Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Halloween! "Frankenstein" and Edgar Winter!



If you finish listening to this all the way through, get yourself some Halloween candy as a reward.

Happy Halloween! Sheila Frankenstein - Von Helsing!



Hi!  I'm Sheila Frankenstein!


this happened.

Happy Halloween! Monster Mash!

You are now legally allowed to play this song until midnight, and then it needs to go back in the vault for another year.





Happy Halloween! The Fonz!


The Fonz in costume

Happy Halloween! Lee & Cushing!


If you have to ask, you may Google it.

Happy Halloween! Vincent Price!


It would simply be bad form to celebrate Halloween without a nod to Mr. Price.

Halloween! Garth Marenghi's Darkplace!

If you've never watched Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, I cannot recommend this BBC show highly enough.

Here's the first episode.



Halloween! Mickey Mouse in "The Haunted House"!




Back when Mickey was still scrappy and not afraid to throw a punch.

Happy Halloween! Paul Lynde!


Tuesday, October 30, 2012

October Watch: House (1986)

I kind of suspect this was a "you sort of had to be there" thing in 1986.  I think I was a full 45 minutes into the movie before I figured out it was supposed to be funny.



Sorry to those of you who have a fondness for this movie.  I think my comedy/ horror allotment was already filled first, in 1987, by Monster Squad, and then in 1993 when I saw Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness.

Octoberama! War of the Worlds on the Radio!


On October 30th, 1938, the Mercury Theater performed a radio show adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds.  I expect that most of you will have heard of this presentation.

On the eve of Halloween, 1938 - war brimming over in Europe, Asia in chaos, science and engineering on the march despite a decade of financial instability - Americans tuned into the radio for their after dinner relaxation.  Sure, everyone knew Halloween was coming, but like the first April Fool's joke sprung on you each year, it may not be the first thing on your mind.

The broadcast was the one that supposedly set the nation into a panic and had people driving around, shooting at water towers and running from imaginary space men.  It also ended in folks calling for the head of Orson Welles - well before he decided not to sell any wine before its time or voice the monster planet in the Transformers Movie.

Monday, October 29, 2012

AXE COP. NICK OFFERMAN. GO!!! (Halloween, Cartoons and Awesomeness)

If you're like me, you're busily trying to model your entire work persona off Ron Swanson, head of the Parks Department on NBC's Parks and Rec.*  Ron Swanson is played by the amazing Nick Offerman, the man manly enough to be married to Megan Mullally.

Mr. Offerman is now also The Voice of AxeCop.**

Here is the first clip from the upcoming show, an adaptation of one of the "Ask AxeCop" mailbag sections popular in the comic strip.

Bear in mind, the strip is written by a 6 year old. That may fill in some important blanks as you consider the mind-boggling sequence about to beset your eyes.



*and, seriously, Parks and Rec is one of my favorite shows right now
**thanks to Kristen B for the link!

October Watch: House of Wax (1953)

When I was, maybe, 13, House of Wax (1953) showed on local UHF affiliate, KBVO.

It scared the bejeezus out of me.

I haven't seen it again since, nor did I catch the 00's-era remake featuring... sigh.  Paris Hilton.

House of Wax was my first full Vincent Price film, and while it may not be as straight up creepy as House on Haunted Hill or weird as The Fly, it still freaked me out pretty well when I was the right age.  It also gave me a lot of respect for Vincent Price as someone other than a guest star on The Muppet Show and Batman.



The film, while gothic in spirit, is shot during the era where Technicolor required a lot of light, and movies were offering up all sorts of color to compete with the monochromatic invasion of the television screen.  The movie was originally seen in 3D, but I've only ever seen it on television, so...

Octoberama! Donald and the Nephews!


and a cartoon!

October Read: At the Mountains of Madness (1930's)

Despite his profound impact on much of the fiction I consume, I've never read or consumed any actual HP Lovecraft.  Like everything else, I just never got around to it.

What I'd read about Lovecraft's writing was interesting.  Even by his fans, he's not considered to know much about how to turn a phrase.  The term "purple prose" comes up a lot in the sniffier descriptions, but everyone acknowledges his wild imagination and ability to generate a palpable sense of dread that other writers strive for, but force with nameable threats and terrors.

