The Ray Bradbury stories I've been reading have been zipping by at the rate of 2-3 every lunch hour. Some are terror tales, others science fiction, and many simply fiction. All are charmingly written and very palatable. Halloween always draws me to such things, though I also like to indulge in some straight up splatter flicks.

AMC always incessantly runs the Halloween movies during October and I always get sucked in. Now, the original Halloween has been one of my favorite movies for as long as I can remember. We had it on VHS and I watched it as much as possible. Honestly, we may have had it on Beta as well. While I can certainly appreciate the weaknesses of each Halloween sequel, I'm a softy for them and find something to enjoy about each one.

It all got me thinking about other John Carpenter flicks that I hadn't seen in a while. I revisited The Thing earlier this year and it was excellent -- easily as good as I had remembered it. Prince of Darkness quickly rose to the top of my list of films to revisit. I don't believe I've sat through it since I saw the theatrical release at Ford City West in 1987. I remember enjoying it, but finding some of it confusing, ultimately having me conclude that the movie was a misfire. After watching Prince this weekend I found that I really enjoyed it and that what I disliked about it as a kid was that at times it was a bit chatty, though this time the verboseness worked very well. Most movies from my youth that I revisit are absolutely terrible (see Spaceballs, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Sleepwalkers, etc.), so it was great to find the reverse.

One of my favorite weekly rituals is to download the podcasts of Nick Digilio, place them on my jump drive, and then listen to them throughout the work week at my desk. Even when I lived in Chicago and had easy access to AM radio, it was difficult to make it through his shows as they were over night. Thankfully the podcasts have solved that problem. In particular, I loved his segment with finalgirl. It sent me happily to her site and fed even more fuel into my horror film appetite. Her site is well worth bookmarking.

Thanks to finalgirl and a few other recommendations I made an effort to catch up on The Descent. I was very underwhelmed. The spelunking was exciting and the jump scares were good, but it just never built to enough for me.