31 Days of Halloween - Day 3

There are some houses that don't need to decorate for Halloween. You should also avoid ringing their doorbell for trick-or-treats. 

The Reptile (1966)

13 Ghosts (1960)

The Changeling (1980)

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

The Others (2001)

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

The Legend of Hell House (1973)

The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)

The Raven (1963)

The Evil Dead (1981)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Burnt Offerings (1976)

Phantasm (1978)

The Innocents (1961)

House of 1,000 Corpses (2003)

The Haunting (1963)

While the matte painting for The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven are obviously, and not surprisingly, the same coming from thrifty Roger Corman, take a closer look at the house from Burnt Offerings and the Morningside Funeral Home from Phantasm. 

       

31 Days of Halloween - Day 2 - Movie 2

Like it's predecessor Tales From the Crypt (1972), Vault of Horror (1973) is an anthology comprised of stories adapted from the legendary EC Comics horror anthologies, Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror. Unlike its predecessor, Vault of Horror has none of fun, humor, or demented glee in the excessive and cruel stories that both Tales From the Crypt, and the original comic book stories had.

Featuring a rather obvious wrap around story wherein the main character of each story tells his tale, this anthology features a rather weak story involving vampires, a neat freak, an Indian rope trick, a man buried alive, and an artist who can use the powers of voodoo to kill with his paintings. The one involving the artist is easily the best of the lot. The story involving the neat freak in its original comic book incarnation is classic EC horror featuring a truly despicable character and his just desserts, which if handled in the same manner as the adaptations in Tales from the Crypt, could have been a classic. Instead, like the other segments, its rather flat and its main character seems more whiny than domineering. The story involving the man buried alive is meant to be humorous and is anything but. If you're looking for a good anthology movie, stick with Tales From the Crypt.


      

31 Days of Halloween - Day 2 - Movie 1

The Halloween season doesn't feel official without a viewing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966). Since today marks the 60th Anniversary of the first publication of the comic strip "Peanuts" by Charles Schulz, I chose tonight to watch it to mark the occasion.

I've talked about this special in my previous post and during previous countdowns and don't have a lot to add. Instead I'll just list some of my favorite elements.

That gorgeous montage that comes right after Lucy "kills" the pumpkin that almost looks like it was animated using stained glass as the medium.

Those beautiful cloudy night sky backgrounds.

The ability to make me associate the color pink with Halloween.

The music.

Snoopy's emotional swings as Schroeder plays the piano at the Halloween party.

"I got a rock."

The irony of Lucy choosing a witch mask because it was diametrically opposed to her personality.

The ghost with a Davy Crockett hat.

The other ghosts.

The moment pictured above where Linus explains to Sally how they'll see the Great Pumpkin with their "own eyes."

For more Great Pumpkin, check out the Countdown to the Great Pumpkin social media contest.


    

31 Days of Halloween - Day 2

 A couple of months ago, Robert Pope asked me "what movie or tv show, without which, would greatly diminish or even negate the Halloween experience?" It brought to mind a post from my first Halloween Countdown here about what I considered to be the perfect Halloween movie marathon. I've been meaning to revisit that post and see if it was still relevant to me four years later. Surprisingly it did. Rather than simply rehash it here, I thought I'd give some more reasoning to why I chose what I did. So here then is what I would consider my essential Halloween viewing.

1. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" half of The Adventures of Ichadod and Mr. Toad (1949) or "The Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from Fantasia (1940). I like to intersperse shorts into any movie marathon. They serve as nice intermission pieces, almost like palette cleansers before moving on to the next course, and animation works as a nice contrast to a live action feature film. Just as movie theaters used to show a short before the main feature, I like to start with one, too. The two I've chosen are pretty long for animated shorts, but both really serve the purpose of properly setting the mood for a Halloween movie marathon. Disney's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is the visual version of a hot cup of apple cider with a cinnamon stick in it. "The Night on Bald Mountain" has a darker atmosphere suggesting the witching hour is upon us no matter the true time of day. Either of these makes for a perfect way to start a true Halloween viewing experience.

2. The Haunting (1963). This is the pinnacle of haunted house movies (The Changeling (1980) is a close second). The movie starts with a real chilling bang with the sequence relating the house's history imparting a dark atmosphere on everything that comes after. I decided last year when I began my own month long marathon by watching it that it is the perfect movie to start with. With this movie the mood is set and there's no turning back.

3. The Tell-Tale Heart (1953) This is a gorgeous experimental short designed by Paul Julian with a perfect voice over narration by James Mason who reads the Edgar Allan Poe story over unsettling visuals. Again, I wanted to intersperse a short between features and following The Haunting, it seemed like anything with any humor in it would appear frivolous and would change the mood that we've been carefully cultivating. 

