TACKY HALLOWEEN DECOR CREATES GLOBAL STIR
Some people have inflatable monsters that annoy neighbors for seasonal decor.. others showcase brutal scenes of torture and death and get worldwide news attention. Such is the case at two venues in the United States, one in Ohio and one in New Jersey. Both have attracted worldwide media, a UK DAILY MAIL pictorial, and days worth of attention on the Drudge Report. The front yard of a house in…
Today was Sunday squash slicing day..
It turned out well.
A pumpkin to represent each member of the family except the dog. We forgot that one..
But the human are all accounted for in squash form.
Have you ever wondered what the most popular horror movies were in your state and zip code?
Now you can find out.. with the help of the Halloween Express website, a complete summation and scientific (I assume) study has been listed to show what’s what around you, and if you’re in the mainstream of horror movie watchers ..
The big surprise for me: ALIENS is the most popular horror movie in the entire nation except for the states of Rhode Island and Delaware. Those states like PSYCHO.
This is a real image of the ‘Halloween’ version of the Whopper from Burger King.
There’s mixed reaction..
I somewhat think the colors accurately reflect the quality of product you’re consuming anyway.. perhaps even more shows the decay of flesh that takes place in your stomach as the rotting corpse of meat breaks apart before excretion..
Happy meatless Halloween.
The already overdone and failed concept of endless Halloween movies is going to get another run. And just in case there are any people still looking forward to it, read the exclusive MOVIE HOLE infornation they obtained:
Titled “Halloween Returns”, the new project will be a standalone film set to reintroduce audiences to Michael Myers years after his initial rampage.
“Halloween Returns” will pit a new group of Haddonfield youngsters against Myers. The now 18-year-old child of one of Myers’ victims plays a central role along with the child of a cop whose long been obsessed with Myers’ case, even putting it before his own daughter.
Myers is now on death row and the two kids with their own personal vendettas against the killer sneak in to watch his execution. But when things go awry and Myers escapes, the pair, along with their friends, find themselves in the firing line.
This just sounds all wrong. Plain wrong..
I have become weary of Michael Myers, but this death row concept for someone who has already been killed 8 times plus is plain ludicrous.
I actually wish someone would remake Halloween 3—as a horror fan, I have always been outnumbered in my appreciation of the Season Of Thr Witch..
Instead though Hollywood will return to the tried and true method of pointless slasher trasher with a storyline to match. ..
Save us.
Someone.
John Carpenter is a hard to get man.. I have myself attempted to interview him on several occasions.. I typically get a very friendly and kind response from someone with his public relations team.
And why would he want to talk to a little old website anyway.. He’s the master of horror.. the man who, whether he tried it or not, changed culture in 1978 when he created a low budget slasher flick about a babysitter killer that someone intelligently named ‘Halloween.’
And the genius—pure genius—of buying a William Shatner mask and painting it white..
While Carpenter was too busy to talk to me, the fine wealthy folks at DEADLINE were able to snag a few words with him..
Carpenter told DEADLINE what I have heard before in a number of places: That HALLOWEEN was a load of fun to create and the budget, so low, was a crapshoot for them.. they were just young people having a blast creating a horror movie. They did not set out to change horror, or create two generations of movies that would be forever modeled on Michael Myers. But they did just that..
Carpenter also joked a bit about Shatner’s face being the face of the madman who stalks movies sequel after sequel:
There were two options – one was a clown mask, which was a better mask, but the Captain Kirk mask was altered, spray painted, eye holes cut, with the hair. I don’t know if he knows the story. I met him recently at one of these conventions. I walked up and introduced myself. Without looking up he says, ‘Nice to meet you.’ The guy’s 80 years old, I’ll just leave him alone. You know, he was busy and probably worried about something else.
