It's All Hallow's Eve, 2025, and time for more members of the local Lantern Corps to give us a grin!
This year's models have no real Jet Jr input - a fact he discovered late into play we he entered the kitchen as I was finishing off the second pumpkin asking which one was 'his'. "Neither" I replied. "Ohh - so is it this one?" he indicated the old school looking one. "No, that's your cousin's" And indeed it is, my first commissioned lantern, based it turns out on Eerie from a few years back, but with some slight modification (he's had his eyes done) Given the choice of grim or ginning, sawtooth or peggy tooth, Jr's cousin went for the more traditional, and so here is un-named Birthday Pumpkin for tomorrow night's party:
Of course, I did have to do one for myself, and so Gulper here is the result, going for cartoonish and a little bit Jamie Hewlett, a little bit Mike Mignola. Also pretty okay.
Not much more to note as I'm really getting the hang of doing these things quickly and safely (but boy do we have a lot of pumpkin pulp to use now). I did this watching Larry Blamire's very silly Dark and Stormy Night, and then listening to bit of Paul McGann reading the novelisation of the Doctor Who TV Movie which, fact fans, had its encore showing on Halloween night 1996 here in NZ. That's nearly thirty years ago now - blimey!
I am twelve, and like most people I know my age, I am crazy about Michael Jackson's new album. 'Billie jean' is an absolute banger, 'Beat It' a badger of very hot properties. The whole things sounds brilliant and is probably the first album I ever buy that I listen to, absorbing as much of the backing instruments and their interplay as I can to try and work it all out. It was a fool's errand, and I may as well have tried to pull apart Jackson's insane dance moves for all the good it (and that!) did me. But the best was yet to come. Tonight, for Halloween, I'm revisiting the next big thing to come off Jackson's unassailable album:
Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' (John Landis, 1983)
The production is a film and cult media geek's dream: Landis was not long off the set of The Twilight Zone, bringing Rick Baker in tow for makeup - both had worked together of course on An American Werewolf in London, the only movie of Landis' that Jackson had seen, although it was enough to get him on the line. Rounding out the interstitial music was Elmer Bernstein, also a past collaborator with Landis on Werewolf as well as Animal House, and soon to be providing the original score for Ghostbusters. And then of course Vincent Price, who doesn't seem to have been on set, but whose presence is essential in the song and for the extended reawakened dead scenes. The short film itself is an honest homage to the old form - Jackson loved the tradition of movie shorts, so wanted to bring them back, the story takes place in a Fifties'/ Sixties opening, and later zombies storm a creepy abandoned house, shuffling and moaning in a visual recreation of Night of the Living Dead. Finally there's the cinema itself, location of the movie within a movie opener, and tellingly festooned with posters of Price's - and Landis' past works. Much of this I know - but not all. And for the first time seeing it on TV, the same night as all of those other kids I know, I have no idea what's coming next. But it's brilliant.
Forty-three years on, and it's still a great diversion, even if you have to squint your brain at the history of some of its principal players. The direction is nice, the sound and lighting terrific and the colours in particular are fantastic - I'm a sucker for Eighties zombies with their parchment skin, deep-set eyes and angular features. get them dancing the way Jacko did and it's a vision. Plus, I can swear that one of them is a reference to Tor Johnson. In y opinion Jackson peaked here - he never looked as good, cast such a shadow, or electrified the screen. Thriller is a miniature treat, from gas-strapped prologue to that memorable final spin with its cat-eyed hero that would stay in my young mind for days afterward. Truly, noone could resist this Thriller.
Halloweenometer. As loath as I am to go straight down the zombie route, this has graveyards, a full moon, a spooky house and a werewolf. It's pretty much made for Halloween.
Companion Piece. The audio for Vincent 'One Take' Price's additions (complete with third, unused verse) is here. But why no add in another of Landis and Baker's great collaborations from the time - courtesy of a future Ghostbuster, naturally. I rewatched this again for a laugh and still jumped, crying out, knowing what was coming. And laughed at my silliness. By jeepers it's a good scene!
A lot of my idea of what
Halloween is come naturally from US sources – the Child Life journals picked up
from our town library, the odd TV programme, and in later years that recentday
Bible of Americana, ET the Extraterrestrial. The latter I really took to,
especially as it included a pretty hefty – if dubious – nod to the Dungeons
& Dragons phenomenon, but the Halloween aspect is key to the story. The
disguise our titular alien wears, Elliot’s skeleton makeup, a cornfield
bursting with golden promise, the great Star wars vuisual gag in the Trick or
Treating scene (which to my astonishment seemed to take place in near full
daylight – most ujnlike the dark autumn evenings I’d grown up thinking were a
staple. They were like us after all!). Oh, and a trail of candy with which to
trick the cosmic critter in the first place.
Halloween in America, the young Simian concluded, must be an awesome thing
indeed. Subsequent encounters with States-born classmates and friends have
tempered that somewhat – and of course, Hollywood will glam these things up,
but for further evidence this evening I took to everyone’s prime source of
facts, YouTube, to see how Halloween was interpreted on the domestic tube in
the 70s, 80s and 90s. How did it go?
