HALLOWEEN

ORANGE THE SPIRIT OF HALLOWEEN-OIL-Over the next twelve days this post will be a virtual landfill for things Halloweenie. I will throw in some stuff about Horror Films, trick-or-treating, some testimonials of the past, some of the traditions of the holiday, and maybe some images of Jack-O-Lanterns and goblin festivities. This is my favorite holiday of the year, but I do not know exactly why? When I was growing up each year got more and more intense. Each season more and more creative. By the time we get to John Carpenter`s "Halloween" with Jamie Leigh Curtis, it was completely out of control! I went to many wild costume parties. One in Boston in 1971 was the one that stands out most. The spirit in New England is as thick as fog in graveyard with howling wolves and vampires! When you look at the vast cornucopia of Halloween, or all of the ingredients that go in the mix, you are overwhelmed with flavors, textures, and colors! You have to begin with Pomona, the Roman holiday of bountiful fruits. This is the grassroots of Halloween! Innocent, good, and just plain fun! None of the bad stuff was in the holiday yet 2000 years ago. If a person could just look at it like this they would be getting ahead of the game. But I know this will not be possible, with more than 2000 years of Christianity under the belt! Please study this holiday of Pomona as a start, and then begin to add other ingredients in the witches caudron.********************************************

10/20/2007 TEN TOP PICKS LIST ONE

10. THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL 9. DRACULA 8. THE BAT 7. WHITE ZOMBIE 6. THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 5. THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN`T DIE 4. SCREAM 3. HOUSE OF WAX 2. THE EVIL DEAD II 1. PREMATURE BURIAL OOPS! I forgot Nightmare Castle with Barbara Steele! She rules in the Victorian Goth Groove!

I will do this list two more times before Halloween. I will have to study the genre more, and impressions may change. I am going to J. Michaels and the Party Pig for decorations and I will have to get a pumpkin to carve too. I will go to the Bazaar to start the arduous process of piecemealing a costume. This must go through evolutionary stages until it emerges in its fully realized form. Then I will see David Slade`s "Thirty Days of Night". Oh, here the wiki entry for Halloween for you to study. There is much to go over before you can understand all that goes in the holiday. I have a full day, so HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
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10/21/2007 Well I just saw "Candyman" and boy was it weird? It`s a Clive Barker production and have not ever seen one of his. It was completely in the realm of fantasy, but it was good entertainment. It came out in 1992 and has cult status in the Horror Books and web pages. The music was outstanding, done by Philip Glass, and very young Virginia Madsen is playing a difficult role, maybe something like Sissy Spacek in "Carrie". She is covered in blood the entire time. I did like the crack house sets with gang graffiti though, very arty. The gory hook of the Candyman was rancid though, and makes you want to ark. Best Buy has lots of horror classics for $4.99 so I may go back in a couple of days? I also got "High Tension", a French splatter flick and it reminded me of "Wolf Creek", but it had a fake, surprise ending that was completely hokey. I thought I was picking up "Hitchhiker II", but grabbed the wrong one! All of "Saws" are on sale, and yesterday I saw the previews for "Saw IV", and started to get curious. I`m a little scared off because they seem pretty sick as in the way Rob Zombie is sick. I tend to like the arty, 60s Goth stuff more, since I am so old. I saw that "Devils Rejects" a couple of years ago, and it was too edgy and sick for me. All of my horror reference books came in too, so i will be telling you about them soon. Oh, "Thirty Days of Night" was really sick. I just saw it yesterday at the new Cinemarck at South Meadow Shopping Center, or something like that? There was tons of gore against Alaskan snow! These new ones are exceedingly in bad taste! The theater was almost sold out, so that tells you how good horror sells! These kids have to see a carcus drained of blood to get off. All of the vampires faces were dripping with blood, even the chicks. I guess they have to beat out George Romero, cuz there were close-ups of flesh gobblings so that you thought you were at an all-you-can-eat-bar-b-q-joint! I`ll tell you tomarrow about my decisions on my costume since I am going through many changes in what I want. It does seem like it starting to be defined though.
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10/22/2007

