Still, like all kids I grew up, and after getting my hands on some books on special effects makeup (a technical fascination I’ve always admired) and reading of the great Tom Savini, I knew I had to see some of these films, if just for technical curiosity. One viewing of Dawn of the Dead later on IFC one Halloween when I was in high school, and I was set. I became a huge horror fan, and will always remain one.
So that comes to this list. I wrote this list last year on my personal Facebook page just for the fun of it, but as I look back on it now, my tastes have changed some, and so the placement of a lot of entries changed. Some went away, while some new young bucks (or old bucks, as it may be) took their places. I’m not going to claim to be a scholarly expert in the genre, not by a long shot. I can’t give you a socially relevant analysis on any obscure Italian horror film at the drop of a hat. What I can say, for sure, is what I enjoy. This list is going to contain 31 of my favorite horror movies of all time, one a day for the entire month of October, 2013. This isn’t going to be a pretentious list of the greatest horror movies of all time (so, sorry The Shining, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, Silence of the Lambs, Alien… the list goes on), nor will it be a list of what I think the best movies are (there are some choices on my list that are, for all intents and purposes, terrible movies, but it won’t stop me from loving them), but rather a list of 31 films that I truly enjoy as of late 2013. Ask me a year from now, and the list is sure to shift around, though most of these movies will likely be on it, if just in different positions. Given the number of contenders I had to sift through to make this list, getting it down to 31 was a true challenge (though initiating a rule of only one film from any series certainly helped there).
So, stick around (the list starts tomorrow), relax, grab some popcorn, dim the lights, and enjoy The Long Halloween, 2013!*
*Note: Enjoyment is not mandatory. Please feel free to disagree and call my selections crap in the comments, though I will also accept jovial debates.
-- Matt Carter
(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)