The month that turns cinephiles into cliches

I like watching horror movies in October as much as the next guy. In fact, you might say I informally got things started when I watched (for about the seventh time) The Cell on Sunday night, the first of October.

I just don't like devoting structured viewing series to watching them as much as the next guy. And I'm a guy who likes structured viewing series.

I don't know why they think they're so original -- and that "they" might include you, dear reader, so if so I apologize -- but cinephiles of all stripes and sizes can seem to agree on one thing: When the calendar flips over to October, you're supposed to watch one horror movie per evening until Halloween.

Every year around this time I am inundated by people posting in my Flickcharters Facebook group, telling us about this great idea they have to watch a horror movie per night for all the 31 nights of October, like they are the first one ever to think that up.

You'd think this would only be the rubes who had just tumbled off the turnip truck, but no. For every guy who tells us that his 31-day movie night started and he just watched Cooties, there's the guy who has a far more sophisticated but essentially similar approach. Maybe it's only horror movies made before 1940, or only those made in Eastern Europe. But no level of cinephile credibility is spared from this cliche idea.

Now don't get me wrong -- I don't think it's a bad idea. I just think it's funny that it seems to strike each of these people as an idea that originated with them.

Probably the most inviting thing about it is that it's one of the easiest viewing series to be sure you can complete. I'll explain why.

1) Horror movies are plentiful. Especially in the era of streaming, there are just so damn many choices available that it's easy to find not only dozens, but hundreds of horror movies you've never seen. And you don't even have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. There's so much horror available out there that you can probably fill up 31 days with only legitimate ones you haven't seen.

2) Horror movies are short. If you're watching a movie per night over an extended period of time, as I can attest having done this recently myself, it helps to have choices that are short. That way you can do other things you may need to do and still squeeze one in -- even go out for the evening, possibly.

3) Horror movies are well defined. While some genres overlap with other genres, horror movies tend to be easily recognizable as horror movies. This is not to say there's no overlap between horror and other genres -- the horror comedy is many people's preferred method of consuming horror -- but horror is usually the most recognizable genre association for these films, making it easy to opt them in to your selection pool. And lending itself to easy categorizing on the aforementioned streaming services.

What's more, nearly all cinephiles have an interesting relationship to horror, whether they metaphorically bathe in the genre's blood or squeamishly resist for fear of getting nightmares. Because in that squeamish resistance there's a part of them that's compelled, since people are drawn to what they fear, and this is the time of the year when they seek to confront those fears.

Which is one of the reasons people don't do, say, 25 nights of Christmas movies leading up to Christmas: They don't have particularly interesting relationships to Christmas movies. That's an even more well-defined set of movies and they also tend to be short, but by being such a select set, there's a greater chance you've already seen the good ones. And the bad ones are really not worth your time. Whereas bad horror movies will often still scare or disturb you at some point, or at least cross over into "so bad it's good."

I like watching horror movies during October too. Nothing wrong with it. In fact, I encourage it. I will probably try to sprinkle five to ten among this month's viewings.

I'm just not interested in watching 31 horror movies in 31 days, and not only because it means I wouldn't be able to watch many/any other types of movies during an important time for new releases in building toward my year-end list.

Mostly, it's just because someone else, a million others, have already had the idea, and I don't want to be a cliche.