October Horrordays

[Curt McGirt]

 

 

Don Post was the man.

[Brisco]

DAY 11 of 31: HELLRAISER

I don't much remember the Hellraiser movies outside of the third one. This one is kinda lame with the acting. The story concept is cool. Also Cenobites to not scare me at all. I think it's because the more they do the less they seem like monsters and more like a comic book super team of questionable morals. Also they just look too creative. I find myself being less scared of the monsters and more impressed with the creative juice that goes into them. Which gets amplified in the next one:

 

DAY 12 of 31 HELLRAISER 2

Also like Friday the 13th 5 and Dream Warriors we put our heroine in an insane asylum. And also like Puppet Master, we turn the bad guys face by explaining their backstory and making them face a Nazi. Despite all this, I still dug it better than the first. Much cooler visuals and the story was vastly more intriguing. Still, this series is kinda weak for something that spawned many many sequels.

 

Saw both of these last night for the first time. I found it odd that the famous Pinhead is not the true antagonist of these movies as I thought he would be. The Cenobites are nothing more than glorified garbage men taking out the trash that opens their puzzle box. I do not mean to trivialize the ideas found within these movies as they are fantastic and Claire Higgins plays a fantastic antagonist. She rides the fence perfectly for the first third of the movie before going all heel and being awesome. There is all kinds of fun visuals in both of these movies, but my favorite is from the first film where Kirsty has the freaky dream sequence with the baby. The second movie gets a little confusing with all of the labyrinth stuff. It is still a quality movie with several nods to the first film which makes me happy. I lean towards the first film just slightly due to the second flick having those odd moments of confusion.

 

One thing I am interested in seeing as I go through the series is how the Hellraiser canon is altered by the end of the series. I read a few reviews on The Video Graveyard and it seems that by the end there is little to do with Clive Barker's original vision. The second film adds but not alters the canon of the original. So far they are more than worth tracking down and I enjoyed both films very much. 4/5

[Brian Fowler]

 

Oh please, she is universally hated. There is a whole segment in 25 Years of Terror about how she destroys the movie.

 

Proof that creators cannot be trusted to understand their own creations.

 

Don't trust them, Fowler.  Open you mind and heart.  Trust your heart! 

 

Your heart tells you that

 

1) structuring the move around the character of Tina was one of the most creative ideas in 80s slasher films and

 

2) the weight of that twist and

 

3) the need to play against 2 1/2 mute counterparts made it one of the most challenging roles to carry off in the history of cinema.

 

And she nailed it, you fool, with all the foolish fearless exuberance that clueless, clumsy, enthusiastic youth has always brought to horror movies.

 

 

 

If by "nailed it" you mean is so fucking obnoxious that I wished the movie had never been made....

[Reggie20x6]

SHORTZ! 

http://youtu.be/c-p0xL2lnkw

 

 

[Curt McGirt]

It's Vincent Price Night on TCM! Fall of the House of Usher is on now, followed by:

 

Diary of a Madman

The Tingler

House on Haunted Hill

The Bat

Tower of London

The Raven

 

The great scene where Vince says he can't stand to eat anything but "patted mash" just played. Me and my folks used to crack up at that line every time.

[Reed]

Masters of Horror: Dream Cruise. Feature length version. So, basically, every Japanese horror movie has to have a dead woman with long black hair crawling around and chasing people? Although, at least she glowed. Which made it different, I guess.

[Burgundy LaRue]

I haven't seen the original, but the remake of Maniac is a nasty piece of work.  Good movie, though, and Elijah Wood as the mommy issue having pyscho totally works.

[Brian Fowler]

More Peter Cushing!  More Christopher Lee!  More garish but brilliant Eastmancolor!  More mostly bland one-note actresses with large chests!

 

Yes, (The Horror of) Dracula!

 

On one hand, Cushing isn't quite as glorious here as he was in Frankenstein (I think more due to the role than his performance, it's a much more restrained character than the mad scientist of legend) but Lee gets more to do here, and is incredible.  Carol Marsh is really obnoxious as poor, dying Lucy, but she is really effectively creepy as vampire Lucy. 

 

Overall, I definitely didn't like this as much as The Curse of Frankenstein, but it did manage to actually being pretty damnably creepy for a 55 year old movie, which is something Curse never managed.  Really good.

 

So, next, I guess I go to 1959 and watch Fisher direct Cushing and Lee in The Mummy. 

