I wanted to come up with a blog-a-thon for The Dark of The Matinee, as I’m in the midst of planning a little road trip that will take me away from being able to post later this summer. I thought about making the series topical – perhaps building up to a particular film being released, or nosing through a director’s catalogue. However, I soon realized that the answer was sitting right here…in this very room…just over my right shoulder.

Many of you might have heard me refer to the fact that Lady Hatter and I have our dvd collections separated. You might have also heard me refer to her collection as the “Left-Hand Shelf of Crap”. Well, it shall henceforth be referred to as the “Left-Hand Shelf of Doom” – and it will also be the source of this blog-a-thon.

Now, when posing this idea to my blushing bride, I noted that we could play things one of two ways. I could actually use it as a source of great wealth, since all mocking aside she does have some great films on there that I’ve never seen (TOPSY-TURVY, AMERICAN MOVIE, etc). Or, it could become the source of great misery for me as she has a lot of titles I want no part of.

Ever the sadist, she chose the latter, and here’s where you folks come in…

She has whittled the shortlist down to 21 crap-tastic titles I’ve never seen, and have no desire to see. To wit, she’s pretty sure these are films I will not like.

For the next four weeks, I’ll be keeping a poll in the sidebar of my blog and I want you folks to be the ones to decide which films I should be forced to watch. You can vote for as many titles as you wish, and while you can cast multiple votes, you can only vote once a day. On April 8th, the poll will close and the top seven vote-getters will be added to the watchlist for the blog-a-thon.

Finally as King of Pain commissioner, Lady Hatter will then get to pick one more title from the remaining contenders to round out the series with an eighth film.

So have at it folks – vote early, vote often, and bring on the pain.

Note: if you have any trouble voting multiple times, the poll can also be found here.