Greetings, Nextlanders! And a happy October to all who celebrate what is indisputably the best month of the year. I don't just say that because of my oft-mentioned love of the Halloween season. I just love the onset of autumn, and also somehow like half the people I'm friends with have birthdays in October. I'm telling you, all those other months? Chump months. This is the money month, right here.

And yes, I also love it because it means I get to scare the skin off of all of you with our annual spooky Watchcast lineup, and this year's is, I think, one of the best lineups we've done for an October.

The theme? It's a loose one, but we're calling it Dark Temptations. Each of these movies involves some fiendish bargain or another that doesn't quite pan out the way you'd think. Sometimes it's a magical puzzle box that tears your soul apart, sometimes it's a mysterious substance that gives you the youth you've been desperately craving. And sometimes it's just sexy vampires. In all cases, these movies feature the kinds of tempting offers you should absolutely turn down if ever presented. Especially the puzzle box one.

Here's what we've got on tap this month.

Monday, October 5th: Hellraiser (1987)

Ah, the reason for the season. And I'm not just saying that because this is one of my favorite horror movies, but because this is the movie that the whole theme for this month spun out from. We've been talking about doing it forever, and the soon-to-be-released Hellraiser: Revival game provided a perfect opportunity to finally put this one in front of the guys (who had not seen it before).

Though it is certainly of an era (and a budget), Hellraiser still stands as one of the most creatively goopy horror flicks anyone's ever made, and it's probably the gnarliest thing we've watched for the Watchcast so far. That said, apart from all the hooks and skin peeling, the movie is a surprisingly intimate affair. Almost all of it takes place in an old house, the most recent resident of which ran afoul of the movie's famous monsters, the Cenobites. Pinhead and the gang aren't an enormous feature of this one, which is more or less how it is in The Hellbound Heart, the novella Barker wrote with the idea of turning it into this movie. They certainly make an impression when they are around, though.

If you're sensitive to depictions of gore and bodily harm, this is probably not the movie for you to engage with. Again, it's very much of a time, and the effects are representative of that, but probably best to go in with the assumption that you will be seeing a lot of skinless bodies, among other horrors.

Where to Watch

Monday, October 12th: Needful Things (1993)

Moving from one very famous horror author to maybe THE most famous horror author, we have the '90s film adaptation of Stephen King's Needful Things. I will admit that this is the most self-indulgent pick of the month for me. I already had an itch to revisit it after not having seen it in quite a long time, but I got extra curious when I researched what the critical reviews were like for it when it released. Critics didn't care for this one, believe it or not!

Look, King adaptations are always dicey, and this one, directed by a nepotism hire who had never directed a feature film before, isn't exactly The Shining. But for a 13-year-old who saw this for the first time during a sleepover with some horror-minded buddies (I.E., me), this movie was a hit! And a big part of that is the great Max von Sydow as Leland Gaunt, a mysterious man who comes to the sleepy town of Castle Rock, Maine to open up a very special antiques store, one that always seems to have the precise object any given resident might be looking for. Of course, those objects come with a dark price.

This movie also has an absolute embarrassment of great character actors hamming it up, including J.T. Walsh, Amanda Plummer, William Morgan Sheppard, and Major Garland Briggs himself, Don S. Davis. Less hammy is Ed Harris as the town sheriff and protagonist, but you do get to hear him attempt a Maine accent, which is novel.

Will this live up to my ancient memory? Or was Roger Ebert right to call this a profoundly depressing affair? We'll find out together!

NOTE: There are two cuts of this movie, but we're watching the theatrical cut. The TV cut, which is three hours, in 4:3, and only available on the home video release, just isn't the ideal way to be watching this, so we're sticking with the more readily available version. Also, if you're sensitive to pet deaths on screen, there is one in this movie. It's not a long or labored scene, but it's still the sort of thing I'd prefer to warn about ahead of time so those with such sensitivities aren't smacked with it unawares.

Where to Watch

Monday, October 19th: The Substance (2024)

Here is our most recent film on the slate, and the only one among this year's offerings that Brad is the sole viewer of up to this point. I've seen some parts of The Substance because I'm on social media, and when you are on social media, you have a better than average chance of seeing chunks of every hit movie clipped up in random presentations with didactic titles like "The beautiful actress made a terrible bargain for her youth!" Now I'm finally gonna watch it for real!

Demi Moore earned herself a rare horror-aligned Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging actress desperate for a solution after she's fired by her producer for being too old. She turns to a black market drug that promises to rejuvenate her, and ends up with what one might call Unexpected Consequences.

All I really know about this one is that it's got some inventive body horror stuff in it, that Demi Moore is doing some terrific work, and that the whole thing is shot like a particularly deranged cartoon. Beyond that, it'll all be new to me (and Vinny, too). Looking forward to it!

Where to Watch

Monday, October 26th: The Lost Boys (1987)

FINALLY, Greasy Sax Man is coming to the Watchcast.

Genuinely, I've been trying to come up with a good reason to do The Lost Boys for a while, and Brad's recent enthusiasm toward seeing it for the first time solidified for me that it needed to be part of this month's lineup. And it even fits the theme! After all, the whole movie revolves around what happens when a teenager is tempted by the myriad benefits afforded to those who enjoy the vampire lifestyle. In this case, those vampires are also a bunch of rowdy teens (or, at least, still hold the appearance of them), and who wouldn't accept the opportunity to experience eternal life, fly around beautiful Santa Cruz, California, and occasionally drink the blood of the innocent?

Part horror, part adventure, part coming-of-age drama, and part showcase for an extremely oily man with a saxophone, The Lost Boys is a movie I come back to every few years or so, and I'm always delighted by its less-than-subtle queer subtext, its profoundly '80s soundtrack, and its unbelievable cast (Jason Patric! Kiefer Sutherland! Dianne Wiest! Jami Gertz! Alex Winter! The Coreys!). It's a fine line director Joel Schumacher often walks between entertaining camp and unbearable ridiculousness, but this movie is probably one of his greatest successes at walking that line. And we get to show it to Brad for the first time! How fun is that?

Where to Watch

And that's our October schedule! We'll let you know what we've got planned for November when we get to the end of the month, and of course, Star Trek Summer* will finish out in December with the final six episodes of Star Trek season 3. Hope you all enjoy this month's movies, and that you have a pleasantly terrifying October!

--A