The Halloween Countdown Begins

We got one of these Halloween countdown clocks this year from Michaels. My honey added some numbers to the blank spaces, so we can count down longer. I'm going to keep track of our seasonal doings, as best as I can.

September 20: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Never seen before. I liked it! Told my honey, "I think this is the movie Rob Zombie always thinks he's making." It's way over the top, but I think Tobe Hooper can pull it off.

September 21: Some shopping at Party City. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Third viewing. Almost finished reading The Graveyard School: An Anthology, edited by Jack G. Voller, from Valancourt Books. Also, bought pumpkin bread!

September 22: This is our Downton Abbey movie day, so limited Halloweening. Only, uhh, working on my upcoming essays for The Haunted Cinema, and listening to some soundtracks -- House of the Gorgon, Halloween (2018), The VVitch, and The Dead Don't Die -- plus old-timey music from The Little Box of Halloween.

-- Had some everyday-life kind of days, but we've still gotten some activity in.

September 23: Our local Caribou Coffee debuted a new Pumpkin Latte, advertised as being made with real sugar, pumpkin puree, and "traces" of nutmeg and cinnamon. It was, surprisingly, what I got my hopes up for: more pumpkiny, and not really pumpkin-pie-y. So I had two during the week.

September 27:  Watched Happy Death Day again. I'd seen it, but my honey hadn't, and he needed to catch up to see the sequel. In some ways a throwback to the classic '80s slasher style, but with an updated sensibility and style. Doesn't take itself too seriously, but also not like it's all a big joke. Really fun. Also, we just watched Russian Doll (not Halloween, but OMG excellent), so not only is the time loop trope really big right now, but there are two very different versions in which it's happening on the heroine's birthday. Something weird is happening with the zeitgeist.

September 28: Worked on a little project. Hit the Spirit Halloween store. I didn't buy any of the larger items featuring Sam from Trick 'r Treat, but happy to see him becoming a real icon of the season, and did get a plastic broken lollipop.

Then it was off to the Haunted Corn Maze! It rained on the way out to the country, but cleared up when we got there, so it was a perfect night for it. Even the roving packs of teenagers were mostly okay (and it's always fun to hear their screaming), apart from when some boys ran from a chainsaw and knocked two of my friends into the corn.

September 29: Re-watched The Craft in the afternoon. Watched  Happy Death Day 2U in the evening. Have finished the great The Graveyard Poets book; have started Park Barnitz's book (from Hippocampus Press), The Book of Jade (lots of poems about death, the grave, and ennui!), and Stephen D. Sullivan's novelization of White Zombie.

October 1: Our 20th wedding anniversary! Worked on costumery, then met friends at the opening reception for the exhibit "America's Monsters, Superheroes, and Villains: Our Culture at Play," put on by SuperMonster市City! We dressed as Joyce and Hopper, from Stranger Things.

October 2: Watched Haunters: The Art of the Scare. Had a lot of potential, and talked to some interesting people, but marred by its focus on a sociopathic asshole who runs an "extreme" backyard site. Alas.

October 4: The Thing from Another World!

October 5: Worked on a project. Spur of the moment decision: the Riffrax Zombie Nightmare. Finished the White Zombie novel.

October 6: Finished The Book of Jade, and started Hilda Lewis' The Witch and the Priest (from my friends at Valancourt Books). Then it was off to see the original Ghostbusters in the theater.

October 7: Wanted to do something in the classic vein, so we went with Dracula's Daughter, which I've wanted to re-watch for a while. It predates Cat People, which interested me, since I thought it had some similar dynamics: a no-nonsense American girl secretly jealous and a little worried about her boss's interest in an exotic European woman with a tragic occult background.

October 8: Absorbed in The Witch and the Priest; it's super-compelling! My CD of the Stranger Things Season 3 score came in the mail, which I really like for its weird discordant elements.

October 9: Watched Part One of Mark Gatiss' History of Horror. Also received my Beistle Box in the mail from Creepy Co.

- Took a break and went on a whirlwind tour of New Orleans. Did a Save Our Cemeteries Tombs by Twilight tour, which also went to the historic Hermann-Grima House, which was decorated for mourning, and then went to the Evening with Sid Noel (aka Morgus the Magnificent). The night that I was exhausted and turned into my hotel room early, the original Halloween was on TV! I'll be writing something about Morgus, and will post a link eventually.

October 16: Saw Alien on the big screen. So many things I'd never noticed before in my previous viewings, and the outer space element was so much more impressive than even a big-screen TV.

October 17: Our spooky karaoke night.

October 18: The local Spooky Ballet at the historic downtown theater. I dressed as "the Picketty Witch" (the rhyme seems to have been made up for Sleepy Hollow: there was a famous Picketty Witch in the U.K., but it's from "wich," as in Greenwich or Dunwich). I had a long autumn gold skirt, a satiny black top, and a witch's hat. My honey wore a vintage-style devil mask, with a matching red and maroon outfit.

October 19: Went to Boo at the Zoo: a fundraising event for, yes, the local zoo. Lots of decos up, and tons of little kids in costume, which was good to see. I always like to visit my friends, the ravens. In the evening, watched the second and third parts of Mark Gatiss' History of Horror.

