everyday is halloween

happy halloween!

we carved the pumpkin & waited until the witching hour to light the candle in service to the high holiday.  we had a fair number of little goblins to hand out candy.  but our neck of the woods usually doesn't get that many trick 'r treaters.  but we had a fine time watching carnival of souls [1962] as the creatures of the night came & went.  for it was candy time.  & the moment of the year when the fabric that separates the living from the dead becomes the thinnest.  still there is the pandemic.  still there is our world out of whack.  but for a couple of hours tonight we could celebrate this most prized of spooky days.  until next year may we all hold halloween everyday together in our hearts.

boo

everyday is halloween

this movie is a trip.  the only halloween film in the franchise that does not, repeat not, feature our beloved serial killer michael myers [aka the shape].  rather than feature the goings on of a pretty pissed off & murderous former citizen of haddonfield. ill. this flick goes for something else.  the 'true' meaning of halloween.  which includes a crazed psychopath who is the head of a conglomerate that manufactures halloween masks & broadcast media.  what fun!  this CEO wants the hills to 'run red' with ritual sacrifices because death, for this story, means halloween.  this flick has some lovely autumnal photography with kids dressed in their halloween best.  again, there is really no horror movie like this one.  & the franchise returned to the stabby shenanigans of the erstwhile & always pissed off michael myers.  but for a moment the filmmakers & producers thought that halloween, as a holiday as well as a trope, can mean something other than a man in a william shatner mask getting all stabby on account of, ahem, things.  

boo

everyday is halloween

 elvira: mistress of the dark [1988]

what a goofball movie.  what a lot of lo-blo sex & boob jokes.  what a treasure is cassandra peterson!  peterson's creation elvira is a hyper sexual independent strong woman who dresses like robert smith of the cure wearing almost as much makeup as the venerable singer.  see, elvira, is a television horror host.  she makes all sorts of sexy wisecracks such as when she hurt noggin & she is asked how's her head elvira lets loose this zinger, no complaints yet.  

har har!  okay, the stupidity of the joke is part of the comedy.  peterson is no dummy.  elvira is a dame, as in the old pulp novels, but she is also no dummy.  rather, she can punch out creeps with the best.  which she does plenty of times in this movie.  which goes like this.

elvira is a horror movie hostess in some mid-market TV station whose new fat fuck cowpoke owner attempts to sexually assault the mistress of the dark.  fuck that shit.  elvira stabs the creep using her stiletto heels & tells the boss he can keep his crappy job.  she's lighting out for the wilds of las vegas where she has a gig waiting for her.  she's gonna make it big in las vegas!  the only catch is that she's got to help produce the show & finance it too to the tune of fifty grand.

problem is, of course, she doesn't have that kind of dough.  lo!  she receives a telegram informing her of an inheritance from a great-aunt elvira didn't know she had.  what could she have inherited?  our hero most travel to fallwell, mass. to find out.  which she promptly does in her tricked out black hot rod.  elvira's threads, makeup, wheels, uncompromising sexuality & her wit gets a lot of attention along the way.

of course the township of fallwell [get it!] is a conservative backwater where the local teens are forced to watch only g rated movies at the local theater.  it's stultifying!  elvira being her own kickass self [kickass is her california license plate] stirs up the local populace but she gets all the town's kids to live with a bit more punch.  the kids love her.  elvira falls for a local hunk who owns that local theater.  when she gets her inheritance elvira finds she gets her great-aunt's house, dog & recipe book.  no cash.  no dinero to help fund her show in las vegas.

but there's a catch.  elvira is even more special than she knew.  the honorific mistress of the dark covers a lot of ground.  & the town wants to burn her because they think she's a witch.  that's when elvira's three inherited things reveal their deeper purpose.  

does this flick have a happy ending?  why yes of course.  elvira is the mistress of the dark.  but not too dark.  she unbuckles the town's trousers so to speak & the folk come to love her too.  in the end.  so what about the standard horror movie tropes that would make this a really bad halloween movie.  there's lots of fog, a haunted house, creatures of all sorts, witches, warlocks, magic spells but most of all it has cassandra peterson as elvira who is TV cheesy horror movie host squared.  she's a delight to watch even when you are cringing at the one-liners & yet another boob joke.  as the old folks used to say, they don't make 'em like that anymore.  i hope.

