We’re not stealing this, but we’re reposting because we think it’s genius.
It’s October and it’s almost Halloween. Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.
Tag: halloween
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That’s the SPIRIT!! Store jabs back at SNL
The Season 50 premiere of the NBC late-night sketch show featured a sketch that made light of the retail store that sells Halloween costumes throughout October.
SNL’s Season 50 premiere, with guest host Jean Smart, featured a fake ad for Spirit Halloween, the costume store that pops up in vacant retail stores for the month of October.
“Times may be good on Wall Street, but on Main Street, communities are struggling,” SNL’s Heidi Gardner says in a voice-over. “Closed stores, shuttered businesses, empty parking lots… When hard times hit, it’s easy to feel like no one cares.”
The fake ad continued, “But help is on the way because when others leave, we show up.”
Spirit Halloween sets up shop in a vacant K-mart and revitalizes the building, welcoming customers “for six weeks and then bouncing.”
SNL’s Chloe Fineman then says, “We’re here providing vulnerable communities with the things they need most: Wigs that give you a rash, single-use fog machines, and costumes of famous characters tweaked just enough to avoid a lawsuit.”
But.. Spirit got its own revenge..
The store offered this on X:
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Its never too early for the season of the Witch
Now keep in mind that decor began going up in August..
Neighbors were aghast.. but tis the season for ghostly aghasts..
More to come. It’s only September after all 🎃😆😉
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Michael Myers: The less than minimum wage serial killer!
The original Halloween was low budget.
But this low budget!?
Whoa!!Michael — called “The Shape” — was played by Nick Castle.. As a small boy, Michael Myers was played, in one scene, by an actor named Will Sandin in his first and last role on screen. In POV shots, the hands of young Michael were provided by co-writer and producer Debra Hill, while the unmasked Michael — who appears only briefly at the very end of the movie — was played by Tony Moran.
There were certainly a lot of Shapes.
Vanity Fair adjusted Castle’s paycheck for inflation, saying that $525 in 1978 would be about $2,509 in 2018. By 2023, that inflation only equals $2,583.43. According to Rent.com, the average price of a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles is about $2,853..
In Castle’s own words:
“I was paid $25 per day for ‘Halloween.’ That was a lot at the time! You have to remember: my interest in doing the film was being on set, so I could demystify the experience of filmmaking and directing. I expected to hang around the set for no money. But hey, $25 per day, and all I had to do was wear a rubber mask. It’s a mystery what [John Carpenter] saw in me and the way I moved. I asked John, ‘What is this character going to do?’ And he said, ‘Just walk across the street.’ I knew Michael’s movements weren’t going to be robotic. He was a real guy. He’s not rushing.”
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The OFFICE Halloween cut scene lives on in infamy
BIG fans of the OFFICE here at the HORROR REPORT.
After seeing a ‘best of Halloween’ Youtube OFFICE themed video, one particular scene was foreign. That is because it was rarely seen–cut by NBC and not on Netflix when it appeared there or Peacock now in its current home.
The scene was originally featured in the episode, “Koi Pond,” the eighth installment of season 6. You will not find it now.
“Koi Pond” was one of the most memorable episodes from The Office season 6. Jim had a meeting with an important client but it was requested that Michael come along. When the duo returned, Michael was soaking wet and it was revealed that he fell into a koi pond. After a lesson about mocking fellow employees, the office learned that Jim could have stopped Michael from falling into the pond but he purposely stepped aside to let it happen.
The episode is famous in OFFICE lore for the plot. But also famous for what vanished.
The episode aired on October 29, 2009, and opened by showing the employees of Dunder Mifflin Scranton putting together a haunted warehouse for the local kids. Darryl , who Michael referred to as “gangster pumpkin”, pushed the kids around as the rest of the employees put on less than inspired horror scenes.
The cold open-ended with Michael simulating a suicide, horrifying the children while turning it into a life lesson and referencing that Christmas is not the only season with a message and that suicide is not the answer..
It appears NBC had a backlash to the episode. Some thought it was too offensive and inappropriate causing NBC to remove the scene. Michael was dressed as Saturday Night Live‘s character, D*ck in a Box during his hanging.
You an see it here, still, in all its cut and edited glory:
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DID YOU CALL THE MICHAEL MYERS HORROR HOTLINE IN THE 80S?
We were busy recollecting some nostalgia by watching this glorious VHS copy of when Halloween 4 appeared on television .. commercials galore. Edited for your TV viewing pleasure.. But when we get to the mark, we noticed something interesting. An advertisement for Halloween 5–and a 900 number.
