Ah… the month of October. A perfect time for many things. The weather is nice, the colours of the leaves change, a new season is in full bloom, and a whole new kind of holiday is right around the corner. This is the month of Halloween and I love it! The decorations, the sense of fun, the entire horror mood, the cool costumes, everything. This is easily my favourite time of the year, and I have a lot of reasons behind why. For now though, let’s go to the beginning! This is how I got into both, Halloween and horror films.

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As a kid, I always loved the idea of wearing costumes. Even when it wasn’t Halloween, I always wanted to have something to wear. One week, I’d be in a superhero mood and would want a superhero costume; and other times, I’d be in a detective & spy mood and would wanna look like one of the guys from MAD Magazine’s Spy vs Spy. Them or Ace Ventura. Hey, it was the 90’s and my imagination went places.

Anyway, everything about Halloween got me excited for the whole month. From eerie graveyards and Gothic castles, to haunted houses and nice suburbs for trick-or-treating, I loved it all. I didn’t get a chance to go trick-or-treating in a suburb until later (largely because the area where I lived didn’t have many other homes nearby), but I still found a lot to love about the season. One of those things, of course, is watching horror films.

Even though a lot of the crazier films were a little frightening for me at a young age, I still wanted to watch something and work my way up. I did see some genuinely freaky movies at a young age, but for the most part I watched movies like Gremlins 2, Beetlejuice, and especially Ernest Scared Stupid, essentially getting into the idea of funny kid-friendly horror movies.

Not long after that, The Monster Squad got me excited at the idea of watching the classic Universal monster films with its updated takes on Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Wolfman.

 

Best… line… ever!

In another area, video games were also getting me intrigued for more graphic & creepier things. Splatterhouse was one of these games. Then there’s the original Resident Evil, which took everyone by storm with its gameplay and bloody violence. It’s hard to take the original game seriously these days because of the dialogue, but that does make for a very funny time and it fuels my love for B-movie type of horror. In addition, Zombies Ate My Neighbors is also great with its cartoony take on zombies and monsters. And, of course, the Castlevania games also provided a great mood for Gothic type of horror with plenty of influence from the classic Universal films.

All these things not only led to me watching more horror films, but also immersing myself more in Halloween itself. Learning about its history is always fun, and going into stores full of costumes, props, toys and decorations also makes for a good time. If I had enough money, I would be buying literally everything to use in my own horror films. But for now, until I can do those bigger things, I’m glad I can enjoy the time of year like this and talk about it.

This is the first time I’ve done Halloween-themed content throughout the month, so I hope you’ll stick around and enjoy it with me. Thanks for reading, there’s more to come!  🙂