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trwesterman.bsky.social
@trwesterman.bsky.social
270 followers 260 following 710 posts
Writer. Movies. Rock & Roll aficionado. Horror fan. Political genius.
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trwesterman.bsky.social
If we can’t have campaign finance laws because they limit speech, maybe we should require instead that political donations require a matching, discretionary fund to payfor the winner’s agenda. Pay $55 million to beat Mamdani obligates you to give his agenda $55 million in funding.
kendrawrites.com Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 3d
"In the weeks before Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral dream went up in smoke on election night, a handful of independent spending groups backed by New York City’s oligarchy spent more than $55 million supporting the ex-governor or attacking his ultimately victorious rival, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani."
Cuomo Backers Burned $65 Per Vote, Including $13.3 Million From Bloomberg
A blizzard of outside spending on ads, including a spot that linked Zohran Mamdani to 9/11, failed to move voters and may have even backfired.
www.thecity.nyc
November 8, 2025 at 12:23 AM
trwesterman.bsky.social
I don’t know who the latest Fox blonde is—I block Fox—but I saw this excerpted clip and now can’t unsee this:
#fox #election
A blonde on Fox mouth tweeting blonde things. ATweety Bird plush toy looking stylish in a suit. This house has no dog.
November 5, 2025 at 11:43 AM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Ok, weirdos. NOW that Dia de los Muertos finished, you can post the Mariah Carey nonsense without a block. Her minions need to stop that crap, ignoring the day of the innocents and day of the dead. Carey ought be linked only with New Year’s Eve, the 1 time she entertained.

youtu.be/lJKooIkqHRI?...
FULL VIDEO OF MARIAH CAREY'S 'MASSIVELY EPIC' PERFORMANCE AT NEW YEAR'S EVE 2017
YouTube video by John Nacion Imaging
youtu.be
November 3, 2025 at 5:19 AM
Reposted
gr8flbluejay.bsky.social
Día de los Muertos

Luis Tapia, American (1950- ), Doña Sebastiana La Maestra, Will Take Your Requests (Death Cart), 2001, carved and painted wood with horse hair; 31 1/4 x 40 x 22 1/2 in, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, USA
November 1, 2025 at 3:04 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 31: 🎃

1. Jack-o (Splatterween tLDI special)
&
2. Idle Hands

That’s it for the challenge! While I lagged behind, I logged big # s

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social
#filmsky #horrorsky
Halloween Night Day 31 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge written over a cemetery silhouette backlit by an orange-tint sunset. My Letterbox Diary. 1. The Halloween Tree bridged Halloween ween and Halloween Day. It was good to hear Bradbury’s voice again. 2. Jack-O. I watched the Last Drive In presentation from Splatterween. Darcy’s right—it’s fun! 3. Idle Hands. Buried by Columbine, this 90s horror comedy masterpiece boasts Jessica Alba at her peak hotness, scream King Devon Sawa doing Lucille-Ball level physical comedy, and Seth Green with the face of 90s kids Elden Henson at their funniest, and true to life, like popeye’s spinach, Anton’s devil spinach saves the day! This is one of my all-time favorite movies that’s a time capsule of the 90s where everything works. I love every frame. Seated on a couch left to right, Zombie Mick with a bottle impaled in his forehead, Anton knits 🧶, Zombie Pnub cradles his severed head in his lap as smoke comes out of his neck. Snack bags and soda cans litter the table in front of them. Jessica alba in an angel Halloween costume dances at the school’s Halloween dance Offspring played.
October 31, 2025 at 5:59 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 30: 🧒 👹

1. Something Wicked This Way Comes.
2. The Long Halloween Deluxe
3. Monster Family
4. The Halloween Tree 🌳 🎃

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social
#filmsky #horrorsky
Kid-Friendly Fright Day 30 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 written over a cemetery silhouette backlit by a green tinted sunset. My letterbox diary. 1. Something Wicked this Way Comes. I hadn’t seen this Disney adaptation since childhood but always loved Ray Bradbury’s book more; he kindly signed one for me I own to this day. 2. Batman: The Long Halloween Deluxe Edition. Two 90 minute parts, OLED reactive, and in my top 3 favorite Batman adaptations ever made. 3. Monster Family. Baba Yaga dispatched by Dracula turns a family into their Halloween costumes until they learn self-love and family. It’s a pretty standard contemporary fairy tale—love breaks the witch’s curse. 4. The Halloween Tree. This bridged the end of the day into Halloween. I’d also not revisited this Ray Bradbury written Hannah-Barbara style animated film about a meaning of Halloween since my childhood. A monster costume party invitation from the computer animated Monster Family that coincidentally set on the day I watched it, October 30th! The Halloween tree. Pumpkins and Jack o lanterns dangle from the black gnarled branches viewed from below.
October 31, 2025 at 5:19 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 29: 💵 🏰

