Editor’s Note: It is with a bittersweetness that we close out our annual October celebration of horror. For a fourth year in a row, our staff has dedicated countless hours to soaking their screens in blood and giving you 31 great films to watch. Hopefully you’ve learned something along the way, or at the very least had some fun discussing some wicked horror films… Synopsis: Halloween‘s Donald Pleasence and Carrie‘s Nancy Allen host a look back at horror movies and their effect on us, interspersed with clips from greats like Psycho, The Shining, The Thing, Night of the Living Dead, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Speaking on such diverse topics as sex, terror, Hitchcock, and villains, this 1984 documentary also throws some dramatic narrative into the mix.

When the calendar page turns to October, we Rejects have only one thought: horror. To celebrate this grandest and darkest of months, we’ll cover one excellent horror film a day for the entirety of the month. That’s 31 Days of Horror and 31 Films perfect for viewing on a dark, chilly, October night. If you, like us, love horror and Halloween, give us a Hell Yeah and keep coming every day this month for a new dose of adrenaline. Synopsis: After Warren inherits a nice slice of wilderness, he and a few friends head out on a camping trip to check it out. Unfortunately for Warren and his friends, there are a couple of residents who already call the land home – and a few of them are ready to kill to keep it. Also, they kill for fun.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Jack Finney’s novel “The Body Snatchers” gets its second film adaptation by Philip Kaufman in 1978. This time, the setting is changed from a small California town to the teeming metropolis of San Francisco. Donald Sutherland plays Matthew Bennell, a health inspector who stumbles across reports of people claiming their loved ones are not themselves. His colleague Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) faces similar stories and even suspects her live-in boyfriend Geoffrey has been infected. After conferring with Matthew’s pop psychology guru friend David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), they settle on mass hysteria as a cause. However, when Matthew’s other friends (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright) discover a mysterious body in the back of their spa, the group soon discovers an insidious alien force has come to earth with the ability to duplicate people.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: A prostitute becomes embroiled in a murder investigation when a psychopath butchers a woman in the building where she is meeting a client. Anxious to clear herself of any involvement, she teams with the murdered woman’s son to pursue the most likely suspect: a mentally-disturbed female patient of the murdered woman’s psychiatrist. But before they can tighten the noose around this maniac’s neck, our heroic duo find themselves being stalked by their own razor-wielding prey.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: “Long live the new flesh!” Good old fashioned body horror courtesy of the master of such things, David Cronenberg. Videodrome stars James Woods as Max Renn, the sleazy president of CIVIC TV, a Toronto-based TV station, “The One You Take to Bed With You”. The channel focuses on lower quality content, the kind of stuff we get after 1AM on Cinemax these days. Always on the hunt for something more extreme, more what he calls “tough”, Renn believes he’s found his station’s latest offering in the form of Videodrome, a faux snuff show he has come in possession of. But Renn soon believes he is involved in a global conspiracy when the truth about Videodrome and the people behind it begin to reveal themselves, and Renn’s already sick mind deteriorates into hallucinations and madness.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: A contemporary adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel, Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm (1988) begins with archaeology student Angus Flint (In the Loop’s Peter Capaldi) finding a strange serpentine skull in the backyard of an English cottage. After some research, Flint makes the connection between the skull and the “d’Ampton worm,” a giant malevolent worm that was conquered in nearby Stonerich Cavern. The direct ancestor of the worm slayer is the rather charming James d’Ampton (played by a rather charming Hugh Grant), who shares suspicions with Flint that the worm may still be alive under the grounds of their otherwise quaint English hamlet. D’Ampton’s seductive and often leather-bound neighbor, Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donahue) is an immortal, supernatural force subservient to the worm, and her seductive search for a virgin sacrifice brings about all kinds of over-the-top, schizophrenic greatness.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Where do you take Jason when he’s already been through the woods all the way to New York City? Why you take him to space, of course! In the distant future, Voorhees and his most recent victim are resurrected by advanced technology. Not one to care about details like the year or where the hell he is, Jason immediately begins dismembering people.