boo

everyday is halloween

i've written about local [sacramento/san francisco] TV horror host bob wilkins before.  he's an icon for nearly every local lover of my beloved genre horror.  my parents would have me take a nap on saturday afternoons just so i could stay up late to watch creature features with bob wilkins.  wilkins was an unassuming host with his thick eyeglasses, smoking a stogie, & wry humor.  unlike a great many other media markets who also had their own horror hosts with their own ghoulish gimmicks & outre costumes.  not so for bob wilkins.  the venerable, yet unassuming host would often read the night's listings of other broadcasts published in tv guide magazine & encourage his viewers to watch those things instead of his own really bad movies.  that made me love him all the more.  bob wilkins introduced me to horror films.  i was often scared out of my mind.  thrilled too.  i'm glad to see the youtube channel for the center for sacramento history published this short promo for creature features from 1969 in honor of the high holiday.  

boo

everyday is halloween

is there a movie today that brings such visceral dread & fear than the exorcist [1973].  a film so frightening that some viewers thought that they risked their own demonic possession simply by watching it.  i remember the adults around me talking about this flick & even their speech possessed an aura of nerve-jangling trauma.  there has not been a movie to have such a huge hit on its audiences, & on popular culture.  a few have gotten close to this pic's hugely influence.  but this movie was/is in its own orbit.  here is a clip of the massive popularity of this movie, & the audiences reactions to its horror.  even today, 48 years later, this is a movie that can punch you in the solar plexus & freeze your blood.  but just remember as you dare to stare to remind yourself it is only a movie...it is only a movie...it is only a movie...

boo

everyday is halloween

do you have a thing, a song, movie, piece of art, anything, that is not supposed to be scary yet that thing gives you the willies?  no?  yes?  well, for me it's this song by the fictive TV musical act the partridge family.  como?  it doesn't make any rational sense.  but rarely those things that go bump in the night make sense.  see, this song was released in the very early '70s when i was a small child.  my family lived in san jose.  in a house with a pitched roof.  i was quite an imaginative kid & a scaredy cat to boot.  i was going thru my monster phase.  you know, run to your bed at night & put your head under the blanket so that thing living under the bed won't get you.  i thought if there was any place in the house that witches, & other creatures of the night, would live is in that area of the roof where it was pitched.  now, comes along this song.  it's tremendously popular.  the singer, & star of the eponymous TV show, david cassidy was the dream boy for a great many people.  this song was always on the radio.  you couldn't escape it.  the instrumentation features a keyboard that sounds to me like a harpsichord.  harpsichords are the instruments deluxe in horror movies.  cassidy is singing about his fear, a dread, of being in love.  fear.  plus his vocal pitch puts me in mind of someone crazed.  i can't explain this rationally.  this song, to me, is a natural for a horror film.  think on it.  you're trapped in a dank & darkened basement.  you have no idea where the hell you are & who grabbed you.  then you hear a click.  your senses quicken.  your hearing is so acute you are able to hear, faintly, the wind & rain outside your environment.  then a short faint click.  an electric hum.  a moment later whoever brought you to this place turns on this song.  the melody & tone are incongruous to your immediate peril.  yet, utterly appropriate to the horrors of your predicament.  you sit in tense dread knowing you are about to meet your monster.  that's the kind tune that hits all those horror movie tropes.  also, did i mention that in the very early '70s i was deep into my monster phase.  monsters were not only lurking under my bed to grab my feet as i leapt under the covers at night.  they were in my closet, outside my window in the shape of tree branches, hiding in the shadows, & just beyond my field of vision.  & cassidy's croon was of no help!  this song still gives me the willies.  & so it is part of my permanent halloween hit parade.

boo

everyday is halloween

this might be one of the spookiest intros for any movie from the 20th C.  it never fails to freak me out.  we get a haunting minimalist score from the director john carpenter, a jack o'lantern, the familiar orange halloween colors of the font.  the genius of this opening credits is how it conveys so much dread without revealing a damn thing about the movie.  other than the title.  we know the action happens on halloween.  but what might happen, if you saw this for the first time in 1978, we don't know!  genius.  & a favorite of mine for the scary season.  for every season.

