From Zombos' Closet

My Halloween: Sideshow Cinema

Five questions asked over a glowing Jack o'Lantern, under an Autumn moon obscured by passing clouds...in between mouthfuls of candy corn...Fiji Mermaid of Sideshow Cinema steps out of the Black Lagoon to celebrate Halloween with us...

Why is Halloween important to you?

Halloween is important to me because as far back as I can remember I’ve always liked monsters, whether it be toys, songs, movies and such. That interest is still there to this day and thankfully there is a Holiday and a month that really puts that monstrous vibe out there for everyone to enjoy. As soon as I see the first Halloween store open, or decorations start to appear, it gives me that feeling of scary fun that only Halloween can bring.

Describe your ideal Halloween.

My ideal Halloween would be to set up some spooky decorations around the house and have some of the haunted house sound effects I’ve collected over the years playing on loop through some speakers positioned in the windows to set the mood. Dressing in costume to hand out treats seems like the only way to do the job right, so I’d pick out one of my costumes from the “Halloween” bin. I think surprising or giving a bit of a scare to the kids coming to get candy will help to pass on that fun of Halloween. If years down the road they can sit back and think about their own Halloween memories of the scary guy who was handing out candy then I’ve done my job of keeping Halloween alive.

What Halloween collectibles do you cherish, or hate, or both?

I don’t have any Halloween specific collectibles, oddly. I love the season so much, but there hasn’t been a collectible outside of various scary film characters that were put into toy figure form that I can deem as collectible and fit into the spirit of Halloween.

When was your very first Halloween, the one where you really knew it was Halloween, and how was it?

My first memory of Halloween was pre-school Halloween party/parade and dressing up as Dracula. My mom had some small little handmade witch cape with yellow moons and stars on it that I wore over some “Sunday best” type of clothing. My mom did my make up for me. I had the slicked back hair, white face and blood dripping down the sides of my mouth. I’ve looked at pictures of this day and the other kids are clowns, cowboys, Luke Skywalker and such. I look like the only scary kid in the bunch.

What's the one Halloween question you want to be asked and what's your answer?

Q: Do you have a Halloween playlist on your iPod and if you do what are you listening to?

A: Yes, of course. There are certain genres and artists I stick to with my general music listening, but when it comes to Halloween I’m all over the board. If the content of the song has any even flimsy Halloween reference, or scary topic, it shows up in the “Halloween playlist”. If it’s about Halloween or appeared in a horror movie, that grants it access to the list.

I’ll not bore you guys with my complete 2+hrs long list of songs, but here are some highlights. I recommend tracking these down if you don’t have them and adding to your own Halloween mix. They are sure to liven up any party this time of year.

• Tim Curry - “Anything Can Happen on Halloween”
• 3-Speed - “Once Bitten”
• John Carpenter - “Halloween Theme”
• Elvira - “Monsta’ Rap”
• DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - “Nightmare on My Street”
• Misfits - “Dig Up Her Bones”
• The Cramps - “Surfin’ Dead”
• Wild Beasts - “Hooting & Howling”
• Motorhead - “Hellraiser”
• Dru Down - “Bloodsucker”
• Henry Hall - “Here Comes the Boogeyman”
• Classics IV - “Spooky”

 

Halloween Pumpkin Candles

I've had these pumpkin candles since forever (or thereabouts). The faces are sinister, funny, and spirited. I keep them out all year long.

Mr. Hyde Behaving Badly

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) picture courtesy of Professor Kinema.

Halloween Ring Light-Ups Witch, Cat, Skull

What every fashionable ghoul like you needs to wear on Halloween night: flashing ring light-ups adorning your claws. The witch, skull, and cat are made by Illuminix. They can either blink slow, or fast, or you can leave the red light on. I don't recall who makes the metal skull ring in the middle, but you twist the skull a little to turn on his eyes, which change colors as they blink. The witch has all the right colors and demeanor to be Halloween-witchy, but the black cat is my favorite. His eyes glow red (but the battery's too weak to show it in the photo).

