Friendly Doomsday Reminder

It’s tomor­row, peo­ple! So I hope all your affairs are in order, all your meat clos­ets are stocked , you’ve spent qual­ity time with loved ones, and most impor­tantly, you’re all caught up on your favorite TV shows. It would’ve really sucked to die a fiery death with­out know­ing whether or not Mag­gie and Glenn ever made it out of the Governor’s camp alive.

One of the best Christ­mas gifts I got last year was this 2012 page-a-day Dooms­day count­down cal­en­dar from my boyfriend:

Like the  Jelly of the Month Club , it’s a gift that has kept on giv­ing the whole year. I’ve looked for­ward each and every day to Armaged­don pre­pared­ness tips, apoc­a­lyp­tic movie and music rec­om­men­da­tions, pop­u­lar end-of-days sce­nario pre­dic­tions, things to do before you die, failed Dooms­day prophe­cies (I assume they included those to keep my spir­its up), and all kinds of other apoc­a­lyp­tic fun.

I’m proud of myself for hav­ing suc­cess­fully resisted all temp­ta­tion this year to sneak a peek at what the cal­en­dar says for Decem­ber 21st and beyond, so tomor­row will be quite a big day for me, assum­ing, of course, I’ll still be alive to tear that page off.

Today’s entry was espe­cially poignant. I’ll type it here in case it’s too hard to read in the above pic:

The Day Before The Day Before The Day After

Big day tomor­row.
Rest up, drink plenty of flu­ids.
Pick out your clothes care­fully–
you may be wear­ing them for quite some time.
Also, set up your cof­fee machine tonight–
you’d hate to be fum­bling with beans and grinders
when Armaged­don comes.

You see what I mean? That’s the kind of prac­ti­cal wis­dom this cal­en­dar is full of.

It puts the ‘Lotion’ in the basket.

You know what the world needs? More songs inspired by Silence of the Lambs .

I am cur­rently rock­ing out to one called “Lotion” by Greenskeep­ers ‚ by far and away my great­est musi­cal dis­cov­ery of the week.  A Level 90 Rogue in my boyfriend’s WoW guild (Jesus Christ I felt so nerdy typ­ing that) rec­om­mended it. Well actu­ally, he asked if we’d ever heard “that Silence of the Lambs song” and I instantly assumed he was talk­ing about my favorite prance-around-naked-in-your-basement anthem “Good­bye Horses” but no, he meant THIS:

The night is very cold
I’m feel­ing kind of weak
I think I’ll make myself a cap from your right buttock’s cheek
And then I will go walk­ing with my lit­tle dog
And then I’ll bury you under­neath a log

With lyrics like that, my imme­di­ate plans now include look­ing up every­thing else this band has ever done.

Kudos to who­ever edited this shit, too. Dare I say–it is pre­cious .

If/when I have kids, I will teach them ‘The ABCs of Death.’

Check this crazy shit out.

The ABCs of Death is an upcom­ing hor­ror movie from Draft­house Films that con­sists of 26 shorts by 26 dif­fer­ent direc­tors depict­ing 26 hor­rific ways to die–that’s one for every let­ter of the alpha­bet. Fun fact: “T” is for toilet!

I’m a sucker for anthol­ogy cult and hor­ror films like Trick ‘r Treat , Grind­house and Creepshow , so I’ll prob­a­bly order this on Jan­u­ary 31 when it hits On Demand. Or I’ll wait a few weeks and save it for Valentine’s Day because I’m roman­tic like that.

Besides, is this not one of the coolest posters you’ve ever seen? Why has it taken this long to give the world a poster with a baby on Death’s lap? I’m even will­ing to over­look the fact that they used Tra­jan font.

[via Dread Cen­tral ]

Halloween [31 DVDs of Halloween]

John Carpenter’s  Hal­loween is the defin­i­tive hor­ror movie of Hal­loween. I thought it fit­ting that I end my count­down with this clas­sic slasher flick. A few posts back I gushed about Rob Zombie’s inter­pre­ta­tion , but there’s no sub­sti­tute for the 1978 orig­i­nal. This is the slasher movie all other slasher movies com­pare them­selves to, and Hal­loween does not offi­cially begin for me until I’ve heard the theme song .