boo

everyday is halloween

on halloween night 1981 the punk band fear performed on Saturday Night Live.  the host was donald pleasance who played dr. samuel loomis in the great john carpenter helmed movie halloween [1978].  why the fuck was a punk band on a not-ready-for-primetime broadcast?  the story is well known by now but in a nutshell the actor john belushi was a fan of the band fear.  belushi tried to get the band work doing the soundtrack for a movie.  the movie deal fell thru so in recompense belushi pulled some strings to get fear on SNL.  the result is this perfection of chaos.  fear, lead by lead singer lee ving, was no stranger to art brut & violent provocation.  the band, along with belushi, brought in some slamdancers, including ian mackaye of minor threat & fugazi [you can hear mackaye shout 'new york sucks' in this video] & belushi himself.  hard to fathom that once upon a time a subgenre of pop music scared the living shit out of the squares.  but it did.  fear was permanently banned from SNL forever.  i don't know what the rest of america thought of this performance in 1981.  it was a little before my own foray into punk rock.  my first gig was in 1982.  but man! what art!  what a performance!  what the hell was SNL thinking to okay the national broadcast of this band?!  i dunno, but i love it.  

boo

everyday is halloween

night of the mannequins by stephen graham jones [tor.com; 2020]

several weeks ago jonathan hayes sent me a batch of horror fiction that he was reading & thought i'd dig.  one of the books he mailed me was the above-named short novel by stephen graham jones.  i'd not heard of jones.  then again i'm fairly out of what is cool in contemporary fiction, horror & otherwise.  i was an avid reader of horror, & will still read the occasional novel or story collection, but i'd been sticking to old faves like clive barker, steve rasnic tem et al.  

this morning driving nick to school i often listen to the radio show 1A on NPR hosted by jenn white.  white is an intelligent, lively host & often the subjects are about the current state of affairs.  however, this morning hit me in the heart with the force of jason voorhees' ax.  the whole hour of talk was about horror fiction.  white's guests were the film scholar kinitra brooks, the horror fiction writers carmen maria machado & stephen graham jones. 

it was a lively hour & the guests did not need to convince me about the pleasures & pains of my beloved genre.  so when i had a couple hours i read night of the mannequins.  the novel is about a group of teenage friends in west texas killing time by doing stupid shit.  they find a mannequin in a swamp, whom the kids christen manny [get it?], & spend a summer using the life-size dummy to commit all sort of pranks.

the story is told in the first person by sawyer.  jones uses the language of teens to relay the uncertainties of teenage awkwardness of a body in rapid transition with a mind & the attendant powerful confusing sexual desires that are changing too.  sawyer is an unreliable narrator.  but what we do come to understand is that he is under psychiatric care of some kind with prescribed medications.  what might be those medicines & what might be sawyer's mental illness jones holds from us.  & even this information is said in a quick sentence or two.

so what happens?  the kids use manny for the grandest prank of pranks.  one member of the group, shanna, works in a run-down cut-rate movie house.  shanna works at this theater for reasons that are not fully developed until later in the narrative.  but it seems all the kids' home lives are relatively safe but are perhaps unsatisfactory.  some shit went down causing shanna to have to work to pay off some property damage caused by the kids.  

shanna often is in trouble with her boss because she will sneak her friends into the theater. & get caught in the act. the kids like to sneak into the theater so they can goof off, sometimes watch movies they have seen on dvd, illegal download, at another nearby multiplex, or the drive-ins.  jones references the third installment of a well-known superhero franchise yet thru the voice of sawyer never tells us the name of that movie.  & yet, this film is a motif used by jones to deliberate the actions made by sawyer.  for sawyer sees himself as a superhero even if his friends, parents, teachers, society at large, might find him the villain.  

you see, the prank goes sideways leading sawyer & friends to freak out.  without giving away the plot, for i think this book is well worth the time to read it, sawyer becomes the person he always wanted for himself.  the devil be damned.  the delight for me is how jones pulls all the pieces together.  the climax takes place at the drive-ins where that third installment superhero movie is playing large onscreen.  

jones' ear is subtle & musical.  he's got the slang & the teenager's fragmentary thinking speech nailed.  jones also has what i think is crucial for a good horror writer, humor.  some of these scenes are wickedly funny.  i've long claimed that horror & comedy are two sides of the same coin.  jones is proof of it.  stephen graham jones' novel is a campfire story that hits all the bumps in that night.