4. Frankenstein (1931) Whether it's windy and rainy outside, or you just want to make it feel that way, Frankenstein is the perfect choice to invoke that dreary autumnal feeling (vs the crisp autumnal atmosphere). It's also the classic horror movie and features one of the best monster designs ever to be shown on screen played to perfection by Boris Karloff. The rest of the cast is pretty darned good as well.  I'm a tremendous fan of the classic Universal horror films, warts and all, and Halloween wouldn't feel complete without at least a couple of them. 

5. Bride of Frankenstein (1935) breaks my intent of separating two features with a short, but it would seem jarring to do so here. Paired with it's predecessor, these two movies are the crowning jewels of Universals monster films. Whether, or not, it's superior to Frankenstein is beside the point here. Superior sets and a great deal more levity than seen in Frankenstein not only reinforce the dreary autumnal weather we began to invoke, but serves as a nice segue to bring some light-hearted fare into our holiday viewing.

6. Water, Water, Every Hare (1952) There are a lot of great choices from the Looney Tunes canon to choose from, but this remains my favorite of the genre related shorts. It's beautifully atmospheric with some gorgeous backgrounds and Bugs Bunny does his usual great job out foxing his opponents, in this case a mad scientist and his monster. 

7. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) Required Halloween viewing. Without it, just like the Great Pumpkin, Halloween will not appear. As a kid I always wondered what the Great Pumpkin looked like, and as I grew older I realized that no matter what, if he were ever actually seen, it would be a complete disappointment. 

8. The Wolf Man (1941) Back to Universal. It may not be the best of the Universal monster movies, but it's my favorite. Not only does it have a great cast including Lon Chaney, Jr. as the most sympathetic monster in movie history, but it does a good job capturing the spirit of the holiday. Larry Talbott transforms into a monster just as kids everywhere change into an entirely different persona by putting on their costumes and heading off into the night. 

9. Lonesome Ghosts (1937) There were a few Mickey Mouse cartoons I could have picked, but this on wins out because it not only contains Mickey, Donald Duck, and Goofy during the tail end of the period of my favorite look for the characters (and the Mickey Mouse shorts overall) but it includes sound effects  that were later included in the classic Chilling, Thrilling Sounds from the Haunted Mansion record album. It's a fun short in which the trio play ghostbusters and end up stymied by  various suprnatural special effects employed by the ghosts. 

10. The House on Haunted Hill (1959) Just as I believe that It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and at least a couple of the Universal monster movies are essential viewing during the Halloween season, I also believe that a movie starring Vincent Price is required. The Roger Corman movies inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe might be more atmospheric, but The House on Haunted Hill seems perfectly suited for the holiday. It's a playfully macabre film full of tricks and treats as well as one of the best staged bits of misdirection leading into a scare to be found in any movie. 

11. Trick or Treat (1952) This Donald Duck short with its catchy theme song may have been responsible for turning the actual act of trick or treating into a central part of Halloween. Aside from its significant impact on the holiday, it's a great looking cartoon filled with nice Halloween visuals and Donald Duck as his nasty self as he proves to be the perfect match against a well meaning witch out to teach him a lesson for spoiling Donald's nephews' Halloween fun.

12. Brides of Dracula (1960) Probably my favorite monster movie of all time. The first third is absolutely perfect, and each act after that contains dialogue and visual gems that ignite the imagination and almost make you giddy with pleasure over just how inventive, exciting and fun a horror movie can be. The color scheme and gothic trappings of this movie also scream "Halloween."

13. Vincent  (1982). Tim Burton's ode to Vincent Price is thematically and visually perfect for the holiday and brings us back to black and white. 

14. Night of the Living Dead (1968) One of the things I love about this movie is that it serves as a bridge between what are considered the "classic" horror movies of the 1920s-1960s and the "modern" horror movies which really came into their own in the 1980s, even though groundwork was being laid in the 1970s and even late 1960s with this movie and Rosemary's Baby. Fans of horror movies tend to be divided into two camps, those who love the "classic" stuff and those who love the "modern" stuff. There's plenty of modern horror I love, but my heart really belongs to the classics. Night of the Living Dead really feels like both, which makes it close to being the quintessential horror movie; both new and antiquated at once. Dreamlike in many ways, it's a nice way to work towards our finale.

15. The Skeleton Dance (1929) There's something about the way Halloween was celebrated in the 1920s that makes it seem like a completely different animal that what we do now even though it contains so much of the iconography that we associate with the holiday; bats, Jack O'Lanterns, owls, spiders, graveyards and skeletons. This movie has all of those things, especially the skeletons. It's like showing Halloween from the source. 

16. Nosferatu (1922) or The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Silent movies have a dream-like quality to them making them the perfect way to close a lengthy Halloween movie marathon. There others I could substitute, but these two seem to fit the season the best. 


No doubt many of you are wondering where a particular John Carpenter movie is. Truth to tell, while I enjoy the movie, there's not a lot to it that really says "Halloween" to me beyond the title. The movies I chose all evoke to me the spirit of the holiday and the season, in ways that are most likely only apparent to me. Movies made after 1970 generally do not have that quality present in them, though I keep hoping someone will make one that does. 