October 20-21:  Took the nights off from watching anything, and finished The Witch and the Priest. Then I started wolfing down J.B. Priestley's Bright Day, which is not seasonal at all, except for its overriding melancholy about the passing of time, which is suitably autumnal.

October 22: The crazy animated 1978 Witch's Night Out, featuring the voice of Gilda Radner. Have had the catchy theme music ("Halloween! Witch magic, Halloween!") in my head ever since.

October 23: Historic theater had an impromptu free showing of House of Frankenstein! We wore our Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein t-shirts.

October 25: We were talking about Love at First Bite, the other night, so impulsively watched that. I'd actually never seen it in its entirety, and I was very surprised that George Hamilton made a decent Dracula! I frankly think he was better than John Carradine's, since that was fresh in my memory.
October 26: Mostly busy with  other obligations, but did sneak in a listening of the amazing new Something Weird CD compilation, Spook Show Spectacular A-Go-Go.

October 27: Worked on projects, so no details yet. In the evening, read David Acord's fun little book,Graveyard Groove: The Haunted History of Monster Music from "Monster Mash" to Horror Punk. Then re-watched the 2018 Halloween. I think on the small screen, its resemblance in story line to some of the lesser Halloween sequels showed up a little bit more. In the end, I still prefer the H20 Laurie Strode better, and I certainly like the kids better. But on the other hand, I could totally watch a whole movie with Judy Greer as a badass, and who knew that would happen? So someone give Judy Greer a smart, funny action movie, or maybe a contemporary take on Van Helsing, with her in the lead! I do still really love John Carpenter's new version of the score, and I still find it superior to some of the big-splash horror films, like Hereditary and the Suspiria remake, that I was underwhelmed by.

October 28: Read a short novella from 1880, After Ninety Years: the Story of Serbian Vampire Sava Savanovic, by Milovan Glisic. I heard about it on Monster Kid Radio, as the source for an obscure 1973 vampire film called Leptirica, which I also need to watch. It's a very slight tale, but interesting as a fictional account of real-life folklore. For example, as found in Paul Barber's classic book Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, the vampire's face is bright red.

October 29: Went to the first Monster Ball at the local historical society. Very fun, but probably not as well-attended as they hoped (much like the party we went to last year). I was Medusa, my honey was the vintage devil, and our friends went as David S. Pumpkins and one of the dancing skeletons (who looked eerily like the ones in the skit!)

October 30: Finally watched The Autopsy of Jane Doe -- very creepy and well-made -- followed by the classic Star Trek episode, "Catspaw."

October 31: Got to dress up at work, so I reprised the Joyce, as the most comfortable to wear in the office all day. Later, we walked down the block to where the trick-or-treaters are thick, where the Spooky Ballet folks did a performance of "Thriller" on a lawn. Loads of people: I think it's becoming their new Nutcracker! Then off to the Sons of Norway Halloween party. My honey and I were dressed as a '70s horror double feature: he was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I was The Fog, in the most ridiculous costume I may have ever worn: my KAB t-shirt, with clumps of white spider webbing pinned all over me to simulate an attack from the fog. Inspired by the amazing and ridiculous action figure from Death by Toys.

And that wraps me up! I'm really enjoying keeping track of my reading and movie-watching, and often regret that I haven't done that in life. Maybe I'll keep further logs.

It's been a pretty busy and amazing Halloween season! And, like true October People, we're already discussing our plans to next year.

Happy Halloween '13

FYI, I was on the radio today, on Prairie Public's Main Street show, which is listenable here. The host, Doug Hamilton, said the selection I read was "chilling. But a warm, poignant chilling."

Exactly!

Here's a select photo from last weekend's trip to our hometown cemetery. The overview pictures don't show how weird and uncanny it was, because without the "before" you can't appreciate the "after." A few years back, there was a big tornado, and there's hardly a tree left. It's like going to visit someone you loved and not even recognizing them. It used to be that you felt completely enclosed, but now it's barren and wide open, so all the houses you never saw before are right there.

Trust me -- it did not look like this before.

I used to think that the trees growing in the cemetery would take on the spirits of the people buried there. Animistic from an early age! And now that the trees and shrubs are all gone, it seems doubly sad.

We also had a very peculiar experience will deserves its own blog post, so, there'll be a few more creeps to come!

In the meantime, Happy Halloween, and keep your pumpkins lit!

Cakes from HELL: the Pessimistic Baker Makes Skulls

Learning to bake has been on my to-do list for ages -- as I discovered when I picked up some of that fancy cooking spray, with the flour in it, and discovered two other cans that had expired over two years ago. Oops! But with Halloween upon us, I was determined to use the occasion to bake a cake in my skull cake pan, along with the skull and jack-o-lantern cupcake pans I've picked up along the way.

What I really need with baking (and cooking) at this point is familiarity. I've been looking for a book to help learn baking, and what I really want is something that starts with the rock-bottom basics, has you make something, and then slowly increases in complexity, building on skills used in things you've already made. The recipes need to use few ingredients, and appear simple and reassuring. There are lots of gorgeous and inspiring books out there, but they're all starting from too advanced of a place for me. Some of us are intimidated just by mixing the ingredients in a bowl!