This 25th Anniver­sary Edi­tion includes some cool extras, includ­ing director’s com­men­tary, a making-of doc­u­men­tary, and a tour of the orig­i­nal Michael Myers house.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing how an extreme low-budget movie has become such a pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­non. Is there any­one who doesn’t know who Michael Myers is?  Here’s an inter­est­ing fac­toid I recently learned about  Hal­loween : Michael Myer’s mask was actu­ally a Cap­tain Kirk mask from Star Trek. They spray-painted it white and re-shaped the eyes. Now you can impress all your friends with use­less movie knowl­edge, and mar­vel at the low-budget inge­nu­ity of Halloween’s production.

Watch the Trailer

Spooky Screencaps

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

‘The Exorcist’ Recut as a Cheesy 80s Sitcom

Yeah, I know I’m like five days late with this and you may have seen it else­where by now, but it’s too good not to share–especially now that Hur­ri­cane Sandy is behind me, my power has finally been restored, and I’m feel­ing grate­ful to have sur­vived it. It would have really sucked to die before I ever got a chance to post some­thing this awe­some. (What do you mean “priorities?”)

The geniuses over at Film School Rejects (one of my favorite movie blogs) have man­aged to take the scari­est movie ever made and turn it into a cheesy 80s sit­com com­plete with laugh track and retro com­mer­cials. Go watch it. The power of Laugh Track com­pels you!

Any­one hun­gry for pea soup?

P.S. I’m eas­ing back into blog­ging this week after life kicked me pretty hard in the prover­bial balls. Thank you to every­one who emailed me and sent well wishes and pos­i­tive thoughts my way. I expect to get back in the full swing of things this week.

The Exorcist [31 DVDs of Halloween]

Let’s see… What can I say about The Exor­cist that hasn’t been said count­less times before? Most peo­ple I know con­sider it the scari­est movie of all time. See? It says so right there on the cover:

Due to what I can only guess was an extreme over­sight in parental guid­ance, I saw The Exor­cist for the first time when I was five. FIVE, bitches! Of course, I didn’t fully under­stand what was going on, which was a good thing because if I did, I’d have prob­a­bly needed ther­apy. I just remem­ber feel­ing sad for the lit­tle girl and being grossed out by the pea soup vomit .

Also, I’m pretty sure my first encounter with this movie was on tele­vi­sion and there­fore it wasn’t nearly as trau­matic as see­ing the full, unedited ver­sion that I didn’t fully absorb until my teenage years. Nev­er­the­less, it was always a weird source of pride to be able to say I had seen  The Exor­cist  before most of my peers.  On the other hand I’m kind of pissed that my hor­ror movie-watching career peaked at such an early age. After you’ve seen  The Exor­cist , every other hor­ror movie just seems “cute” in comparison.

I get chills just hear­ing it.

I’ve opted not to embed any actual movie clips, at the risk of spoil­ing any­thing on the off chance you haven’t seen it. Instead I will leave you with “Tubu­lar Bells” by Mike Old­field, also known as the theme song from The Exor­cist , one of the great­est hor­ror movie songs ever composed.

Spooky Satanic Screencaps

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula [31 DVDs of Halloween]

I don’t know if I can call Bram Stoker’s Drac­ula my absolute favorite vam­pire movie, but it’s up there for sure, and cer­tainly my favorite Drac­ula movie. I remem­ber see­ing this when it first came out in 1992. I was twelve. My par­ents rented this from Video Tonight (a seedy mom & pop video store before Block­buster came to town–the kind that had a roped-off porn sec­tion) and boy were they in for a shock. I can’t be sure if it was the Keanu Reeves/vampire orgy scene or the WOLF RAPE that set them off, but in a rare dis­play of good par­ent­ing, I was sud­denly sent to bed early with­out being allowed to fin­ish watch­ing the movie.

I didn’t care, though. At that age, other than the scary parts with Gary Old­man, I thought this movie was a ter­ri­ble bore. I didn’t even bother sneak­ing around to watch it with­out per­mis­sion. It wouldn’t be until years later, after I re-watched this movie as an adult, that I fell in love with it and learned to appre­ci­ate all the things that make it so good.

For one thing it’s directed by Fran­cis Ford Cop­pola ( The God­fa­ther, Apoc­a­lypse Now, The Out­siders …do I really need to go on?) and it’s full of phe­nom­e­nal per­for­mances by some of my favorite actors: Gary Old­man, Anthony Hop­kins, and Winona Ryder. Oh, right, Keanu “Duu­u­u­u­ude” Reeves is in it too. He’s tol­er­a­ble here, though. It’s also got Richard Grant, Cary Elwes (!), and best of all–Tom Waits.