[Curt McGirt]

I'm scrolling down the list for what's on TCM the next couple days after this Price-a-thon and they're playing, among others: 

 

Spider Baby

Sisters

Psychomania (!!!)

The Bad Seed

OG Village of the Damned

The Curse of Frankenstein

The Mummy (Hammer)

Dracula, Prince of Darkness

The Devil's Bride

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave

Horror Express

 

aaaaaand my list cuts out at 6 PM on the 31st. They're also showing Badlands, Mean Streets, Chinatown, MASH, Cabaret, The Conversation, Blow-Up (OG)... DAMN!

 

EDIT: Oh yeah you can watch The Bride of Frankenstein and continue the argument too.

[piranesi]

I'm scrolling down the list for what's on TCM the next couple days after this Price-a-thon and they're playing, among others: 

 

 

aaaaaand my list cuts out at 6 PM on the 31st. They're also showing Badlands, Mean Streets, Chinatown, MASH, Cabaret, The Conversation, Blow-Up (OG)... DAMN!

 

 

 

Halloween night TCM is:

 

5:30 HORROR EXPRESS

8:00 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

9:30 THE HAUNTED PALACE

11:15 THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

1:00 a.m.m THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

2:45 TWICE TOLD TALES

5:00 a.m. THE TOMB OF LIGEIA

 

weirdly they stop showing old horror at night between the 29th and 31st.  Lame.  Make sure you DVR some to fill those evenings and wee hours of the last precious days of the season for you insomniacs.

[piranesi]

Fuck Yeah!

 

DIARY OF A MADMAN is on right now and that means Ian Wolfe!

 

I don't remember if my Ian Wolfe post is on this or the old, ghost board.  But he's one of the great "Guys who were never not old." and was a big part of one of the best Halloween episodes of FACTS OF LIFE ever.

[piranesi]

I think we're close enough for this...just close enough:

LOST HALLOWEEN EPISODES OF THE 70s and 80s (and maybe before, but definitely not after).  NothingNOTHING is better than a Halloween episode of an old t.v. show...older the better.  I hereby declare the following non-binding rules that mean nothing:

1) No Roseanne's (too easy)
2) No pretty Little Liars, Waverly Wizard, Spongebob bullshit.  Too recent.

THE MUPPET SHOW (w/Vincent Price, natch):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ00WDK-rk8

KATE AND ALLIE:

THE COSBY SHOW: (The Kingly 1st season one where Vanessa wants to make out with that kid in the Dracula costume)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkj28a8EHXE

THE FACTS OF LIFE (weird "The Girls and Mrs. Garrett live together in a bakery" season)
with IAN MOTHERFUCING WOLFE

 

and let's see if there's anything elsHOLYSHITIT'sTHEPaulLYNDEHALLOWEEN SPECIAL!!!!!!!

Guys...I'm not kidding.  Paul Lynde did a Halloween special...in 1976...there could not be a more perfect harmonic convergence of awesome than that.

Here is the cast list:
 Paul Lynde
Margaret Hamilton (Yes, the one from THE WIZARD OF OZ.  According to WIki-poo, this is the first time she reprised the role)
Billie Hayes
Billy Barty
Tim Conway
Roz "Pinky Tuscadero" Kelly (She is actually billed with the name of her character from HAPPY DAYS as part of her name...and she's smoking)
Florence Henderson (Fuck Yeah!!! Mrs. Brady!)
Betty White (Of course, just like, you know today THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS LATER!)
KISS (fast forward to 25:40 for this, you raving metalheaded freaks)
Donny Osmond
Marie Osmond

KISS + The Osmonds + Tim Conway + Pinky Tuscadero + Billy Barty were all in the same green room all sharing the same bag full of quaaludes and they all then went to Paul Lynde's bungalow for a boundary-and-orientation-shattering key party. 

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR FOOL, WATCH THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

FLORENCE HENDERSON SINGS A DISCO VERSION OF "THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC" IN A BODY-HUGGING SEQUENED GOWN ON TOP OF A GIANT ORANGE BAT

 

 

PETER CRISS SINGS A SOLO VERSION OF "BETH" AT THE PIANO!!!!!
 

They had all of KISS there, and they said, "You know what?...let's have Peter take this one!" 

Since this aired on Oct. 29, 1976, I'm pretty sure I was literally 36-40 hours away from putting on Gene Simmons makeup myself...either that or Batman, I can't remember which year was which.