This little Rough Guide to horror movies is wonderful! I`m not too tight on the genre and can gather simple information rapidly and can gegin to get the big picture! There are lots of sidebars and I dig those. All of the big actors and producers have pieces and you can review their careers with the Speed of Light! I am surprised by how much I know; just going through all of those Halloween seasons already. It goes through the different decades too and since I have been taking an interest in the thirties, I may want to see some Peter Lorre stuff or Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. There are beaucheaux box sets of their stuff, of course. The literary background is discussed too in the first chapter. It is not encyclopedic, but that is why I like it.


I went to the Halloween Store yesterday and was impressed with its blatant consumerisms. There are whole sections for outdoor decorations and complete dioramas for the wealthy. I was impressed though! There are whole sections for just witch stuff or just pirate stuff. Also, there is erotic wench stuff, like chamber maids and that kind of thing. I guess they sell alot, but I have never seen that many of those costumes about. The mask section was really impressive, but most of it was too scary for me! Lots of Leatherface anf Michael Myers scary stuff...I was looking for a funny mask, but couldn`t find one-say Barny Rubble or something funny. Todays generation is too out there, and maybe in bad taste sometimes! Rob Zombie is too sadistic for me! I like the arty world of Roger Corman better! Maybe I`m just getting old. THe new Target in Southpark Meadows was cool too, but a little picked over! My real pick is The Party Pig, and I will probably get most of my stuff there. They have millions of little accessories, so you can build your own costume. Right now I am going in the direction of a FLOWER-POWER-WAIF-RAGGEDY-ANNE-DOLL-FOP-FLAPPER-WITH-PATCH-WORK-PANTALUNES-AND POLKA-DOT-PATCHES-WITH-STREAMER-BEADS-PIMP-HAT-FUNNY-GLASSES-WIG-MAGIC-WAND-GIMMICKS-SEEING-EYE-MARTI-GRAS-CELEBRANT-FROM-THE-OTHER-SIDE-OF-THE-TRACKS-HOBOLAND-LOOK-SORTA-HOBO-HIPPIE-DILITANTE-MALCONTENT-OR-WHAT-EVER!
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10/23/2007 WHOLE FOODS` PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE IS THE FOOD OF THE YEAR FOR THE HALLOWEEN SEASON!

This volume is an underground guide to horror. I have never heard of most of these films, but intend to seek out many of these titles! I betcha many will be hard to find?

Gotta run, but please read Annabel Lee (1849) by Edgar Allan Poe many times over for proper ambience!.....................................................................................
10/24/2007 John McCarty is a Gore Scholar and I just got that volume yesterday, but I`ve come to find out he has written many more. I will send you to an interview with him, and he has a DVD with some of his favorite films in horror. There is a snap in the book of "Basket Case II", and I did not know there was a sequel-will have to check it out! One tiny nostalgic reflection I had this morning, is back in the 60s when I went trick-or-treating we would not come home until we had filled up a complete grocery sack with candy! I went as a backwards man one year, and had to walk backwards throughout the candy-gathering festivities! This was before the Real Candyman nearly ruined `Ween! Oh, here is John McCarty!

10/25/2007For me there is nothing scarier than the way the people of Pompeii were buried alive by lava, ash, and pumice of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The horror on their faces was blood-curdling! TRUE GHOST STORY-One time in Dallas at my house in 1965, the haunting season, I heard some rattling and whisling seemingly from the attic in my parents room. I was alone in the house and fearfully looked in the closet at the attic door. It was half-way open and I ran out of the house with rapidity! I told some neighbor chaps about it and they came over to look at the attic door. They tried to explain it by saying that the wind or a draft must have blown the door open! I was frightened by this for years to come, and never was fully convinced that this explained the chilling phenomenon. (Here are some ghost stories to purview). The Tingler