With Halloween coming, I figured it would be a good time to finally delve in and check out what all the fuss was about.



I will not say At the Mountains of Madness is my new favorite novel(la).  But it is a fascinating work - complete in its mythology, striking in its building of atmosphere and dread, and it feels like a single man's efforts to restrain an entire culture's imagination and mythologies, pouring them out onto the page with force rather than cultivating smaller ideas and lulling the reader with craft.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Octoberama! Sundays with The Bride! Part 2!

As we head into Halloween, let's just celebrate with some Bride Miscellenia and fan art from around Tumblr!

As Ms. Lanchester celebrates her 110th somewhere in The Infinite, clearly I'm not the only one with a thing for girls with interesting hair-do's.

If you didn't read our post on Ms. Lanchester earlier today, please take a moment to do so.  It's her birthday.

from the Mondo Universal Horror celebration.  Saw this in person, and it is absolutely stunning.
This is a collection of fan-art of varying provenance - some official, most not.  From what I can tell, somehow The Bride and The Monster have become icons for the rockabilly-retro crowd as it exists in 2012, applying late 50's aesthetic to the 1935 character with the tattoo sensibilities of today.

Go, pop-culture.

Octoberama! Sundays with The Bride - Happy Birthday, Elsa

Last week, JimD emailed me and asked if I planned on posting about Elsa Lanchester's 110th Birthday, which happens to fall on today, the day I'd planned the finale post for Sundays with The Bride.  Honestly, I had no idea the birthday was coming, so, everybuddy, take a moment and thank JimD and then take another moment and appreciate cosmic happenstance.

I had another post ready, and so you'll still see that today, later, but as it's Elsa's birthday, we need to give the lady her due.



We all grew up seeing clips from The Bride of Frankenstein, or saw the role of The Bride parodied in other films, in cartoons, or pop art.  The role passed into western iconography as much as the rest of the Universal Horror pack of monsters, but - oddly - The Bride appears for a total of one scene in this single film.  The Bride has no speaking lines, and, of all the Universal Horror "monsters", she is the only one which hurts nobody.

But that's only if you don't count breaking hearts.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Octoberama! Silent Saturdays Finale!

I seem to have made a theme of silent film in our Saturday postings this month.  It's belated, but I'm dubbing these posts Silent Saturdays.  Live with it.

If you ever think that all Hollywood does these days is adapt existing material from books and create remakes - well, that's all they've ever done.

If you enjoyed Disney's Legend of Sleepy Hollow as much as I did as a kid, its of course, an American classic as a novel, but it was also done in 1922 as a feature film of the silent era.  Let's not belabor asking you to watch a 70 minute movie, but we will share a link to the Headless Horseman scene.

Ichabod encounters The Headless Horseman!

Hi yo, Horse from Hades!

Friday, October 26, 2012

October Watch: Dracula (1931)

With the arrival of the Universal Horror Blu-Ray set, I wanted to get Dracula (1931) in before Halloween.

I first saw Dracula back in high school when it was going through a bit of a renaissance, probably because of those @#$%ing Anne Rice books that I kind of blame for leading to Twilight.

As a kid my concept of Dracula the character was fairly benign and drawn from things like The Groovy Ghoulies and the 70's-monster-plosion.*  But Dracula never seemed to be available on VHS, and I sure as hell wasn't going to read a whole book, but thanks to the monster-magazines and books I always seemed to have growing up, I already knew the story, including the character names and basic plot elements.



I was surprised how spooky I did find the film the first time I saw it.  I've always been of the Ed Wood school of willing-suspension-of-disbelief, even in movies which have long traded on literalism for the most part.  If I see a giant fake bat on a string, I guess I just buy that that's supposed to not just be a bat, but Dracula travelling incognito.  If there are armadillos in Castle Dracula, then, by gum, Transylvania must be overrun with cousins of my fellow Texans.  I dunno.  As long as I'm enjoying the film, I've always been willing to forgive a lot.**

Octoberama! Fridays with Elvira!

Our final Friday with Elvira rolls into the station.


All these years later, who knew Elvira would make a bit of a return in the pop culture consciousness? I, for one, welcome her return for as long as she wishes to stick around.


Really, what better way to celebrate the spirit of Halloween than with a bit of spookiness, a lot of fun and a celebration of creature features, great and terrible?