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We love dressing up, but are blanking on costume ideas this year, and don't have as much time as we usually do. 

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I highly recommend y'all check out Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara, Don’t Look Now, & Empire of Passion

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I hate having glasses. I feel so limited in my costume possibilities. Not that I ever go anywhere for Halloween, but I like the idea of dressing up a lot. 

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I love dressing up. This year my wife is going as Passepartout from the game 80 Days. I thought I'd maybe go as one of the steam-punk mechanic ladies.

 

This will be our third year going to a local bar with a costume contest and karaoke. This year I'm inviting like 20 people and hoping to pack the place.

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10/5

 

Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments

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This could be pure nostalgia, but for me it isn't October without watching the Bravo 100 Scariest Movie Moments, If you've seen a basic cable clip show, you know what to expect here. Lot of actors and comedians, a few minor celebrity cameos that haven't aged well (let's find out what the Coors Lite twins think of The Shining!), but in this case there's also a good amount of film critics and filmmakers. 

 

It definitely skews mainstream and American, but the thing that sets this apart is it's genuinely deep selection of movies from every era. You have Silence of the Lambs and Jaws listed, sure, but you also have lesser heralded films being discussed like The Vanishing, Alice Sweet Alice and The Black Cat. You couple it with a creepy music and art design, and clips from almost every one of the films listed, this is perfect background viewing for October. I will sporadically just throw a random episode of this on the TV as I do other things.

 

How can I watch it?

This used to air on Bravo every October, but I now they probably show real housewives getting real drunk at a costume party. Or perhaps a special Halloween costume episode of Project Runway? DOES THAT EXIST? IS THERE AN EPISODE OF PROJECT RUNWAY WHERE THEY HAVE TO MAKE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES, THAT'D BE AMAZING.

 

Anyway, YouTube exists so now this does too, in five parts.

 

 

Vincent (1982)

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I wish Vincent played on Sesame Street. I think seeing this at an impressionable age would have changed my life, and the lives of so many weird little kids, for the better. This stop-motion animated short from Tim Burton is not only a perfect portrayal of growing up weird and morbid, but it's also a great encapsulation of why Burton would go on to be so successful.

 

Not only are his gifts for art design and visual storytelling front and center, but it's a story about how children will make idols of any adult who offers a different way of life than what they get from their parents and teachers. The way Vincent worships at the altars of Poe and Price, so many other kids would grow up to do the same with Tim Burton, and this is where it started.

 

How can I see it?

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I hope I can carve pumpkins this year. That's my favorite part, but I haven't done it for like 3 years because I guess it's always a case of no time plus everywhere I live there are no kids. BUT FUCK KIDS

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I hope I can carve pumpkins this year. That's my favorite part, but I haven't done it for like 3 years because I guess it's always a case of no time plus everywhere I live there are no kids. BUT FUCK KIDS

 

The last several years a friend of ours has hosted an adult's only pumpkin carving party and it's been a blast.  Organize one yourself this year!

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That actually sounds pretty cool, Bjorn, I might have some friends who'd be down with that. Alcohol and pumpkin carving!

 

Also I did not know artificial pumpkins were a thing until you said something, Jenn.

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My initial reaction to learning if the existence of artificial pumpkins is it's wrong and I hate it. My secondary reaction is that it does solve the problem of carved pumpkns only surviving a couple days but i still hate it. My opinions are bullshit though, since I also feel that way about people who draw faces on pumpkins with a marker (or use stickers I mean god damn). I'm also not a fan of when people do the super fancy thing where they cut to various depths to get that shading effect and I mean yeah it's impressive and I guess it looks pretty cool but I feel like it sidesteps the interest I limitations usually associated with the medium.

So yeah, for some reason I have strong and extremely particular opinions regarding pumpkin carving. I have yet to meet someone who shares these opinions (because they are stupid opinions), but this is the hill I choose to die on.

Cool pikachu though

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10/6

 

Kwaidan (1964)

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Maybe ghosts aren't vicious. Maybe ghost don't want to haunt you. Maybe ghosts are forced to haunt you, because you've forgotten something you shouldn't have, because there's a misdeed in the past so terrible it should never be forgotten. Maybe ghosts are just the past's way of forcing itself onto the present. Maybe that's an equally painful process for all involved.

 

Which is a whole lot of vague suppositions, but part of what makes Kwaidan such an overwhelmingly powerful collection of ghost stories is it's pervasive morose tone. Kwaidan's four supernatural fables are soaked in regret and shame, but kept afloat by what is surely the most beautiful color photography in horror history. With a running time of just over three hours, it's definitely not a film to be approached casually. But those who do sit down and watch it will quickly be absorbed in it's dreamlike rhythms.

 

How can I watch it?
Criterion just re-released it on DVD and put it on blu-ray for the first time. Luckily, this also means it's on Hulu+.

 

 

Common Shiner's "Social Mediasochist" music video

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"Social Mediasochist" is a fine power pop song from Chicago rock band Common Shiner, but it takes a backseat to this insanely horror reference-dense music video directed by Zoran Gvojic of the Chicago sketch troupe LowCarbComedy. The video depicts a high school entirely populated by famous slashers, from the notable Freddy Krueger (as the wise-cracking best friend, natch) to the more obscure Leslie Vernon (seen wisely refusing a videotape from The Ring's Tamera).