1. The Tingler
2. The Old Dark House

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
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#filmsky #horrorsky
William Castle Day 29 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 written on a cemetery silhouette backlit by an orange tint sunset. The director William Castle casts a less impressive shadow than Hitchcock, but stands in a suit in front of a white screen. The cc reads “I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you’re about to see.” A Charles Addams (of Addams’ family fame) drawn old dark house entrance tinted purple with the super “Directed by William Castle” overlaid. Only two. I appreciate more than I enjoy William Castle. He’s a fascinating movie impresario who created a unique niche. The stories about his movies surpass the movies themselves. I like far more the Bob Clark produced movie Popcorn I watched on Dee Wallace day that mentions Castle as the inspiration by name of the kind of horror gimmick festival the film kids recreate as a fundraiser before getting slashed by the phantom of the theater serial killer, the man behind the masks. I’ve seen William Castle’s the House on Haunted Hill and already watched Rosemary’s Baby this Halloween season, which Castle produced (sadly not on creepy neighbor day). These two—the Tingler and The Old Dark House—I set aside for today. The Tingler almost made weird science day before I settled on mad neurologist scientists, evil brain movies, a mad science sub-genre. Vincent Price elevated that movie. Tom Poston did his best in the Danny Kaye type project, a sort of proto-Clue horror film in the Old Dark House. It’s zany, campy fun and I get why John Waters especially called Castle his “god.”
October 31, 2025 at 3:21 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 28: 👻 🏠 👁️ 🚫 🙈

1. Black Phone 2
2. They Live Inside Us
3. Ghost Team

Hard. I’ve seen most great 🏚️ movies. My favorites ranked: boxd.it/OwIdy

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
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#filmsky #horrorsky
Haunted House (I Haven’t Seen) Day 28 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 written over a cemetery silhouette backlit with a purple tint sunset. A haunted house movie I’ve seen many times that tops my favorite ghost movies list on Letterbox. An illustration of Shelley DuVall, red eyed and crying, holding a baseball bat, in front of the Shining’s famous orange hexagon carpet design. An illustration of 3 kid classic sheet ghosts standing behind an iron gate under a full moon on a snowy night. My Letterbox for Haunted House I haven’t seen day. The problem with this category, is it’s hard to tell if it’s a haunted house movie for sure until you see it. My choices were more defined by a day-long, citywide power outage as Black Phone 2 was the only ghost movies I could see as even the cell tower couldn’t function with a whole city on data. Ghost Team was the strongest movie of these three, and They Live Inside Us was the most on topic, I suppose. Anyway, I’ve seen most of the great haunted house movies already. I’ll put a link to my favorite ghost films in the post.
October 31, 2025 at 10:47 AM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 27:

1. The Sentinel
2. The Girl Next Door
3. The Crazies

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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
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#filmsky #horrorsky
Creepy Neighbours Day 27 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 written over a cemetery silhouette backlit by the green tint of a setting sun. My letterbox Diary for Creepy Neighbor movies. 1. The Sentinel. Creepily intrusive neighbors turn increasingly terrifying as we learn of their terrifying backstories. Then there’s the recluse neighbor upstairs neighbor, an old priest always staring down from the top apartment in the building, staring down with his milky cataract stair. Then there’s the hellish neighbor downstairs, a gate to Hell, so Satan and his assorted demon minions also count as pretty creepy. 2. Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. Bested by only Stephen King and Joe R Lansdale among his generation of horror writers, Jack Ketchum mastered the genre and had a lifetime achievement Bram Stoker award to back up his top-tier bibliography. This movie, while masterful, anyone with a heart will find challenging, and like many of the scariest movies (Zodiac, Silence of the Lambs, the Sound of Metal)—many will say it’s a drama or a thriller instead of horror as if horror only belonged to unserious ghosts and goblins. Ketchum does the near impossible in taking an unthinkable crime and making the abuser behind the torture understandable albeit never sympathetic or relatable. But we learn how the rare psychopathic female thinks and creates, inculcates male abusers. It’s like a tour of the MAGAt factory to find out how rightards are made. This seems like a plausible origin story for a Pete Hegseth type. It walks you through the kind of torture and murder by neighborhood that makes most sane people go “how could that even happen.” Yet Ketchum also brings a sensitivity to it never losing sight of the victim’s humanity. 3. The Crazies. George Romero’s non-zombie horror movie (or living zombies in a way) that while slow-paced still blends Romero’s sadly prescient hippie conspiracy social commentary into a pandemic outbreak thriller about neighbors driven mad by a bio-weapon leak. Living through the COVID pandemic made some choices strain credulity, but still a solid film worthy of reassessment overall. A joker poster with a creepy neighbor looking in a window captioned “creepy neighbors. The reason doors have locks.” The creepiest of neighbors, this peeping tom weirdo. A still of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.
October 30, 2025 at 2:00 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 26: 🎃

1. Hollow Gate
2. Pumpkinhead
3. The Pumpkin Karver
4. Carved

Stay away from Pumpkinhead, unless you’re tired of living— through “meh” movies.

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social
#filmsky #horrorsky
Pumpkin on the Poster Day 26 placard on the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 written over a cemetery silhouette backlit by a tinted orange sunset. Evil pumpkins with fangs, rotting pumpkins on the vine, glowing Jack o lanterns, and unlit Jack o lanterns too, from the Factory of Terror Haunt. A Pumpkinhead on a giant skeleton with a glowing light blue mouth and glowing orange eyes at the Factory of Terror haunt. My letterbox diary. 1. Hollow Gate, the gateway joint to pumpkin on a poster day. It’s a Halloween set slasher where we see how abuse during Halloween apple bobbing creates a Halloween themed killer who dresses up in different costumes to kill each kid locked in his electric-fenced-in mansion. A serial killer who kills on Halloween? What will they think of next! 2. Pumpkinhead. I considered rewatching it on fairy tale day since it’s the best American set Fairy Tale I’ve come across in any medium. Stan Winston who normally did creature SFX and makeup kills it as a director. Pumpkinhead is a simple story but everything in it works, especially Lance Hendricks performance as Ed Hardy. His son may be one of the most endearing kids in horror. It’s in my top 3 Witch movies. See letterbox for my complete favorite witch flick list. 3. The Pumpkin Karver. A middling mid-naughties slasher that’s not intentionally funny enough to be a comedy or scary enough to be a good horror, but it does service some good Halloween imagery and slasher kills. It’s a predictable yet also unearned reveal, sort of the worst of both worlds. Weirdly, it’s set in a town called Carver yet the town doesn’t spell it with a K either, making the title even more nonsensical. 4. Carved. Like attack of the killer tomatoes before it, this movie images a mutant fruit as a creature feature. The Hulu logo smeared over it like a booger you can’t flick away, with poorly placed commercials, hurt the viewing experience. There’s some fun kills and a lot of it works, but it’s also a hate crime against potheads. Besides some off color jokes, language, and gore, this feels like kiddie horror. I liked the diverse cast, an Asian girl lead who’s new to me, and they found yet another rat face boy like Timothee Chalamet or Mason Thames as her beau, Corey Fungalmantis who I’ll apparently be seeing in the Cliff Booth Tarantino penned Fincher flick. I liked the progression of pumpkin (head), 🎃 karver, and Carved.
October 30, 2025 at 5:18 AM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 25:

1. The Hallow
2. Krabat
3. Krabat: the Sorcerer’s Apprentice
4. VIY
5. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social
#filmsky #horrorsky
Feels like a Fairytale: Day 25 placard from the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge imposed over a cemetery silhouette backlit by a purple-tinted sunset. My letterbox diary: 1. the Hallow. An Irish folk horror movie that uses the fairies and changelings of Gaelic folklore (including their iron allergy) for a contemporary creature feature; I liked the addition of fairy fungus, a sort of black mold meets acid meets blob substance that looks like black forest ooze. 2. Krabat. The live-action take on the German fairytale figure of Krabat, most famous due to maybe Fantasia’s adaptation of Goethe’s poem the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Krabat is the orphan apprentice of an evil, one eyed wizard who extends his life by sacrificing one of his 12 boys needed to run his bone-meal mill. The boys gain some abilities like transfiguration into crows. 3. The superior animated version of Krabat made in the late 70s instead of naughties. The wood relief folk art aesthetic and emphasis on the magic—especially the annual wizard’s duel where the apprentice selected for sacrifice gains a chance to best his warlock master or else must dig his own grave—beat out the live adaptation, despite its noble attempt to tell the story on a small SFX budget than what animation can conjure. 4. VIY. A sin-prone young monk comes across and dispatches a witch only to find himself summoned by a rich nobleman to sit prayer vigil locked in a church with his late daughter, the maiden aspect of the hectare’s crone he killed; the whole piece feels like an Eastern-European fairy tale. Encounters of the Spooky kind owes this practical effect masterpiece from the 60s a debt for when Sammo also must spend the night trapped inside a mourning chamber with an animate corpse. 5. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. I often do “superhero Saturday” and this fit the bill perfectly for “feel like a fairytale” and a superhero-adjacent take on Hansel and Gretel. It’s better than I thought as I’ve passed on it over the years, superior to the similar Van Helsing attempt to update that character into an action hero. The Witch scenes steal the show. A orphan boy sweeps a wooden cottage floor while observed by a black cat. It’s from the animated film Krabat and looks like a fairy tale book illustration. A fairytale vibing swamp witch cabin from Pumpkinhead, which bridged Pumpkin on the poster day and feels like a fairytale day. A witch with thin white hair sits in a chair amongst witchy clutter.
October 28, 2025 at 10:00 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 24:

1. The Dead Pit
2. Phenomena
3. Don’t Breathe
4. Cellar Dweller

Consider me over such debasement.

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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social
#filmsky #horrorsky
Don’t Go in the Basement Day 24 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025, over a sunset lit green-tinted cemetery silhouette. My letterbox Diary. 1. The Dead Pit. A carryover between mad science and basements. This sanitarium houses a lab basement where a mad, undead scientist has created an army of zombies who ascend from a basement’s basement. 2. Phenomena. You don’t reach the basement until the late 3rd act, yet it’s the setting of an exciting and disgusting conclusion involving the second worst kind of maggot. Dario Argento directs a young Jennifer Connelly with a memorable basement-owner in Daria Nicolodi—frequent Argento collaborator, former partner, and writer of Suspiria. 3. Don’t Breathe. I wanted an entry that like Barbarian or Heretic gets placed into the recent sub-genre based on a sub-room, basement horror. All three tell stories involving somewhat labyrinthine basements that submerge a dark secret. 4. Cellar Dweller. Cameos and camp, but with a a short runtime, this movie has fun 80s slasher payoffs galore. The cameo of Jeffrey Combs as the cartoonist of the Cellar Dweller comic starts strong. The small art institute’s director allows for another horror legend cameo from Yvonne De Carlo, Lily Munster. Don Mancini better known for Child’s Play—the sequel I considered for basement day—writes a love letter to horror fandom in this proto-snark slasher that takes a meta approach before Scream. It’s a small, unexpected treat that punches above its weight. The 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 calendar. Before he inked Cellar Dweller, Jeff did this in basements. There’s a Re-animator poster in cellar dweller, and as Herbert had a basement lab, I rewatched Re-Animator on morgue day but “mad science” and “basement” also fits…
October 27, 2025 at 1:05 AM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 23:

1. Donovan’s Brain
2. Frankenhooker
3. The Brain that Wouldn’t Die
4. Brain Dead
5. The Dead Pit —into basement day; this basement has basements.

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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social
#filmsky #horrorsky
Mad Science Day 23 of the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 on an orange tinted cemetery silhouette. My letterbox diary. Deadly Friend, the last Craven deep cut, bridged me into Mad science, with its android dead girl. 1. Donovan’s Brain; the originator of mad scientists trying to keep a brain alive only to find his experiments resulting into psych-vampirism, telepathic possession. The movie also has an early critique of the corporate class subtext. 2. Frankenhooker. The Last Drive In presentation of Frank Henenlotter’s black horror comedy, “one of the best films of the 90s” according to Joe Bob, and I don’t disagree. Frank said it’s based on… 3. The Brain that Wouldn’t Die. When Director Joseph Green heard Henenlotter took inspiration from his film, he accused Frank of theft until Frankenhooker was screened; it won him over and they parted as friends. This movie has a great head preservation SFX that provides prior-art to Re-Animator that homages this movie. 4. Brain Dead. Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton, a double-bill. My mad science day had an undercurrent of “brain” focused movies, so this felt like a good continuation. It’s a less successful version of Pullman’s superior Altered States flick. 5. the Dead Pit. Mad doctors galore but mostly going on basement day, since it bridged midnight…
October 25, 2025 at 11:25 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 22: Wes Craven Deep Cuts

1. Chiller
2. Shocker
3. Deadly Blessings
4. Deadly Friend

The last bridged into mad science day.