10/26/2007 Everyone would agree in Goreland that Herschell Gordon Lewis is the GRANDADDY OF GORE! My friend Jack Turlington had turned me on to him in the late seventies, and I saw a number of his films like Blood Feast or 2000 Maniacs. This is a starting point for any new student of gore. You really have to study him carefully if you want to get anywhere in GORE CIRCLES! You have to remain detached from this product that you are not to tainted with the evil itself! This may require reading the GOOD BOOK, going to mass, and abstaining from spirits! We may be able to be more virtuous too by studying these films, because we then know how to not behave. Understand, this is just a theory! The volume to the left is a new member of my collection, and has 999 blurbs about these genre films-the category is loose and includes many sub-genres. Aficionadoes may want to split hairs about the real definition of HORROR OR GORE, but I can kind of intuit this category by examples of product. To my surprise there was much mention of Joe Bob Briggs, the drive-in critic from Dallas. I had forgot about him, but since drive-ins are almost extinct, he too is out-of-there! I`m still going to remember him anyway! I just want to say, the Texas State Fair is where I`ve got many of my ideas. It has seemed to be a breeding ground for the odd or unusual! Very little censorship was in place back in the olde days! I am reminded of Toby Hooper`s "Funhouse", a title that has always captured my imagination.

10/27/2007 I saw "Saw IV" yesterday and was not expecting much, but was very entertained! (I`m pretending that it was yesterday for this post.) Last night I watched the fully restored "Halloween", and came to appreciate it even more. John Carpenter`s music is what really makes it. I noticed too the way the Jack-O-Lanterns were carefully placed in different location throughout the film. This was ingenious, and sinks with the opening credits. I believe that Michael`s knife is the biggest I`ve ever seen! Bigger than Norman Bates or Jim Bowie`s even! I saw it in Dallas in 1978 at the Preston-Royal Theater 9a defunct theater house now-it was a Gorden McLendon cinema house at that time), when I was a manager at Baskins-Robbins, and it completely caught my imagination! Nice are the touches of the girls smoking pot while Michael is following them in the mental hospital station wagon. He disappears behind bushes alot and is often shown from the back. There are only two themes in the music, but it is brilliant the way the music is synched in to the scenes. All horror films after it were influenced by it, just think of the "Screams" and you can discern heavy borrowing. Jamie Lee Curtis`s character, Laura, is really a goody-two-shoes who actually does her homework. I believes this adds to the predicament she finds herself in. PJ Soles and Nancy Loomis are not so virtuous; this allows you to accept that they are victims better. The spooky abandoned house of Michael Myers is really out there! John Carpenter must have have seen the Bates hacienda as a very high bar to overcome. Lots more connections come to my mind but I won`t reveal all here! 1978 was a very interesting year, and a lot of creativity came out then. Wes Craven`s "The Hills Has Eyes" was released in that year too! I sure wish I was getting some of those royalty checks that John Carpenter gets from the movie and the Michael mask and costumes. I`ve been practicing my costume today! That is my pumpkin that I just bought. I`m a hula-hula-hamburger hat man, I believe.

Hey, this thing is starting to get a little dense! Hallween is just that rich people!

10/28/2007 I picked up two paperbacks of HP Lovecraft`s short stories because I had just seen "The Resurrected", and it is based on story by this author entitled: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. I just read Cool Air and really loved it! Lovecraft is metaphysical horror and I`m enjoying his work. He draws from history and archaeology and his stle is puffy and academic; in fact I was reminded of Edgar Allen Poe. I will dabble a little bit at a time until I read all of his stuff, say over three or four years. It is interesting how he was obscure in 1937, the year that he died, and has sustained a slow boil over time, so that now he is widely read. I`m just now being turned on to him through my sojourns into gore! Go and figure, better late than never. 10/29/2007 I started to watch "28 Days Later" last night, a DVD I just purchased. I saw "28 Weeks Later" at the theater, and was getting into it. I will include it on my Best of 2007, and i`ve decided to include 25 % Gore Stuff, since this genre is so popular. I will write about 25 movies, so 5 of them will be horror stuff.