I also love the visual style of this movie. It is beau­ti­fully col­ored and richly detailed, like watch­ing a liv­ing paint­ing. I love this quote I found on Wikipedia which gives us a glimpse into the frame of mind Cop­pola was in while mak­ing this film:

Cop­pola asked the set cos­tume design­ers to sim­ply bring him designs which were “weird”. “‘Weird’ became a code word for ‘Let’s not do for­mula,’” he later recalled. “‘Give me some­thing that either comes from the research or that comes from your own night­mares.’ I gave them paint­ings, and I gave them draw­ings, and I talked to them about how I thought the imagery could work.”

It cer­tainly did work.

They say you are a man of good taste.

Spooky Screencaps

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

The Craft [31 DVDs of Halloween]

The Craft came out back in 1996, dur­ing my fresh­man year of high school. It is very much a prod­uct of its time–mid-90s, post-grunge, teen hor­ror with a sound­track to match; a style tem­plate for all the weird girls (hi!) to latch onto and feel like we fit in some­where. In my cir­cle of high school friends*, this was prime sleep­over view­ing material.

*Not witches

Sarah, a young woman with pow­ers that are just begin­ning to awaken, begins her first day at a new high school where she meets a trio of wannabe witches–what the hell does Neve Camp­bell do nowadays?–that take her under their wing. The girls begin a tight friend­ship that inten­si­fies as they get deeper into mag­ick, cast­ing spells on peo­ple and bend­ing nature to their whims. The trou­ble begins with things get too scary and Sarah wants out…

I love watch­ing  The Craft  around Hal­loween. The film has a great fall, back-to-school qual­ity about it, which I really dig, and makes it totally appro­pri­ate for this time of year. There isn’t any­thing Halloween-specific in it, but it’s got great atmos­phere and it is a movie about witches, after all.

My favorite thing about it, how­ever, is that it stars Fairuza Balk. In my world she’s the unof­fi­cial Queen of Hal­loween  and a pretty big girl­crush of mine. It’s those eyes, man. Those eyes . She can give you a look that will cur­dle your soul. She’s an actress that deserves a lot more credit and I wish she was in more movies.

She’s a lot like you…the dan­ger­ous type.

Cheesy mon­tage alert.

Spooky Screencaps

 What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

Freddy, Jason, Michael & Chucky Together on One Awesome Retro-tastic Poster

If I had an extra $45 to blow (or I guess tech­ni­cally it would be $48 with ship­ping & han­dling) I would so buy this lim­ited edi­tion poster by The Dude Designs which pays glo­ri­ous homage to the art­work on clas­sic 80s hor­ror movie VHS tapes:

Oh how I miss the days of VCRs with pop-up tape decks! I used to get in trou­ble for press­ing eject just to watch the deck pop up, then slam it closed, then press eject again, then slam it close, then press eject again… Shut up, it was fun. You guys don’t even know.

Can you imag­ine if there was really a hor­ror movie with Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers AND Chucky? My head would explode from the sheer awesome.

[via Dread Cen­tral ]

The Midnight Hour [31 DVDs of Halloween]

I love Hal­loween. I love the 80’s. There is not a more per­fect mar­riage between these two things than the 1985 made-for-TV movie, The Mid­night Hour .  It is the Holy Grail of 80’s teen Hal­loween horror.

Despite all that, this movie lives in rel­a­tive obscu­rity.   The Mid­night Hour only had a lim­ited DVD release back in 2000, and copies of it go for around $150 and up on places like Ebay and Ama­zon Resellers (and no I did not pay that much, in case you are won­der­ing, but then again I’m also not sure that my copy is 100% legit).

The Mid­night Hour takes place on Hal­loween in a small New Eng­land town (which isn’t Salem, but might as well be). Five high school class­mates, includ­ing geeky Phil (Lee Montgomery–hey, any­one remem­ber him from Girls Just Want to Have Fun ?) are throw­ing a big Hal­loween party and decide to steal cos­tumes from the town’s Witch­craft Museum. In the process, the teens dis­turb some ancient arti­facts and unin­ten­tion­ally awaken a centuries-old curse that brings the town’s dead back to life, includ­ing a 300-year-old witch. Unaware of what they just did, the teens all head to the Hal­loween party but it isn’t long before the undead start to crash the place. And because this is a goofy Hal­loween movie, every­one thinks they’re reg­u­lar party guests wear­ing really good cos­tumes. Phil isn’t hav­ing a good time and decides to head home early. He meets Sandy, an undead cheer­leader who died in the 50’s, but isn’t aware she’s dead. She warns Phil that the whole town is in dan­ger. Mean­while, back at the party, the witch begins turn­ing every­one into vam­pires. Phil and Sandy work together to stop the curse, which has to be done before mid­night, hence this movie’s name.

