Spooky Movies for October

 Fall is upon us which means - sweaters! scarves! even more spooky movies!

I, despite being a total wuss, do love a good horror movie so I am making myself a list of horror movies that I haven't seen to view during the month of October. I am keeping the list small, I know there's 31 days in October but I just don't have that sort of time. Also I'm pretty sure that would give me nightmares.

Suspiria (the new one) - I can't resist Tilda Swintron or post-WWII/divided Berlin.

Coraline - I read the book a long time ago but everyone says how spooky this movie is, even though it's for kids.

Mothman Prophecies - one of my former bosses said that this movie still scares the shit out of her, and the cast is kind of bizarre (Richard Gere?) so I'm intrigued. 

Paranormal Activity - My dear cousin Amanda suggested this one and since it kicked off a whole new subgenre of horror movies I think it's worth including!

Something by Dario Argento - one of the guys in my favorite movie reviewing YouTube channel (Red Letter Media) loves him some Dario Argento and so I'll pick one of his to get started on. I could do Suspiria, a double feature. 

Amityville Horror - my friend Sally's husband recommended this one for me. I've never seen it somehow. I think Im going to go classic version, though the remake is tempting because it involves Ryan Reynolds. 

They Live - I love me some John Carpenter (The Thing is top 5 of my favorite movies ever) but this is a classic of his that I've never seen.

Graphic Novel Series Review: "The Last Man" by Brian Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudzuka and Jose Marzan Jr

A couple of weeks ago I was watching tv and an ad came up for a new show called "The Last Man" and they were like "based on the acclaimed graphic novel". The show looked interesting (a plague wipes out every man (?) in the world except  for Yorick, a smart but lazy loser with his pet monkey Ampersand. I. being myself, was like well if I'm interested in this and I'm too impatient to wait for the show to come out looks like I will have to read the graphic novels instead so I know what happens! And I did. I love a good graphic novel series that isn't superhero related (no offense superheroes, just not my favorite form for you) and I hadn't had a good GN readathon in awhile so I was excited to get at these. The confusing thing about GN sometime is that they come in different editions and issues, my library had the whole series in 10 books, so that's what I read. It worked out well!

So, Yorick, our loveable loser and his (male) monkey Ampersand survive a plague that wipes out every male animal and human on the planet. I really like this concept because of it's far reaching implications, many of which are addressed in the novels. Like think of al of the industries that the men outnumber their female coworkers (government, airline pilots, shipping, oil production, military, etc etc). Yorick's mom is a senator who suddenly finds herself as the President because of the line of succession. She sends Yorick away with Agent 355, a mysterious Secret Service agent, to get him to a famous doctor who may be able to find the secret to Yorick's survival. Yorick agrees to go along with 355 but the whole time is mostly just concerned with trying to find Beth, his anthropology student girlfriend who was in the outback of Australia for school when the plague hit.

The novels take place over a series of 3 or 4 years as Yorick, 355 and a cast of other characters make their way across the US and then the world in search of Beth and the answer to Ampersand and Yorick's survival. There are Amazons (an angry, violent group of women who pillage and murder and burn down sperm banks), the Israeli army, Yorick's super angry sister Hero, drug runners, submariners, rogue agents and more. 

I really enjoyed this series. All of our main characters were inherently flawed but good and cared for each other in a realistic way. It felt like the stakes were high and they weren't afraid to put our characters in danger. I will be tuning in to the tv show when it starts this month!