So I started in the easiest place I could find: a box of cake mix. My specific tasks to conquer were: finding the hand mixer; using the hand mixer; turning on the oven; transferring batter into a pan; and not burning anything.

In those terms, it's a success!

The mixer was actually where I thought it would be, and I considered it a good omen when I found its doo-hickeys(see, I just had to Google to find out they're called "beaters").

The cake mix in question was a Pillsbury Moist Supreme Premium Cake Mix in "Classic White." It was quite yellow, though,and came out looking nothing whatsoever like the cake on the box. I did use the whole egg recipe rather than the egg white recipe -- because please -- which might be the difference, but it does make me wonder what's different about yellow cake.

(The numbering scheme of the following steps has been done by me, in summary of the relevant box instructions).

1. Set your oven to 350 degrees. On my oven, I can push a button for a particular function, set a temperature, and then it'll beep when it pre-heats to the temp. Fortunately, one of these functions is "Bake," so I knew to pick that instead of, say, "Broil." If I were cooking something, I might have some problems just turning on the oven, although I think I just always use "Bake," because what, the heat knows the difference? In any case, the oven pre-heated to 350 degrees before I even got blending. Does it make any difference? It seems to me, based on communal Christmas cookie baking, that the longer the oven is on, the hotter it gets, and thus, the less time you need to bake later batches. Will that be relevant? I have no idea.

2. Either use shortening and flour (Good lord! Is this the 1930s?) or "lightly coat" with no-stick cooking spray. As stated, I bought the fancy baking spray, so I used that. It came out in an uncontrollable futz of white spray, so I don't know about "lightly coating" anything. Also, the box said to use liners for cupcakes. That would normally make sense, even to me, but I was using special molded cupcake pans, that are supposed to be "non-stick."

3. Add ingredients. Fortunately, I'm an overachiever with the liquid measurements. AND I can crack an egg with one hand.

By the way, I totally Single White Female-ed this Pyrex bowl from a friend: I saw hers and went straight to eBay. But who can blame me? 

4. Blend ingredients until moistened. It took me a second to realize that meant separately from using the mixer, and blending is not the same as beating.

5. Beat with a mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes. My mixer has 4 numerical settings, so I assumed that 2 was "medium." That seems to have worked, since the result was something recognizable as cake batter.

I had some real concerns about whether the hand mixer was going to fling batter all over my kitchen, but it did not, even when I pulled the beaters out slightly to spin the batter off them. Fortunately, I have a vague memory of my mom doing that, so I didn't just stop mixing and leave them heavy with goop.

5a. They missed a step here, which is the part where you get the batter into the pans. Okay, yes, this is as rudimentary as it gets, but that's what I'm looking for!  I spooned into the cupcake pans, and poured into the bigger pan. The main thing I didn't really know was how much batter this was going to produce. The box said it made "24 cupcakes," but that wasn't helpful. Turns out, there was exactly enough batter for each of my pieces: one skull cake, 4 skull cupcakes, and 4 pumpkins. Kind of spooky.

6. Bake. "Follow the bake times below."

Here's where it gets tricky. Different bake times are given for 5 different cakish scenarios: One 13x9 inch pan; two 8-inch round pans; two 9-inch round pans; a Bundt pan; and 24 cupcakes (2/3rds full).

First of all: if you fill the cupcakes 2/34rds full, I imagine it's because it's going to rise. Does that mean a cake will rise also? With the cake pans, they don't say anything about how high to fill them. But it  seems that if cupcakes shouldn't be filled to the top, neither should cake pans.

My second confusion was about the relationship between the amount of cake in the oven at one time, as related to the bake time given. Maybe it's not even relevant, but who knows? Even a microwave will say to use more time if you're zapping two frozen enchiladas instead of one.

In my case, I had two pans with 4 cupcakes each, and a single cake pan, of unclear dimensions. We'll get to that troublesome skull in a minute; for now, I just don't know, even if I guess that cake pan is the equivalent of 8 inches, would I bake it at the time given for two 8-inch pans? How about if I want to put in the cake and one cupcake pan at the same time? (Which I did).

Questions like these are exactly why Betty Crocker was created in the first place!

I picked up some recycled aluminum cake pans for future reference, but when I got them home, I discovered they are 8 - 3/4ths round pans. So ... is that the bake time for 8 inches, or 9 inches?

In the meantime, despite not knowing enough to guesstimate, I totally did. With mixed results. I had the cupcakes in for a good 5+ minutes less than the suggested time, and they certainly didn't need any more.

However ...

7. Cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean.

Here's where we really had a problem, based on my wild guessing about proper times. To be fair, my skull cake pan is made of very thin metal and quite shallow, and it's neither a symmetrical shape, nor a consistent depth. So I definitely made this harder than it had to be. However, I did in fact skewer the cake, in different areas, and it came out clean.

So it had been cooling on the cookie rack for quite a while when I decided to turn 'er over and see how well the skull pattern had turned out. When, uh ... complete disaster! Although it was nice and golden baked around the edges, it was still soft and pudding-y in the middle. What a mess!