There`s a HULA-PUMPKIN for you. When I was preparing my music for my performance art today, the costume party at work, I was recording the beginning riffs of John Carpenter`s Halloween, and I noticed how the candle intensity inside the pumpkin modulates. This has a hypnotic effect along with the spooky drone of JC`s music! You can tell I`m getting very worshipful of that title, but its brilliance lies in its sheer simplicity. My pumpkin carving is fairly simple too, but I doubt that`s a virtue in this case. It was hard to carve through its thick shell! Well today is the day, so HAPPY HALLOWEEN! November is always a more austere month. I`ve been modifying my costume somewhat, and trying to make it more funny, but it gets scarier and scarier. It makes me appreciate the way George Romero modulates between comedy and horror, so that both run together and are sequestered in definition.

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

I just got this DVD two days ago, and I have already seen it several times! It is a NBC news production, part of Project Twenty, and is really one of the earliest forms of the documentary. It is primarily just film footage, still photographs, a sound-track of some of the popular songs of the Thirties, and an ongoing narrative of the important topics of that decade. Some of them are: rampant unemployment, The New Deal, the farm crisis, The Dust Bowl, the unions, and entertainment issues like music and movies. This TV documentary was produced in 1959, and I am reading "The Coming of the New Deal" by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (I want to read his memoirs that were just released), which was published in 1959 as well. A fun recreation is to watch a little footage then run back to my volume and read some pages explaining how The New Deal was set up. The particulars are fairly complicated, but will eventually be understood after some effort. Understanding The New Deal should be a goal of every American, then they could make more responsible decisions when casting their votes! Will Rogers` comments about the National Recovery Act are appreciated. Because of the long-term repercussions of The New Deal, it is important to fatham the details and their lingering effects. Issues such as Social Security (it will benefit you to review all of the developments of SS) and entitlements are still controversial even today. Since "Life in the Thirties" and "The Coming of the New Deal"are so old I have to assess their significance by using my experience in historiography, or the history of history itself. So far they seem to hold up, as a result of sound methods of research and analysis. Film footage of the thirties goes a long way to putting me back into those times, by viewing buildings, people, dress, cars, and events. The lure of Fascism or Communism is more apparent when every fourth man is unemployed, and sees no way out of a failing capitalist system. And when you see thousands of desperate people in a bread line you can go well beyond the cold statistics to observe the gravity of the situation. The survival of the nation and the democracy lay in the balance in 1933. In just a couple of years FDR was able to improve conditions, so that by 1935 some stability was established. I`m still puzzled by the fact that the crash of 1929 brought on the Great Depression? The stock market crash of October 19th, 1987 (my sisters` birthdays), which has been in the news a lot lately, began to recover the very next day, October 20th. Apparently Ben Bernacke, the chairman of the federal reserve, has studied the causes of the Crash of 1929, so it might be nice to read some of his writings and see more clearly his theories of economics. These early TV documentaries hepled me learn history when I was a kid (lots of visuals help me learn). Right now I am watching The Hindenberg Disaster again, and it is still as intense as ever! Do not forget the Lindbergh kidnapping, often labled the crime of the century. FDR is rather more of a hero to me now, then when I was a kid. Lord knows I did not want to hear about that era in the 1960s...The Generation Gap was into effect at that time, & strongly mind you!"Happy Days Are Here Again"! If FDR could make the American people optimistic again in the early thirties, under those dire circumstances, then he must be a great man-in my book! ...the music goes around, and around, and it comes out here...done on a rinky-tink-piano and the jitterbug, swing swing...

