Welcome to Wasted Weekend! Welcome to October! This is undoubtedly my favorite month for candy shopping, pet accoutrement acquisition, home décor choices, and movie watching. I never have a shortage of stuff to watch the rest of the year but it's extra fun when more people are getting in the spirit of things and various streaming services give up the spooky goods. I will probably keep the focus keenly on horror films this October but there will be some other movies to yap about so these will be particularly overstuffed watchlists.
I do a horror movie challenge every October where I watch at least 31 horror movies - however this year I'm finally participating in Cinemonster's HoopTober Challenge over on Letterboxd. I had a lot of fun putting my list together so please check it out if you want some inspiration for your own watching or merely wish to judge me silently. Another new wrinkle for me this year is that I'm participating in the Unsung Horrors podcast #HorrorGivesBack fundraiser where I will pledge to donate at least one dollar for every movie I watch this month to the Trevor Project - a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth. If you've got the ability I'd highly recommend joining this effort or make donations based on your movie watching to the charity of your choice. The Unsung Horror folks did a great list of prompts for ideas this month if you need yet further inspiration.
The horror films are starting to flow like pumpkin spice from just about every streaming service around and it's the beginning of the month so there is much to discuss!
The first big news in streaming is that Kino Lorber has started a new, free, ad-supported site called Kino Cult. As you can imagine, there is some overlap with existing libraries but after rooting around on their site for a bit I think I found some items that aren't particularly represented other places. Kino's been in the eurocult game either via their own discs or doing distribution for other companies and that's well reflected in their initial offerings.
Hatchet for the Honeymoon - There are a bunch of excellent Mario Bava offerings on Kino Cult but for whatever reason Hatchet has been one of the harder ones to come by. It may not be one of Bava's more celebrated films but I'll watch the maestro's compositions any time.
The Nude Vampire - Again, there are several Jean Rollin films on Kino but this is the one that seems hardest to track down at the moment. It's only his second feature and I noticed it gets a cheeky reference in the excellent Lips of Blood so I'm looking forward to it.
The most extensive collection of eurocult films that don't seem to be elsewhere are those from Jess Franco. A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Female Vampire, and The Diabolical Dr. Z are all films that I had been struggling to find outside of physical copy (which I love but I can't always buy everything) or dicey transfers on YouTube. All in all this seems like a really promising start and I would love to see some of the harder to find non-horror titles from Kino find their way to streaming - Road to Salina for instance.
I confess that I'm a bit of an Arrow fanboy, I think their streaming service is excellent, and they are still offering a 30 day free trial for the curious. Arrow is doing 31 days of horror film choices if you want to hand over the controls to someone else - it looks like they will have some good stuff to offer. Personally I'm more interested in their curated Shocktober Essentials lists which break down some of their catalogue into categories like "gore" or "giallo." A couple notable things they're offering new this week is slow burn Ozploitation chiller Patrick and 80s slasher The Initiation which if nothing else offers some Clu Gulager action and who doesn't love that?
Tubi usually has great horror offerings year round but the recently added Alison's Birthday is another Australian film I've been meaning to catch up to. This one is actually getting a physical release as part of Severin's massively wonderful folk horror box set but if you need a preview or couldn't commit to the set, Tubi's got you.
I started watching the occasional shot on video movie mostly because of October movie challenges and now not only do I include them in my annual binging but I watch them throughout the year. I would highly recommend you open your heart (and risk your mind) to some SOV action this October and while I'm not entirely certain that Things is where you should start it will certainly give you a hearty dose of the outsider, murderdrone vibes that resonate so strongly with some of us. Things was recently added to shudder but is on Tubi as well.
It wasn't my intention to get into non-horror movies this month but I had to make a note of some great movies cropping up. So this is for the non-horror people or for you to file in your notes when you have the time. 10 to Midnight is back up on Prime - it's definitely not horror but you could make the argument that it's at least slasher adjacent. A naked karate killer is dispensing with young women and Charlie Bronson is definitely too old for this shit. Midnight is crammed with cop movie clichés but it's Bronson and J. Lee Thompson so it totally works. PlutoTV just added one of the great vet-sploitation movies - Rolling Thunder - featuring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones as a pair of army buddies getting brutal vengeance on the pack of thugs who killed Devane's family (and shoved his hand down a garbage disposal). HBO Max has added a lot of good stuff this month but I wanted to mention a trio of outstanding neo-noir films The Yakuza, The Long Good Friday, and Night Moves - the latter of which you can hear me ramble about on The Trylove Podcast. They also added bittersweet heist comedy Going in Style which like many 70s films featuring Art Carney I can't beseech you enough to seek out.
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