Can you smell the crisp October air? Then screw you, it’s in the mid-80s in Austin. Enjoy your sweater weather, I’ll just continue wearing shorts and flip-flops…in October. But no matter what weather you may be experiencing, it’s October the world over and that means it’s time for copious amounts of candy and scary movies. To celebrate this greatest of months, we here at Film School Rejects have decided to spotlight a different horror film every day all month long, in a feature we’ve cleverly titled 31 Days of Horror. These aren’t really reviews as such, think of it more as a list of our favorite movies that go bump in the night. These are the movies you want to watch at midnight with all the lights off. No cell phones, no laptops, no distractions. Environment is everything and really letting yourself get drawn into a good horror movie can lead to more than a few legitimate scary moments. I think you’ll be surprised. So turn off the phone, grab a bowl of popcorn, hit the lights and beam one of these fine films through your eyeballs. My choice? Australian import The Loved Ones. Synopsis: Brent’s dad is teaching him how to drive one morning. They banter back and forth playfully when a young boy stumbles shirtless and bleeding directly into the road. Brent swerves to avoid him, but crashes the car into a tree killing his father. Six months later, life is starting to turn back to normal, at least for [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Miriam and John Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) share a passionate longtime love affair, traveling the world and indulging their mutual taste for classical music and the blood of the living. Although John’s love for Miriam might last forever, his youthful vigor will not. After centuries at Miriam’s side, he begins aging at an accelerated rate. Like Miriam’s many past paramours, John seems doomed to a fate worse than death. Under the guise of finding a cure, Miriam begins courting her next conquest – sleep researcher Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon).

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Based on the novel “Let the Right One In” by John Ajvide Lindqvist the film Let Me In is relocated from Sweden to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a friendless boy, a victim of bullies at school. Not a day goes by when he isn’t pushed, shoved, harassed and threatened. With no one to turn to, not a friend, or teacher, not even his parents who are consumed by a bitter divorce, Owen retreats into  violent fantasies of revenge. One night a man (Richard Jenkins) and his daughter Abby (Chloe Moretz) move into the apartment complex and Owen becomes curious about the girl who only comes out at night, sits in the cold with no shoes or coat, but seems untouched by the frigid New Mexico winter. She looks ragged, she smells bad, her hair is lank and her are eyes dull. But even so, Owen is drawn to her. The next time he sees her she’s been transformed, no longer sickly looking, she looks like a pretty little girl. Owen will learn she’s without a doubt different from any girl he’s ever met.

Since it’s number 13, and we’ve all been infected with the Horror virus around these parts, this week’s column will be bloody and terribly scary. Well, not scary exactly (though I’m sure it could give Wes Craven’s decidedly non-trouser-messing recent stuff a good run for its money), but, like, dedicated to Halloween. Next week, with it being the last column before All Hallow’s Eve, I’ll be looking at some costumes you can pick up from the world of horror movies, so this week it’s all about murderous merch. Scary swag. Ghoulish goodies. And loads of other not-funny, but pleasant alliterative phrases in the same mold…

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Short version: Birds realize they outnumber humans about a million to 1 and decide strips of bread just aren’t cutting it any more. Worldwide attack ensues. Long version: Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), young, San Francisco socialite, stalks follows a potential boyfriend, the handsome Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), to his lakeside home in the Northern California town of Bodega Bay. There, Melanie meets his mother (Jessica Tandy) and young sister (Veronica Cartwright), and become acquainted with the small town. However, strange things are about to take place. Out of nowhere, the local members of the Avian 404 – read, the birds – decide it’s high time to turn their beaks and claws on the human population. Hitting sporadically and in large swarms, the birds begin attacking the fine people of Bodega Bay. The residents, some believing it to be a sign of the apocalypse, others not having a clue why this is happening, but all of them scared senseless, try to take refuge indoors. But it soon dawns on them that their only way of survival is to escape the town.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Some kids at a summer camp pull a prank that ends up having deadly consequences. But there’s a twist. The victim of the gag gone awry doesn’t actually die, he lives on as a deformed monster and one day returns to the camp where he goes about exacting brutal revenge on a group of horny, party obsessed teenagers. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so, but that’s not important. No matter how many of these Friday the 13th clones come out, they’re still all pretty entertaining in a cheesy way. And The Burning is definitely the cream of the crop when it comes to the pretenders, being just a notch below the genre milestones like Friday the 13th and Halloween, and certainly being better than their sequels. The killer here is Cropsy, a drunken and despised camp janitor who gets burned alive when some kids try to freak him out by putting a flaming skull in his bunk. His weapon of choice is a pair of gardening shears, which he uses to chop and slash tender young flesh. He’s silent, he’s dressed in black, and he kind of looks like a charred version of Sloth from The Goonies.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis In a manner that suggests that they have never seen a horror film, a young couple – Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and Steve (the always excellent Michael Fassbender) – head for a romantic weekend break to a wooded area around a lake. After being interrupted by a gang of local teenagers on the lake-side, but ignoring them, the couple find themselves hassled and then ultimately terrorised by the group after Steve confronts them. The situation quickly spirals out of control, and is then hurled dead-long into the realms of horror when Steve accidentally kills a dog belonging to the leader of the gang Brett (played with typical menace by rising star Jack O’Connell), and he seeks bloody retribution.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Hipster scientists Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) have humanity’s best interest in mind as they try to genetically engineer animals that can revolutionize medicine. After their would-be humanity-saving experiments tear each other apart, Clive and Elsa create a new creature with human DNA. Thus the couple begins a downward spiral of bad decisions with the best of intentions. Miraculously, this new creature doesn’t die, so they secretly keep it alive in the lab, hoping it can lead to medical advancements. Silly hipster scientists. As the experiment (which they’ve affectionately named Dren, which is “nerd” spelled backwards) matures, Clive and Elsa soon realize they are in way over their heads… and maybe a little turned on.

