2008 HTF Scary Movie Challenge

It is that time of year again when us horror movie fanatics watch as many scary movies as we possibly can in the month of October. Hosted by the Home Theater Forum, some of the members do their best to take the challenge and not get burned out on horror. There are different levels of commitment for the challenge. Here are the rules from last year;

**Official 8th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge***

1. Watch 13 Scary/Horror/Halloween-Themed films before midnight on October 31, 2005 (use your own timezone to set the ending time).

2. Two of the above must be new discoveries, movies you've never seen before. The point of this is to see those few movies you've always meant to see, but never got around to. I recommend more than 2, but 2 is the minimum to pat yourself on the head and say you completed the challenge. Please specify new discoveries in your film list by making them bold, adding asterisks, different colors, etc.

3. If you were part of the challenge last year, no more than two of the same films can be RE-watched. I'll grant a couple since some movies (ie. Halloween, Rocky Horror) are simply tradition and I'm willing to give credit for these. (Revision: This only applies to those going for the 13 movie challenge)

4. Come here and talk about 'em.

5. There is an uber-category, the Ultimate Splatter Challenge for those who wish to put all of the rest of us to shame. This is the heavyweight division. These people, if they choose to accept the challenge, must view 31 horror/scary/Halloween themed movies before dawn on Nov. 1st. Ten new discoveries are recommended for this one. The rest of us will bow down in awed reverence to these truly "Splatterific" HTF members. The bragging rights will be awesome and long lived.

6. There has been discussion over the past two years as to what movies qualify. Is Silence of the Lambs a horror movie? Does The Nightmare Before Christmas count? From now on, if you wanna include it, go for it. There will be no hairsplitting. If The Wizard of Oz send you to the dresser for a fresh pair of boxer shorts, all the power.


There may be a few changes this year due to a few disgruntled participants who did not like some of the selections some other participants were counting as movies. I feel that since it is the Scary Movie Challenge, that it should be limited to actual movies and shorts cannot be counted simply because they have a horror theme. Some people during last years challenge included numerous shorts that ran under 10 minutes. It is a bit easier to get to 100 hundred movies when a "movie" is only 10 minutes long! Knowing that I would never have the free time to actually win even if I did include shorts, it does not really bother me that people include them. I will be interested to see if there is a change to the rules this year. Maybe there should be a certain viewing time required before it counts as a "movie". So it may be required to watch at least 3 or 4 shorts to count as one entry.

Last year I managed 40 films. I usually take off a day around my birthday and watch horror and exploitation type movies, so I manage to add a few to my total on that day. I am going to try my hardest to watch 2 movies per day this year. The problem I always seem to have is that Hockey season starts the second week in October, and it is hard to make the decision to not watch hockey and watch yet another horror movie. A lot of the members of the forum will also post reviews of the movies they watch, but I don't know how they manage the time to watch and write reviews.

Please wish me luck and join in! I will post s link to the thread on the HTF board as soon as it gets started.