The Premature Burial

I got a little excited on Saturday when I picked up the "Roger Corman Collection" at Waterloo Video. I have only seen two so far, of the eight classics offered. I saw "Bloody Mama" with Shelly Winter first, because that takes place during the Depression and is about the notorious and controversial Barker Gang. Next I watched "The Premature Burial" with Ray Milland, my all-time-favorite actor. For the time being it is my very favorite horror film, and is a superb companion to our current witching season. It`s excellence may be due to the fact that the plot is based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, who too rules the Halloween season with an iron hand. I found the actual short story online and will give it to you! I wish that I could post the crimson face of Ray that accompanies the DVD (& did so on 10/10). I suppose I could photograph it? (consider it done) The phenomenon of catalepsy or fear of burial before death was more widespread in the 19th century, but I am able to experience it vicariously well enough, especially through the chilling portrayal of Ray Milland who plays Guy, a haunted rogue of sorts! Ray`s ability to express fear and horror, the wincing facial features, the frozen eye-sockets, the macabre grimaces, and understated black-comic expressions, are unprecedented in vaults of gruesome films! The strains of Maude Malone on keys recall the whistles of a gravedigger unearthing the coffin of a man buried alive! Here are some true tales of premature burial or references in literature and popular. Notable is that in medieval Italy unrepented murderers were buried alive as referred to in canto XIX of Dante`s Inferno ( Se di saper ch`i` sia ti cal cotanto, che tu abbi pero la ripa corsa, sappi ch`i`fui vestito del gran manto;) or the Black Sabbeth song "Buried Alive". For me, the concept of premature burial is a wide-reaching metaphor that speaks volumes about our condition on earth. Think of Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, an over-the-top silent film star, in "Sunset Boulevard" idly passing her days watching her old movies; she has few prospects of a revival, and indulges in vane reverie in the screening room. Norma Desmond is the living dead. Be sure you tune in to this Roger Corman classic. Lots of fog, blues and greens, dream sequences, cob-webbed chalices, mantels, & gaslights...way scary soundtrack...goblets and rats...worms in the doom cup...

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Recent rumblings about a Recession and the housing crisis have raised a lot of fear in people that we may soon experience a new fall. The sub-prime loan crisis has contributed to that too. Loan institutions have been too free with money and many people have been purchasing homes that can not support the mortgage payments. I found myself drifting back to the times of " Hey Mister Can You Spare Me a Dime?' Then when I was watching “The War” by Ken Burns I could see just how the war effort employed nearly every American in order to counter the Axis threat. It was quite clear to me how the US was able to pull out of the Depression, with everyone working people had money to put back into the economy. This in turn created more businesses and jobs and before you knew it we were really percolating. When I was a kid I often suspected that the Vietnam War was fueled by a need to keep the armaments industry prospering. I believe this even stronger today. Yet as I experienced some of this news I have felt a burning need to rewind the tape and take a look at the Depression Years and also look at the Great Crash of 1929, maybe out of a desire to prevent history from repeating itself. When I was a kid I withered from focusing on this period, rather favoring the optimism of the New Frontier. In the literature there are conflicting opinions about just how effective the New Deal really was. Some have even suggested that the work programs even worsened things. I am not in this camp of thought, but I will have to review many documents before I can get a handle on how Roosevelt was able to get us out of these troubling times. Some may argue that he never actually accomplished this, but simply by the resolve and character, and sheer will power of the American people we were able to pull ourselves out of these pernicious pits of collective disaster. The fact that it may have been simply WWII that did it has always been a thorn in the side for me. We may never truly know if the experiments in social engineering were intrinsically valuable.

