On 1 October 2025 I launched a YouTube Shorts series, 31 Days of Halloween. The concept is simple: one, one-minute (or shorter) Halloween/horror movie review every day for the month of October. These reviews are super lo-fi—just yours portly recording on a phone, sitting at a desk. No frills, no fancy editing, just me giving my impressions of the films in an unscripted, fast way.
In case you’ve missed any installments, I’m featuring the several days of reviews. If you want to catchup on Days 1-9, check out last week’s YouTube Roundup.
A quick note: most of the links below are Amazon Affiliate links, typically linking to the movie on DVD or Blu-Ray, as well as the books they’re based upon (or the novelizations of the films). I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you.
It’s my favorite month of the year, so let’s keep rolling with some vaguely October-related posts!
“Open Mic Adventures CLI: ‘Blue Ghost’” – A doleful trombone and bassoon duet with piano accompaniment, “Blue Ghost” is certain to invoke spirits of sad little ghosts singing the blues.
On 1 October 2025 I launched a YouTube Shorts series, 31 Days of Halloween. The concept is simple: one, one-minute (or shorter) Halloween/horror movie review every day for the month of October. These reviews are super lo-fi—just yours portly recording on a phone, sitting at a desk. No frills, no fancy editing, just me giving my impressions of the films in an unscripted, fast way.
In case you’ve missed any installments, I’m featuring the first few episodes today!
A quick note: most of the links below are Amazon Affiliate links, typically linking to the movie on DVD or Blu-Ray, as well as the books they’re based upon (or the novelizations of the films). I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you.
Last week was an exceptionally busy and demanding one for yours portly, so apologies for the lack of a post yesterday and last Saturday. Paid subscribers—I’ll be working on some catch-up posts and Sunday Doodles this week.
Enough empty—uh, I mean, sincere!—promises. How about some posts about October?
“Open Mic Adventures CL: ‘Red Ghost’” – One of my favorite tracks from Spooky Season IV, which I finally finished! Watch for it to drop later this month.
“31 Days of Halloween Starts Today!” – My new series of YouTube Shorts, 31 Days of Halloween, launched on Wednesday, 1 October 2025. It’s one, one-minute review of a Halloween and/or horror movie each day for the month of October. Catch up with this playlist.
Today I’m kicking off 31 Days of Halloween, a series on my YouTube channel. Each day in the month of October I’ll offer up a lo-fi, off-the-cuff, rapid-fire, one-minute, hyphen-hyphen, Halloween/horror movie review. These are quick and, therefore, not very comprehensive, but they give my quick impressions of some classic (and not-so-classic) flicks.
Monday was the first day of autumn—hurray! I’m unapologetically in the pro-autumn camp, and love all the hokey stuff that comes with the season: pumpkin spiced everything, Halloween, leaves, fall festivals, apple orchards, crisp mornings, etc. If I were a woman, I’d probably get a PSL at Starb’s everyday (assuming that, as a woman, I’d have my reckless spending bankrolled by the various beta orbiters around me).
I have core childhood memories of fall that further enhance the coziness of the season. I have a vivid-yet-fuzzy memory (a self-contradictory paradox, yes, but I hope you take my meaning, dear reader) of coming home from school one overcast autumn day to fresh-baked cookies. I can still remember the soft lamplight emanating from homes and the way the colors of the season popped in the grey afternoon. I can faintly remember the smell and the warmth of the cookies.
It’s a season for gathering closely with family and friends, of preparing for the long, dark winter with joy and merriment. It’s no coincidence that yours portly is getting married in late autumn!
What are your favorite autumnal activities? Let me know in the comments.
In lieu of my usual Monday Morning Movie Review, I wanted to do something a bit different: what are some of your favorite films to watch during the month of October, in the build-up to and/or on the day of Halloween?
I have an idea for a little YouTube project: a series of brief (one-minute or less) reviews/synopses of thirty-one horror flicks, one for each day in October. I’d release these as YouTube Shorts, so I only have one minute!
These will also be super lo-fi, as a.) I believe in the lo-fi ethic and, more honestly, b.) my video editing skills and capabilities are virtually non-existent. We’re talking one take with minimal in-camera editing—and that’s it. No fancy cutaways to clips from the movies; no wacky angles; no green screens placing me in a haunted castle. At most I’ll hold up a DVD of the flicks if I have one, and maybe I’ll dress up in some mildly goofy outfit occasionally.
I have a vast archive of reviews of crappy (and good!) movies to pull from for this list, but I want to know your recommendations. If it’s something I’ve already review, great! It’ll definitely save me some time. If it’s something totally new, even better—I get to watch and review your favorite flicks!
I can’t promise I’ll get to all of them, but if there’s a surplus, I’ll bank them up for next October.
Let me know your picks in the comments below, or through the contact form on this site.
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As my grasping promo paragraphs suggest, yours portly has some new music out there, with Triple Deluxe releasing this Monday, 15 September on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms. I’m also currently working on Spooky Season IV, which is running a little behind schedule—gulp!
SSIV likely won’t be as long as SSIII, which clocked in at nearly forty-two minutes. But it will hopefully capture the fun, spooky, ghostly feel of Halloween.
My fiction writing has cooled considerably, but I did finish a draft of “Tap, Tap, Tap,” a creepy little short story about a telepathic beetle that feeds on human emotions; I’ll likely upload that as a PDF and/or in-body text for paid subscribers in the near future. I’m also working on a pulpy barbarian story, although I have not been putting in my daily quota of words in weeks.
Otherwise, I’ve been keeping busy with school. I’ve got two solid ensembles this year, and my Middle School Music Ensemble in particular has impressed me with their musicality. The High School Music Ensemble is doing well, too, tackling pieces like Supertramp’s “The Logical Song” (which features irregular phrasing of ten and then eleven measures) and Herbie Hancock’s fusion classic “Chameleon.”
As a bit a preview for SSIV, here’s the short piece “Red Ghost”:
I wrote the main theme in F major by hand, and it feels rather truncated. Inspiration struck, through, and I wrote a three-voice fugue section in D minor, which I think came out quite well.
More updates to come, dear readers. Thanks for your support!
Well, another Halloween is in the books. I’m actually not experiencing the blues today, but I will miss spooky season. Of course, Halloween is the gateway to the holiday season, with Thanksgiving and Christmas looming large—woooooot!
That said, I thought I’d take one more wistful look back at this fun season:
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At long last, it’s here—Halloween! Regular readers know that I love Halloween (perhaps a bit too much). The season always seems to fly by, though, no matter how hard I try to cling to every pumpkin-spiced moment.
Yours portly was disgracefully late with putting up my decorations this year, but I’ll likely be disgracefully late taking them down, too; it’s not unheard of for me to be heading into Thanksgiving Week with a rotting Jack O’Lantern still festooning my slug-infested porch.
Speaking of, here’s a look at the Jack O’Lantern while still fresh; I did a very thorough job of scraping and scooping the little guy of his gooey innards, so he’s holding up a bit better this year:
If that dubious knife play doesn’t get you excited for Halloween, perhaps these classic Halloween posts will.
The Portly Politico 