By Ezra Stead
As always, I’m far from finished watching scary movies for the month of October, and we won’t be covering everything I’ve watched this month, for the sake of your time and my sanity. In brief, I’ve caught up on some classic franchise entries (Stepfather II, Damien: Omen II, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers), checked out some newer gems like this year’s The Endless and Terrifier, and revisited some old favorites, including five generally less-loved Stephen King adaptations, which is what we’re going to focus on here.
Stephen King’s Children of the Corn (1984) is not exactly a critically beloved film, but it has managed to spawn eight sequels and a 2009 TV-movie, which is pretty impressive considering the original short story that started it all runs about thirty pages in total. Meanwhile, King’s Dark Tower series, a sprawling saga that runs well over 4,000 pages, got a disappointing 90-minute film adaptation last year. As William Goldman (screenwriter of, among many others, Misery and Dreamcatcher) famously said regarding Hollywood decision-making, “Nobody knows anything.” Anyway, in this writer’s opinion, Children of the Corn is a very enjoyable B-movie worth revisiting, especially for all the scenes that really forefront the very creepy kids. Courtney Gains is especially fun to watch as Malachi, he of the most hateful face in all of cinema. Just look at that scowling bastard up there. Awesome. Read More
On the cult-classic two-season animated sitcom The Critic (R.I.P.), one of the half-dozen or so fake movie clips recycled in the opening credits throughout the series depicts a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers-style black-and-white ballroom dancing scene suddenly interrupted by a full-color Tyrannosaurus Rex devouring the dancing couple. The show’s protagonist, Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz), responds with his usual catchphrase (“It stinks!”), but every time this particular clip comes up, I can’t help but think he’s dead wrong about it. That would clearly be one of the greatest movies ever made, because nothing can improve literally any movie like the sudden, unexpected appearance of a prehistoric creature or two. In other words: surprise dinosaurs! 
Right from the opening frame of the 1998 straight-to-video thriller Diary of a Serial Killer (also known as Rough Draft), it’s obvious the viewer is in for a cheesy affair. The score, with its heavy saxophone wailing and bombastic drum-machine track, feels more like something from the ’80s rather than the late ’90s, and the rest of the movie feels the same way. Our protagonist, Nelson Keece (Gary Busey) is introduced dressed in drag that is, while certainly not convincing, enough to render the distinctive-looking actor practically unrecognizable. In fact, he actually seems to be enjoying these early scenes more than the rest of the movie, and it almost makes you wonder if maybe he chose this project out of bitterness that he wasn’t included in the cast of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, alongside his Point Break co-star Patrick Swayze (and his Drop Zone co-star Wesley Snipes). 
As always, I am not finished almost exclusively watching horror movies for the year, nor will I be once Halloween night has come and gone; this will likely continue throughout November. However, in the interest of providing this list with some sort of seasonal relevance, now is the time to tell you about a handful of the movies I’ve watched so far in this, the best of all possible seasons. As it happens, this year I ended up watching a high percentage of iconic franchise entries, so, forsaking some other great ones I discovered that don’t fit into this category (Pretty Poison and The Blackcoat’s Daughter in particular are a couple of real gems), let’s take a look at some noteworthy sequels, in the order in which I viewed them.
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Let’s get your first question out of the way now: “vore” is short for “vorarephilia,” a fetish involving a desire to be consumed by—or to be the one consuming—another person or creature. Yes, it is a sex thing, and yes, as per Rule 34, there is pornography for this fetish. Daniel Schneidkraut’s latest feature is a documentary about Raymond P. Whalen, sometimes known as Rock & Roll Ray (full disclosure: both the director and his subject are friends of this reviewer), who holds claim to the title of the most successful purveyor of vore porn.
Nothing can destroy one’s enjoyment of a new movie like anticipation, and this type of (sometimes) misplaced enthusiasm is never more likely to occur than when it is attached to a new version of a beloved property. As excited as audiences might have been about, say, Jurassic Park in 1993, the anticipation for its sequel a few years later was bound to be even higher, leaving open the road for diminishing returns down which that particular franchise has been barreling ever since. 60 years before that first Jurassic movie, there was a little black-and-white classic without which Spielberg’s masterpiece likely never would have come to exist; that, of course, was the original King Kong, and if you’re not a pretty huge fan of that one, I’m kind of surprised you’re even reading this.
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