Of the millions of books one can read on this subject, I now have three to start me off. I am about half way through “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan, and I can tell you it is a good one. It just looks at the Dust Bowl and the area of the Panhandle, Oklahoma, Kansas, and parts of Colorado. I will include the map so that you can see the area clearly. You may recall that the Jodes were fleeing from Oklahoma and on their way to California in “The Grapes of Wrath”. I have been almost prone to not believe this phenomenon of clouds of dust blowing across the prairie, if I had not seen some of these photographs. Egan gets some first hand accounts of this Midwest crisis and much of it centers around the city of Dalhart and Boise. How anyone could have survived through those years, especially 1933-1936, is the gist of these accounts. To say that poverty, ignorance, and prejudice existed within that society is an understatement. Yet, much courage and Christian generosity prevailed also. Another monograph that I picked up at the new Borders at the Domain is “The Defining Moment” by Jonathan Alter. This is about the first 100 days in office of FDR, a time when some of the major reforms of the New Deal were put in place. I am on page 103, but am getting into it-Roosevelt`s struggle with polio, his growth of character, and the ways he began to tackle the monumental problems of the American People are touched on in these early pages of the book. I just found the speeches of FDR, and you can even listen to them here. The first inaugural address reveals in the black and white the despair of the country, March 4, 1933. All the lines address the urgency of the crisis, and a rough sketch of the New Deals reforms are also suggested. The most famous line is: “ So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror that paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Also, “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” That is to the point. The fear thing is really that the American people would need change their collective psychology to being hard and tough, in order to fight unemployment and starvation. Do not succumb to fear and paranoia, laugh in the face of the perils. This is still good lesson today. Much ink has been spilled on Roosevelt, so if anyone would like to recommend some possible better treatises, let me know. I am inclined to want to look at some of the titles of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. first, such as “The Coming of the New Deal”. General works on The Great Depression are a rarity, it would seem to me. If you know of a best one, let me know! I picked up a general reader by Robert S. McElvaine, but it is a little patchy in the writing, but not too bad for the most part.

The wiki entry is very good, as usual, but should just be used as jumping off point for more specific investigations. I want to look at Prohibition and the movies from that era, or the role that entertainment played in lives of everyday Americans, say during the 1930s. Also, I want to look at the thousands of bank crashes and the ways the New Dealers restored the banking system. Naturally, I want to look at the work programs and how they put millions of people to work and restored their self-esteem, and possibly made them feel like they were not just getting a hand out. This will entail a look at the many programs that were put in place then, such as the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corp., and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The History Channel has a good special on the TVA that shows you how strong men built The Hoover Dam. Another thing is to see how the Social Security system was first formed and why that was and still is so important today. And being a stock market buff I want to better understand the the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, which put the SEC in place. Yes, there is much to know, but through gradual study and attrition it will start to sink in. Actually studying economics will be one greatest goal. It has been in the news that the American people have been spending money that they do not have, and running up credit card debt astronomically. The federal deficit too is getting out of control. The excesses of the 1920s have often been given as the cause of The Great Depression. Those fears surface again as we escalate into out-of-control debt. The irony is that if we stop spending we will sink into a recession. Yet, once credit cards are maxed out we will have to stop spending! Some unwinding is inevitable!

“Every picture tells a story, story.” The best place to start our journey is to look at as many photographs as possible. I urge you to look at each one of these shots several times, and you will begin to understand the American landscape of the early 1930s-the hopelessness, the bread lines, people looking for work, and down and outs leaning on a street corner with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Please review this page many times, then pick up some books to study this period. The real test of the New Deal was how far it went to help the poor. In Roosevelt`s second Inaugural Address he said, “It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” True government grew much at that time, and that is part of the legacy of Roosevelt. But during Republican presidencies, such as Reagan and George W. Bush, I do not see that the role of the federal government has shrank any. I don`t think anyone else could have helped the American people other than the government. Yes, the New Deal was brilliant in the way it addressed the major problem of unemployment. If everyone would simply go to work, then people would have money to buy goods and services. Businesses would flourish, farmers could buy supplies, parks and public facilities would look nice, people would go to more movies and concerts etc…! Yet, it was not quite that simple. In fact, we slipped into another recession in 1937. Sadly, it was the invasion of Poland by the Nazis (just an approximate guess of when real recovery may have begun) that truly began to propel our economy.