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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
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#filmsky #horrorsky
Wes Craven Deep Cut Day 22 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 on a cemetery silhouette. An illustration of Wes Craven with Freddy Krueger and Ghostface with his birth and death dates. Freddy’s clawed glove is giving Craven rabbit ears. 1. Chiller. A Craven directed tv movie that’s pretty slow, has a few good horror sequences, but a little melodramatic parable. 2. Shocker. The best of the deep cuts, but a movie that’s equally rich in creative ideas but also plot holes and logic problems. The rules never seem clear and obvious courses of action never get taken, a frustratingly dumb father and son combo. 3. Deadly Blessing. Sharon Stone, Maren Jensen, Susan Buckner, Michael Berryman (memorable from the Hills Have Eyes) and Ernest Borgnine all do a great job, but the story, while slow and with some memorable kill sequences, has many endings and none of them work. The third act ended in a storytelling catastrophe that made the film unlikely to be one I will ever revisit. 4. Deadly Friend. After Shocker, while much more straightforward, this was the best new Craven deep cut I watched in a somewhat unrewarding day. Anne Ramsey once again stands out as cinema’s most outstanding “Karen;” Kristy Swanson plays Craven’s usual, pure, airy small town blonde, helping to make the runtime pass. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream 1-4, the People Under the Stairs, the Hills Have Eyes, the Serpent and the Rainbow—Craven has some great work. I also saw Summer of Fear (better than the 4 here) last year and Invitation to Hell this year. I wanted to come away with a deeper Craven appreciation, but sadly his deep cuts aren’t his celebrated work for good reason. An ominous pair of killer arms clutch a big knife and a rag, the rag arm leaned against a work table littered with ominous machine clutter, a messy industrial madness.
October 24, 2025 at 5:55 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 21

1. Dead Snow
2. The Grapes of Death
3. The Blob (1988)
4. Friday the 13th (2009)

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text commentary…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social
#filmsky #horrorsky
Everyone Dies (or Close Enough) Day 21 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025, overlaid on a graveyard silhouette background with a green-tinted light-source suggesting sunset. My letterbox diary. 1. Dead Snow, a movie where the Nazis do indeed kill everyone. It felt prescient. This fit my own sub-theme of zombies and snow. The second half really picks up but I found the setup a little slow. 2. The Grapes of Death. I loved the Living Dead girl. It almost cracked my letterbox list of favorite vampire movies into the top 10. Toby Hooper’s Lifeforce did this year, but the Living Dead Girl came close, may yet after rewatches. I’ve seen a lot of Japanese, Indonesian, Canadian, Mexican, and most of all Italian, horror, but Jean Rollin, a French director, has proven a revelation this year. The Grapes of Death is his take on zombies, done in the 70s in conversation with Romero. Fittingly, the French zombies result from a pesticide that turns their local wine into zombie juice—silent spring 70s eco-horror. This movie fulfilled the death prompt with flying colors. There were great horror kills, zombie designs with melting custardy pus faces, and a unique take on zombies where the original personality can resurface, a hunting technique, to lure a victim in. Jean Rollin while better known for his vampire fantastiques, seems like the French answer to Argento, Fulci, Romero, and Bava. 3. The Blob. A great update of the Steve McQueen classic that takes what’s good about the original and increases the payoff paycheck. The remake went for more of a purple blob that the strawberry jam original. The creature design surpassed the classic, but couldn’t match the other blob in contention, the mullet on Kevin Dillon’s head. That blob also has tentacles and seems to swell in size engulfing all ability to take the punk seriously. But it’s a really solid, fun, well-written remake staring horror icon Shawnee Smith best known from the Saw series. However, google AI misled me when I asked if everyone died—many survived so instead to close… 4. Friday the 13th. One of the best of the series with 2 complete camp clears! You usually only get one set of campers! Nadia from the What We Do In the Shadows Tv show shares an observation about how death isn’t always sad at the No Kings protests. 🪧 A melting skull from Lifeforce.
October 23, 2025 at 1:24 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
La Morte Vivante
AKA
The Living Dead Girl,
(Dir Jean Rollins, 1982).