I’m ter­ri­ble at writ­ing movie reviews and syn­opses, I know, but the below screen­shots were a bitch to take, it’s almost the REAL mid­night hour, and I’m drained. But before I go, here’s some other stuff you NEED to know about this movie:

1) It is one of the Halloween-iest damn Hal­loween movies you will ever see.

2) In addi­tion to Lee Mont­gomery (who despite being the main char­ac­ter isn’t men­tioned once on this DVD cover), this movie stars Harry Belafonte’s daugh­ter, Dom DeLuise’s son, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s sis­ter. So basi­cally a bunch of almost-famous peo­ple. Oh, and LeVar Burton.

3) It has a great oldies-infused, Halloween-appropriate sound­track .

4) It is more funny than it is scary, in case you’re one of those peo­ple .

5) For no appar­ent rea­son (except per­haps to cap­i­tal­ize on the pop­u­lar­ity of Michael Jackson’s Thriller ) every­one breaks out in an excep­tion­ally cheesy 80s-tastic song & dance num­ber in the mid­dle of the movie. Watch the video below and see for your­self. (You’re welcome.)

I’m dead, you’re dying. Every­body should try it.

Take it away, Wolf­man Jack.

Spooky Screenshots

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

Sleepy Hollow [31 DVDs of Halloween]

Wash­ing­ton Irving’s The Leg­end of Sleepy Hol­low is a clas­sic ghost story that goes hand-in-hand with Hal­loween, and there have been hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent adap­ta­tions over the years. I’ve already included Disney’s ani­mated ver­sion from 1949 on this count­down, and today I’m going to show you this vastly dif­fer­ent take on the story from direc­tor Tim Bur­ton, sim­ply titled  Sleep Hol­low .

It seems hard to believe this was released thir­teen years ago; I can remem­ber clearly when this movie was new and going to see it in the­aters. Back in 1999, Tim Bur­ton was still in the good graces of the movie-going pub­lic. This was only his  third  time putting Johnny Depp in the lead role of his film, as opposed to his cur­rent total of eight. Eight! Still, I do feel this movie is a bit under­rated, and I sus­pect it suf­fers from a lit­tle retroac­tive Tim Bur­ton hate. When the guy keeps mak­ing the same movie over and over again, it tends to cast a neg­a­tive light on his total body of work, and gems like  Sleepy Hol­low  get passed over.

Sleepy Hol­low  stars Johnny Depp (no shit) as pro­tag­o­nist Ich­a­bod Crane and Christina Ricci AND her giant fore­head as his love inter­est, Kat­rina Van Tas­sel. I’m assum­ing every­one is famil­iar with  The Leg­end of Sleepy Hol­low , so I won’t bother delv­ing too much into this movie’s plot. But there are a lot of dif­fer­ences that make this ver­sion unique, for exam­ple, Ich­a­bod Crane is a police con­sta­ble inves­ti­gat­ing a series of grisly mur­ders in in Sleep Hol­low as opposed to a super­sti­tious school­mas­ter. There’s no Brom Bones, roman­tic rivalry, or merry Hal­loween par­ties. Over­all it’s a much darker, sin­is­ter take on The Head­less Horseman’s tale, and just in case you can’t already tell, yes, it is a hor­ror film.  I don’t want to say any­thing more about its dif­fer­ence because we’d quickly tread into spoiler ter­ri­tory, and this film does have a pretty big twist I don’t want to ruin for you.

I love this movie for a lot of rea­sons, but atmos­phere is the main one. I was read­ing on Wikipedia about how much trou­ble the pro­duc­tion crew went through to find the per­fect film­ing loca­tion for the town of Sleepy Hol­low, hav­ing scouted loca­tions all over New Eng­land before decid­ing to move the pro­duc­tion to Eng­land, and then end­ing up hav­ing to build the entire town from scratch any­way to achieve the per­fect look and feel. I find film­mak­ing insights like that fas­ci­nat­ing because it shows how much thought and effort goes into some­thing we con­sume with our eyes in a mat­ter of sec­onds. This film is gor­geous to look at and you can tell it was lov­ingly han­dled by all who had a hand in its visuals.