 

You couldn't ask for a better take on the cute premise of a nerdy Jason Voorhees pining after a girl who may or may not be a damsel in distress. Die-hard horror fans will want to watch it a couple times to pick up every reference (freeze-frame the facebook pages to see an ad for Tucker & Dale's cabin repair business!) and in-joke.

 

How can I watch it?

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10/7

 

The Invisible Man (1933)

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Universal's reign over the world of horror through the 30's and 40's lead to a slew of great and indelible films, and of that collection The Invisible Man is the bottle of wine that has aged the finest. While bats on strings and the limits of early sound films have rendered the once great shocks of Frankenstein and Dracula as slightly creaky and charming, The Invisible Man works on the same level it always has: madcap black comedy.

 

It isn't just Claude Rain's absurdly haughty vocal performance, or the shrieking innkeeper's wife, or the plethora of unflappable British bobbies stomping around saying "Right, what's all this then?". It's that Whale balances all these silly playful touches with strong direction, convincing effects, and a real willingness to go dark places. The Invisible Man isn't just spooking little old ladies by running around wearing only boots and gloves, he's also pushing over baby carriages, derailing trains, and cackling as he pushes his best friend off a cliff. The zany humor is grounded in the Invisible Man as a real credible threat. The film is still wonderful and entertaining to this day because the only thing Whale takes seriously is the storytelling.

 

How can I watch it?

It's available to rent on Amazon and iTunes.

 

 

The Sleepover (2012)

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By Friday the 13th Part 7, the town of Crystal Lake had been through 6 annual teenage massacres. One wonders what that must do to a town. How does a town react to a dead killer coming to life, cutting children's heads off, and then being killed again on a yearly basis? Chris Cullari's clever and funny short examines just that.

 

How can I watch it?

Youtub- no I'm just kidding. This one is on Vimeo.

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My friend's birthday is on Halloween, and she always throws a themed party. This year she's turning 31 on the 31st, her "golden birthday," so Gold is the theme. Anyone have any clever suggestions? I'm really terrible at costumes.

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Is that also called your Champagne Year? Dress as the guy from Spandu Ballet, and make sure the Gold gets inserted into the party playlist at 20 minute intervals.

 

 

(Which comes for my idea for a wear the playlist party, where you dress as a music video and your costumes inform the music playlist).

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My friend's birthday is on Halloween, and she always throws a themed party. This year she's turning 31 on the 31st, her "golden birthday," so Gold is the theme. Anyone have any clever suggestions? I'm really terrible at costumes.

 

Both Goldfinger and a Golden Girl would be pretty easy costumes. If you wanna go obscure, there's the Frank Sinatra movie Man With the Golden Arm, where he plays a heroin addicted drummer, or Humphrey Bogart's gold obsessed character from Treasure of the Sierra Madre

 

Or, if you want to celebrate Christmas early like a certain butt on this forum, you can go as Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. 

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10/8

 

Oculus (2013)

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"Why are they running up the stairs where there's no escape? Why aren't they leaving a house that's clearly haunted? UGH, why can't anyone just be smart and think about self-preservation for two seconds?" Easy complaints to make about a lot of horror films. But the joy of Oculus, a haunted mirror movie from 2013, is that the characters take every logical precaution in the world against the evil antique and it still might not save them.

 

How do you fight against a cursed object with the ability to cloud your mind & judgment and make you hallucinate? You pick up a bat to break it and before you even know what's happened you've put it down, deciding no, you probably shouldn't. The answer is timers, cameras, automated phone calls, reminders to eat and drink, outside parties keeping track of your actions. Rather than the traditional story of characters slowly realizing what's going on, Oculus plays like a battle of wits between a haunted mirror and two siblings whose lives were destroyed as children by it's power. You add in an achronological structure that jumps back and forth in time until the climax is edited like a horror version of Cloud Atlas and you have a really effective and fun little horror movie.

 

How can I watch it?

It's on Netflix Instant.

 

Met State (2001)

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Met State is an experimental stop-motion animated film, half urban exploration and half macabre music video, that takes you on a tour of an abandoned mental hospital. It's basically a mix of a hundred kinds of catnip for me, and with Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre as the soundtrack, it's a perfectly spooky Halloween treat.

 

How can I watch it?

Vimeo.

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So this year my wife is going as Scully from X-Files and seeing as I am a non-svelte, ugly bearded man I would make a pretty bad Mulder.

 

I was thinking about making a mask out of foam and going as the masked killer from the "Our City" episode. Is that too deep of a cut? It makes a great themed costume with Scully, but I am worried no one will get it. I guess I can always say I am a "Voodoo priest" or some nonsense. 

 

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So, anyone have any ideas where I might pickup a steam-punk looking corset for a somewhat overweight male?

 

Edit: Random Amazon orderings of women's corsets with 6XL sizes has commenced.  Men's corsets either aren't showy enough or are super expensive full cross-dressing models. As fun as that would be, I can't quite justify the price tag.

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