As a goodie bag? A bit mixed, to be honest. I have takeaways. Some hard candy, some
soft centres, some saccharine offerings of dubious origin, indeed. The 70s are
a particular revelation, marking the first technicolour video decade of
regional channels promoting local fare on a budget. Yep, Halloween costumes
looked very… economical. Thin, plastic half masks, tamer choices of raggedy
Annes or hoboes (a VERY popular and DIY-friendly choice from that time, it
seems), and some sound mixing and which has not survived the ravages of time
and early VHS technology. It was a bit underwhelming, and the ever-present
cereal ads of Count Chocula and his frightful brethren, not to mention the
long-forgotten pretenders to the McDonalds/Burger King etc throne looked a bit
forlorn.
Ten years later the dayglo decade became a little more adult-friendly
with face paints and a promise ofdancing and snagging your intended with the right costume… not a lot of
spookiness here, really. By the 90s it was more of the same. The technology had
improved, but the whole things had a rushed, improvised aspect to it, maybe
because of the hodgepodge of corporate and Mom/Pop franchises vying for that
sweet sweet Halloween dollar.
Halloweenometer. The question I found myself asking was “does it get me in the
mood?” Kind of. “Does it give me a good idea of what Halloween may have been like back in the day?” Well, maybe it did- and possibly despite itself. Try it out and see what you think!
Postscript: In the
interests of weird science I did compare thins to UK Horror-themed ads of the
same time. Beer ads, Hamlet cigars… illicit ice lollies. It’s a contrast, but
as much asI had fun with them, they weren’t
real Halloween fare. Good, though.
So far so much straying from Halloween itself. So tonight, Matthew, I've returned to the Sates, to a slightly more modern time for the movie that it's in: Halloween 3
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, not John Carpenter and not Nigel Neale so stop asking)
Ah, the dreaded
threequel. Nigel Neale wrote this, you know. Then had his name taken off it.
Tom Atkins is in it – a sure sign of quality with his horror pedigree (The Fog!
Monster Squad! Night of the Creeps!) I’d heard this was at best a guilty
pleasure, and had nothing to do with the tale of Michael Myers. Was it right?
And did it not?
Yes, reader, for if you’ve not dived into the backstory of this movie to date,
both are respectively kind of right, and very much on the money. The idea,
apparently, was to have Halloween-adjacent and not necessarily linked stories
going forward in this franchise, leaving the tale of poor beleaguered Laurie
Strode and less-fortunate souls behind to allow the films to spread their
batlike wings and take off. Reader, they didn’t.
This is… fine. A take of sinister advertising, mind-controlled kids, electronic puppetry and dubious
Halloween masks, it’s cosmetically on point. But its also a bit confused,
fumbles the alleged Celtic connections in a way that many many modern horrors
do, and the final product is a real mixed goody bag. Charismatic leads, sure – but I missed the Shape of a proper bogeyman. The movie straddles uneasily the slashy Seventies with the more visceral, technological Eighties. Freddy Krueger was mere months away, and ready to reinvent the form. This could only suffer by comparison.
Halloweenometer. Well, it says it on the tin, and the VHS wrapping is very
enticing. PLUS I have feelings about serial killers stealing the season from
the spooks and ghouls. But I was a bit stratchy watching this one. On theme,
but maybe not on point.
Pumpkinwatch: We're back on familiar ground, and there's plenty to choose from here, including a new fangled digital title sequence! But it's the masks we've come for, so feast your peeps:
The UK horror experience fascinates me. For something as homegrown and
ready-loaded with a ready arsenal of classic, gothic literature and a hefty
output of the Hammer and Amicus Studios in the 60s and 70s, it feels as though
British horror often gets overlooked in favour of its glitzier, more
camera-ready US cousin, with its Universal Monsters, serial killers, Munsters
and Addamses. There’s a charisma to American horror that’s sometimes lacking in
the older, colder, damper, camper British version. And yet, consumers of the
form overlook Britshock at their peril, because beyond the celebrated works of
Stoker, Shelley, Cushing and Lee there’s an intriguing domestic oeuvre in UK
horror that has a taste all of its own. A rare vintage, redolent of wet post
War Victorian townhouses, urban cemeteries, canals, shadows, Scream comics,
House of Hammer series, and guilty tattered paperback dreadfuls passed under
school desks by day, to be consumed in secret after sunset.
I go on – and could easily continue to, but suffice it to say, British horror –
even in the early decades of my long life, is a broad church, as evidenced by
Alan Whicker’s exploration of the British Horror psyche here, on the cusp of a new era of visual nasties...