 

At one point in this, Paul Lynde is playing "a trucker" which means he is dressed in a white studded-leather jumpsuit...shirtless. 

Paul Lynde doing Butch.

The other truckers dancing around him in the exact same outfit (to hoe-down music???) are all women.  Tim Conway is there and he is into it.  I can't process this.  Paul Lynde makes a joke about "being bigger than Billie Jack."

 

It ends with the entire cast dancing to "Disco Lady."

 

Why are you still reading and not watching??????

On the far left?  That is Tim Conway doing The Hustle.  Why can't we go back to this world??????

[Brian Fowler]

I was sold on that post with "Vincent Price episode of The Muppet Show" for the record.

[Curt McGirt]

I would watch so much of that but I just finished off my Halloween Havoc pick and it required a huge amount of liquor. Actually, it didn't, but I made myself require it anyway, so no way can I get to Vinny with the Muppets or Kiss with Paul Lynde right now. Get back to you on that. 

 

Look at that TCM lineup for Halloween though! If you are a shut-in (no disrespect, I usually am) or just don't give a fuck and aren't doing anything on Halloween unlike myself who is singing for a Misfits cover band, WATCH THOSE FUCKING MOVIES. Masque of the Red Death and The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a dream double-bill to me. I will pay someone to DVR this and burn a copy of it for me to DVDR if possible. Actually, just Dr. Phibes, I have the other one on DVD.

[piranesi]

Alert...Alert...This is a Combo Corinne-Bohrer/Halloween alert.Fans (creepy stalkers) of Corinne Bohrer (ultimate 80s B-movie blonde goddess and eventual drunken Veronica-Mars-mom).  She had a sitcom (actually she had a few).  in 1989.  She played a sexy witch who takes a job as some 80s douche-guys sexy housekeeper...so just double down on the fetishes and float that sparkling concept over the airwaves!The show lasted only 14 episodes (which is a pretty good run for a Bohrer-com).  But they made a Halloween one!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vXfdI9IV8wDid I mention that one of the guy's kids is Alyson Hannigan?  No?ALYSON HANNIGAN PLAYS A HIGH SCHOOL KID IN THIS!!!!So, roughly ten years before she is playing a high-school sophomore on BUFFY, she is playing a high-school freshman in this.This is worth watching just for the fonts alone.  Also Corinne Bohrer spends much of the episode dressed as a "magician" in what is essentially a playboy bunny outfit without the ears.This was also not that bad.  It was in no way worse than WHO'S THE BOSS or GROWING PAINS or FULL HOUSE...it is literally the same.  If you go to the Part 2 video and go about 6:00 in (to the big father/daughter talk moment) you will see that Alyson Hannigan is a full-on fucking pro at this point already.  She's doing some seriously awesome sitcom acting, which is a very particular way to deliver horribly stilted dialog without sounding like a machine (good examples of this are NPH, and Johnny Galecki, everyone on THAT 70s SHOW and MARY TYLER MOORE and TAXI.  Bad examples are Kat Dennings, Charlie Sheen).  And if you think it's easy to deliver such saccharine dialog in a way that is at all acceptable and not just cringely embarassing, you are misguided. 

 

Corinne Bohrer is also really energetic and fun and her line readings almost break the format she's so oddly free-wheeling.  She should have been a way bigger star.For those of you who don't make it, the voice-ver guy says the following over the final credits:

 

 

"Life goes on will return next week at its regular time.  Monday, MacGuyver's arch-enemy becomes his only ally, on MacGuyver!!  Now, stay tuned for Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters' Halloween Special!!!"

What a time to be alive!  What with macGuyver in such as state! 

[piranesi]

Random Creepy Shit: Part 42

 

I had this LP as a kid.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMS_3Vro6Ls




It was released a number of times with different covers.  I had the 1964 cover,



which means my old man bought this way before I was born, just cause he like wanted it himself.

I used to listen to it and just dig on all the little details of the haunted house on the cover...imagining the layout and trying to guess the path through the hosue represented by the sounds...trying to figure out what the back of the hosue looked like with what seems to be some giant structure silhuetted behind it.  Straining to read the words on the other tombstones:

Now, thanks to Internet, I know that the cover was created by Disney designer Paul Wenzel.  His Bio:
 

During his 42-year career with the Walt Disney Company, Paul Wenzel created thousands of fine illustrations for motion picture advertising and retail merchandising. His many film-advertising illustrations included posters artwork the Academy Award winner Mary Poppins, first released in 1964. Recently retired, he continues to accept commercial assignments on a freelance basis and paints more personal images for exhibition and enjoyment. His vibrant portrait of Walt Disney appears on a 1968 U.S. stamp.

