It's Halloween!

[Patrick R]

My absolute favorite time of year. I rarely get in the Christmas spirit, but I am always prepared to get into the Halloween spirit. Since moving from the suburbs to the city, away from so many falling leaves and jack-o-lanterns, I find that I have to work extra hard to get the mood right. So how about a thread where we post our favorite Halloween/Autumn things?

 

A Good Selection Of Works By Edgar Allan Poe

 

This song:

 

[clyde]

Outside my window, a brown oak leaf is suspended by spider-webs and I'm making friemds with many of the shield bugs. I do love this season.

[tegan]

Yes, yes, yes!

Halloween is my favourite time of the year (and as a nice bonus, it's only about a week before my birthday). I've made a tradition of booking the day off of work and watching no fewer than two old Universal monster movies. Thus far I've done Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolfman; plus I always watch the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia. This year I'm probably going to have to break tradition and find something besides Universal movies. I'm thinking maybe something with aliens or Scooby-Doo.

[melmer]

[tegan]

[TychoCelchuuu]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6jpIv7jJdA

[elmuerte]

What is the halloween of video games?

[tegan]

What is the halloween of Video games?

 

Friday the 13th for NES

 

 

(real answer: a combination of Sweet Home and Luigi's Mansion)

[Dewar]

I have Haloween and the day after off so I can throw a hell of a party on Saturday the 2nd. It's likely to be the last year that we're in this house (which is set up very well for this sort of thing) and I want to make it one to remember.

[tegan]

HALLOWEENIE MOVIE COUNTDOWN

 

Today I watched Hotel Transylvania after putting it off for a year. I wanted to see it because of Genndy Tartakovsky directing, but didn't want to see it because of Adam Sandler starring. The result is this weird mixed bag of occasional moments of brilliance lost somewhere in a sea of terrible generic CGI cartoon crap and inexplicable and repeated use of the word "zing". Ending with the obligatory cartoon dance party (culminating in Adam Sandler's Dracula rap) is just the icing on the "would not recommend" cake.

[Dewar]

I'm thinking of going back and watching Session 9 again, or maybe the original Wicker Man.

 

I don't have the mental energy to sit through a horror movie that I haven't seen before these days.

[shammack]

[Ucantalas]

I love Halloween. It's the only time of year I can go into stores and buy candy in bulk without anyone looking at me funny. 

But seriously... I kind of like Halloween. I mean, I loved Trick or Treating as a kid. And I love the movies (mostly...) and the decorations. But its also kind of a symbol of how just depressingly lonely and antisocial I am. Most people my age are out going to Halloween parties and having fun, but since I became too old to Trick or Treat, I've just stayed home. I've never been invited to a Halloween party, and now I'm in a new city I don't know anyone in or know my way around, so thats probably not changing this year either.

But I love the decorations the most. All the bats and jack-o-lanterns and witches and skeletons and stuff. It's awesome. 

[syntheticgerbil]

What is the halloween of Video games?

Costume Quest. I want more please.

 

I wish I could enjoy Halloween more, but I always feel like I somehow fail the holiday because I don't have the time or money to go all out. I don't know what it is, but it felt so much more real and fun until I was about 14. I think Trick or Treating for hours with a group of friends in a dumb costume always made it for me, along with the TV shows and movies as well as the candy. Anytime I consume any Halloween based media I feel all nostalgic and teary eyed (Again, like Costume Quest).

 

And you might see your cat turn into a dog.

[Patrick R]

Super Ghouls and Ghosts and Zombies Ate My Neighbors would be my go to Halloween games.

 

 

I adored this Bravo special in high school. Obviously, like any list, I'm not on board for all of it, but it's a pretty well-curated list, and seeing all those horror movie clips warms my heart.

 

And I rarely end up going to Halloween parties or stuff like that. For me, it feels like a more personal holiday. About drinking cider and reading ghost stories. My big Halloween social thing comes a couple weeks beforehand, with local arthouse movie theater The Music Box's 24-hour horror film festival, The Music Box of Horrors. Which reminds me, I also recommend checking out if any cool screenings or midnight movies are happening in your area.

[Patrick R]

Spooky novelty songs are vital to the spirit of the season.

 

Martian Hop

 

And the hands down greatest horrorcore song ever recorded,

.

 

Horror Movie Rap is a very early example of horrorcore, a genre that emerged out of Houston, TX in the early 90's with artists like Bushwick Bill and Ganksta Nip. Ganksta Nip especially didn't seem to understand the difference between "horrific" and "nonsensical", so Horror Movie Rap has such amazing couplets such as

 

Fuck with a psycho, you end up dead
Those who didn't live drowned in a turtle's head

 

and

 

Don't run up, because I kick like Bruce

I wanna and I'm gonna trade heads with a moose

 

and

 

Ganksta Nip with the psycho voice

Some say I'm insane because I married a dead horse

 

and

 

It's Christmas time! Happy New Year, G!

A dead pig's head makes a good-ass Christmas tree!

 

Simply it's one of the most baffling and delightful rap songs ever.

 

What's the best costume you guys have ever gone as? My favorite was probably just going in a suit and creepy-ass babydoll mask.

 

 

Last year me and my ex really wanted to go as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Julie Adams, but I couldn't find a white lady's bathing suit that fit me.

[Ucantalas]

Its not Halloween without the Monster Mash. (I hear it was a graveyard smash!)

My favorite costume was the year I went as... I don't know what I was. I wore a trenchcoat, a top hat, I had a Freddy Krueger claw-hand-thing on one hand, a cape, and a makeup goatee on my face, So like.. some kind of evil Freddy Krueger magician? The part I loved about it was everybody asking what I was. I got guesses ranging from the Devil, to a magician, to a demon, to a hobo. It was fun.

[melmer]

Guillermo Del Toro does a Simpsons opening

[elmuerte]

Does that youtube video work for anyone?

[TychoCelchuuu]

Works for me.

[tegan]

Same here.

 

 

On the one hand I kind of liked it, but on the other it just reminds me of how terrible The Simpsons has gotten. I generally really hate the overly-long couch gags they've been using to fill time for the last few seasons, and Treehouse of Horror gets more disappointing every year. XXII parodied such classic horror stories as Avatar, Dexter, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

[Patrick R]

I imagine it was mostly "suggested" to Del Toro. It's weird to think that, given complete control to do a couch gag, he'd decide to mostly pay tribute to himself. He even slipped in the roaches from Mimic!

 

The most successful short film of all time (it, coupled with a making-of documentary, sold NINE MILLION UNITS on home video) is also essential Halloween viewing:

 

 

EDIT: This is my first time watching the long version in a while, I never realized that the title card was a tribute to Suspiria. Oh John Landis, I love you so much.

[tegan]

I like that it has a See You Next Wednesday reference.

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah, I felt the same about that GDT opening sequence. I have no idea what is supposed to be good about it, and were it any other director, I'd assume it was some egotistical piece serving as an advertisement for their DVDs. Since it's Guillermo, the most humble director I've ever heard speak, I'm just confused why it's a long opening that is eventually strung along with references to everything he's directed ever. Add that to how ugly and terribly staged the Simpsons are now and you have what would normally appear to another idiotic piece of fan art.

[Patrick R]

 

The ending of Halloween, with audience reaction from 1979. (Spoilers, obv.)

 

This is so great.