Françoise Blanchard as Catherine Valmont aka tLDG.
A blonde woman with bangs unhinges her jaw, her lower-face blood-caked.
October 22, 2025 at 7:18 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 20

1. The Descent
2. Mark of the Vampire
3. Sleepwalkers

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
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Movie w/ a famous Jumpscare Day 20 placard from the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 My letterbox diary. This Halloween season, I already revisited Friday the 13th and the Exorcist III, two movies with famous jump scares. 1. The Descent. This movie often makes lists for famous jump scares, and I wanted to revisit it as it’s been years since I had. It’s hard to say which jump scares people would remember most in a movie full of jump scares. In terms of volume, it ranks with tje most jump scare heavy movie. 2. Mark of the Vampire 🧛. Tod Browning’s lesser known vampire movie beside Dracula, that also has Bela Lugosi as a blood sucking count. Lionel Barrymore, Drew’s gramps, best known today as Mr Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life is #1 on the call sheet. This movie features the first jump scare of its type that has become one of the ultimate horror clichés, up there with nightmare-takeouts—the cat jump scare. I’m looking at you, Halloween 5! However, this movie originated the cat jump scare so I decided this category gave me a good chance to tick it off my “important prior art” watchlist. 3. Sleepwalkers. Stephen King wrote the screenplay, and while I had considered slotting this in “based on a book” day as a snarky joke (as I forgot until the opening credits it’s one of his few screenplay only movies), the effective jumpscare at the start purrfectly pairs with Mark of the Vampire. Sleepwalkers also contains a cat jump scare, a cliche I dislike, but follows up this lame jump scare with a well-timed body of a mummified girl following out of the closet soon after. The double-blind cat jump scare covering for an additional surprise exemplifies how to use clichés as storytelling opportunities to subvert the expected. The only other cat jump scare I give a pass—the Uncanny as it also makes cats the plot and has one jump down a man’s throat, but we knew the cat was there saving the cat from cliché.
October 21, 2025 at 11:58 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 19

1. The Stepford Wives
2. The Resurrected
3. Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb
4. In the Mouth of Madness

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#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
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Based on a Book Day 19 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025 over a cemetery silhouette backlit by a purple tinted sunset light-source. Letterbox Diary. 1. The Stepford Wives. Run-over from Dee Wallace day—she had such a minor part I decided to watch it for this category instead. Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award author Ira Levin wrote the book The Stepford Wives film adapts. I also watched Rosemary’s Baby, another property based on a Levin. 2. The Resurrected. Dan O’Bannon who penned Alien and wrote/directed Return of the Living Dead’s adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s the Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward. I love Returns and admire O’Bannon so when Joe Bob Briggs gave this film praise, I had to check it out. I’d also watched Roger Corman and Vincent Price’s less-faithful adaptation of the same story making it an interesting “based on” comparison. 3. Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb. This Hammer adaptation of Bram Stoker’s the Jewel of Seven Stars peaked my curiosity. I want to see all the adaptations of this book. The Mummy (Universal) technically isn’t an adaptation but clearly took a key story idea—a contemporary female doppelgänger of a dead Egyptian princess seemingly becomes possessed by the magic totems of Egyptology, becoming possessed by the dead princess as her resurrection vessel. Several obituaries of Stoker’s mentioned his novel The Jewel of 7 Stars while ignoring Dracula entirely until Nosferatu made it his more famous property. 4. Into the Mouth of Madness. A John Carpenter movie that’s based in the Cthulu, HP Lovecraft’s mythos, based on a book in that sense, but also based on the fictional book this meta-horror movie creates. This is a sepia toned pumpkin head from the haunt I went to Saturday night, which shows why I’m lagging behind in social media posts. I chose prioritizing watch as much as possible over reporting it. Sorry! The 31 Days of Horror Challenge prompt calendar.
October 21, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Reposted
ruemorguemag.bsky.social
Born on this day in 1946 (d. 2009), Happy Birthday, LUX INTERIOR! 🦇
A man wearing all black and black sunglasses singing into a microphone.
October 21, 2025 at 1:44 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 18