I announced that 8 cupcakes may be all we were going to get, but my honey helped me plop the whole mess onto a piece of aluminum foil, on a cookie sheet. We baked it for another ten minutes. What came out was more or less like a bread bowl cake. Hey, maybe that's a thing that should exist! Since it was yellowish, it looked very like it had some kind of cheesy stuff in the middle. So we ate it right out of there, fondue-style.

8. Clean up! The smartest thing I did was start putting dishes in the sink immediately. I put the egg shells in the measuring cup while I was blending. When I got to beating, I tossed them, and had the measuring cup handy to stash the sticky beaters in while I was pouring and putting in the oven. Once that was done, I squirted in some dish soap and let them soak, so the batter didn't dry on. Then, as soon as my second batch of cupcakes went in the oven, I immediately started soaking the mixing bowl. By the time those cupcakes were done, the first set of cupcakes were cool enough to remove from the pan, and I washed that along with the bowl, the measuring cup, the beaters, etc.

The verdict? Doable! Next time I'll try to use more normal cake pans and see if that makes a difference. Also, this mix was ironically a little sweet for my taste, so we'll have to see if I can darken it down in the future.

All Hallow's Read

With all the cool stuff on the internet to keep track of, it still surprises me when I come across something I totally should have known about, but somehow got lost in my shuffle! In this case, I cannot believe that I've never heard of the the All Hallow's Read until now.

Of course, if I were just reading Neil Gaiman's blog, I wouldn't be so out of the loop ... so let that be a lesson to me!

There are some free downloadable posters at Introverted Wife.

Unfortunately, I don't know of anyone locally who's doing anything with this, but I'm definitely willing to promote the giving away of scary books. I recommend Arthur Machen, E. F. Benson (of Mapp and Lucia fame!), and, let's see, how about my old and dear friend J. Sheridan Le Fanu, as some good starting points. For kids, there's always Something Wicked This Way Comes, or Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Egypt Game, which I can't believe I've never properly blogged about. Sometimes I just don't know what I've been doing with my life!

My first proper publicity, from the fine folks at Church of Halloween!

It totally warms my ghoulish little heart!

Back in Orange

I've been out of the loop for a while -- making stick puppets, go-go dancing in a Godzilla outfit, getting swept up in a zombie apocalypse, etc. Mainly, though, I've been writing, but doing it off-line. I've finally taken the plunge and published a novella, and am deep at work on a more full-length novel.

Since I've written so much here about jantelogen and related concepts, it's probably no surprise that I'm not wildly comfortable with the self-promotional aspects of all this. When I started this blog, it was with the idea that it wouldn't contain anything that gave away my identity, unless people came here because they already knew me. And now that I'm in a position where I could make use of it for real-life purposes, I certainly feel like mocking my ideals.

However, I have always agreed with Auden that "private faces in public places are wiser and nicer than public faces in private places." So what the hell.

Oh, and about this book. There's a picture on the side of the screen. I tried to get a proper widget, I really did, but we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way: with hyperlinks.

It's called The Jack-o-Lantern Box, and it's available in print and ebook formats. It's about kids in a small town in the '70s who are planning for Halloween, telling ghost stories, and generally creeping each other out. Even though it’s never openly stated, the book partly exists to answer the question I often get in life: “What’s your deal with Halloween? Why do you love it so much?”

Of course, the correct answer is: “Because it’s awesome!” But along with the self-evidentness, there's the joy of being scared, and the combination of the holiday’s sense of freedom, forums for creativity, and even surface silliness, with an underlying seriousness that comes with the reality of death.

Plus candy!

So go buy it. See how smooth I am at this?

At any rate, I'm hoping to post more regularly, with some Retro Halloween-themed goodness, my backlog of reviews, and the usual random. Fingers crossed.

Spider the Pumpkins

That's an actual item from my "to-do" list for today. I'm living the good life! Yes, it's the annual Halloween program time again, this year with a vaguely EC Comics kind of theme. I was scrutinizing my set-up, and decided I wanted to move the body bag back so it would be more visible ... but I figured I'd better wait until the political rally in the next room is over with. I'm sure the uniformed cop standing guard outside their door has already noticed that I'm strewing the room with pumpkins and skeletons, but still, why tempt fate?

When I'm setting up for the program, at some point every year, I think for a minute what it would be like if I had a better room than this big modern box of a meeting room. If I had a proper stage, real lighting equipment, or just something with a little more atmosphere to it. But on the other hand, there is something special about the no-frills space, and the fact that the program takes place somewhere that usually has such mundane functions. It's here in the library, where people go for all kinds of things, not in a theater or somewhere that's set apart. There's a more intimate quality to it, which I think helps connect the readers and the audience. And it keeps the focus more on the stories themselves, as stories. Right now, I have to keep things intimate and low-key, because there's only so much I can do to disguise the room. But more lighting and staging and effects might detract from what makes it so special.


I actually got interviewed in the local paper about the reading, which is not exactly in my comfort zone. I always sound a little like an old-school Val ("it's like, kind of, you know, sort of, and stuff"), but that's what happens in conversation! So I'm going to write up what I meant to say, in a slightly more articulate form.