But speaking of sequels—and this is the real point that I concur wholeheartedly with Carpenter on—Halloween did not need sequels. On the subject of the constantly recycling of Carpenter’s idea:
I didn’t think there was any more story, and I didn’t want to do it again. All of my ideas were for the first Halloween – there shouldn’t have been any more! I’m flattered by the fact that people want to remake them, but they remake everything these days, so it doesn’t make me that special. But Michael Myers was an absence of character. And yet all the sequels are trying to explain that. That’s silliness – it just misses the whole point of the first movie, to me. He’s part person, part supernatural force. The sequels rooted around in motivation. I thought that was a mistake. However, I couldn’t stop them from making sequels. So my agents said, ‘Why don’t you become an executive producer and you can share the revenue?’ But I had to write the second movie, and every night I sat there and wrote with a six pack of beer trying to get through this thing. And I didn’t do a very good job, but that was it. I couldn’t do any more.
This is something I have also long thought..
While it was before my time and I only discovered the Halloween films years after adults were squirming in theaters seeing them, I always felt that Halloween 2 felt rushed. Sort of off key, and even more, just a way to bookend a story and end it. Of course we know it did not end at all, but instead kept on chugging into oblivion—and to a point where it does not even matter anymore when a new Halloween is coming out. By the way, if you didn’t hear, a new Halloween is coming out next year.
Carpenter’s Halloween 3, though despised by so many horror fans, is one of my favorites.. It’s creative and fun, a but bizarre, but it has the freakiest song in horror: That mind-numbing ditty about rushing home for the ‘big giveaway’ at 9..
Halloween’s original ending, with Michael Myers vanishing after a murderous night in Haddenfield, was the perfect ending.. it could have been left there—the ever foreboding boogeyman who stalks the night on Halloween, lurks in shadows, and hides where your fears are deepest.. Halloween should have ended at one film..
Instead we had non stop rubbish propelled at us from Akkads, Zombies, and Busta Rhymes.. So sad..
The HORROR REPORT presents some of the best reading from the website past..
Horror tales and truths from Halloween then and now..
Speaking of sexy outfits, the HORROR REPORT lamented how soon we sexualize children around the Halloween season. I sounded prudish to some in 2012 when I first posted this. I still think, two years on, that is rings true..
Though it is always humorous to go back and see what the ‘in crowd’ wore any given Halloween..Twerk it.
In 2012, the HORROR REPORT was shocked by the weather more than the season.. A snowstorm was forecast for the night of Halloween. Though that did not happen, a very cold and windy Halloween did. After all, Halloween 2011 featured a snowstorm.
Weather also took center stage Halloween 2012 as superstorm SANDY impacted the east Coast.. the NWS offered horrific warnings about how to prepare your body in case you did not survive..
Though it has nothing to do with Halloween, we wrote in December 2013 that we wished Christmas would keep its tradition of having ghost tales and paranormal experiences. Bumps in the night can happen all year.. Christmas can also feature fright.
X X X X X
FROM THE STACK OF PARANORMAL NEWS:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl6CGlBVpCA]
The video you see here is an ad for a haunted house. This one was from 2013. But you’ll get the point.
It is called McKamey Manor. It’s in San Diego. And the waiting list to get into the attraction is 24,000 strong. No doubt growing not that it has found itself getting worldwide attention.
The reason so many are suddenly finding out about this is because of the extreme nature of the attraction..
Among the many enjoyable things that will take place when you go to this little gem:
Things may get bad. That’s why you have to sign a waiver prior to admittance.
The trend of the extreme is all around us—from movies and the macabre to events of the real. Beheadings grace our evening news and now, as this testament provides evidence of, you can now ‘live your own horror movie’..
While some decry this place of rest and recreation and torture and rotted mayhem of the mind, others will defend it to their deaths..
You will undoubtedly judge for yourself..
The evidence of the video will speak volumes..
For me, someone who is a follower but not a fan of the paranormal, I can only state that I’d steer clear of this type of entertainment..
But not for the reasons you’d assume.
Would I be scared? Well, take a peak at the video. Of course I would be, and you would be, too..
Now, the real reason I would avoid this quagmire of a not so good time is because, while I often write about the paranormal and strange, I also write about current events.. current horrors. Real horrors.. My mind is already filled with the overwhelming gore and hatred that pervades daily news.
There are times I would just like to banish reality from my view..