boo  

everyday is halloween

ministry sez...

boo

everyday is halloween

this TV halloween special starring comedian paul lynde is an anti-classic of 1970s variety show kitsch.  fun, yes.  a slog to get thru the whole hour, yes.  & yet, i was 9 years old in 1976.  the rock band KISS looked pretty scary to me.  they didn't sound scary & i can't recall who had the double lp ALIVE!, & later the second live double lp, ALIVE II, but man! i remember rocking out & fascinated by the pictures of the band members in action, like gene simmons' mouth dripping blood after doing his famous fire eater act, & the audience.  looking at those photos & the eager audience members in the stadium waiting for KISS to take the stage you know the air was rank with marlboro cigarettes, stale budweiser, weed, hashish, & patchouli!  

so the band were a perfect complement to lynde's brand of snarky 1970s comedy for a halloween night.  do note the witches that are his costars.  if you were a kid in the 1970s you'll remember witchiepoo, played by billie hayes, from sid & marty kroft's piece of children's TV psychedelia, H.R. Puffnstuf.  the other witch is played by margaret hamilton reprising her role as the Wicked Witch of the West from the film The Wondeful World of Oz [1939].

i dare ya.  i double dog dare ya, boils & ghouls to sit down with your favorite beverage, a snack or two, & watch this halloween special all the way thru.  

the show can drag on for a bit.  you will feel that hour pass like a kidney stone.  there may be better badges of bravery than the claim that you watched this television all the way thru without breaking your funny bone  but you will have survived.  & lived to tell the tale.

boo

everyday is halloween

 why horror?

short answer, cuz it gives me pleasure.  which is not really an answer.  long answer is, i don't know. 

watching a halloween vlogger's exploration of a museum of monsters gave me great good pleasure.  why should these images of frights provide such good feelings?  that's a headscratcher.  the imagery of horror, the sounds & sights make me happy.  

yet, that must not be confused with real horror of the world we live in.   seeing werewolves, frankensntein's monster, or hearing horror movie themes is an augment to life.  an art.  the real shit of the terrible things humans do to each other is on another plane.  of disgust.

i simplify things.  & in no way can i answer the differences between made up horror tropes & the real things we see & hear everyday in our world.  perhaps the fake shit gives us an anchor to the world we live in.  a world that can be cruel, indifferent, & fucking horrible.

but then again, i don't even play a psychologist on TV.  when i watch a horror movie i identify with the victims.  i am experiencing the trauma too.  but why subject yourself to such things?  perhaps it is to come out the other side, whole & intact.  to know terror & to live to tell the tale. 

again, i simplify things.  i was watching a vlogger explore the halloween goings-on at salem, ma.  the place infamous for the witch trials of the late 17th C.  & with horror in popular culture comes a lot of kitsch.  if you are a fan of my beloved genre of horror then you are well acquainted with kitsch & even love it.  the real horror was the mass hysteria of a community in the late 17th C new england town that thought witches infiltrated its midst.  the kitsch comes a few centuries later when the town where the witch trials took place [which should be a thing of great shame] monetized that notoriety to a halloween spookshow.  

but then why horror?  perhaps it is because i know there are things that do go bump in the night.  those things are always human caused & human created. & perhaps my beloved genre of horror explores, even in it most baroque signs, knows it is silly, & says that we are human monsters who live in the shadows of the night.  & that those human made shadows are ripe for explorers to make fun of & know that we are capable, in the words of one of the most evil hollywood monsters, noah cross, from the flick chinatown [1974], under the right circumstances, we are capable of anything.  

boo

everyday is halloween

sharp productions is a favorite theme park vlogger who always does outstanding vlogs of halloween horror haunted mazes.  this maze is one of the best i've seen.  the host looks genuinely frightened as well as having a good time as she navigates thru the most fucked up scenes halloween haunters do think up.  the camera operator is famous for having a steady hand whether it be ghoul jump scares or witnessing the crazy things conceived & executed by an imaginative halloween mind.  watch all the way to the end.  this haunted maze is not for the faint of art! 