Now 900 numbers were quite a thing when I still in single digits. If you were alive then you may recall the 900 Freddy Krueger numbers. The sex lines. The psychics.. It was a different time and era. But this number, 1-900-860-0700, produced an interesting response:
Dialing 1-900-860-0700 prompted you to guide a potential victim of Michael Myers to safety.. Michael most likely always won. The hotline itself aired directly after the end of television promos for the film. The hotline itself aired directly after the end of television promos for the film. The voice on the other end would give you a variety of places that could be found in said film, like the Tower Farm or the Children’s Clinic, to send Michael’s prey for safety.
Undoubtedly people who were alive at the time recall being in big trouble from their parents by racking up huge 900 phone bills. It was easy to do, you paid by the minute.
Too bad no one recorded the actual audio from the call–we have tried our best but cannot find anything proving someone did.
If you call it now, it is disconnected.. Which is good since in today’s dollars the call would be 5 bucks a minute..
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The Samhain traditions
Samhain was a celebration of the harvest and is closely associated with the concept of autumn symbolically representing the end of life and the start of the winter cycle.
The bonfire is therefore a symbolic means of ushering in the process of rebirth.
The rebirth.. the spirit.. it burns bright.
The rebel yell in the dark of night.
Foreboding is the darkness still
Erased from time is good will.
With a fire brought until the dawn..
Accept a change and end what’s gone.
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Halloween 4 and all its feelings
It seem that Halloween 4 makes the socials on an annual basis.. Why?
The 1988 sequel suffered horrendous criticism in the year was released. Through the 1990s, people who were fans of the original almost were offended by the Return of Michael Myers. It was just about as bad as the feels of Halloween 3. So why are people celebrating it annually?
For horror fans, this meme may make the most sense. Michael Myers was back. But he was really different:
So why does the movie trend this time of year?
It is not because of its acting or script, but instead the imagery. And not just the nostalgia for those who felt it. But even more, the silent and quiet nostalgia for those who never experienced it and never will.
Halloween 4 is set as though 3 never happened, ten years after a hospital exploded in Haddenfield and Mikey and Dr. Loomis survived the blaze. Myers grabs a new mask off a discount drug store rack and the rest is history. Of course multiple further sequels goofs up the timeline as much as a Marvel Spider-Man movie. Seriously.. it can be confusing for the non horror fans.
But this film sparks some other melancholy of the infinite sadness.
It began without the famous pumpkin and piano theme.. but instead a series of autumnal images .. what it is about the imagery which makes the film this special?
The fall feeling? That is what social media streams seem to suggest. All of those images sure present that aura..
The other thing presented is not just pictures of the loneliest parts of fall, but also a somber haunting musical background to the scenery.
This is something those who lived in 1988 can feel. I can almost taste and smell the pictures. I had moments with friends and family in the heyday of the decade that look the same in the memories. Out late at night before a curfew when the rural landscape was dancing with a fiery sunset.
I recall vividly a moment when friends of mine and cousins were out too late, well beyond the time when we should have been home earlier. We were lost somewhere deep in farm lands. At sunset, we thought we saw someone with an axe. Or a machine. Or farm equipment. Heck we were 7 and 8 years-old and had no clue what we were seeing. So we ran home.. When we got back to my cousin’s house, we were in a bit of trouble (but it was the 80s, parents were okay with this stuff) and –seriously–Halloween was playing on TV. The theme song greeted us walking through the front door.
For people reading this, the 80s and 90s really were different. No doubt.. not saying better.
But sure as hell not saying worse.
Those who were born soon or well after the appearance of Halloween 4’s intro in ’88 be viscerally in tune to the opening scene. Perhaps, maybe, these feelings in innate. The deep and profound feeling is within us.. the nostalgia is passed down. The feeling of sunsets arriving earlier perhaps are somehow so humanly frightening that the nostalgia of that moment never goes away. No matter the generational or technological advance. We feel the feeling.
We are all immersed in the advance of autumn. The festival of Samhaim. The solemn rituals of the early fall and the eventual darkness that takes hold.. deep in our souls.
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Michael Myers becomes a TV star!
Miramax’s Head of Global TV Marc Helwig will be overseeing the franchise creatively in close collaboration with producer and CEO of Trancas Malek Akkad, who has worked on Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, Halloween: Resurrection, Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009).
According to Deadline, “The new Halloween series is envisioned to potentially launch a cinematic universe spanning film and television. Miramax’s Head of Global TV Marc Helwig will be overseeing the franchise creatively in close collaboration with Akkad”as well as reminding that “Jointly controlling both the film and TV rights would allow Miramax and Trancas to map out an integrated film-TV universe.”
The night he came home never ends.
Developing…..
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Halloween homages
Blast from the past.
Here are some Halloween images from the 1980s shared in various places on Facebook.
Nothing like these photos to give you the nostalgic feels ..
Why aren’t Halloween costumes this visceral anymore ? They used some amazing plastic in Taiwan..