So, to keep this as creepy as possible..googling Paul Wenzel, I also found this.

 

 

It's a creepy old contract for a different Paul Wenzel who was a lead clown in the Ringling Bros. circuse from the 1930s through the 1960s.  Crinkly old paper not creepy?  Here you go:

 

Enjoy some night terrors.

Not creepy?  Okay.  The clown on the upper right corner?  Was named Paul Jung.  In 1965, he was murdered in a NY hotel room.  Bound and gagged and bludgeoned to death, blood covering the walls of the room.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1774&dat=19650422&id=EJscAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wmUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6291,5365367

Still not enough?  Paul Jung, murdered clown,...created the costume on the right:

spoilered for terror

Yep. That's the one that will be standing next to your bed while you sleep tonight, waiting patiently and happily for the moment your eyes open.  Then the fun begins!

[jaedmc]

DAY 14 of 31 : FRIDAY THE 13 PART 6

This is up there with Part 3 as the best in the series. Both have in common this need to have lots of fun, 3 because of the 3D gimmick, this one because the director came in wanting to inject meta-humor and gore lots and lots of gore. So many great moments, from the couple bickering while Jason is standing in front of their car, to little girl named Nancy who has bad dreams, this one is a must watch. 

 

DAY 15 of 31: SILENT HOUSE

This movie works for the most part.The film's twist is something you kind of see from way off, but there's enough doubt to keep it interesting. And despite the ending being something we've seen before, it still feels like a new and interesting experience. For one the "one shot" gimmick is engaging and provides some nice tension. Two Elizabeth Olsen is really good at conveying fear. It's not just a one trick show of scream and run, she has some very realistic reactions, and it translates to the viewer. I noticed myself tensing my shoulders and holding my breath just like she was. I think what's key about this movie is that it functionally achieves the types of scares and tensions that a "found footage" film does, by following only the protagonist and having a limited field of view, keeping what's outside the frame both unknown and a constant presence. AND the best part is that you don't have to shoe horn any reasons for the characters to keep filming, or show proof to other friends and family. Really it kind of renders the found footage concept obsolete.

 

DAY 16 of 31: MANIAC(remake)

I'm writing a longer bit up, but this movie is strangely fascinating, and I think people should watch it for the experience and talk about it. You will probably feel icky about this. Also the soundtrack is absolutely GREAT.

 

DAY 17 of 31: EDEN LAKE

Wasn't feeling this one. The action was good, but the town and characters were annoyingly simplistic. This is what the movie is about to me:

 

Yuppie couple are doing well in the middle class. Range Rover. GPS Navigation systems, RAY-BAN AVIATORS BOI. They go back to a beautiful place from Yuppie Man's childhood, but find it is over run with barbaric lowerclass slobs, who fight loud, take no responsibility for each other, and treat outsiders and friends alike like shit. The Yuppies lives are ruined as children drive them apart by being nuisances, and because the Yuppie Man wasn't secure enough in his masculinity to just say "Fuck it, this ruining my weekend let's go home." Then horrible things happen. Then more horrible things happen. But the good news is rich people, the level above our middle class Yuppies, will have the power to weed these people out as they take over their land with beautiful lake houses. 

 

The action is pretty good , but because of the Extreme Horror niche this occupied, I found myself going "Just get on with it and kill these people, so I won't feel bad any more." And yet I like Martyrs. Weird.

 

DAY 18 of 31: DEVIL

It's not all bad. For one, the trailer focuses on "Who is the Devil?" and that's really inconsequential as to the film's message and plot. It could be any of them and it wouldn't matter or change anything. I'm a sucker for atmosphere and stuff that takes place in one setting, so this scored some points on that level. But the dialogue is really bad and lame, and it's not particularly scary. The big message is very much M. Night Shyamalan's, with the focus on social responsibility and how much we're interconnected with each other - in way's we don't even think of. It's familiar ground that he covered in...pretty much all of his movies, so seeing someone else do it with bad dialogue and none of the visual panache that Night has, is kind of lame. Not horrible, but not really good either. Disposable cinema.