Why I love Halloween: because there are things in the world that are frightening, or disturbing, or just plain strange and mysterious. Sooner or later, all of us will have to face loss and death. Halloween is a time when people, individually and communally, acknowledge this. It comes out in the open, and instead of becoming scared or depressed by it, people use their imagination and creativity to transform it into something meaningful. The incredible creativity people put into costumes and decorations and stories, all dealing with things they normally pretend don't exist, gives me hope for humanity ... which, I realize, is kind of funny when they're dressing up as zombies and slasher-movie characters.

So here's wishing you and yours a Happy Halloween!

Halloween Three

The Evil Dead (1981)

Bruce Campbell is so good on TV's Burn Notice as Sam -- a wisecracking, hard-drinking, ladies' man of a retired shadowy government operative -- it's like he's been the character all his life. Of course, that's very much not so, but it was still almost startling to see him recently at the very way-back of his career, in the original Evil Dead.

In the later films, especially Army of Darkness with its "primitive screwheads," Campbell's Ash pushed the limit of how big a jerk a protagonist can be and still get an audience to root for him. In the first one, his Ashley pushed in the opposite direction: the hero was soft-spoken, compassionate, and refreshingly passive. One of my favorite scenes puts him in the background, uncertainly clutching an ax, while his buddy fights off his demonically possessed girlfriend. For once I thought, if this actually happened, I wouldn't know what was going on. I wouldn't jump to assume I should start mutilating my friends. This edition of Ash actually deals with bizarre supernatural threats as reasonably as a person could be expected to.

I was also amused by the scene in which Ash attempts to recite a Greek toast at dinner, but stumbles over the pronunciation.  The origin of the famous "maybe I didn't say every single little tiny syllable"?

Despite its flaws, and some obviously low-budget acting on display, I've always been fond of Evil Dead for being the closest thing to a straight horror film in the series. And, well, at this point in history, nothing much else needs to be said.

Night of the Demons (1988)

I must have picked up this video box a hundred times at the old videostore, looked at the cover, pondered, and finally said "Naw." Now I've finally broken down and watched it, I can say that I should have trusted my instinct, since it turned out to be a pretty generic entry in the subgenre of dumb teens endangering themselves.

There are some good points to the film, however: the opening cartoon credit sequence is pretty cool. Star Mimi Kennedy has a great "I'm possessed by a demon" dance scene in front of a fireplace, and her whole big-haired '80s/Goth gown look is not bad either. That's Heathers' Kurt Kelly (actor Lance Fenton) as the Final Girl's date (just as much of a jerk as he would be to Winona Ryder). Most importantly, I'm always happy to see Linnea Quigley, no matter what the circumstances, and here she has one of her most iconic scenes, on a par with the Dance of the Chainsaw from Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. It involves a lipstick, and some prosthetic toplessness, and that's all I care to say.

Come to think of it, while this is actually pretty inept on all levels, when compared to Quigley vehicles like Nightmare Sisters (top on my list of Terrible Movies I Can't Defend In Any Way, But Of Which I'm Inexplicably Fond), it actually looks like a movie. A bad movie, yes, but at least not like something shot on video in someone's garage.

House of Frankenstein (1944)

Divine Providence seems to be aiding mad scientist Dr. Niemann (a hypnotic Boris Karloff) in his desire to carry on the work of his hero, Dr. Frankenstein. First, a collapsing building springs him and his murderous hunchback assistant from prison. Then they conveniently stumble on a traveling Chamber of Horrors, whose owner they quickly dispatch, leaving them to travel at will with Dracula's bones in the back. (The late lamented Professor Lampini was no charlatan, even though nobody would be able to tell any random skeleton with a stake jammed in its ribs from the real thing). They even find the original monster frozen in the ruins of Frankenstein's old castle, along with clinically depressed wolfman Lawrence Talbot, who helps them find the doctor's old notes.

Niemann is well on his way to revenging all the wrongs done him, with a scheme that involves a shell game of brain-swapping, but a hunchback/wolfman/gypsy girl love triangle is going to thwart his plans. Hunchback Daniel rescues dancer Ilonka from an abusive employer, and she's nice to him in return, but she clearly prefers the gloomy "Larry."  I laughed out loud at a delightful scene in which Larry broods, while the rather Basanti-like Ilonka sits next to him, chattering and beaming brightly all the while.

This film packs in a ton of action, even going off on a tangent with a bunch of extraneous characters menaced by John Carradine's resurrected Dracula (a much more distinguished role for him than the one he played in Nocturna, Granddaughter of Dracula), and still gets it all done in 71 minutes. And it's no real spoiler to say that it all ends with an angry "burgermaster" and a torch-wielding mob. Just like it should.

Rob Zombie, Won't You Please Come Home?

Well, everybody in the known universe knows my opinion of the Rob Zombie Halloween. While much more graphic in its violence, and filled with extraneous unpleasantness (cruel families, animal abuse), it nonetheless softened the theme in the same way that the glossy remakes of The Fog and Assault on Precinct 13 did -- by removing the elements of existential dread and replacing them with explanations for why evil befalls certain people. If evil is caused, it can be prevented. If it's focused, it can be avoided. That's the exact opposite message of the original Halloween, which is that death is going to come no matter what.

There, that saved you from having to go back and read my old post.