1. Shock Waves
2. The Fog
3. The Changeling

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
boxd.it/b3JeX

#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social #filmsky #horrorsky
Wet Ghosts Day 18 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025. A cemetery silhouette backlit with a green tint suggesting sunset. My Letterbox Diary. 1. Shock Waves. Wet zombies that can think and plan when triggered. I wanted to see this movie and felt it counted as a wet ghost movie albeit they’re corporeal ghosts. It’s different than a normal reanimated dead scenario. 2. The Fog. In my top 10 ghost movies, Hal Holbrook does an admirable job selling ghost pirate lore in this John Carpenter classic. 3. The Changeling. A ghost story dripping in foreshadowing, before drowning us in Backstory; watery imagery pervades, an element with many deathly connotations. Perhaps the wettest ghost until the Devil’s Backbone. A Nazis wet ghost/zombie/Frankenstein’s monster lies submerged in shallow ocean water until emerging to attack. His hand sticks out of the rippling water. A ghost ship, also featured in Shock Waves, that strands our characters when it crashes into their pleasure cruise vessel.
October 19, 2025 at 11:18 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 17

1. Baby Oopsie
2. Cooties
3. Little Monsters
4. Sometimes They Come Back Again
5. Sweet 16

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
boxd.it/b3JeX

#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social #filmsky #horrorsky
Killer Kids Day 17 placard from the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025. A cemetery silhouette backlit by a setting sun tinted orange. 1. Baby Oopsie. A demon toy doll restored by a frumpy, doll-obsessive Schizoid becomes her revengematic instrument—but was it really her choice? From Charles Band’s demonic toys brand. A representation of a killer kid (albeit a baby). 2. Cooties. Starring Elijah “Frodo” Wood, Allison Pill, Rainn “Dwight” Wilson, and Jack “Kenneth the Page” McBrayer. I passed the vegetarian test opening that shows how chicken nuggets led to a patient zero of a zombie virus that can only affect the prepubescent adolescents. Truly killer kids when they become Zeds. 3. Little Monsters. A failed Australian Cooties that doesn’t allow the zombies to open the spam in the stand. Lupita deserved better. The poster suggests the Sound of Music Julie Andrews poster which I thought would be ironic given the zombies but, no, we have 3 singalongs with Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off and the most tone deaf Aussie rendition of Sweet Caroline ever. We get to see some zombie kids but the movie largely fails on its promise the title and synopsis promise—little monsters! 5 year old zombies! 🧟‍♀️ boooooo 4. Sometimes They Come Back. A sequel to a less successful Stephen King adaptation that stars Tony Hinchcliffe. Actually, it’s Alexis Arquette also looking like every 80s villain—and the character is even named Tony. That meta level and the demon to ghost crew black magic resurrection made it perhaps a little more fun than I expected. Killer ghost teen kids, who are also demons. 5. Sweet Sixteen. A killer kid falsely accuses a First Nation man of murder leading to his hanging by vigilantes. There’s also a series of murders whose common denominator is teen Melissa, who gets her own (hilarious) theme song! But it’s more kids killed than full on killer kid maybe—depending on if you know the ending. Again, I was a little misled. Baby Oopsie charges with a chain saw, mouth and eyes gaping like ominous black holes! Baby Oopsie drops an electronic in a bathtub (not pictured) and we see it leaning over the steamy smokey aftermath in a blue baby doll nightgown.
October 19, 2025 at 10:48 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 16

1. The Revenant.
2. The Town that Dreaded Sundown.
3. Primeval.
4. Stephen King: A Necessary Evil. (True story seemed a good prompt for a horror doc).

