Your Halloween 2008 Mega-Bloody DVD Shopping Guide (Mwahaaaa!)

This really is my favorite time of the year: Days are just warm enough, nights have that slight autumn-ish smell, you start seeing pumpkins, black cats and Saw sequel posters everywhere ... ah yeah: Halloween is coming! Now obviously I'm not into candy like I used to be (just give me a plain Hershey bar and I'm happy), but I do love the fact that even HORROR has its own season. Like, if you enjoy being scared, October's the month to do it in. Could be PG-rated chills on a hay ride with your six-year-old, could be a goofy pre-teen sleepover where moms does that "eww, these grapes are eyebaaaaalllllllls" trick, or it could be my kind of Halloween season: Packed to the rafters with digital terrors.

So as I was perusing the schedules and doing the "ooh, gimme" thing on a bunch of DVDs, I thought it might be more fun to do it publicly.

September 9 & 16

For the fans: Brand-new widescreen special editions of Child's Play AND Pupmkinhead! OK, and the Beetlejuice special edition -- even though it's the lamest SE since Poltergeist.

For the family: Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour. Anyone?

For red-blooded men: Tiffany Shepis in Nympha, Jamie King in They Wait.

For the masochistic: Uwe Boll's Seed and his "comedy" version of House of the Dead.

September 23

Dario Argento returns with The Mother of Tears (which is wild), Tara Reid battles the Vipers (which is hilarious), and the star of Heroes deals with some painful Pathology. Also today: The Pang Brothers' Re-Cycle, which I hear is wild.

September 30

A whole LOT of schlock seems to be hitting the shelves this week (my favorite title: Flu Birds), but the big titles -- relatively speaking -- are probably the DTV sequels Pulse 2: Afterlife and Rest Stop 2: Don't Look Back. As far as festival titles go, I could recommend smaller flicks like Five Across the Eyes and Summer Scars -- even though they're not your typical horror films. Oh, and today we get a Special Edition of Redneck Zombies. Been a while since I've seen that one/

October 7

Here come the goodies: Straight from the festivals we get Wicked Lake, The Devil's Chair, the very amusing Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, and the long-awaited Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds. For fans of the video sequels we get Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead, and for those who keep holding out hope we have M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. From the catalog department we're getting a swanky new edition of the original Psycho -- and a seamy new edition of the infamous Faces of Death. Now there's a double feature.

October 14

Today belongs almost exclusively to the eight new titles from Lionsgate / Ghost House. I can vouch for these ones: Dance of the Dead, No Man's Land: Rise of the Reeker, and The Substitute (aka Vikaren). The jury is still out on the other five: Brotherhood of Blood, Dark Floors, The Last House in the Woods, Room 205, and Trackman. Also today: A new import with the awesome title of Tokyo Gore Police and a forgotten slasher from the '80s called Sweet Sixteen.

October 21

We get a popular theatrical release (The Strangers), an unintentional comedy (David Hasselhoff in Anaconda 3), a low-budget chiller (Trailer Park of Terror), and a three-disc special edition of Rob Zombie's Halloween -- which sounds like more punishment than pleasure, but that's just me.

October 28

Your last chance to big up some digital devilry before the big day ... and here's what's available: The awesomely-titled Zombie Strippers, Troma's Poultrygeist, the video game prequel Dead Space: Downfall, and a whole bunch of semi-obscure genre nuggets that should please some of the older fans. I'm talking titles like Patrick, The Beyond, Strange Behavior, and PIECES! Title of the week: 13 Hours in a Warehouse. Now that's descriptive.

Let me know if I overlooked any DVDs that you're looking forward to, and feel free to share your own Horror Film Mini-Festival slate.