HOWL O'WEEN (Halloween)

[Patrick R]

 

Classic insane Fleischer animations fulla ghosts and spooks and what not.. The Cab Calloway walrus animation is phenomenal.

[tegan]

HALLOWEEN AVATAR TIME MOTHERFUCKERS

[Patrick R]

DONE.

[tegan]

Oh also, time for some ~spooky anime~

 

This is a two-part OVA by Japanese horror manga legend Kazuo Umezu, produced back during his weird early nineties glam rock phase, before he became a weird old man who only wears "Where's Waldo?" shirts.

 

 

The first part is much better than the second, but I still get a kick out of the whole thing.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxSL3Hy92E

 

 

I'd also post the entirety of "Magnetic Rose" from Katsuhiro Otomo's "Memories" short film collection if it were available subbed streaming anywhere. It's a fantastic haunted house story in space, easily the best part of Memories.

[Bjorn]

Watched Paranorman tonight for the first time ever.  I highly recommend it for some good Halloween watching!  Good stuff, and it surprised me in several ways with its themes.  I expected something that was just purely goofy kid stuff. 

[Dewar]

So, we had our first Halloween movie party this weekend and watched the 1931 Dracula, followed by Dracula: Dead and Loving It. I never realized how much the performances in Dead and Loving It were influenced by the original. Leslie Nielsen's and Peter MacNicol's performances were word-for-word at times, along with a good portion of the camera work. I'm super happy we watched them back to back like that.

[namman siggins]

BAM! I've decided to write about the spooooky books I've picked out to read in OCT and maybe even NOV

 

http://fakak.tumblr.com/post/99938551053/laird-barrons-occultation-and-other-stories

[Cleinhun]

Over the weekend I started work at a haunted corn maze. On the one hand, I have to work on Halloween night, but on the other hand, spooky corn maze.

[tegan]

is it haunted by the ghosts of previous corn or what?

 

 

also, missed a great opportunity by not calling it a maize maze

[Cleinhun]

It's haunted by zombies which people shoot with paintballs (paint space balls?), it's actually pretty rad.

[Patrick R]

 

And

 

The former being of the "charming slightly horror themed vintage cartoons" variety, the latter being of the "charming horror themed pop punk music video" variety.

 

It is shockingly easy to imagine Jason Voorhees as a dorky kid lusting after the cool girl at school.

[Vorlonesque]

So, we had our first Halloween movie party this weekend and watched the 1931 Dracula, followed by Dracula: Dead and Loving It. I never realized how much the performances in Dead and Loving It were influenced by the original. Leslie Nielsen's and Peter MacNicol's performances were word-for-word at times, along with a good portion of the camera work. I'm super happy we watched them back to back like that.

It kind of makes sense given how much Mel Brook's previous classic monster movie parody (Young Frankenstein) was shaped by the old Frankenstein movies of the 30's.

[Gormongous]

So, we had our first Halloween movie party this weekend and watched the 1931 Dracula, followed by Dracula: Dead and Loving It. I never realized how much the performances in Dead and Loving It were influenced by the original. Leslie Nielsen's and Peter MacNicol's performances were word-for-word at times, along with a good portion of the camera work. I'm super happy we watched them back to back like that.

 

I was really surprised when my advisor invited me over to play Fury of Dracula and I was able to communicate more knowledge of the Dracula mythos having seen Dracula: Dead and Loving It than he was having seen the original movie. So basically, yeah.

[Dewar]

It kind of makes sense given how much Mel Brook's previous classic monster movie parody (Young Frankenstein) was shaped by the old Frankenstein movies of the 30's.

 

This weekend we watched Frankenstein, then Young Frankenstein and I didn't see near as many similarities. I think it's because Young Frankenstein is parodying an entire series of movies, while Dead and Loving it was aiming at just one. Plus, a couple decades of directorial experience I guess.

[tegan]

Young Frankenstein is more of an original story than a shot-for-shot parody like Dead and Loving It is. I guess it's mostly drawing from Son of Frankenstein, but still.

[tegan]

Four more days until HALLOLEEM!

 

So I picked up The Mummy and The Wolf Man today. Holy crap, I never realized before how uncomfortably creepy and rape culturiffic Lon Chaney Jr's character in The Wolf Man is. At the start of the movie, he's testing this telescope and uses it to peer into the dressing room of Evelyn Ankers' character. Next he goes to her workplace and starts describing a pair of earrings she owns, telling her that he saw them in her dressing room but refusing to tell her how or when. He tells her that he'll back that evening to pick her up for a date and she refuses him in no uncertain terms (a flat "no") three times. Then he fucking shows up anyway and visibly startles her. She even tells him that she's engaged later, and he still forces a kiss on her after giving her a gift that she doesn't want or ask for. He's supposed to be this charming, likable guy but he's just this creepy stalker for the entire movie that this poor lady is expected to take in good humour.

 

One thing that I do appreciate on re-watching, though, is that there's never any real evidence that there's a werewolf until the very end when another character sees him turn human (and that could be a delusion on said character's part). For all we know, Talbot is just a murderer who created some kind of psychotic justifcation for his actions or something. Some of the evidence for him actually being a werewolf doesn't even make sense, like the wolf prints leading up to his bed when he wakes up after the first time. His father only says that the prints lead to their property, not inside. It seems like an odd thing to overlook, and would indicate that Talbot cleaned up the prints, even though he's trying to convince his father that he's telling the truth about being a werewolf.

[Bjorn]

Huh, wow, I don't think I've ever seen the original Wolf Man.  I have seen most of the other classics.

 

Farscape pretty much derailed all my intended Halloween watching, I should try to get in one or two more movies before the week is done. 

 

Oh, and one more recommendation.  If you're in the mood for some Halloween zombies, I'd highly recommend Pontypool if anyone hasn't seen it.  It's easily my favorite zombie flick from the last five years or so.  It's on Netflix streaming.  First, it's set in a news radio station (I <3 journalism) and second it does some really interesting things with the spread of a zombie infection that I hadn't ever seen before. 

[tegan]

[Spenny]

I like making my costume, usually I try to do some sort of big craft thing. This year I made a Demon Blood Sword from Adventure Time.

 

 

I made an album detailing the process here.

[tegan]

[SecretAsianMan]

Jr. Mints wrote a timely article on Polygon about free horror games if anyone's interested

[Dewar]

Hmm, shame Ib didn't make the list.

 

Edit: http://www.vgperson.com/games/ib.htm

[tegan]

[namman siggins]

The Dissolve looks at 30 American Indie horror films

 

http://thedissolve.com/features/the-dissolve-canon/797-the-30-best-american-independent-horror-films-of-a/

 

&

D'Angelo discusses the Blair Witch and so does Faculty of Horror

 

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/800-the-blair-witch-project-15-years-beyond-the-hype-a/

 

http://www.facultyofhorror.com/2014/10/episode-20-its-very-hard-to-get-lost-in-america-these-days-the-blair-witch-project-1999/

[tegan]