The 31 (Baddest) Days of Halloween: Countdown begins Friday!!

Halloween is descending upon us rapidly. It’s that time of year to wrap up the yard work and stock up the pantry full of canned goods to survive the annual winter zombie assault. It’s also that time of year that the stores churn out Horror movie goodies, Horror movies flood the theatres, and it’s also that time of year that us Horror fans like to express ourselves and our elite love of all things Horror. Lists will be compiled, “The 31 Days of Halloween”, Horror Movie Marathons will run rampant, limitless quantities of candy will be consumed…

…and I will do no fucking different. Halloween is my holiday. (MINE!!) For many others they can’t wait for Christmas or one of those other sissy holidays but for me Halloween is where the evil is and where I will be. I love Halloween: the spirit, the atmosphere, the weather, the movies, the candy, another installment of Saw. (I really do look forward to it…you all know by now my love of punishing myself) So it is of no surprise that I will celebrate this festive time of year with a countdown my own. I will countdown 31 movies throughout the entire month of October leading up to the intense (and highly anticipated) Halloween Horror Night All-Day Movie Scarathon. On Halloween.

A lot of people like to countdown 31 of their favorite Horror movies or the all time scariest movies. Not here. Only the baddest of movies in existence live here.

As I pondered what kind of bad movie list to put together, the perfect idea came to me. If you’ve been reading some of my posts over my short time blogging then you are aware of my love of Full Moon and of the owner/operator Charles Band. So for my inaugural list I will present to you the 31 Greatest Bad Movies Charles Band Has Ever Produced! Or as it will be known: The 31 Baddest Days of Halloween: Charles Band.

Or something like that.

But in case you are completely clueless on who Charles Band is and what the fuck a Full Moon is, allow me to explain. Charles Band has produced, directed, or written well over 200 movies. All horribly awesome. The man started making movies in the 70’s which led into the epicness of his career in the 80’s. During that time, he started Empire Pictures which churned out TONS and TONS of awesome horror movies. Empire eventually fell (ironically) and then in the early 90’s Full Moon was born. Full Moon partnered with Paramount to churn out a bunch of low budget straight to video horror/sci-fi movies. During the early 90’s into the late 90’s they put out a shitload of spectacularly bad movies. It wasn’t that they sucked, they were just so fucking insane and out of this world that they were the single most entertaining pieces of shit that you have ever seen. And for several reasons you wanted more. If one of the movies Full Moon put out was even remotely successful there were tons of sequels made for it. All of them infinitely worse (but BETTER! depending on your point of view) than the one before it. But eventually Paramount cut the cords on Full Moon in the late 90's and they pittered away for a few years. They still put out movies during that time but they were on a horribly subpar level when compared with the mid 90’s greatness. So subpar in fact that Charles Band changed the name of the company to Shadow Entertainment because of how unlike Full Moon these movies were. Well just recently, in the last…oh 4-5 years, Full Moon has returned and is making a HUGE comeback. Charles Band, being the ultimate badass that he is, stepped back INTO his company. He became more involved with Full Moon’s projects: writing, producing, and directing a lot of the features. And since that time the quality of badness coming out of Full Moon has risen 2000%. (It’s a real statistic…probably) New ideas for insane movies have risen, better and crazier sequels have surfaced, and the future is looking brighter and brighter with each passing day.

That is Full Moon. That is Charles Band. He is my hero. (perhaps the greatest hero of them all) He is doing what I want to do with my life. He makes bad movies FOR A LIVING. He owns a castle in Europe. They go there to shoot movies. He travels the world shooting movies. Bad movies...around the world. He has a close relationship with his fans. He’s constantly having contests for what movie they should put on Netflix or what should the next sequel be called in whatever franchise. He does regular podcasts on the Full Moon website updating all of us Full Moon fiends of the goings on at HQ. Someone pitches him an idea for a killer Gingerbread Man movie starring Gary Busey…and he says that’s fucking awesome. Charles Band and Full Moon Features have more entertainment value and originality per minute than anything Hollywood has to offer. And for that, I dedicate the month of October at Mr. Gable’s Reality to Charles Band and all of the amazingly horrible movies he has made.

To compile a list like this took some effort. Not so much figuring out which movies I love the most but widdling a list of well over 200 movies down to 31 took some time and reflection. But in the end, I’ll be counting down 10 movies that I HAVEN’T SEEN but look incredible, 11 movies that are just fucking awesome, and then I will end the month off with my Top Ten Charles Band movies. So WHY am I including movies that I haven’t seen? Because I can…and I also know that of all the movies that I have seen of his I know there are more out there that are far more incredible. And for our mutual enjoyment they will appear on this list. Also, the problem is that now a days a lot of these films are really hard to find. The chances of them being on Netflix are slim, even though I know Charles Band is doing his best to get them onto DVD but until that time I’m stuck with what I see on YouTube and hoping to find it at a used VHS store.

And all of this will be leading up to my annual Halloween Horror Night Movie Marathon. It’s a little something I started 7 years ago and I hold close to my heart. Basically, it's that day of the year when I take a chance on movies that I've really wanted to see but for some reason just couldn't bring myself to actually see. And I make a day of it. I haven’t worked out all the details yet this year but you’ll be sure once I do that you’ll be the first to know about it.

And finally I want to throw out a big thank you to all who are reading this. It’s really incredible to know people out there care enough to read about the shit that I write about. Who knew all this crap would be interesting to anyone else? I especially want to thank the (currently) 13 followers I have and the countless phantom readers out there. (From around the globe even!) Your support means the world to me and I hope that I am in some small way adding joy and (just terrible) knowledge into your lives. Thank you. Thank you so fucking much.

Look for the badness to begin this Friday, October 1st.

- Mr. Gable