The follow-up Halloween II, set mostly a year after the previous movie, is pretty much more of the same. Traumatized former perk-ball Laurie Strode has become all angsty and counter-cultural. Dr. Loomis has written a book full of revelations that would never pass any publisher's legal department, but which is going to make her freak out. And Michael is wandering around, butchering rednecks in cornfields while he waits for the voices in his head to tell him that Laurie is "ready."

All the surviving cast, and most of the dead, returns, including Danielle Harris (who played Jamie Lee Curtis' daughter in the parts 4 and 5, and is now 32 playing a teenager), even though I totally thought her character had died in the last movie. But apparently not. Sheri Moon Zombie, who did a respectable job in the original, is basically just around to stare vacantly into space (she's also involved in some quasi-Jungian symbolism, but don't get me started). I'm always happy to see Malcolm McDowell, but after years of Scream movies, the Gale Weathers take on Dr. Loomis isn't nearly as interesting as Donald Pleasance's respectable authority figure turned paranoid prophesier of doom. Not McDowell's fault, and I wish he'd gotten to play a better Loomis, although it was fun to see him sharing a stage with "Weird Al" Yankovic.

The major missing person is Daeg Faerch (Little Michael), who supposedly grew too much between segments to play himself in the flashbacks and hallucinations. The role was recast with a slightly cuter kid, although I think it would have been wiser to cut out the flashbacks and hallucinations altogether.

I was happy to see genre stalwart Brad Dourif make a dignified transition to grizzled Dad roles, as the harried but good-natured sheriff trying to nurture his scarred daughter and her emotionally troubled friend. The other real flare of interest is Howard Hesseman -- yes, Dr. Johnny Fever himself! -- in a small role as the old hippie who owns the funky bookstore/record store/coffeeshop where Laurie works. Come to think of it, there seem to be an awful lot of hipsters in little Haddonfield, especially once we hit the artistically multi-media Halloween party, with its professional psychobilly band. It's like Little Austin in the Cornfield or something.

There's no point in even talking about holes in the script ... except, okay, why is everyone so positive Michael is dead? "They never found his body" works in case of fire and flood, but no so much from an ambulance crash. And the police force seems to be working a late night on Halloween, although they're not seen actually doing anything: they're certainly not busting the glaringly conspicuous party full of topless dancers and underage drinking, nor has anyone discovered the bodies of those angry rednecks, the folks in the strip club, or any other uninteresting bystanders I've already forgotten, whom Michael left lying around.

Some of the cinematography is nice, with various shots that made me think, ooh, beautiful composition! You could frame that and hang it on the wall, if you're the sort who likes spooky rainy and/or foggy ambience. There's also loads of crowd-pleasing gore, shot in autopsy photo close-up. But both modes left me with a sense of -- bemused detachment. I never felt drawn in or emotionally involved in the story. The place didn't seem real, the people didn't seem real, and the suspense level was non-existent. Action happened too fast to even react to it, and on the other hand, some scenes were drawn out way past the point of interest.

I know that movie stars all want to be rock stars, and rock stars want to direct, but I seem to remember that Zombie didn't do so badly when he was, you know, a musician. His Zombie-a-Go-Go record label put out a few great CDs, like the classic Halloween Hootenany compilation, and that beautifully packaged The Words and Music of Frankenstein. I don't think it's a coincidence that the best part of House of 1000 Corpses was the soundtrack. Please, Rob, you're good at something: why don't you do it?

(In a fleeting resurgence of his label, Zombie is releasing an MP3 album for the film's fictional band, Captain Clegg and the Night Creatures, through Amazon and Itunes. I've noticed press blurbs all over about the album's "cover art." Does an MP3 download really have cover art, per se? This possibly means that a physical CD is available somewhere, or will be, but I can't say that what I heard in the movie was particularly earth-shaking, so I'm not losing any sleep).

I didn't hate Halloween II, which I can't say about Zombie's first effort in the franchise, but his statement that he's done with it is still a relief. I can ignore his other films, but I'm sort of contractually obligated to see all the Halloween movies (due to that unfortunate pact with the dark forces that once took place). No matter how bad I think a Halloween sequel is going to be, I am compelled!

Since Halloween 3D is already on the horizon, feel free to beat the rush and start praying for my soul now.

Halloween Retrospective

As I gear up for the Return of the Halloween Program, I've been trying vaguely to remember what I did for all the previous ones. A few are oddly hazy in my memory.

The most recent one is easy: As the Hearse Goes By. My decor was going for a Victorian mad scientist/anatomist vibe (I'm still proud of the heart-in-a-jar), my costume meant to evoke Victorian undertaker, and the piece I did was a selection from Dylan Thomas' The Doctor and the Devils. That's a book I acquired via flea market or rummage sale in late elementary school or early junior high, and long a favorite.

After that, I start losing track. But I'll try:

Night of the Ghouls. I used the zombie protection kit we ordered from )("Caution, fresh graves" police tape, and various mock biohazard signs), and possibly those hands that reach up from the floor, with leaves scattered over them). It seems that might have been my unsuccessful "Schalken the Painter" year, because it would fit the theme...That's one of my favorite stories, but I was recovering from a bad cold, and my head was still stuffed enough that I couldn't hear myself properly, so I felt like I had no inflection. I'm sure, though, that's the year I wore all the drapy bones to the dive bar afterwards.

