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.........................................................................................
10/22/2007This 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?
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!10/25/2007
For 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 cos
tumes.
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!
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.
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