John Stell
Screenwriter
Well what the hell - here it is, the official thread for the 11th annual Scary Movie Challenge. Here are the guidelines that were used last year and seemed to work for everyone.
1. Watch 13 Scary/Horror/Halloween-Themed films before midnight on October 31, 2010 (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. Come here and talk about 'em.
4. 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.
5. 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. Running times are irrelevant. Short films count.
6. TV Shows officially count, to a point. They should be kept on a separate list to be tallied up at the end. The tallying is based on the following:
Anthology shows count as single entities. Each episode of "The Twilight Zone" is a self contained story, so each episode counts as one. Same with "Masters Of Horror" and other anthologies. These all basically replicate short films, if TV never came around, it would not be hard to imagine a "Twilight Zone" being a short subject before a film, and we've always counted those.
Episodic shows like "X-Files" and "Dark Shadows" now count, but not as single entities. Typically on shows like this, a season is a storyline, which would not be fair to count as one. So the compromise is this. The average modern horror film is 90 minutes, so episodic shows are counted based on this mark. So two episodes of a hour long TV show count as "One" title on the list, three 30 minute episodes of some other 30 minute horror based show ("The Munsters") would also count as "One" title on the list.
At the end of the challenge, the TV content will be added up, and then added to the final total.
2009 Ultimate Splatter-Heads
Mario Gauci - 110
John Stell - 109
Travis R - 100
Radioman 970 - 95
Pat W - 75
Ockeghem - 65
Russell G - 63
Jim K - 60
Tim Tucker - 53
Peter M Fitzgerald - 50
Joe Karlosi - 50
Jason Roer - 50
Sandro - 50
Larry Sutliff - 47
Chucky P - 45
Bob McLaughlin - 33
Malcolm R - 32
Official start time is October 1st in your time zone. Let the frightmares begin!
1. Watch 13 Scary/Horror/Halloween-Themed films before midnight on October 31, 2010 (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. Come here and talk about 'em.
4. 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.
5. 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. Running times are irrelevant. Short films count.
6. TV Shows officially count, to a point. They should be kept on a separate list to be tallied up at the end. The tallying is based on the following:
Anthology shows count as single entities. Each episode of "The Twilight Zone" is a self contained story, so each episode counts as one. Same with "Masters Of Horror" and other anthologies. These all basically replicate short films, if TV never came around, it would not be hard to imagine a "Twilight Zone" being a short subject before a film, and we've always counted those.
Episodic shows like "X-Files" and "Dark Shadows" now count, but not as single entities. Typically on shows like this, a season is a storyline, which would not be fair to count as one. So the compromise is this. The average modern horror film is 90 minutes, so episodic shows are counted based on this mark. So two episodes of a hour long TV show count as "One" title on the list, three 30 minute episodes of some other 30 minute horror based show ("The Munsters") would also count as "One" title on the list.
At the end of the challenge, the TV content will be added up, and then added to the final total.
2009 Ultimate Splatter-Heads
Mario Gauci - 110
John Stell - 109
Travis R - 100
Radioman 970 - 95
Pat W - 75
Ockeghem - 65
Russell G - 63
Jim K - 60
Tim Tucker - 53
Peter M Fitzgerald - 50
Joe Karlosi - 50
Jason Roer - 50
Sandro - 50
Larry Sutliff - 47
Chucky P - 45
Bob McLaughlin - 33
Malcolm R - 32
Official start time is October 1st in your time zone. Let the frightmares begin!