 

 

 

[piranesi]

 

DAY 17 of 31: EDEN LAKE

The action is pretty good , but because of the Extreme Horror niche this occupied, I found myself going "Just get on with it and kill these people, so I won't feel bad any more."

 

 

Dude you just nailed why I hate this kind of movie.  They all have the same basic message about the brutality of human nature and there is literally nothing to wonder about or enjoy stylistically.  it's just this process that has to work itself out..this excrutiating process and you feel terrible while it's happening, and not really any better when it's over.  They all deny catharsis in the same way, which is a fine statement about the artificial nature of drama or whatever, but it's not a point I need made over and over.

 

Once you've seen one, you don't ever need to see another...actually, I guess once you've seen the original STRAW DOGS you don't need to see any of them.  just redundant drudgery that provides no thrill, but does make it slightly harder to get through life with any optimism.  I suppose that's an accomplishment...but, like, a trollish one.

[J.T.]

I had to watch Eden Lake last year as part of the Halloween Havoc.  It was pretty interesting but it had a hard act to follow because ILS is the top shelf film of the hooligan horror catalogue.

[piranesi]

In the middle of KWAIDAN (Masaki Kobayashi, 1965).  We had to stop because my wife had to go to sleep early for work junk...we were just getting into the third of the four stories in this anthology.

But I felt compelled to post that this is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen.  I feel like I must be the last person in the world to see this, so I won't go into too much background detail, since most of you already know more about the movie than I do at this point.  But the stories are based on the "Japanese" folktales by the 19th-century Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn, who immigrated to Japan in the 1860s.  People translate the title simply as "Ghost stories" but my wife tells me it more literally means something like "Mysterious occurences"

That version reminds me of a great discussion we had on the old, lost board a few years ago about the differences between Asian ghost stories and Eurpean/American ones.  I can't remember who made this point, but it was a great one, that, unlike European ghosts which are literally the conscious spirits of dead people who need you to do something for them...who can, in other words be placated or redeemed.  Asian ghosts (a la THE GRUDGE) appear in human form only coincidentally, but are actually a force of nature, and cannot be "fixed" or "crossed over".  There is nothing to solve.  They are part of that force of nature that consumes and destroys life and that is what they do to you.  They do not feel or think or reason, and they cannot be escaped anymore than any other element can.  They are just "occurences."

That idea is fully on display in the first three stories from KWAIDAN.

But apart from that is the style of the film itself.  It is astounding.  beginning with the music, which I found with delight was by the famous composer Toru Takemitsu.  But Takemitsu doesn't just "write music" to go with a movie.  It's way more complicated than that.

Much of the film is essentially a silent movie.  The first story, "Black Hair" has only one scene of extended dialog.  Everything else is narration.  There is no "music" until the end, and the sound effects, a series of clicks starting small and getting longer and louder, are not actually related to what is happening on screen.  It was awhile before I realized this was likely Takemitsu's contribution.  It is, in a sense, a score, but also a character.  It is the voice of the ghost, the force pulling the lead character "home", the sound of decay and crumbling and cracking...of both the decay of her bones, and the crumbling of the house he left her in.

Go to about 3:30 in this "suite" that Takemitsu later created from the scoring to hear sounds based on what he did in the 1st story.

So it functions as a kind of ghastly music that performs the same role as a score (to foreshadow and build mood), but also seems to haunt the lead character's mind...pulling him, reminding him, worrying him...maybe...or maybe only we hear it.  This is how the movie works.  You cannot tell the difference between what is "in the movie with the characters" and what is "just for us."

What we see then, is a process of absorbtion.  A man absorbed by his past.  A past that has waited to re-absorb him into it.  It is a parable about stereotyped male desire...to run free and explore and succeed, and stereotyped female desire, to hold and love and absorb.  But not revenge.  What happens is an act of love in a twisted way.  When he returns, she is waiting to give him what he wants.  To come back home.  He even asks to stay with her "for eternity."  What he encounters, though, is not a vengeful spirit.  it is the remnant of a desire.  I get the impression that it will continue to call people to it, and absorb them too.

It is beautiful, really.
 
 
 The second story, "The Woman of the Snow" was later stolen almost note for note in the 1985 movie TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE (the part with Rae Dawn Chong and the goblin thing).  This is literally a million times better and more devestating.
 
