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 greatest fear any woman has comes to fruition when author Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) moves to a quiet Louisiana town to complete her novel before its deadline. She took her first misstep five minutes into her supposedly pleasant stay when she brushed off the advances of the town’s young lothario Johnny (Jeff Branson) at a gas station. Johnny would not stand for this type of treatment, especially in front of his two equally twisted friends Stanley (Daniel Franzese) and Andy (Rodney Eastman). After they discover the simple-minded, puppy dog of a man Matthew (Chad Lindberg) had not only been in Jennifer’s rental home to fix a leak but also received a thank you peck, the men and the sexually twisted Sheriff Storch (Andrew Howard) take it upon themselves to terrorize the young woman until she breaks. Unfortunately for them, they had no idea of true, brutal terror.

It’s time to put an end to it. Since David Edelstein’s 2006 article about Hostel, the phrase “Torture Porn” has been bloated short hand for any movie that features torture or excessive gore. Beyond being a misuse of the term, the problem with its spreading like an infection in an open wound caused by a crowbar is two-fold. One, it’s been tossed around so liberally that it barely has any meaning anymore. Two, when it does have meaning, it’s used as a loaded gun to take down a certain brand of film that deserves more thoughtful criticism.

The 1958 film Corridors of Blood is a loose depiction and dramatically hightened story about the discovery/invention of anesthesia in 1840′s London. Dr. Thomas Bolton (played by Boris Karloff, the godfather of horror actors) is the surgeon destined to find the cure for patient suffering in medically necessary amputations and other major surgical procedures after seeing the traumatic aftereffects on one of his former patients. His desire evolves into obsession, and his obsession leads him into unintentional addiction to the drugs he’d been testing primarily on himself. His reliance on the chemicals to both feed his compulsions and further his research causes others with less noble intentions to blackmail the doctor into fraudulently signing death certificates so that money can be claimed for the cadavers of murder victims.

None of this sounds particularly horrific, does it? Well, it’s about as horrific as it sounds. It truly is an emphatic representation of a horror gray area. The only components in the film that are found commonly in the horror genre are murders (though not gruesome) and a few actors who appeared frequently in many of the Hammer horror productions (Christopher Lee and Francis Matthews) of the 1950s through the 1970s. However, contained within the content of the film is an unintentionally representative depiction of human attraction to withstand watching others in serious pain. Dr. Bolton is not only a surgeon, but a professor and all of his surgeries in the film are done in the presence of spectators who are either wanting to learn, or want to see how quick the doctor can be in order to minimize the extent of excruciation.

If you need a little somethin’ somethin’ to numb your brain while you watch human mutilation, why not try this on for size. Like Jigsaw might say: “Would you like to play a drinking game?”