Scarecrow Video isn’t just a video store. It’s a landmark for all we love about movies.
Each year, they do a month-long challenge to get people to stretch out and watch some movies they’ve never seen before.
Check out my lists for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. This is the ninth year I’m doing this!
“I walked through a wall, in a basement of a furniture store.”
Psychotronic: (adjective) Denoting or relating to a genre of films that typically have a science fiction, horror or fantasy theme and were made on a low budget. — Oxford English Dictionary
We staff don’t necessarily subscribe to the low budget part of that definition since movies like Scream 7 and Send Help are not exactly low budget affairs but are well within the above mentioned sub-genres. That being said, we do like an underdog more often than not and when you’re challenging the mean you might as well have a lot of fun pushing yourself to new lows.
The basic guidelines are:
• Watch at least 1 movie per day during the month of October in whatever order suits you.
• Must fall within the psychotronic definition.
• Have fun and get weird.
• If you see something, say something! Post your watches on social media and make sure to tag them with #SCVpsychochallenge. Find us at Letterboxd, @scarecrow.video.official (Instagram) and @scarecrow.video (TikTok).
The 2026 Watchlist
1. HUNTING SEASON IS OPEN!: This season’s opener will have some kind of seeking, stalking, tracking or trapping, you know… hunting! Tally ho!
2. THATS COOKED: Has to have a cooking scene, could be food or drugs or Soylent Green (oops, we burned that one for you).
3. STAKE HOUSE: Woodn’t that be a great name for a lumber yard run by a vampire? Ah ah ah.
4. BLOODLINE: Must have “blood” in the title.
5. SHARK DAY: Weeks are for the weak, one day will do ya.
6. YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T TIDE: Sometimes the beach ain’t all sand and shine…
7. S.E.A. IT TO BELIEVE IT: See a thing from South East Asia. Have you perused our newly minted Indonesian Horror section yet?
8. SWIMMING AGAINST THE CURRENT: Someone/something gets electrocuted and lives.
9. SHOWER POWER: Bathe your eyeballs in a shocking shower scene.
10. HOWLOWEEN: Dig up a flick with some canine inclusion, bones and all. Now who wants a belly rub?
11. AT THE MAUL: There will be some slashin’ at the center of fashion, whether it’s prices, throats or big winter coats.
12. BACK IN THE SATELLITE: Rope yourself into a space western.
13. THIS IS A TINY TOWN: The sheriff would prefer you left before “something bad” happens.
14. SUBJECT TO SURVEILLABILITY: Ever feel like you’re being watched?
15. WORKPLACE WHOOPSIE: O.S.H.A. inspectors are gonna need a whole case of red tape for this day.
16. STAPH ONLY: Why doesn’t anyone read the warning signs at the biology lab anymore?
17. VIDEO STORE DAY: This is the big one. Watch something physically rented or bought from an actual video store. If you live in a place that is unfortunate enough not to have one of these archival treasures then watch a movie with a video store scene in it at least. #vivaphysicalmedia
18. CREEPETITION: Rewatch the first movie you ever saw that really made your skin crawl. Don’t be scared, we got you.
19. DISCHARGE: Hey hey, ho ho, that nasty ooze has got to go! *You see, the only truly great jokes are the ones that have to be over-explained right? Check it out… In addition to being a less than flattering name for bodily fluid secretions, Discharge is also the name of a 1970’s/80’s minimalistic UK punk band with intense drone-like rhythms who sing short sharp protest songs, mostly about the fears and horrors of nuclear war and the fallout from it. Some have described their sound as a “grave-black aural acid assault.” How is that for information leakage? Haha. We suppose you could opt for a film about nuclear fallout, war, punk stuff, or just plain ol’ seepage of some sort.
20. MAN, YOU GOT SOME ‘SPLAINING TO WATCH: Characters, or even whole movies, who feel compelled to explain everything. “Educate” yourself with one of those.
21. BACK TO THE FUTURE DAY: Really though, any time travel flick will do the trick.
22. PRONOUNCEMENTS: Wordplay! He/she/they/it and an action word in the title.
23. NOT-SO-FUN AND GAMES: Today’s terror has to include a game, could be a playground game or a board game or we’d even accept mind games if that’s your trip.
24. MINDCRAFT: Get cerebral with a plot involving telekinesis.
25. LET’S GET DIGITAL: For the more graphically inclined viewers amongst us, seek one out with calculator font on the box art or movie poster.
26. THE THOUSANDS: This movie’s title must have a 4 digit number in it.
27. SITE OF PASSAGE: This single location story doesn’t leave the property lines.
28. THE BLACK AND THE YELLOW: We’re partial to this palette, so please enjoy a film with that includes this visual motif
29. LE VOYEUR’S VOYEUR: A scene where you can see a movie (real or fictional) playing in your movie.
30. SERIAL BALKS: Any franchise film featuring an exceptionally deceptive character.
31. IT’S YOUR “ESP”ECIAL DAY: Experience a sixth sense-ational extravaganza. The end, but you probably saw that coming…