Whicker’s World: A Handful of Horrors: I Don’t Like My Monsters to have Oedipus Complexes (1968)
This is once over lightly stuff, but intriguing for its scattershot skimming of
what makes for British horror in the day – horror magazines, low budget
schlockers, a distracted interview with scream queen Barbara Shelley, an
earnest but wired Screaming Lord Sutch, Christopher Lee, Terry Nation and his Dalek creations,
and our oh-so-lampoonable host drifting through Highgate Cemetery, pursued by a
Yeti. It’s all good, it’s all valid, it’s all there – bumping its ugly bits
together in a mash-mash stitched-together way. Reminiscent of… I don’t know
what.
Horror essentially defies codification, which is part of its character and an
essential element of its perennial appeal, so a single episode doco is never
going to do it justice – even if geographically contained. Heck, subsequent
documentary series have covered literature and film and still not scratched the
surface, but that just means that there’s more to discover, to experience, to
appreciate and argue over.
YouTube option:
Halloweenometer: Your mileage may vary, as it should. Trust me, it’s better
that way.
Companion Piece: I nearly did Lord Sutch's 'Jack the Ripper', but opted for something a little more catchy and... comic. Here's the Damned!
Giddy from the one-two punch of an all-American Disney
Halloween double feature, I’ve crossed the Atlantic to see how those Brit brats
did Halloween in the distant past of the 1970s (ouch)
Well, not Halloween specifically, but there are monsters, kids, horror movies,
tricks, costumes and nighttime shenanigans; so let’s have a look at Play For
Today’s ‘Vampires’ as recommended by that Scarred For Life Basefook page…
Play for Today: Vampires
(1979)
Hmm. Visceral. There’s a bit more going on in this than I’d thought, with
latchkey youngsters, dead teachers and men taking clandestine meetings in
municipal cemeteries during daylight hours, but what an interesting wee piece!
The precis: A huddle of overimaginative boys (with one seriously impressionable
member) after a night in getting Hammered (The Scars of Dracula, to be exact)
take the notion that a tall, cloaked man they’ve seem in the local boneyard is
a vampire. One of the boys, the impressionable one, buys some joke shop fangs
and turns his anorak into a Dracula-wrap, and things kind of escalate from
there. But not how you might think. Perhaps befitting Play for Today, it’s a
bit more domestic and social commentary than fantastic in its scope – and yet, if indeed I did set
out to try to find the mindset of scar-crossed tykes in the era of Whoopee and
Monster Fun comics, I think I found it, alongside a cautionary depiction of
life in inner Liverpool in the dying days of the Seventies, comprehensive
schooling, dour Christianity and broken homes.
Halloweenometer: As mentioned, not really Halloweeny, but then Halloween wasn’t
really a thing in the UK in the Seventies, even when Hammer Films were still a
TV convention and your local joke shop had a reliably creepy staffer more than
ready to impress you with his theories on the supernatural. Still, mostly
harmless fun, and not without its charms. Pretty good! :[
So far, with some
exceptional evenings attended by Mrs Simian (plus movie night at the Black
Lagoon!) Halloween has been a somewhat solitary project, undertaken in the
spare room while the rest of study and tamer televisual flair continues around
me. But this night was different because I had Jet Jr in tow and a yen to
return to the Disney Well.
We’d been here before, this month, with Something Wicked This Way Comes, but
spurred on with the animated success of Trick or Treat I elected to go further
back this time, both in studio time and in literary sources. Uncle Walt did the
honours, guiding us through a bespoke animated and… worthy version of the
author’s life – for it was quite a life, and the feature wasn’t quite to
length. The author was Washington Irving, and the story?The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A delayed
production, and initially paired oddly with a Wind in the Willows adaptation,
this 33-minute short (plus 14-minute biography!) is worth checking out on its
own for the season.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949, adapted from the short story by Washington
Irving)
So. Much. Disney. DNA in this one! There’s music and songs, an avuncular
voiceover (by the Bingmeister Crosby hisself), caricature of the characters,
and a loose version of events - but faithful enough to the source material that
it doesn’t go the way of Tim Burton’s version or, indeed, the TV series. The first
twenty minutes or so go by well enough, being an introduction to our
long-shanked, beak-nosed, chinless and twitchy ‘hero’ (the designers very much drawing on
the waterbird for Crane’s profile) and his interest in lining his pockets the
fair Katrina Van Tassel – plus his rivalry with town braggart and prankster
Brom Bones.
It's the final ten minutes which really shine – rejected at a community dance,
Crane sets off home on his horse Gunpowder, only to encounter the local
bogeyman, the Headless Horseman during his travels home and to the safety of a covered bridge, the barrier which keeps the Horseman in. It’s a masterclass of
classic cel animation, the design elements are there in spades, and the whole
sequence itself meticulously choreographed with plenty of tension occasionally
undercut by slapstick through the hapless hero. Junior and I laughed out loud
several times and in all, good clean Disney spooky fun was there. The set-up
may be a little long in the tale, but the resolution makes it worth it.
Halloweenometer. A classic, very much worthy of its reputation. Catch a nice
clean print if you can, and buckle up for a good, safe, but chilling ride.
Recommended – and would do well with Trick or Treat!
