THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER (2021)

THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER (2021)

Tagline: Nope.

(Horror, Slasher, Barry…It's Pretty Late in the Month to Bother with Those Halloween Decorations) [R]

Note: This movie doesn’t have an MPA rating, but definitely would have been rated [R].

This house is haunted man. You’ve got ghost…a Chinese checker playing ghost.

In this one, we are taken back to October of 1979. This is the third Saturday in October and people are coming into town to watch a big football game. Meanwhile, a psychotic killer named Jakkariah Harding ends up on death row. Unfortunately, he survives the electric chair and has started a killing spree. Ricky Dean Logan’s child was killed by Jakkariah years ago and now he’s bent on stopping his reign of terror even if it means killing Jakkariah himself. 

First off, and I have to say this because it’s important. This movie made me want a Bronco Burger. Now that that’s out of the way. Here we go. This film is purposely meant to mimic a late 70’s or early 80’s aesthetic. So people coming into this who aren’t into that era are probably going to be turned off after about 8 seconds. It appears this thing was done on a micro-budget so whatever rigs they were using for the kill scenes do look super stiff, but they still work.  

I have a few complaints. All the meowing in this movie from these characters is extremely annoying. It wasn’t funny and it was just completely stupid. Why Jay Burleson, why? My other complaint is that some dumb girl named Denver uses a Bible to snort cocaine off of. Then again, she is also the first person in the main cast who gets killed, so it is what it is. This thing comes complete with a few horror movie starter packs.

The first pack is the “Dumb teenagers that just rolled into town starter pack”. This includes John played by Casey Aud (who looks like he just got into acting in 2019). Denver is played by Kate Edmonds. Her character is from Utah, so I guess it was supposed to be funny that her name was Denver? Not really sure what is going on there. It does look like her career is taking off, but for her sake, I hope she gets cast in better roles moving forward because her character sucked in this. Then we get Pam played by Veanna Black (THE BEANIE BUBBLE). She is okay for what they asked her to do, but all these teen characters are idiots. Rounding out this group we get Dre Bravo who plays Ned. He is also fine, but yeah. This crew might not make it through the movie. 

Next, we move on to the “Dumb adults who are totally useless starter pack”. Enter Bobbie Jo played by Libby Blake (Doom Patrol) I don’t think Blake sucked in this and she gets a lot of roles, but she seems to have just been in this movie so they could sneak in nudity. Then we have Uncle Deeter played by Richard Garner (Cobra Kai) who plays a weird older dude who as I stated earlier is useless.

Next, we have the “Adults that know what they are doing starter pack”. Ricky Dean Logan is played by Darius Willis (THE LAST CASTLE) and he does a solid job. He is my favorite character in this movie because Heather screams too much. Vicki Newton (Nashville) is aptly played by K.J. Baker. Both she and Darius had a good outing here. Vicki is a likable character. Barry Hill is Heather’s father played by Lew Temple and isn’t the greatest, but he also doesn’t take any crap and I liked that about him. 

Finally, we have the “Girl that makes a bad decision, but is too innocent to die starter pack”. Allison Shrum (THE OCTOGAMES) does a decent job here as Heather, but man, once Heather starts screaming, it’s like, can someone just settle her down. What the cow? How is it that the whole neighborhood is freaking out because of her? 

Overall there are some better more fun slashers out there, but for a micro-budget film I thought they made this work as far as the look but that is about it. 

THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER gets a 2 out of 7 though. We did get a few likable characters as I mentioned, but we needed a better story and other films trying to accomplish a similar style have done it better. If this was supposed to be a comedy horror, it definitely failed there.
 

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