October is my favorite month, Halloween my favorite holiday. This October looks to be a busy one, but I’ll still make time to celebrate. First decorations went up on September 30th. For me, decorations will probably be up two weeks after Halloween, the last Friday the 13th of the year. My parents just stopped by the house for the night on their way down to the beach, and they brought me even more decorations, including my beloved Helga. Helga is a musical “statue” of sorts, with a button on the bottom that makes her dance along to “spooky” mechanical music. She is a very hideous witch, but I love her.

I remember watching my first scary movies in middle school with Mary Beth, but Mom says I watched them even earlier. She would come home from aerobics/exercise class to find baby me watching Jason movies with Dad. She attempted to put a stop to this, as I’ve always been prone to nightmares, but it didn’t work. Like many tween/teenagers, Scream had me hooked. Scream was the movie that brought the slasher movie to a whole new generation. This is the movie that made us go back and revisit the oldies. From Hitchcock to John Carpenter to Wes Craven to Sean S. Cunningham to Tobe Hooper to George Romero…I can’t get enough! I want to watch these movies all year (and I do!), but this is the month when my love of the gruesome and macabre actually becomes somewhat acceptable.

I wish I could go to school to analyze ONLY scary movies. Who cares about the dramas, independent films, or literary adaptations. I want to watch movies that scare the bejeezus out of me and figure out why they are constructed the way they are, why people die when they do. I think there is something much more complicated at work than what we give most slashers credit for.

On November 1st, I’ll post a list of all the scary movies I had the chance to watch this month. I started a little bit early, watching Rosemary’s Baby last weekend and My Bloody Valentine 3D the week before that, but that’s okay.