boo

everyday is halloween

 tower of terror [1997]

this movie is something else.  i think it might be the first of its kind.  disney co. decided to make a movie based on an attraction at their signature theme parks, the tower of terror.  the whole premise of disney theme parks is that the lands & their related thrill rides & attractions are based on its movies.  this particular flick reversed that.  a movie is modelled on a ride located inside the park.  it wouldn't be the last of its kind.  the pirates of the caribbean long-running franchise is proof that audiences were eager to lay down cold hard cash to watch a film based upon a favorite ride.

still there always must be a first.  & this movie is it.  interesting tidbit is that the exterior, & some of the interior, scenes were shot with the real tower of terror attraction.  the flick is a made-for-TV movie & looks it.  broadcast on the the wonderful world of disney television show it features steve guttenberg as a once-ace, currently disgraced newspaper reporter, buzzy crocker who makes his living making up bigfoot stole my spouse/aliens in the whitehouse stories for the supermarket tabloids.  kirsten dunst is his teenage niece, anna, who helps guttenberg fabricate his tabloid fictions.  

you might be asking how is this movie a halloween kind of fable.  well, you see, it goes like this.  on halloween night 1939 five people, a young couple, a child star who is modeled after shirley temple, her nanny & the bellhop were in the elevator to a party at the tip-top lounge located on the top floor of the hollywood tower hotel.  but some dark magic, in the form of a green lightning storm, zapped these poor souls.  they've been trapped inside the hotel for six decades.

here comes guttenberg with dunst in tow.  an elderly woman with a mysterious past paints an elaborate & compelling picture about the history of the haunted hotel with 'real ghosts.' our intrepid reporter smells genuine authentic news that can get him back into the good graces of both his old newspaper & his former girlfriend, played by nia peeples, who was guttenberg's editor.  

the plot is fairly wobbly.  the reporter & niece find the ghosts who are indeed real but need the pair's help to undo the dark magic, get that elevator working again, & get unstuck from their limbo so they can get to that party in 1939 & resume their lives.  or something like that.  the elderly woman's designs are discovered & foiled because of love.  that's right.  love wins out in the end.

still, i'm s sucker for crappy disney flicks.  i grew up in the 1970s when disney was cranking out dud after dud like the cat from outer space [1978] & the apple dumpling gang [1975] that i eagerly hoovered up.  also i have a pretty strong constitution.  i can handle a great load of cinematic cheese.  the fx of tower of terror are serviceable.  the art direction is good.  i liked the use of the real tower of terror in the film.  guttenberg & dunst are game & the ghost quintet are fun.  i liked how the reporter's flat was furnished with halloween decor & a large poster of a cover of the great pulp magazine weird tales.  silly?  hell yes.  & a good slice of cheese to go with your halloween candy corn.

what's that you say?  don't like candy corn?  okay, de gustibus non est disputandum.  i also like the thrill ride tower of terror too located in disneyland & disney world.  i've been on that ride a few times at disneyland.  at disneyland the theming of the ride has since been remade into the guardians of the galaxy movie franchise.  gone is the theming from the TV show the twilight zone.  & all references to that venerable television show hosted by the great rod serling are absent from this movie.  a pity since that would've thickened the plot up a bit.

boo

everyday is halloween

candy dracula sez. i wanna be yr pez

boo

everyday is halloween

c'mon boils & ghouls. let's find our way then get lost in the pumpkin patch

boo

everyday is halloween

 pumpkin man sez...

boo

everyday is halloween

this video transferred from 16mm home movie stock is a great mash of spooky cheese.  a home haunt in midtown sacramento from 1968 titled 'psychedelic home haunt.'  is it?  well, take a gander & i'll let ghoul be your answer!  i love my hometown.  i really do.  this haunted house was made & presented a little before i was walking & talking on my own.  but it reminds me of a few moments of screen time in the early 1970s of a local haunt also in a midtown victorian house.  the charity march of dimes hosted a haunted attraction during the scary season & the local news went to report on it.  the camera roamed the halls & i remember seeing frankenstein's monster at the end of a dark hall while in the bathroom was a creature in the bathtub.  scared the bejeebus outta me.  & thrilled me at the same time.  i'm sure as an adult the haunted attraction would look like so much plastic, latex & paint.  like they do in this video.  & yet & still, holy shit!  they still thrill me.  ain't that the heart & essence of the scary season? 

boo