Movie Review: Let Me In (2010)

Zombos Says: Very Good

Abby: "You have to hit back."
Owen: "I can't. There's 3 of them."
Abby: "Then you hit back even harder."

Between the idealized romance-fantasy of Twilight and the fetishistic terror romp of 30 Days of Night lies Let Me In, Hammer Studios' English-language remake of Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), a movie that returns the vampire to its cursed existence.

Abby (Chloe Moretz) is a peculiar 12-year old girl who says she's not a girl. During the night she quietly moves into the apartment complex where Owen lives, accompanied by her sullen father. Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a peculiar, lonely boy, bullied at school, and wedged in the middle of his parent's divorce. He lives with his mother, who is very religious and hangs a crucifix on the wall. He also eats Farley's and Sathers Now and Later candy, in what possibly may be the most seemless product placement done for a film. It's Owen's only constant and cheerful companion. He sings the jingle in-between chews, "Eat Some Now. Save Some for Later." Abby can't share in Owen's enjoyment eating Now and Later because human blood is the only thing she can stomach; but both share an isolation, a need for companionship and acceptance, and both are caught between uneasy nows and always certain laters.

Abby is a vampire that doesn't kill for herself, although when aroused she attacks viciously, tearing throats apart and ripping off heads. Her father (Richard Jenkins) collects blood for her by waiting behind car seats and surprising his victims. He drains their blood into a plastic jug.  His joyless laters are filled with killing for Abby and he's been doing it for a long time. He hates it, but why doesn't he stop? When the butchered bodies turn up, a detective (Elias Kotias) investigates, believing a Satanic Cult may be involved.

Both Abby and Owen are lifeless: she's dead and he lacks vitality. When they first meet, she's shoeless in the snow because she doesn't feel the cold. He has no friends at school and the apartment complex is filled with adults, so he spends his time alone in the courtyard chewing Now and Laters and avoiding the bullies at school. Owen can't emotionally grow up and Abby physically can't; she doesn't even remember how old she is. He probably wants to forget how old he is. He's so unhappy he puts a mask on and coldly pretends to stab imaginary bullies with his newly bought pocket-knife. Both Abby and Owen share a dark side, too.

Matt Reeves keeps us close to everyone, only briefly opening our view to see the turmoil Abby's curse brings, or to watch her from a distance as she easily scales a hospital's facade. She is a traditional vampire: her bite spreads the curse, sunlight is her enemy, and she must be invited into a room. When Owen asks her why she must be invited in she cant' explain why, but shows him what happens if she's not. The tone of the movie is dark and subdued by its close framing, which helps highlight the sudden moments of terror when they come: Abby's victim in the hospital awakes to sunlight as a nurse opens the curtains; Owen is held under water in the school's swimming pool at night; Abby transforms and attacks when the need for blood overtakes her; a car rolls over and over as seen from inside it.

It's unusual for a remake to be this good, this measured. Let Me In is an unusual vampire movie. It captures the sordidness of being cursed as a vampire and leaves no wiggle room for romance, blood substitutes, medical explanations, or sadistic predator delight. Abby travels in a box, sleeps in a bathtub, and smells funny. Unlike Bella Swan, the last thing on Abby's mind is wanting to be a vampire: now or later.

Halloween Russ Motion Activated Dracula Decoration

I find the 50% Off Card Stores a veritable treasure trove for older Halloween cutout decorations. With the party stores fading away (and their supply of Beistle cutouts with them), I now scour these card stores every October, along with mom and pop drug stores, for interesting pieces to add to my collection.

I found this charming little vampire in a store I always seem to have luck with. He's approximately 8 inches tall and 7 inches wide. His eyes light up and he makes suitably irritating Halloween sounds. The colors are superb and he looks sinister in that not-so-scary way which is half-way between too cute and too serious. He's also motion activated to delight trick or treaters.

