Working Title: 30 Ways to Get the Blood Out

Will Leschber on a Wednesday…

Ouch! You stabbed me in the eye…

We are days away from Halloween and obviously what everyone still needs is additional reminders on proper ways to celebrate this all consuming holiday. Grab your pumpkin lattes and get ready to pre-game your Halloween pre-party (before your actual Halloween shenanigans and obligatory hung-over post-Halloween festivities) with some entertainment fit to scare you out of your skin! I know it’s sacrilege to say, but I could leave the pumpkin flavored everything. Sorry lattes, cookies and cakes; I like you but like the Celine Dion song, my heart will go on without you. (That reference was from my dear wife…thanks honey, now every kid in middle school thinks I’m so cool!) Anyway, back to the point… I do love that this time of year reminds me to revisit something usually left on my preferential back burner. You guessed it…The horror, the horror!

The weekend is not only Halloween but also the closing performances of Awesome Theatre’s Terror Rama! This grindhouse theater mash-up of 90’s serial killer cop dramas and 70’s camp horror hilarity, beckons for late-night teenage sleepover nights spent watching all the terrible movies your parents never wanted you to see.

Initially, I was going to bound into a HORROR-ible rant about cinematic 70’s horror films and how they tower above the trash released today. While the best examples (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, etc.) are a cut above, generalized assessment serves no one. Sure, plenty could make the case about how the visceral immediacy of 70’s horror films strikes a deeper cultural artery than the less explicit films that came before and some of the lighter slasher fare to hit the marquees decades after. But saying this as a “be all end all” of betterness would be fallacy. Grand generalizations serve only to prop up narrow preferences or willful ignorance. I say this knowing that my horror cannon needs expanding. So it’s easy to only think about the name brand films (Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St, Night of the Living Dead, etc.) and dismiss the daggers in the rough.

Similarly, I overheard someone saying recently that it has been a weak year for movies. I hear this every year and I have the same annual reaction: if you care to look, there are plenty of impressive films out there. Most of the time people don’t seek out the best or are unaware that they exist. I say this because it applies to any genre cannon and scare-specifically the horror genre in this case.

Thanks to fellow blogger, Charles Lewis III, a list of the 30 best Indie Horror film was recently brought to my attention. Just in case you needed another list to slice up the season, I’ve provided it here.

So if you haven’t seen it, go catch some horror theatre (Terror-Rama) and check out one of these great horror flicks. I know you haven’t seen them all. Grab your pumpkin popcorn and stab a good time.