Dark Carnival. That's the year I tried a costume contest, which was way too much work. My look was Vampire Magician's Assistant, and my honey was an evil clown, and afterwards we went to the anniversary party for the local small press, still in makeup, which I fondly remember. We built a small, purposely rundown circus tent...and maybe that's when I used those hands? I think I used an opening and closing piece from Something Wicked This Way Comes...

Thesaurus of Horror. My best title! One of my best fliers, and I'm sure it was the year my costume was Blood-Spattered Bride. (I popped out into the library before the program and startled someone: I'd forgotten my shirt was covered in stage blood). The ambience was more overtly gothy; that's when I made the photocopies of old tombsones and backed them with cardboard, for a portable graveyard. But I don't remember reading anything, other than a few poems.

Spookerama. The decorations were fairly minimal (blow-up photocopies of B-movie posters), but a lot of other things were elaborate. We made a loop of vintage spook show radio ads that I played in the lobby beforehand; I made individual treat bags to give away; and I had an actual assistance. She handed out "Spookerama" tickets as people came in, and, in my best entrance ever, I was wheeled in on a steel table, covered with a sheet, from whence I rose from the dead. That was a big hit. I believe I read from something I'd written myself.

Phantasmagoria. The first year, the decorations were pretty simple, and I read Poe's "Berenice." At the end, I threw little "teeth" into the audience. Ahh, I remember that fondly.

I think I'm completely forgetting a year. Maybe the individual treat bags were another year, and the Spookerama was the year with the eyeball cupcakes? I thought I did a theme of "kids' Halloween for grown-ups," with lots of old-fashioned plastic pumpkins, black/orange festoons, vintage look black cats and skeletons. But what was it called? What did I read? The piece I wrote myself would fit that better, so maybe I read something else for the Spookerama? I can't tell if I'm conflating two memories into one, or separating one into two.

Maybe I should start keeping, I don't know, some kind of records.

At least all my Mummy Shroud stuff is really coming along.

"I didn't sign up for Second Degree Assault Party"

We're gonna have a murder party tonight. All right!

Sorry, but every time I see the title for the 2007 indie release Murder Party, I get Black Flag's old hit "TV Party" stuck in my head. That line about "why go into the outside world at all? It's such a fright!" actually seems pretty a propos.

I'd heard this movie tagged as "The Breakfast Club as a slasher film," mainly due to a game of "truth or dare" played midway through the film, which is clearly meant to invoke a John Hughes vibe. Lately, I keep seeing odd comparisons online to Napoleon Dynamite, as if that film invented the concept of social ineptitude.

At any rate, as the film started, the only name in the credits I recognized was Beau Sia, a performance poet known for his book A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge, a parodic response to the collection of poems published by Jewel in 1999. He also appeared in the movies Slam and SlamNation. Right there I thought, that's kind of odd, and the rest of the movie pretty much fulfilled that expectation.

On Halloween night, lonely guy Chris (co-producer Chris Sharp) finds a wind-blown invitation to a "Murder Party." The quiet opening minutes establish him as likeable, if so socially inept (see above) that he can barely relate to his hilariously deadpan cat, and I was already rooting for him to survive the evening's events. Impulsively, he decides to go to the party, where he is quickly taken hostage by the members of an artists' collective. They're all competing for a grant from the Bret Easton Ellis-esque Alexander, who says that he'll give the money to whoever comes up with the best way to kill Chris, now an unwilling, bound and gagged "collaborator" in the artistic process.

At first it's mostly all talk and mind games -- just one accidental death to start muddling up their plans -- but eventually it turns into a crazed, murderous free-for-all, with suprisingly good effects for such an obviously low-budget production.

While the pretentions of the New York art scene may be a tired target for satire, it's definitely a fresher setting for a killing spree than, say, a campground full of teenagers. These things are all relative. I particularly enjoyed that one of the key characters was dressed for the costume party as Blade Runner's Pris, and another as a Baseball Fury from The Warriors. And there were all sorts of interesting oddball touches, like when the kill-crazy artist bursts into a neighboring Halloween party and, having lost his victim in the crowd, goes to the bar and casually orders a drink. For a minute, he reverts back to the way he'd have been if he'd gone to this party before he snapped, which is a nice touch.

Not the greatest movie I've ever seen, but it doesn't pretend to be. Those of us with a taste for quirky, low-budget horror have all seen a lot worse. It may even leave you wanting to rent the non-existent horror movie our hero had intended to watch: Scene Wolf.

How the Pumpkin Became Orange

Based on the evidence, I don't know why everybody always thought I was so precocious. Unless the other little kids were in really bad shape.

Going through some old folders, I came across a bunch of stories and poems that I wrote in elementary school. Several of them are about Halloween, which I'm sure is no surprise to anyone. I must have been in about...3rd grade? when I wrote the following.

"How the Pumpkin Became Orange

Once pumpkins were all green. But one of the pumpkins fell in a pot of orange dye. It was very becoming, so every pumpkin tried it. And that's the reason all pumpkins are green for awhile and then turn orange."

There you have it! It's a little-known fact that pumpkins turn orange as a fashion statement. They reach a certain age, and then they want to do the equivalent of hennaing their hair. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we all magically ripened into the most "becoming" colors?