 The visual style is different here.  less realistic even than the highly stlized 1st story.  The forest looks like a puppet-theater world.  Matching perfectly the folk/fiary-tale tone of the story about a woodsman and a mysterious woman in the woods.  The backgrounds are paintings that turn the sky into various manifestations of her appetite.  The moon is in the shape of a woman's eye, later, the twilight sun refracted through a wisp of cloud takes on the shape of her lips.
 


 
Mouths are weirdly important here.  All the female ghosts have blackness inside them...like he has the actresses chewing black licorice.  The Snow woman breathes death through her mouth, her breathe freezing the life out of you.  Something about the mouth in these stories that are both about love and abandonment.  consuming, eating, kissing, taking/giving breathe.  The blackness inside the mouths of these ghosts becomes terrifying...an abyss that can't wait to get itself around you.
 
 

 
 The music here is even more astounding.  There actually isn't "music" or "sound effects" but a strange combination of both.  The "sound" of the storm is not made by foley work...it is not sound effects, but sounds made by musical instruments.  So it is more music than sound.  But it isn't music, because the instruments are just makine "wind sounds."  My wife said "The sound is making my teeth hurt."  So it doesn' match up with the world exactly either.  Takemitsu is a genius and has managed to find a way to create the same unreal/real world in sound that Kobayashi is creating visually.  (Go back to the Youtube video above to about 6:30 to hear music based on this part of the score).
 
The snow lady is so much creepier than the goblin from TALES.  She seems so thin as to be made of wires.  Her hands are so small you think maybe she has none.  
 

She seems to exist in the forest as a natural force of death, but which seeks life and for some amount of time can periodically attain it.  The ending, which is not violent like the American version, is more emotionally wrenching.  He achieves almost everything through lighting.  Instantly turning the world of the living into it's mirror image ghost world and back again, making you feel as if you've journeyed a thousand years or miles when you've never left the same set.


I haven't actually finished the 3rd story "Hoichi the Earless" but I feel compelled to comment on what I've seen so far, because it is by far the most advanced visually.  This time we get music from Takemitsu, in fact the narration of the opening scenes, recounting an epic sea battle in which a samurai clan was wiped out, is sung in the style of Biwa players, many of which were traditionally blind as is the lead character here who it turns out is the one singing.  So once again we have music and "film sound" crossing over.

This is directly from the 3rd story score.

The battle filmed gloriously in a kind of soundstage miniature with smaller-than-life boats in a flat pool of water against a beautifully painted backdrop.  It is meant to mimic the visual style of 19th-century Japanese prints and the story of the battle is told half by pannign across paintings, and half by having actors act it out.  The results are stunning.....



The smallness of the boats, the kabuki makeup make the people look almost 2 dimensional, like paintings themselves.  The final battle shots of the defeated clans suicide, jumping into the now red sea is amazing.

The shot of later on of our lead character playing his Biwa in front of his hut may as well be a drawing on a scroll.  This movie is knocking me out.
 

[Curt McGirt]

I am renting that tomorrow. If someone else already did they will feel MY curse upon them.

[piranesi]

Part 7 of THE PAST IS AN BOTTOMLESS BAG OF NIGHTMARE SEEDS:

 

Youtube is on fire this year.  Here is a nice montage of horrific olden-day Halloween costumes:

 

 

And for a different kind of creepy (but still Hollow-weenie) we can turn to the slezay side of 1950s Hollywood:

 

 

I am quite certain that most, if not all, of these women were eventually murdered by some sort of 1950s Hollywood strangler...probably Steve Buscemi in a dress.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Random Creepy Shit: Part 42

 

I had this LP as a kid.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMS_3Vro6Ls

 

The screeching cat and screaming lady were a little too real.

[Curt McGirt]

To continue my earlier bragging, I got to see The Wicker Man on the big screen last night. Let that settle in for a minute. 

 

Having not watched it in over a decade plus, I was shocked at how much of this I remembered. It didn't look like there were many additions really. There's a guy on rogerebert.com who wrote a bitchfest about how the original 112 or whatever minute version he has on VHS is still unreleased, so apparently there's lots more footage out there despite the director saying this cut was his "original vision". Getting to see it in a theater really felt special. Hell, any film that Christopher Lee was so proud of that he offered to pay critics' tickets to go see it should feel that way. The very blasphemous humor got over well with the crowd too, which was nice. 

 

 

"OH GOD, NO... OH JESUS CHRIST, NO!!!"

[JRGoldman]

On some channel called WE TV today, they are currently having a Roseanne Halloween special marathon.