A haunted house where reality and guts with gore are shoved, quite literally in this case, down peoples’ throats does not come off as entertaining to me..
Now, does the video make things look worse than they are in reality? I suppose you can say that. And I’d bet my next week’s salary on the chance that people who want the to go to the most extreme haunted locations will absolutely devour this like a flesh eating zombie.. but I wrote about those people before, too.
But there is one last valid point to make.. Should you be believer in the paranormal, the other world, and the more devious presences that some say exist, perhaps a place like this is the final place you should step foot in.. The evil that may be conjured by the actions there are intense.. Perhaps it will be enough to let the real scary show up in your life..
I love Halloween.. don’t get me wrong. But I disdain when we get yearly “lists” of the best horror girls, the best horror movies, the best victims in horror movies, the best kills, and now the newest from Entertainment WEEKLY: THE BEST SLASHER FLICKS..
First off, let’s get real.. anyone who promotes these lists does it at times when the iron is hot: Halloween is when you’d most likely click on a link that will purport to tell you what the ‘best’ slashers are.. And typically, at least in this case, you’re going to get any new information. What you will read is going to be regurgitated sameness. The movies that make the list are predictable..
The only reason lists like these are promoted is for web hits and, from the site’s perspective, schmucks who will accidentally click on banner ads populated throughout the website..
So what are EW’s slasher flicks featured?
FRIDAY the 13th.. No big shock.. SCREAM.. nothing new. PSYCHO.. yawn.. TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE…sigh.. And of course HALLOWEEN, because it’s HALLOWEEN and EW knows that posting a few shots of Michael Myers near the end of October will get hits.
So often when it comes to lists like this—not just about horror but, say, lists of Jennifer Anniston’s hair style on the anniversary date of FRIENDS first airing—we realize that nothing online is new.. pop culture trends escape the big sites.. Instead they hope that lists of this nature will fill the void of reporting..
I especially hate the sites that make you continuously click arrows to get more of the list. I give up after one click..
Not EW didn’t do that. Instead a sub par attempt was made at new content.
It just seems to be that we get the same old thing over and over and over and over and over again….
This is the best month of the year for creepy stories, strange feelings, and the thinning of this reality and merging with another. Or so we think..
October’s season of the witch is one of the most beautiful times of year.. Leaves are shifting from dark green to the amazing colors of autumn.. The winds are a bit more chilled, with each breeze seemingly blowing deeper into your soul than those of the warmer months..
And the darkness–the darkness!
The darkness penetrates everything in October..
The sun is seen less. When it is actually in the sky, it shines dimmer–of course if you’re not reading this in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s quite the opposite for you.
There’s one more thing that often happens this time of year.. at least to me: Shadows.
Shadows invade …call them shadow people, shadow figures, or just quick sliding darkness in the corner of your eye.
The ‘shadow people’ craze began over a decade ago. Since that time, the Internet and other paranormal sources have been in a constant buzz about what people were seeing.. But shadow people, or ghostly darkness, has been within paranormal lure for generations. The tales of people seeing figures, dark creatures, or even shadow rats from their vision have been around for years. Some have applied very skeptical science to the notion that we are seeing quick bursts of a paranormal world. Hallucinations, perhaps.. Maybe just optical illusions that are mind is being tricked into thinking is real.
But try to tell yourself in the midst of seeing a peculiar darkness in your sight that it’s not real.. Attempt to explain away what your mind is attempting to explain .. Give it a go and dismiss that creepy and chilling feeling that comes over your entire being when you see a presence of darkness, and feel the cold wrath from the corner of a room..
Floaters? optical tricks? brain lapses?
Or maybe a shadow being…
Maybe this world is thinning this time of year–the season where we are on the verge of spilling over into a spirit world..
Ever since I was a kid, I always felt a bit strange on or around Halloween. There seemed to be a very thin reality during that evening.. Maybe pop culture has reinforced the premise that Samhain is really a paranormal reality.
I cannot say if the other worldy does in fact exist. However, I can say this: I have seen more than a few shadow figures this year.. All of them have taken the shape of a human mist, and all but one vanished when I looked directly at it.. That one that did not haunts me.