I'm curious what everyone else would include for their Halloween marathons. 






                                

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1 - Movie 2

I told myself that this year I was going to watch some of the movies included in the various Mill Creek sets that have come into my possession. I'm already regretting that decision after one movie. You've probably seen these DVD sets; a thick plastic case with really generic horror art on the covers and even more generic title descriptions like "Horror Classics" or "Chilling Classics." In addition to radically misusing the word "classic" these sets contain 50 movies, 48 of which you've probably never heard of, and with good reason. All to be had for about $15.00. For the most part it's the movie watching equivalent to playing Russian roulette, only with 5 bullets and 1 empty chamber instead of the reverse. That one empty chamber is the equivalent of a movie that's watchable on the level of The Brain that Wouldn't Die.

Tonight I selected The Murder Mansion (1972) aka Maniac Mansion, aka La Mansion de la Niebla, aka avoid this movie if you can. This is a Spanish/Italian film which on the Mill Creek DVD is incredibly murky to look at and incredibly hard to hear the mediocre dubbing. The European origin of the movie means that you can expect the flow of the story to diverge wildly from storytelling methods done in America during the same time. The movie introduces the characters by having them speed past each other on the road. Then later, these same characters on another road, all get lost in the fog and wind up taking shelter at the least inviting house imaginable. There's extensive character backstory for one of the refugees for no reason. The handsome man with the motorcycle hooks up with the babe. There's a bunch of talk about how they all feel like the fog has transported them to another world which paired with a spectral undead chauffer and his elderly woman passenger, who may, or may not be the strange attractive woman already occupying the decrepit house, leading you to believe this movie has potential. There are a few nice visuals that reinforce this notion, but the movie is mostly boring and confusing (possibly because of the aforementioned poor quality of the print I was watching, or possibly because I fell asleep for about fifteen minutes in the middle, though it seems like I only missed people being assigned their rooms for the night in the spooky old house). In the end, some Scooby-Doo explanation is given for the mysterious goings on that comes out of nowhere, and really explains nothing.

The best part of this movie was the bowl of popcorn that I made to go with it.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1 - Movie 1

It's been a while since I've seen Masque of the Red Death (1964) starring Vincent Price as the cruel and corrupt Satan worshiper, Prince Prospero who secures his wealthy "friends" in his castle to wait out the plague of the red death which is sweeping the land outside, spending their time within the castle in an endless rite of debauchery. Like the other Roger Corman movies based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe this one takes quite a bit of liberties from the source material, which also includes "Hop Frog." The film has some really nice visuals, and uses the sets and color to good effect. Price is pretty sinister, but the movie, overall is a bit dull. There's quite a bit of padding and some strange choices in presenting a couple of scenes, including the climax as almost modern dance numbers.

There's also a very strange casting decision for Hopfrog's love, fellow dwarf who dances in the court. She's played by a child actor with an adult's voice dubbed over her. In her initial scene, she's silent, and it's not made clear that she's actually meant to be a dwarf and not a child, making Patrick Magee's lecherous remarks about her even more disturbing. Until she spoke, I just thought this was further license taken with the source material, and that she was meant to be a child.

The ending seems a bit silly as well with its rainbow legion of death which reminded me of some of the sillier superhero comics from the 1950s and 1960s.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1

Welcome to the 5th Annual Halloween Countdown. Everyday throughout the month of October I will be posting a variety of tricks and treats for your enjoyment.

Things here will be a bit different than they were last year. The riddle of the day which was a popular feature here for the past three years will not be returning. The reason is that I've simply gone through all of the Halloween and monster related riddles I know. I had also intended to continue with last year's theme of a daily cut paper collage portrait of a different movie monster each day. Unfortunately I did not have time to make even one single new collage for this year. In fact the last collage I made was back in February.

My daily movie viewing posts will return, and the main posts will revert back to the more or less random assortment that they were back in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Hopefully there will be enough for everyone to enjoy and no one will feel like I've dropped a toothbrush into their trick-or-treat bag. Additionally, I'll be carrying my countdown over to facebook where I'll be posting a season appropriate short film each day. If you're interested in joining me there for these, there's a facebook link at the lower right on this blog. Make sure to mention the Halloween Countdown, and the name of your blog.

For your first treat, I direct your attention to Tim a short film by Ken Turner which is an ode to both Tim Burton and Tim Burton's short film, Vincent, itself an ode to Vincent Price.

On the upper right of this page you will see a button for the Countdown to Halloween. Clicking that will take you to the home page for the expanded online countdown with links to all of this year's participants who number more than 150 with, no doubt, many more to be added as we go. So there's plenty of virtual candy to be tossed in your bucket if you stroll through that neighborhood ringing doorbells. Be sure to say thank you to all the participants by leaving comments in their comment boxes.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!