Per­son­ally, I would love it if Tim Bur­ton would get back to mak­ing hor­ror films like Sleepy Hol­low and Sweeney Todd  instead of con­tin­u­ing to “Burton-ify” family-friendly clas­sics like Alice in Won­der­land and Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­tory.  ( Dark Shad­ows  doesn’t count. ) And as much as I love Johnny Depp, enough already with the putting him in every sin­gle one of your god­damn films, Tim. Please?

Spoiler: The Head­less Horse­man Loses His Head

Here’s Christo­pher Walken get­ting his head chopped off. God this movie is awesome.

Spooky Screencaps

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

Trick ‘r Treat [31 DVDs of Halloween]

This is the new Hal­loween hot­ness right here, kids! From the first time I so much as heard about Trick ‘r Treat back in 2007 and saw the first cou­ple of screen­shots, I knew it was des­tined to become a Hal­loween favorite and I couldn’t wait to see it. The prob­lem is, for some rea­son or another that I still don’t quite under­stand, the film was never released in the­aters. After mak­ing the fes­ti­val rounds and get­ting a lot of pos­i­tive buzz from blog­gers, Trick ‘r Treat finally saw an even­tual direct-to-DVD & Blu-ray release in 2009 just in time for Hal­loween. And let me tell you, it made my year.

Trick ‘r Treat is a dark comedy/horror anthol­ogy film–that is, it’s four dif­fer­ent hor­ror sto­ries in one movie.  Although it’s a comedy/horror and not a straight-up hor­ror film, it’s plenty scary and down­right grue­some. But I promise it isn’t one of those schlocky gore-fests with no sub­stance and ter­ri­ble act­ing. It’s a well-polished and beautifully-shot love let­ter to Hal­loween itself, telling four inter­re­lated sto­ries that play upon clas­sic Hal­loween tra­di­tions and fear­ful urban leg­ends like poi­soned candy and cos­tumed killers hid­ing in plain sight.  The sto­ries are inter­est­ing, the act­ing is great, and it’s not so scary as to make you feel uncom­fort­able when it’s over. (Of course, very few films are able to do that to me anymore.)

My favorite thing about it, though, which prob­a­bly won’t be sur­pris­ing if you’ve been fol­low­ing along with this count­down, is how extremely Halloween-ish this movie looks. From begin­ning to end, the scenery bleeds Hal­loween. There are jack-o-lanterns and orange twin­kle lights every­where! I also love how all the sto­ries are loosely con­nected and take place on a sin­gle Hal­loween night. It’s all so very Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye , if you can remem­ber that one.

If you’ve never heard of this movie and are judg­ing it by these pic­tures, or if hor­ror movies aren’t really your thing, I’d urge you to give Trick ‘r Treat a chance. Go ahead and look up the reviews if you must! The vast major­ity of them are noth­ing but pos­i­tive, and I def­i­nitely agree with the sen­ti­ment that it’s “a new Hal­loween clas­sic.” And oh that lit­tle Sam! So creepy-cute. So deadly . Seri­ously, guys, this movie is SO much fun. Go watch it.

Watch the Trailer

Rather than just post a sin­gle clip, I decided to go with the trailer so that you can soak up all the extreme Halloween-y goodness.

Spooky Screencaps

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

Lady in White [31 DVDs of Halloween]

Wel­come to the most under­rated film on this count­down! Released in 1988,  Lady in White is one of the first “hor­ror” movies I can ever recall see­ing. The quotes around “hor­ror” are nec­es­sary because as I’ll soon point out, this movie seems to suf­fer from an iden­tity cri­sis. Call­ing Lady in White a hor­ror film is like call­ing The Goonies a hor­ror film. Yes, it is tech­ni­cally a hor­ror film and clas­si­fied as such by who­ever the peo­ple are who clas­sify such things, but there’s enough of a non-horror plot and un-scary stuff in it to make me ques­tion its sta­tus. I would call it a coming-of-age para­nor­mal mys­tery drama adven­ture with light hor­ror ele­ments, but what do I know? I only pre­tend to be a movie expert on the inter­net. Though mostly kid-friendly, Lady in White does have mature themes and sev­eral moments that are prob­a­bly pretty fright­en­ing to a child. I can def­i­nitely recall at least one bad dream or two after watch­ing this at age 7.