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
boxd.it/b3JeX

#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social #filmsky #horrorsky
Scary Story Come To Life Day 16 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025. The background has a cemetery silhouette tinted purple, suggesting dusk. My letterbox diary. 1. the Revenant. The true story of Hugh Glass adapted from a 2002 novel into a magical realism horror story; the title supports the read that Hugh Glass returns as a dead, corporeal spirit in this weird western revengematic. 2. The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Jason’s character design in Friday the 13th Part II owes a huge debt to this movie. Set in the 1940s, the documentary style seems proto-found footage, and reports the story of a lover’s lane killer similar to Fincher’s Zodiac. No Country For Old Men’s resolution also owes this film a debt, learning how to frustrate audiences for the better. 3. Primeval. A well-shot film that gives a serviceable African safari adventure, but tries to tell the story of the Burundi Civil War through the white lens of a documentary tv crew who are trying to make a documentary about capturing Gustave, the most deadly man-eating animal recorded in the last few hundred years, responsible for as many, hundreds, of deaths. The film would have done a better job focusing on Gustave primarily as a creature feature eco-horror, nature-strikes-back movie. It’s a middling drama film and a middling horror movie combined. 4. A documentary about Stephen King that told the true story of one of the greatest horror writers beside Joe R Lansdale, King being an author only beat in adaptations by Agatha Christie, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and maybe Charles Dickens and Edgar Wallace. He’s one of the most prolific and best selling writers ever. Gustave the man eating crocodile as depicted in Primeval. The real Gustave, a giant no-neck crocodile shows its cavernous teeth lined mouth, and bullet wounds from prior encounters. He’s a crocodile who strikes fear into the heart of other crocodiles he’s so ugly. Although Gustave has reached his 60s, and perhaps the end of his natural life, many believe this legendary man eater who has swallowed hundreds still hunts Burundi and Rwanda’s Rusizi River.
October 17, 2025 at 5:20 PM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 15

1. Lifeforce
2. Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter
3. Mortuary
4. The Return of the Living Dead
5. Re-Animator

See my letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
boxd.it/b3JeX

#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social #filmsky #horrorsky
Morgue Mayhem Day 15 placard for the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025. The background has the silhouette of a cemetery’s grave markers tinted green suggesting sunset. My Letterbox Diary. 1. Lifeforce. I’m shocked any vampire movie cracked my top 10 ranked vampire movies, but I’m not surprised Toby Hooper would be the man to crack the top 10, in one of the most original and ambitious films of his career. 2. Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter. Jason comes back to life in the famous morgue opening. 3. Mortuary. New-to-me, fun to see, enjoyed it for what it was, and to see a young Bill Paxton play (spoiler 🚨) —proto-ghost face. 4. The Return of the Living Dead. One of my favorite movies, in my letterbox top 4. 5. Re-Animator. Another favorite with one of the best zombie morgue scenes of all time. Blood floats out of a bald corpse’s face, being drawn into the air by a vampiric force. The futuristic, luminescent space morgue in Lifeforce, where a corpse lies on a clear slab with lights embedded.
October 16, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Reposted
npr.org
The artist and illustrator created iconic posters for movie franchises like Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Back to the Future. n.pr/4n1dfOB
Drew Struzan, artist of iconic movie posters, dies at 78
The artist and illustrator created iconic posters for movie franchises like Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Back to the Future.
n.pr
October 16, 2025 at 7:50 AM
trwesterman.bsky.social
Day 14: Dee Wallace

1. Critters
2. The Haunted World of El Superbeasto
3. Popcorn (1991)

My letterbox for 🌟-ratings and reviews; also alt-text…
boxd.it/b3JeX

#31DAYHORRORCHALLENGE
@nofspodcast.bsky.social #filmsky #horrorsky
Dee Wallace Day 14 placard from the 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge 2025. The background image of a cemetery silhouette has an orange tint of fading dusk. My letterbox for Dee Wallace day. Critters was a fun knockoff Gremlins with some critters that Farmer Vincent from Motel Hell would have loved to make into critter fritters; one critter attacks an E.T. toy meaning Dee Wallace’s character also exists in a world where she can watch her doppelgänger in a Spielberg movie. It’s a fun kiddie horror. The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. One of the few Rob Zombie movies I hadn’t seen turned out to be one part Animaniacs and one part Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat but all parts Rob Zombie. I had a lot of fun with it. Dee has a voice cameo. Popcorn. The early 90s classic slasher that’s sort of the American Demons (Bava’s); both involve young adults releasing evil forces via movie in a movie palace during a movie festival resulting in a supernatural slasher. I watched the Last Drive In presentation by using Just Joe Bob and a physical copy. Dee Wallace has a part as the mom withholding a secret that starts to cross over to affecting her daughter. Dee screams like a queen in Critters. Dee Wallace clutches the barrel of a rifle to use as a club while looking afraid in Critters.
October 15, 2025 at 4:21 PM