there—horror comedies, family-friendly spooky movies, campy horror—things like that.

4. Substitutions are allowed when a movie is unexpectedly unavailable (I try to make sure things are attainable before I make my list, but streaming rights are fickle, and some DVDs are hard to find in a pinch).

5. Most important: your phone goes in a different room and the lights go off. 

The last few years,

I’ve used Letterboxd to keep track of my programming schedule

, which also makes it easy to share among friends. If Letterboxd isn’t your jam, I’ve put the 2022 calendar down below. (Here’s

2019

,

2020

, and

2021

if you’re interested).

This year, there are a few things I’m doing for the first time, like including an entire franchise spaced out across the month in

A Nightmare on Elm Street

(2010 remake not included).

Dream Warriors

(Part 3) is a Shocktober staple, but probably due to the fantastic

Stranger Things

Season 4’s major

Elm Street

vibes, I’ve been itching to watch them all in a row (and what a great excuse to finally buy the Blu-ray set!). 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987).

I’ve also planned around the release of

Halloween Ends

on October 14, though I’m not planning a rewatch of the Blumhouse-era

Halloween

movies to prepare (and I’m saving the original

Halloween

for the Big Day).

Normally I’d over-prepare for a release like this, but I didn’t love last year’s

Halloween Kills

(but I love 2018's

Halloween

), so I don’t feel compelled to revisit it quite yet. 

2022 has some perennial favorite omissions that still might make their way into my eyeballs at some point regardless (the aforementioned

House

,

Trick ‘r’ Treat

,

Bride of Frankenstein

, and 

The Blair Witch Project,

to name a few), but I’m pretty excited to dig into all of these movies.

Prior to 2020, it was always difficult to be able to fit in a movie every single day, but for better or worse, being stuck at home (and now working from home permanently) has made it far easier to get ‘em all in. 

But reader, I’m curious to know what your own Halloween viewing traditions are.

Is it just one night of watching spooky movies, or is it a month-long celebration like me? What are your annual staples? What

don’t

you like? What movie does everyone seem to hate that you love? What has nobody ever heard of?

Are you one of those “psh I don’t get scared” weirdos or are you in-tune with your own fears enough to let the cold hand of death brush up against your cheek?

I wanna hear it all. 

Happy haunting, 

Joey

SHOCKTOBER 2022 CALENDAR

P.S.

Nancy’s birthday is in October, which is very fitting.

P.P.S.

My wife Amanda put on an incredible event for her work at the Maine Maritime Museum, called Pints on the Pier, in which she organized a bunch of local Maine breweries and food trucks and a sold out crowd to raise money for the museum. I’m very proud of her. If you come to Maine, visit the museum.

My biggest Batman story to date, a 4-part arc called “The Murder Club,” kicks off in Batman: Urban Legends #20 on sale October 11! This is truly a “holy shit, I can’t believe they’re letting me do this” kind of story, drawn by the incredible Vasco Georgiev. I’m very excited for people to read this one. Parts 2, 3, and 4 will follow in issues #21, 22, and 23 in November, December, and January respectively.