The grand finale of the channel’s October horror programming: Daniel (@dungeondive) took on the 31-movie challenge and won, delivering capsule reviews of everything he watched — 32 films once a forgotten anthology sneaks back in. Ratings run a four-tier scale from “not recommended” to “highly recommended.” The discoveries are the joy here: The Satanic Rites of Dracula with Christopher Lee as a vampire CEO fronting a satanic cult, Álex de la Iglesia’s The Day of the Beast as the only film he’s seen approach American Werewolf in London’s tone, the livestream found-footage gem Deadstream, and the southwest-highway anthology Southbound. The maulings are equally fun — the 2022 Hellraiser is the month’s worst (too murky to see, switched off before Pinhead even appeared), joining Return to Salem’s Lot and The Incredible Melting Man in the bin. His top five new watches: Fall’s 2,000-foot radio-tower survival ordeal, the video-nasties fever dream Censor, the unspoilable One Cut of the Dead, both Happy Death Day films — and at number one, Barbarian, an “unequivocal masterpiece of primal horror” that had him waking up at night. Poltergeist, his annual rewatch, sits above the ranking entirely.
Daniel called Barbarian a masterpiece and binned the new Hellraiser. What was your best blind-watch discovery from a horror marathon — and which acclaimed film did you switch off?