The Lady in White  tells a clas­sic ghost story, but frames it in a young man’s child­hood mem­o­ries. Set in 1962, the major­ity of the film is a flash­back into pro­tag­o­nist Frankie Scarlatti’s life, a young boy liv­ing in the ide­al­is­tic, pic­turesque town of Wil­low­point Falls. On Hal­loween night he gets trapped in the coat closet at school and sees the ghost of a young girl and her mur­derer as it hap­pened 10 years ago. He is later haunted by the girl, who wants him to help find her mother. At the spirit’s encour­age­ment, Frankie begins to stum­ble onto clues about her mur­der and goes on some­thing of a local adven­ture to find her killer and crosses paths with the mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure  Lady in White. Say­ing much more than that would give too much away, and this is one of those movies I hope you’ll actu­ally go watch if you haven’t seen it, and I don’t know how I could live with myself if I spoiled it for you.

I obvi­ously have no idea what it was like grow­ing up in a small town in New Eng­land in the early 1960s, but damn if this movie doesn’t make me wish I had.  The pri­mary rea­son I love this movie, and why it deserves a spot on this count­down, is the rich fall scenery and Hal­loween dec­o­ra­tions. The first half of this film pos­i­tively  oozes Hal­loween as the whole town of Wil­low­point Falls seems to be decked out and com­pletely in the spirit. Add in the lush golden, brown and orange foliage, rows of corn­fields, and the rain cloud-dotted sky and we’ve got our­selves a movie that’s picture-perfect for set­ting the Hal­loween mood. Seri­ously,  many of this movie’s scenes are like look­ing at a mov­ing postcard.

Not every­thing about this movie is per­fect, though. It was writ­ten, direct and pro­duced by Frank LaLog­gia, who doesn’t have much else to his credit. You could cer­tainly say this film was his “baby” and as such, he prob­a­bly had too-heavy a hand in its pro­duc­tion. With a run­ning time of 2 hours it’s way too long for what kind of movie it is, it has pac­ing prob­lems, and the spe­cial effects could be better–even for 1988. But hey, I’m not here to pass judge­ment. I’m here to tell you that as far as Halloween-centric movies go, this is a great lit­tle film that’s often over­looked. If this film’s script was tight­ened up and it had bet­ter edit­ing, I’m wil­ing to bet Lady in White would be a much more pop­u­lar film than what it is now. That being said, it’s one that I enjoy watch­ing every cou­ple of years or so when the air turns chilly, the leaves turn brown, and I lay in bed at night too afraid to look out my win­dow for fear I’ll see the Lady in White!

The Hal­loween that Frankie Scar­latti didn’t make it home.

Spooky Screencaps

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

A Few of My Favorite Illustrations from ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’

When I was in ele­men­tary school,  Scary Sto­ries to Tell in the Dark and its two sequels were my absolute favorite books to check out from the school library–that is, when they weren’t already checked out by some other stu­dent, which was quite often. These books were leg­endary in the halls of Hick­ory Ele­men­tary School, as word of mouth spread from kid to kid about the sheer ter­ror con­tained within their pages. I remem­ber when I first got wind of an excited whis­per pro­claim­ing these to be “the scari­est books you’ll ever read!” and how my eight-year-old mind spun with intrigue. I knew at that exact moment that I sim­ply  had to get my grubby lit­tle hands on these books.

Each book con­tains a col­lec­tion of ghost sto­ries, spooky poems, and musi­cal com­po­si­tions col­lected from folk­lore and retold by Alvin Schwartz–but most of them are pretty tame, even by an eight-year-old’s stan­dards. No, the REAL TERROR in these books are the macabre illus­tra­tions by Stephen Gam­mell, which range from mildly dis­turb­ing to 100% night­mare fuel. Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, the Scary Sto­ries series was #1 on the list of the 100 Most Chal­lenged Books dur­ing the period 1990 — 1999 because of Gammell’s ter­ri­fy­ing illus­tra­tions. It all makes sense now.

Reunited and it feels so good.

I recently picked up The Scary Sto­ries Trea­sury (pic­tured above), a hard­cover vol­ume which col­lects all three Scary Sto­ries books with all of their orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions intact. I had not laid eyes upon these books since a very early age, and skim­ming through these pages again was like recap­tur­ing a dark, seedy cor­ner of my childhood–that secret, scary place I would retreat into with noth­ing but these books, a flash­light, and my too-vivid imag­i­na­tion. And of course, I never brought the dis­turb­ing imagery in these books to my par­ents’ attention.