"The trouble with these sell-your-soul movies..."

"...is that they're always so theologically unsound."

Although it was the least of Ghost Rider's problems, I kept saying, "For Pete's sake, haven't the characters read Faust?"

I've been reading History of the Kings of Britain, and got to the older version of the King Lear story. The storyline is almost exactly like it is in the play, and then all of a sudden, Shakespeare completely changed the ending. I don't think there were Elizabethan fanboys, but I'm sitting here going, hey, why'd he do that? In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Cordelia's army defeats her sisters', and she rules Britain for decades. I'm so used to the tragedy that it's hard to wrap my brain around.

And speaking of Cordelias, I wonder if there's a support group for people addicted to episode guides. I just picked up a Buffy guide called Dusted, and now the Angel companion volume is on its way. I think I get bored with my own analyses, and want some opinions to agree or disagree with.

Same with all this slasher scholarship I've been into. Like, I didn't even think a movie like The Dorm That Dripped Blood was worth watching. But it's still worth thinking about. Then I start going, hmmm, maybe it wasn't so bad, and I should give it another chance. Once I've watched the hundred other movies on my Netflix list.

So this movie, Going to Pieces: the Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, was pretty interesting, if not quite as socio-political as The American Nightmare. And they used the phrase "genre purist," and it made me think, I've heard that phrase before. But what does that mean, exactly? How can you be a "purist" about slasher movies? For the record, the original Halloween is probably my favorite film in the genre, although the first Friday the 13th contains probably my favorite line of dialogue. I mean, "purely and simply...EEE-villle" is a great line, but it can't top "It's got a death curse!"

And a little horror bonus, courtesy of the IMDB. So, it turns out that the girl who's playing Laurie Strode in the Halloween remake is also starring in a remake of April freakin' Fool's Day. I mentioned this to my honey, and he asked, "Are they remaking Prom Night and Terror Train?" Ummmm...yes, and yes. Things are getting out of hand when they have to remake things that were utterly derivative to begin with. And I'm saying that as someone who actually liked all of those movies! But nobody can say there's anything really original about their storylines (April Fool's Day excepted).

But so far it looks like at least Hell Night is sacred....

"I've been trick-or-treated to death tonight"

Woke up to a super-blustery day and the power off, but fortunately I fell back to sleep and didn't suffer from a lack of Emergency Frappuccinos. I realized I don't have any reserves in the pantry, and since my stove is electric, I couldn't even rustle up some caffeinated tea in a crisis.

Anyway, as one thing leads to another, at the convention we saw a bunch of trailers for upcoming movies. We saw the 30 Days of Night, which looks good, despite the off-putting presence of Josh Hartnett. Also, I am Legend, finally being filmed under its own name (after Vincent Price's The Last Man on Earth and Charlton Heston's The Omega Man). I'll definitely go see it, although I thought that and the new umpteenth Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie, this time just called The Invasion, both seem to be aiming for big budget Independence Day/War of the Worlds status more than I'd rather, including the overused parent/child "I just want to find my family" slant. However, I was super-excited to see that there's a Veronica Cartwright cameo in The Invasion.

And it was my first viewing of the trailer for the upcoming Rob Zombie Halloween remake (I just haven't been hitting YouTube very heavily, obviously, to be so far behind). I have doubts about the whole project, not just because of Rob, but because of the cast list's obvious emphasis on the Pretty People. Still, there was nothing in the trailer that turned me off, which is something in itself. And no matter how bad it is, it can't be any worse than some of the older sequels. If Halloween 6 didn't ruin the original for me, I'm pretty confident that nothing can.

That led to an afternoon of listening to various Halloween soundtracks and finally to eenie-meenying Halloween II to watch after an excursion to the dive bar last night. It pales next to the original, of course, but in retrospect, it didn't seem so bad. I've always been fond of the spiritually incorrect "Sam Hain, the Lord of the Dead" speech, and amused by Donald Pleasence's tendency to say all his lines in this movie as if he's totally distracted. I was also pleased to rediscover that Nancy Stephens actually got a bit of screen time and more lines in her recurring role as Dr. Loomis' chain-smoking nurse. (You might also remember her as the manifesto-reading kamikaze revolutionary in Escape from New York).

There are also a handful of scares that actually work, like when Ana Alicia is terrified in the dark room, and Michael's face slowly appears out of the blackness behind her. It's a scary and fairly subtle effect in a not-so-subtle movie. And when Michael comes up to the locked glass doors at the hospital and just keeps walking, crashing right through them without hesitation, it prefigures the really non-human sense of purpose that The Terminator would later do so well.

Some dull victims, yes; Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't really get to do anything but stumble and play drugged, and it's a little odd when she seems to be flirting with the EMT from her hospital bed early on. And where the heck are her parents? It's completely implausible that the authorities can't find them, in a small town where everybody knows them and it's all over the radio and tv what's happened, naming their daughter by name. But the script has to keep them away because they would explain what's going on, and it would ruin the big revelation. A revelation I've always found totally silly, but what the heck, all the rest of the movies have stuck with it, so I guess I can roll my eyes and let it pass.

When I watch the original, though, I put all of that nonsense right out of my mind. I prefer my evil random, thank you very much.