The box he comes in is another matter. Pink? The graphic design is also not very eye-catching for the true Halloween aficionado. My assumption is Russ had their birthday party designers do this one. I would have designed a coffin box with a cellophane window showing his handsome, toothy grin.

Halloween Flashing Pins Skull, Witch, Pumpkin

I picked these flashing LED pins up at a Rite Aid in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I like the Skull the most because he doesn't smile.

 

My Halloween: Creeping Bride

Five questions asked over a glowing Jack o'Lantern, under an Autumn moon obscured by passing clouds...in between mouthfuls of candy corn...the Creeping Bride has just begun a SHOCK! and Son of SHOCK! viewing project this October, covering the 72 Universal and Columbia movies released to television in 1957 and 1958...

 

Why is Halloween important to you?

I love how subversive Halloween is. Halloween is a rupture in the day-to-day miseries of quotidian existence—it’s like Mardi Gras but with less drunken idiots in the street and fewer puddles of vomit everywhere.

First of all, people dress up in crazy outfits and stroll the streets and it’s never an issue (have you ever wondered what would happen to you if you tried to wear a werewolf mask in public on the Fourth of July or Memorial Day?). Secondly, you give away fun stuff to total strangers (cheap candy, mostly, but I also sometimes give out DVD-Rs that I’ve made of public domain horror and sci fi flicks). So you’ve got this complete undermining of normal, respectable decorum and the dull mechanics of capitalist exchange.

Halloween also undermines the edifices of Christianity that tower over daily life in the U.S. It is, after all, a vestigial reminder of the distant pre-Christian and pre-industrial agricultural past: a polytheistic pagan harvest ceremony and festival of the dead. In Europe, the Church tried in vain to eliminate festivals like Samhain among the Celtic people by creating All Saints and All Souls holidays, but the stubborn persistence of Halloween suggests that this effort to Christianize the pagans has failed. In fact, I would argue that the evangelical “hell houses”—those haunted attractions put on by fundamentalist Christian groups in late October that substitute drug addicts, porn-addicted chronic masturbators, Muslim terrorists, ob-gyn doctors who perform abortions, and gay men for ghosts, vampires, and other monsters—illustrate how harvest-time pagan festivals of the dead have had a profound influence on Christianity. If you can’t beat the pagan ideas that underlie Halloween, then join ‘em, I guess.

Finally, I like that Halloween is so geared towards children. Kids have a very loose grasp on what is real—they are not bound by the confines of language, instrumental rationality, or career-mindedness, so theirs is much more like a world of imagination and instinct and emotion. Celebrating Halloween is giving them a time when they have the run of the roost of the Real World, and this makes the day all the more subversive. I know a lot of people like New Year’s Eve and Fat Tuesday as holidays, where the world is turned upside down, but for me, there’s only ever Halloween. (At least until we figure out a way to get folks to celebrate Walpurgis Night, too…)

Graphic Book Review: American Vampire Vol 1

Zombos Says: Very Good

Here's what vampires shouldn't be: pallid detectives who drink Bloody Marys and only work at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes.

What should they be?

Killers, honey...(from the introduction by Stephen King)

There are bloodthirsty killers and blood-drained dead aplenty in the hardcover edition of American Vampire from Vertigo. It collects the first 5 issues of vibrantly colored panel-stretching art from Rafael Albuquerque and colorist Dave McCaig, detailing the two side by side stories that tell the death and times of the American-made vampire, Skinner Sweet. Cover art, sample script pages, and a foreward by King and afterword by Snyder are also included.

I was surprised to see how concise Scott Snyder and Stephen King's script pages are. Comprised mostly of dialog, they leave ample room for Alburquerque's interpretive embellishments with visual characterization to imbue emotional energy into each panel.  Snyder's story begins in 1925 Los Angeles where Pearl and Hattie, two yearning-for-stardom actors in Hollywood, become intimately acquainted with the blood-thirsty--thirstier than usual, anyway--movie moguls running the studio. Stephen King's story begins in the 1800s to tell how Sweet's taste for sweet candy turns to the sour-sweet taste for warm blood.