Here are 10 of my favorite illus­tra­tions from the Scary Sto­ries books, with a bit of their accom­pa­ny­ing text. And just for fun, I’ve tried to rank them accord­ing to how much they used to scare/disturb me.

#10 — The Thing

He walked up to it and peered into its face. It had bright pen­e­trat­ing eyes sunk deep into its head.

#9 — Won­der­ful Sausage

No one knows for sure just what hap­pened to Blunt that day. Some say he was fed to his hogs. Oth­ers say he was fed to his sausage grinder. But he was never seen again, and nei­ther was his won­der­ful sausage meat.

#8 — “T-H-U-P-P-P-P-P-P-P!”

After Sarah went to bed, she saw a ghost. It was sit­ting on her dresser start­ing at her through two black holes where its eyes had been.

#7 — What Do You Come For?

No sooner had she spo­ken than down the chim­ney tum­bled two feet from which the flesh had rot­ted. The old woman’s eyes bulged with ter­ror.

#6 — The Ghost With Bloody Fingers

Soon the ghost appeared. As before, its fin­gers were bleed­ing and it was moan­ing, “Bloody fin­gers! Bloody fin­gers!”

#5 — The Dead Hand

They found young Tom Pat­ti­son by the wil­low snag, groan­ing and gib­ber­ing as if he had lost his mind. He kept point­ing with one hand at some­thing only he could see. Where his other hand should have been, there was noth­ing but a ragged stump of ooz­ing blood.

#4 — Hoo-Ha’s

Some peo­ple call those shiv­ery, shaky, screamy feel­ings the “hee­bie jee­bies” or the “scream­ing meemies.” The poet T.S. Eliot called them the “hoo-ha’s.”

#3 — Is Some­thing Wrong?

As he stood in the road pant­ing, try­ing to catch his breath, he felt some­thing tap him on the shoul­der. He turned and found him­self star­ing into two big, bloody eyes in a grin­ning skull.

#2 — The Haunted House

Her hair was torn and tan­gled, and the flesh was drop­ping off her face so he could see the bones and part of her teeth. She had no eye­balls, but there was a sort of blue light way back in her eye sock­ets. And she had no nose to her face.

#1 — “Oh, Susanna!”

“I’m hav­ing a night­mare,” Susan­nah told her­self. “When I wake up, every­thing will be alright…”

Did you have these books? Do you remem­ber being freaked out by them? And if so, wouldn’t you agree that we’re all MUCH BETTER OFF for hav­ing been exposed to such awe­some, scary things at an early age? Chal­lenged book list be damned!

Dark and Disturbing Interactive Teaser for ‘Asylum’

One of my most antic­i­pated games for 2013–which has been listed on my Most Wanted page for what feels like for­ever now–is an indie point-and-click adven­ture hor­ror game called Asy­lum . I’ve posted the trailer before on this blog and tweeted about it prob­a­bly hun­dreds of times over the past year (which as far as I’m con­cerned isn’t enough). And now I’m going to post the inter­ac­tive teaser because even though this came out last month, it some­how man­aged to escape my atten­tion until today. Shame on me.

Here’s where you can down­load the playable teaser , which is avail­able for PC, Mac, and Ubuntu.

I spent a good 20 min­utes or so explor­ing the con­demned halls of Han­well Men­tal Insti­tute and I was more than suf­fi­ciently creeped out. The game seems to be shap­ing up to be a wor­thy follow-up to  Scratches, the pre­vi­ous game by devel­oper Agustin Cordes of Sen­scape . I con­sider  Scratches one of the scari­est com­puter games I’ve ever played. Here’s hop­ing that  Asy­lum  will soon share that honor.

Screenshots

Suicidal Adventure Horror Game ‘The Cat Lady’ Coming this Halloween(ish)

I say “ish” because a firm release date for upcom­ing indie point-and-click adven­ture hor­ror game  The Cat Lady hasn’t been set, but devel­oper  Har­vester Games  hopes to release the game by Hal­loween. We seem to be in the midst of a surge of creepy, indie hor­ror games like Slen­der and Anna ; The Cat Lady looks like it has a lot of potential.

Susan Ash­worth, known in her neigh­bour­hood as the crazy Cat Lady, is a lonely 40-year old on the verge of sui­cide. She has no fam­ily, no friends and no hope for a bet­ter future.

