Some ideas ill throw out....

eliminate wild cards
eliminate the dusk of sept. 30th and go back to midnight
Have a theme night "before they were stars".. horror movies with mainstream stars before they were famous
Evelyn Ankers under movie star
No more surprise special days(ie.. sept. 13th)

Since they're limited anyway, I don't mind them as they actually solve more problems than they cause (so far as I can tell).

I like that, although the definitions will necessarily be hazy - "stars" and "before"...

Oh, yes. That was what I was thinking - thanks for jogging my memory! I would like to see several continuing names under the stars/directors/writers/etc. categories. I would suggest a (personally policed) caveat whereby you can't just watch the same film every year, but have to widen your horizons a little bit. Or watch two (or more) for certain people (Lugosi, Cushing, Karloff, Price, etc.).

I feel that the names lists don't always reflect the genre as a whole because of the attempts to keep them 'fresh'. To clarify: I like that they change, I just don't like that they change that much. Last year was my first year, (as most years will be someone's first) and I was as baffled by the lack of important names, as I was by the inclusion of rafts of people I'd never heard of...! (Ultimately, the 'never heard of's were useful for horizon-expanding, but I feel there's a danger of skewing things because of this lack.)

I think that particular idea - reasonable as (I thought) it was - did not really gain any support. So it's probably unlikely to even be suggested the next time it happens, which could in any case be several years away!

Woot Woot!
I disagree with every single one of these suggestions.

I think Death Via Chainsaw was an effective checklist item this year and want to see more like this. Maybe R rated movie where no one dies or Popular Fashion trend makes identifying killer difficult (Same gloves, shoes, ect). That last one is obviously a bit too long for the checklist but I like this idea.

Random idea to increase subset picks participation. For every two subset movies you watch you get 3 entries. Say you watched ROTLDIII and Killer Tongue. ROTLDIII would be worth 1 and Killer Tongue would be worth two 2.

Both those might also be hard to find films for unless you've already seen them previously..!

That aside, and unless the "no one dies" is a spoiler, I do really like that one.

Hm. I wonder if that wouldn't be too complex. Perhaps one entry per ten films, but not much more than that, or the number of entries would begin to get flooded and complicated.

I can see an arguement for some.. but whats wrong with the theme night pick or evelyn akers?

They just felt week.

Before they were stars should be a fun surprise not a mark to hit, it takes all the fun out of it.

Also just not impressed with Evelyn Ankers's offerings.

^BuMp^

Just rehashing what I said on the Facebook page...

Since I'll be posting the main thread in less than a month(!), I just wanted to remind everyone that the planning thread is always open. If you have any suggestions for whatever post it in there here up until the discussion thread goes up. And that especially goes for Checklist and Theme Nights entry ideas. The plan is to get those done at least somewhat earlier so the 31 Film Subset isn't being worked on right up until the last-minute yet again.

And yes, Dick Smith was added to the checklist.

As always the link to this thread is in my sig.

Less than a month. Wow! Can't wait.

Large concurrent horror sheep challenge?

It's so close! Can't wait for this!

I second all these suggestions!

Since we have people chiming in regarding the start time, I'm in favor of keeping the dusk start time.

I agree; for a lot of us staying up after midnight for the 1st isn't practical because we have work that day.

I say keep dusk, even though the purist in me wants to keep start at midnight... it sure is fun diving into horror films as soon as dusk arrives (plus the crossover with Criterion Challenge is nearly a tradition now).Technically nothing about the October Horror Movie Challenge is "practical"... but that's what I love about it.

My opinion (which I may have already stated in a past year) on the dusk/midnight start time issue is that I'm a purist. As such, the September 30th start time bothers me...but I've found two workarounds, both of which I've used:

1. I treat the night of September 30th as a "pre-challenge" viewing time, and while I list the film or films that I watch, I don't include it or them in my totals. I only tally films that fall in October proper.

2. If I'm not up for the "pre-challenge," I just start at midnight. Nobody (as of yet) has held a gun to my head requiring that I start watching movies at dusk. So it turns into a non-issue, and everyone's happy and gets to start when he (or she) wants.

I know that with my regular work schedule, and especially my schedule this fall (full-time day job and teaching two night classes), I'll never win the challenge. That's not even the point. I just want to have fun and try to catch the subset list film every day. If I can do that, I'm happy.

I don't care about start times.

I'd be happy if people could just use their own judgement to watch whatever. Odds are that even someone with borderline decisions would watch one plain old horror film.

Throw out the counting requirement. If someone wants to do it, that's fine.

Think of another contest besides the "name movies from the poster" that's done every year. It's no surprise and with google image search, it's not that much of a challenge.

Instead of trivia contests, do something like "Tell me your favorite Vincent Price film". Post results and pick a random winner.

No special prize drawings for things like completing the checklist. Give them a shiny badge they can put in their signature for completing it.

I like this idea. I've been listening to the now defunct "Yeah, It's That Bad" podcast, and they have a question of the week that always seemed to drum up discussion. Using your example, if I'm asked about Vincent Price, I would be compelled to throw on a Price flick and also explain my answer in the discussion forum.

Absolutely keep the dusk start time... heck move it to Sept 1st even, I cannot get enough of this challenge

I really like this contest. It's exposed me to a ton of posters and movies I've never even heard of.

The poster contest feels like part of the tradition; and I liked how last year it was a random drawing open to anyone who correctly listed a number of components so more a drawing open to anyone than a question of speed or skill.

Also, I don't think anyone had resorted to Google Image Search (and it's not clear to me that'd work on some of the jumbled image fragments). Even if technically an option I know I "won" the poster contest twice the "old fashioned way" and had fun looking through poster by poster on some horror movie websites till I recognized images (presumably that worked better than anyone with technology assist).

Recently found an amazing link for this one.

Don't think that will be a problem.

Never participated in one and know very little about them, but wouldn't be opposed to it.

The result of plugging last year's banner into Google's search by image:



Click on pic for everything.

Maybe I'm a bit biased due to the fact I go completely overboard on creating the banner, but I gotta disagree on this one. Back when it was asking to name every image a good 95% of entries identified less than 10% of them. Even when it was changed to naming 10 or whatever it was there were still quite a few wrong answers given. So I'd definitely say it's on the challenging side, and, well, nothing wrong with at least one prize giveaway that you have to work for, right?

This I can get behind.

If it was a random drawing as long as you guessed something, that's fine. I thought I remembered it was whoever got the most right.

I mainly have memories of people letting competitions getting the better of them and drama showing up. I also remember thinking Trevor's idea of not counting things was crazy but I'm more laid back/tired/old now and like his idea.

I was thinking more of cutting out the individual images and searching each of those. I'm probably over thinking things since I'm at work and in the mindset of problem solving.

*WHY* did I click on that? My head hurts...

I like the idea of counting things. I don't think I'll ever really get to the top number of views as others here, but it's fun to see how far I can go. Also, I do enjoy seeing just how many people have seen.

Mainly though, I enjoy talking with everyone on this forum and discussing what we're watching. If someone has seen way more than normal, let them. The focus should be the spirit of the season, the movies and the conversations.