When the calendar page turns to October, we Rejects have only one thought: horror. To celebrate this grandest and darkest of months, we’ll cover one excellent horror film a day for the entirety of the month. That’s 31 Days of Horror and 31 Films perfect for viewing on a dark, chilly, October night. If you, like us, love horror and Halloween, give us a Hell Yeah and keep coming every day this month for a new dose of adrenaline. Synopsis: College students Alex (Maïwenn Le Besco) and Marie (Cécile De France)  journey into the French countryside with the intent of escaping the lure of partying and boys. They plan to focus on study while staying with Alex’s family in their quiet farm house. Unsurprisingly the picturesque country very quickly becomes frightening when an almost amusingly brutal killer terrorizes them.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: After a young girl is brutally attacked, Postmaster Otis P. Hazelrigg does what any good Postmaster would do – acts as judge, jury, and executioner when he organizes a lynch mob (shoot mob?) to exact justice on the suspected killer: the young girl’s mentally retarded friend, Bubba Ritter. Founding him hidden inside a scarecrow the mob extracts their ‘justice,’ only to learn horror rule number 37: never kill an innocent handicapped man, because vengeance and death soon follow.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: A small town becomes ground zero to an alien invasion, which reaches Earth in the form of alien slugs on a chunk of space rock. After the meteor lands in the woods, a local big shot Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) becomes infected with the alien parasite, which controls his body and memories. It’s a story we’ve seen many times before, and understandably so. Director James Gunn creates a loving homage to movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob and Night of the Creeps, in which the small-town sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion) must battle an onslaught of infected, zombified humans while trying to stop the spread of the parasite to the rest of the world. Helping the sheriff is his long-time crush and girl next door Starla (Elizabeth Banks), who also happens to be married to patient zero.

When the calendar page turns to October, we Rejects have only one thought: horror. To celebrate this grandest and darkest of months, we’ll cover one excellent horror film a day for the entirety of the month. That’s 31 Days of Horror and 31 Films perfect for viewing on a dark, chilly, October night. If you, like us, love horror and Halloween, give us a Hell Yeah and keep coming every day this month for a new dose of adrenaline. Synopsis The sardonic millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) is throwing a party for his fourth wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), but this isn’t just any party. He’s invited five strangers into an ancient mansion with a troubled past, a ton of ghosts, and a few people bent on murder. Whoever survives the night gets $10,000 and their life to take home with them.

When the calendar page turns to October, we Rejects have only one thought: horror. To celebrate this grandest and darkest of months, we’ll cover one excellent horror film a day for the entirety of the month. That’s 31 Days of Horror and 31 Films perfect for viewing on a dark, chilly, October night. If you, like us, love horror and Halloween, give us a Hell Yeah and keep coming every day this month for a new dose of adrenaline. Synopsis The Others begins with a scream when Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman)awakens from a nightmare. Grace and her children Anne and Nicholas live in isolation in a fog shrouded house on the Jersey Islands in 1945. She and the children had been living under German occupation, but even though the war has ended and the occupation is over life is still fraught with tension. The children are so photosensitive they will die if exposed to sunlight. The windows are shrouded in blackout curtains leaving them in darkness only relieved by candlelight or gas lamps. Grace’s husband Charles is missing in action and she’s on her own struggling to keep her children safe. Grace’s struggle to maintain an orderly life is disrupted by the arrival of three mysterious servants. The secretive trio arrives out of nowhere, but good help is hard to find so Grace hires them, leading them from room to room, instructing them on how to keep the children away from sunlight. It’s Anne who is aware of the others [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]