One day she dis­cov­ers that five strangers will come along and change every­thing… But those five, “The Par­a­sites”, are also the most ruth­less, deranged and cold-blooded bunch of psy­chopaths the city has ever known. They will stop at noth­ing to hurt Susan.

Unless, she hurts them first…

A playable demo  of the game is now avail­able, and here’s a teaser fea­tur­ing a few min­utes of gameplay:

JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS THAT THING??

[via IndieGames.com ]

Because when Guillermo del Toro makes a horror film, I pay attention. [’Mama’ Trailer]

Directed by Andres Muschi­etti,  Mama is an upcom­ing hor­ror film executive-produced and “pre­sented by” Guillermo del Toro that hits the­aters in Jan­u­ary 2013.

Annabel and Lucas are faced with the chal­lenge of rais­ing his young nieces that were left alone in the for­est for 5 years.… but how alone were they?

Here’s the super creepy trailer:

Every hor­ror film I’ve ever seen with del Toro’s name attached to it ( Pan’s Labyrinth, El Orfanato , and the under­rated  Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark ) has been excel­lent, so I’m all-in on this one. Oh yeah, and also– Mama  stars Jaime Lan­nis­ter (Niko­laj Coster-Waldau) from  Game of Thrones , in case you need another reason.

A Nightmare on Sesame Street

Here’s some­thing cool from the big pile of crap I’ve been mean­ing to post since being out on vaca­tion: Sesame Street char­ac­ters as hor­ror movie vil­lains! This awesome/demented mashup was cre­ated by artist Isaac Bid­well , who I’m auto­mat­i­cally a fan of because his bio says he learned how to draw by draw­ing Ninja Turtles.

Elmo as Freddy Kreuger

Snuffy as Jason Voorhees

Bert as Michael Myers

Ernie as Chucky

Big Bird as Pinhead

Zom­bie Telly

“B” is for braaaaaains!

Cookie Mon­ster as Leatherface

Prairie Dawn of the Dead

Ani­mal the Arachnid

Prints can be pur­chased from Bidwell’s Dr. Franken­well Etsy shop , where he also sells other cool horror-themed pop cul­ture art­work. I know you want to see Mario and Luigi as  the creepy twins from The Shin­ing . Don’t even pre­tend like you don’t.

What’s with the all the Halloween stuff around here?

You may have noticed that I’ve given this site a not-so-subtle tem­po­rary Hal­loween makeover. I know it’s still early Sep­tem­ber, but I’m one of those over-enthusiastic weirdos who dec­o­rates early for Hal­loween and doesn’t take any­thing down until I start get­ting dirty looks from the neigh­bors.  Hal­loween is my favorite hol­i­day and wait­ing until Octo­ber sim­ply won’t do.

I hope you like what I’ve done with the theme. I didn’t want to devi­ate too much from my usual 8-bit Nin­tendo theme, so there’s a Boo Did­dley, a cute lit­tle ghost from the Mario games lurk­ing about some­where on this blog. See if you can spot him!

I am a Cryp­t­keeper (and so can you!)

This year ShezCrafti.com is par­tic­i­pat­ing in Count­down to Hal­loween , an annual month-long, group blog­ging marathon cel­e­brat­ing all things Hal­loween. The goal is to post some­thing Halloween-related at least once every day in Octo­ber. I plan to get started a lit­tle early, post­ing a few Hal­loween things here and there lead­ing up to Octo­ber when I’ll be in full-on Hal­loween mode.

There’s already a bunch of great blogs par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year’s Countdown–look out for those “Cryp­t­keeper 2012″ badges like the one in my side­bar to know who we are. The badges are like lit pump­kins on the doorsteps of friendly houses when you’re trick-or-treating (unlike those lame-ass peo­ple who turn off their lights and pre­tend they’re not home). If you’ve got a blog, why not join in the fun?

Would you rather be killed by zombies or robots?

Per­son­ally, I think I would pre­fer death by robot; to be elim­i­nated in a swift, effi­cient man­ner with the cold, unfeel­ing pre­ci­sion that only a machine could deliver.  You know, as opposed to hav­ing entrails ripped from my body like hand­fuls of spaghetti while I’m still alive.

But on the other hand I’d be lying if I said the idea of a Zom­biepaca­lypse didn’t excite me. I really just want to get Shaun of the Dead on some undead ass, exper­i­ment­ing with a vari­ety of house­hold objects as weapons. And that’s why I’d have to go  zom­bies in this poll.

What’s your ideal end-of-days scenario?