King's writing stands out for its cussing, brutal killings as Sweet takes revenge on lawman Jim Book, and for narrator Will Bunting, a newsman who was there at the time. Bunting wrote a dime novel about it called Bad Blood. We meet him when he's promoting the reprinting of his book at the Sagebrush Bookstore. Three people are in attendance--two are awake--as he recounts the truth behind his "fictional" tale.

Old World European vampires running the rails, tired of Sweet's train robberies, run afoul of Sweet's ill-temperament and newly- acquired abilities, which include walking in sunlight, long razor sharp claws with the strength to wield them,  and an expanding jaw with pointy fangs. Compared to the Euro-vamps, Sweet is a wolf to their sheep.

And he knows it.

Between the Wild West and the Roaring Twenties, Sweet does turn sweeter. Or so it seems. He helps Pearl deal with the Old World European vampires running the studio and then mosy's on his way. Hints to his main weakness and unfinished business he's hankering to tidy up are left with us to roll our own on until we meet up with him again along Snyder and King's revitalizing vampire series trail.

I've got dibs on Brad Pitt playing Sweet in the big screen version.

 A courtesy copy of American Vampire: Volume 1 was received for this review.

Road to Mandalay Photograph

Road to Mandalay (1926) photograph courtesy of Professor Kinema.

Haunt Attraction: Nightmare: Superstitions in New York City

Zombos Says: Excellent (and don't go alone)

Now celebrating its seventh year, NIGHTMARE is a unique, fully immersive haunted house experience. Set in an insane asylum, NIGHTMARE: SUPERSTITIONS forces you to break a superstition in one room and suffer the terrible consequences in the next. AOL Cityguide’s No. 1 rated haunted attraction in New York City, it delves deep into the psychology of fear. Now featuring a second attraction, FUN HOUSE.

I'll second the "fully immersive" aspect of Nightmare: Superstitions' haunted attraction in New York City, but what is it with haunt attraction's fondness for huge, leather-aproned guys drenched in blood, holding meat cleavers and cuddling their kill in a meat-locker room filled with icky meaty things? Of course he singled me out--the short guy cowering in the corner--to kiss his pet rabbit carcass, the one drenched in icky red stuff saturating its fur. I tried blowing a love kiss, but no, that wasn't good enough. I had to actually kiss the damned thing. Gross barely describes the experience, and immersive just doesn't quite do it justice. Had I a bar of soap right then and there I'd be bubbling up a foamy cleanse to rinse that disgusting kiss from my lips. I thought getting in on a press ticket would have spared me the ignominy. Fat chance.

I can't really spill the beans about the chills and potential bodily spills--yours--that you'll encounter in Nightmare: Supersitions, but the actors, those poor lost souls doing their best to creep you big time throughout the various rooms of the Funhouse and the Asylum, are more than good at their tasks of involving you, uncomfortably, through your growing uncertainty and fear as you stumble warily through the dark and across each tableau. Along your journey you will meet Bloody Mary, become disoriented from strobing lights and unexpected movements, be irritated by incessant screams and jabberings from the damned (or the group ahead of you),  and blinded by utter darkness. The makeup effects are nauseatingly realistic and enhance the bedevilment.

I've become a bit jaded being a horror and haunt maven, but there is one effect this year I almost avoided by using the emergency exit (there are immediate exits in each room, just in case you're squemish).  It involves plunging yourself into the unknown, into pitch blackness, into something that completely envelopes you. The sensations I experienced in this stifling situation ranged from claustrophobic to really frightening.

I loved it.

Read my  experience with Nightmare: Face Your Fear.

 

Halloween Trick or Treaters Vintage Photograph

Ring the bells and mouth the yells, the bag o'treats starts to open
Don the mask and start the task of fresh Jack o'Lantern pokin'