Why can't we all just pick our own movies...?

You can. Those are just suggestions for the list of movies for people to share in that's completely optional.

For me, part of the fun of the challenges is deciding what I feel like watching each day, so I know I'm not likely to stick to a list of films that I have to watch on predetermined days. But I'm interested to see a list of "essentials." I used the previous challenges as an excuse to watch unwatched DVDs, but I realized recently that I haven't watched a lot of my favorite horror films in several years. So this year I thought I'd spend the last week or so in October watching those. The list might remind me to rewatch something I'd forgotten about.

My suggestions for the list: The Abominable Dr. Phibes and/or The Pit and the Pendulum.

I watched Trick or Treat today and it was more entertaining than the cover of the DVD case lead me to believe. I kinda recommend it.

Before I forget...
 

For the early birds that prefer to plan your lists in advance and include TCM programming in them, I've compiled the list of eligible titles from their October schedule:



Unfortunately it's a bit of a let down because there will A) be no Friday horror marathons :( like last year and B) things don't really kick off until the second half of the month. At least the last two days don't disappoint.

Obviously this will be placed in the main thread as well.

I'll nominate The Lady In White since it takes place around Halloween.

There's my Two Thousand Maniacs!

Thanks TCM

I'm not suggesting any changes, but it seems like there should be someway that "Tales from the Crypt" could count for more than just wildcards.

I would also suggest that people consider "Cube" as a title to watch in October. There are only a handful of horror movies that really had me on edge while watching it, and this was one of them.

Ah yes... 1 to 5 A.M., the perfect time to experience a Val Lewton movie. It looks as if I've seen and/or own most of the films on that list, with the glaring exception of The Beast With Five Fingers. This was rumored to be an upcoming DVD release, but I'm sure we would have heard an announcement by now if it were arriving in time for Halloween.

:banana:

No kidding!

Thanks for the advance schedule. Now I'm getting excited...

Agreed. DVD cover is just awful compared to the original poster....


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...-C10397177.jpg


This is one of my favorite guilty pleasures from the 80's - still very entertaining and perfect for watching around Halloween. I'll definitly be giving my dvd a spin come October

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/d.../049809-d0.jpg

I love the way Gene and Ozzy are front and center, despite the fact that both are barely in the film.

I feel the same way. I'm not participating in the group list. I've hit all the classics the last two years so I considered hitting more Drive-in and trash movies this year. A few classics will slip through, though. Texas Chainsaw on Blu-ray should be out by then.

But then should Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, Tales From the Dark Side, Monsters, Friday the 13th the series, Buffy and Angel, Goosebumps, Eerie Indiana, Groovy Ghoolies, Halloween episodes of Roseanne and other shows count, too?

The reason I singled out "Tales from the Crypt" is because they always seemed more like mini-movies to me than an actual TV show. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but maybe because it was on HBO and without commercials.

Like I said, I'm not suggesting any changes, but it seems like should count... but the way the challenge is structured and the history of the challenge, I am definitely not offering it as a change. I was just looking at my collection and completely forgot about that series...and it reminded me of how I felt about the series when I watched them as a kid.

Good suggestion, and good idea to use DVDspot stats to see what is popular.

But the longer lists contained some of the better comments and the more obscure recommendations. I just scanned every list, ignoring the obvious TV shows that I wasn't interested in, but seeing the nuggets of underground films , bizarre shorts, movies, and mini-series mixed in those long lists.
Just because some people had more time to watch some stuff you are not interested in, does not mean that their goals were off from yours, or that they didn't watch the same films you would most be interested in discussing.
Agreed. My OCD would kill me if we had two challenges in a month.
A couple of those would be new to me, sounds good.
I just think it would work better if we got decisive and had it finalized with at least 2-3 weeks to spare. People need time to buy or rent stuff.
That makes me think, perhaps instead of a definite title for each night of this supplemental fun, we could have a "Stephen King night", where each of us watch a King film of our choice. An Argento night, a Japanese night, etc. Just a thought.
Seconded.
Looks like I'll need to have my DVR completely empty by the 30th, just to even have a small chance to keep up with all that content.

I'd like to suggest something that is somewhat of a major change.

One pretty big problem with the list thread, imo, is that many people will miss many of the updates. Once everyone signs up to the list thread, there are few updates/email notifications.

I'm pretty committed to the group participation of these challenges, and I tried to go back and scan all pages of the list thread periodically to see people's updates. But even me, with my OCD and constant checking, probably missed a lot of cool comments. For example, last year the list only hit five pages, less than 200 posts (I imagine all of you are on the 40 post per page setting). How many people took the time to go back and look at all the changes on the early pages? I would imagine that many people just looked at the last page.

If everyone posted a weekly list instead of just one long list, there would be more updates to that thread, and more chance of people seeing everyone's comments. People have complained about reading long lists. Wouldn't it be easier to read four or so shorts lists than one huge list? And the shorter lists would be constantly coming as as new email notifications and bumps to the thread, rather than expecting everyone to constantly go thru the entire thread looking at lists trying to figure out what it new and what they have already read multiple times.

I don't think it would make the list thread too unwieldy. We had what, 130 lists last year? Some of us had to break it into multiple posts for space reasons, but even if everyone did four, or even seven, list posts, they all still fit in one thread.

I think I've failed in communicating this idea clearly, but it makes perfect sense in my head.

i fear change. i like the way it went last year and that's how i'll be doing it this year.

I'll just be posting one list. Last year I did, in fact, go back to the beginning of the thread and skim the lists for new ideas and comments on a regular basis, and I like having everyone's views all in one thread. I think the comments about reading long lists in the sci-fi challenge had to do with long lists of TV shows, which isn't relevant here.
I think if people run up against post length limitations, they can start a new post then, of course. Otherwise, I like keeping each list together.

To Trevor's comments:

1. I don't think the post length bug is there anymore. Take a look at my Sci-Fi challenge list. I kept anticipating that I would run into the bug, but it never happened. I even did a test and added about 10,000 characters to get an idea of when I would have to start my new list and it never gave be the bug. With the vBulletin update, though, who knows?

2. I can't speak for everyone, but for the last 3 challenges (Sci-Fi, Academy Award, and Holiday) if I reviewed the lists, it was all or nothing. I would do it at least once every few days and kind of just scan the edit dates for all the posts (or just re-scan everyone's lists.) I know that I may be in the minority, but that's how I would do it. Personally, I would rather have each individual's list in a single post.

I also used to scan the entire list thread periodically after my updates. I'd also like to remind more people to put a link to their list in their signature when the challenge starts. I recall it being a bone of contention one year when some people made new posts with every update. It made for a very cluttered thread.

I guess I'm in the minority, or even solo on that idea, won't be the first time.

I just thought I was in the very small minority of people that would actually take the time to go back and scan all the old posts, when only a few of them were getting regular updates.

With weekly posts, once we read a page, we'd be done with that page and never have to look at it again. All the updates would come in new posts.

Ah well, just trying to be lazy maybe, to leave more time for watching. My goal is only to do maybe 100 this year, mainly just to keep up with our possible daily mini-challenge, and to compete the checklist of course.

I don't remember if this was in the checklist last year, but I think we should add "watched a movie with a title that begins "Return of the" and "Attack of the"".

If we going to have a list of essentials, we must have at least one of the Vincent Price pictures (I recommend PIT AND THE PENDULUM) and one Hammer film (maybe HORROR OF DRACULA)