Five Fantastically Frightening Watches Just In Time For Halloween
As a nod to All Hallows' Eve, we selected five spookily sinful watches that – in their own way – pay homage to one of the most popular U.S. holidays of the year.
By Barbara Palumbo
Contributor
We in the watch world occasionally love our timepieces with a side of monsters or the macabre. which means that there is no better time of year to go trick-or-treating for wrist candy than that of my favorite holiday: Halloween.
Ahhh, Halloween. The one day each year that we all get to act like someone else (unless of course you’re making a living as an Instagram “influencer,” in which case every day of the year you get to act like someone famous [YEAH. I WENT THERE.]). But, while most everyone is familiar with skeletal-themed watches, the dark side of our watch society knows full well that there are some other hair-raising horological dandies out there. So today, we’re bringing you five of the freakiest, fiercest, and most frightening timepieces in production, starting, of course, with skulls and spiders.
The ATUM Pure Skull by Moritz Grossmann
For those who think this independent Glashütte-based company is all about classically designed dials, mechanical ingenuity, and precision movements made by hand, you’re both correct and incorrect, because this year, Moritz Grossmann showed that an edgier beauty is truly bone deep.
The ATUM Pure Skull holds the MG caliber 201.1 manually wound movement containing 187 parts, 20 jewels, and a 42-hour power reserve when fully wound. But the fun is in its aesthetics, with its stainless-steel case, handcrafted steel hands, and shot-peen finished center skull that looks as if walked off a flag from a Pirates of the Caribbean movie set. The first movie set, that is. The sequels sort of sucked.
The Face to Face 42mm in Steel by Speake-Marin
I remember coming, well, face to face (imagine that?) with this watch last year and wondering how I was going to get the money to buy it for myself (I mean, do I really need two kidneys?). I think what I loved most about it was that the skulls were practically perfect in their profile designs. They weren’t cartoon character skulls or outlines of skulls or even skull-like. These were near medical-text-book versions of the cranium, staring into the empty eye sockets of the other, which added a creepiness not often experienced with well-made Swiss timepieces
The 42mm stainless steel case and the chemically engraved, circular grained dial give almost an industrial look to a watch that already flaunts its coldness through its mirrored usage of the dearly departed. This is a watch I’d like not just to own, but to also take to my grave until such time my body is exhumed when some redheaded child thinks I may have been their biological mother and demands a maternity test.
The RM 19-01 Tourbillon Spider by Richard Mille
Also known as the “Natalie Portman” because of the brand’s original collaboration with the actress, the RM 19-01 Tourbillon Spider by Richard Mille is the quintessential black widow watch for the femme fatale in us all. I like to imagine this timepiece as the brainchild of Catwoman, Xenia Onatopp, and Mrs. White from Clue (“husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong, and disposable”), if those three characters had a hot spot for horology.
For me, the most spectacular part of this watch is definitely its baseplate. With its design being that of a spider’s web, the plate is machine cut from a piece of 18K white gold, hand polished, then bead set (think, pavé set but in a single row rather than clustered into multiples) with hundreds of matching black sapphires before a final black rhodium plating is added. I always thought of Natalie Portman as a closet badass. This watch just solidifies that opinion.
The Excalibur Spider Pirelli Automatic Skeleton by Roger Dubuis
This timepiece doesn’t just have the word “spider” in it, it is also a skeleton watch, giving it double the Halloween entendre while also being a collaboration with Milan-based tire company Pirelli. That makes it even cooler by association (because, you know, #italiansdoitbetter).
The Excalibur Spider Pirelli Automatic Skeleton was the first automatic skeleton watch to be introduced by Roger Dubuis. It contains the self-winding RD820SQ movement, which is made up of 167 hand-finished parts taking 530 hours of manufacturing time to assemble, (including the 170 hours it devoted to the Poinçon de Genève). And having had the watch on my wrist for a period of time last year, I can attest to both its web-like attraction and bare bones simplicity.
The H1 Dracula DLC by HYT
I was barely nineteen years old when Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” hit the big screen, but the movie – as well as the idea of an immortal life and eternal love – left such a powerful impact on me that I purchased every Anne Rice book I could get my hands on shortly thereafter, and started what became my two-year-long shaved-head goth phase. These are all likely reasons why the H1 Dracula DLC makes the blood in my veins boil with excitement.
At 48.8mm in diameter and at 17.9mm in thickness, this is not a watch for the meek or the weak, but it is a watch that will get people staring, largely because of the retrograde bloodlike red fluid determining the hours, minutes, and seconds. Trust me when I say there is no other watch like this in this world – mortal, immortal, or otherwise.
And if these terrifying timepieces don’t do the trick, then maybe treat yourself to a Day of the Dead-themed skull watch by Fiona Kruger, or the brand new Big Bang Calaveras by Hublot, released just this past month.
Happy Halloween, Watch Fam!
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