Horror Report

Tag: nostalgia

  • Singing the quiet Christmas song out loud

    Singing the quiet Christmas song out loud

    We read a New York TIMES article questioning why there are so many sad Christmas songs? It’s a great piece if you had to read it..

    And it is a great question.. It got me to thinking, one of the most popular of Christmas stories is one about ghosts visiting a stark capitalist who doesn’t care about a wheelchair-bound boy.. and a cartoon about a blockhead who seems to be disdained by his friends..

    Christmas season is supposed to be good. That’s what we’re told, right? The lights, the music, the movies, the scents, the traditions .. all the imagery is designed to make this the “happiest time of the year.” And I don’t want to take away any of that, because those things are good. They’re important and give us something to look forward to while holding the albatross of nostalgia around us.

    But at the same time, this is the time of year when the bad things happen too. The life-altering things. The life-changing things. The things that, for some people, make Christmas never quite feel the same again.

    A lot of people experience trauma now, during this season. Deaths.. broken pipes.. job loss. It happens in December like clockwork at times.. And it becomes hard to stay positive when pop culture is blasting Christmas songs and holiday cheer straight into your face. I listen to the music too .. even during some of the worst Christmases my family went through, I still played the songs, still tried to find the spirit wherever I could. But when you have kids, you have to keep a sense of normalcy.

    You keep the traditions going even when internally you feel like you’re falling apart at the seams.

    For me as well, December has become this strange emotional landscape. In all different years, my mom went into a nursing home in December. My dad was hospitalized twice in December. A water system broke in December. A heating system broke in December. My nephew almost died in a hospital in December. There’s more if you have time.. but we will bookmark it there.

    But the most mysterious time was December 2013. You also may have had a ‘moment’ like this.

    My father was quickly growing very sick at that time, at the time we didn’t know why but it was getting serious.. I walked into the kitchen and saw him, and for whatever reason, my memory of that moment is not normal. The whole room felt white–glowing white. The table looked like it was floating, and I remember trying to hold it down. Yes, this sounds absolutely insane, I know that, and maybe it was stress, or maybe it was a high blood pressure moment, but that’s how I remember it happening.

    Eventually my dad was taken to the hospital and my sister has her own strange recollection from the hospital that year during this situation. She swears my father said to her, “You were there,” and insinuated that she was holding death back from taking him. He wouldn’t even agree to emergency surgery unless she promised she would still be there afterward.

    And during that entire week, there were so many little things that just didn’t line up with reality as we knew it. My sister always worked Mondays, but somehow this hospital visit seemed to fall on a day she shouldn’t have been working at all .. yet we both remember vividly that she was. Maybe she filled in for someone. Maybe life is a blur when disasters pile up. But it still doesn’t make sense.

    The strangest moments came when my father was finally recovering, and I was driving him home from the hospital. My mom said to me on the phone, “Wish upon a star that everything’s okay.” And right then — no lie! A shooting star streaked across the sky in front of me. Sure, it could’ve been coincidence. But it was weird.. really weird.

    Then the moment happened that I still cannot explain. As we were driving, we suddenly heard my sister and brother-in-law talking inside the car, through the speakers, even though my phone was not connected to anything and I had not called them (And this is 2013 technology folks) But we heard them. Full conversation. I was so startled I actually called them afterward and told them everything they had been saying.

    Right after that, outside the windows, snow was falling. My dad looked at me and said, “This happened before, didn’t it?”

    And I looked back at him and said, “Yes. It did.”

    There was this deep, unspoken knowing .. the kind of moment you don’t forget .. that somehow, in some way, we had lived that exact scene before. Neither one of us could explain it. We never talked about it ever again. Not once. And now he’s gone. I never asked him what he meant by it. I never explored what I meant by it. Time ran out.

    TIME RUNS OUT

    That’s the thing:
    We make Christmas plans, New Year’s plans, life plans, but we run out of time for the things that actually matter.

    It’s the typical cliched conversation a the work Christmas party.. We say we’ll have the deep conversations “later.” We say we’ll reconnect “soon.” We say we’ll talk about the mysteries of life “when things calm down.”
    But life doesn’t work that way.

    And maybe that’s what bothers me about this season.. the holiday parties, the work lunches, the happy hours, the shopping that feels half-present and half-numb. We scroll Amazon, clicking nonsense into carts for people who don’t need it. We forget where the car is parked. We forget what we’re even doing in the middle of a store. We’re overwhelmed, distracted and oddly disconnected.

    It’s not just that we’re not living in the moment.
    It feels like we’re living in a different moment than where our feet are standing.

    Time just slips and slips and slips. And we don’t even fully realize it until we’ve lost more of it.

    Here’s the last thing I want to say, and maybe it’s the most important part of all:

    Nobody wants to hear this at a holiday gathering, but we’re all going to exit stage left someday. For good. Not exactly a pleasant conversation starter and for sure a first date ender.. Say that at a Christmas party and you’re worse than Scrooge. But the truth behind it matters: life ends. It’s the one guarantee. And because of that, we should be talking more openly about the things that actually give life meaning.

    Seeing a parent pass away changes you. Facing illness changes you. Losing a career and having to suddenly change life during financial personal crisis hurts .. not being able to afford the ‘Christmas cheer’ is haunting.. homelessness… war.. famine.. disease.. All under the bows and wreaths and mistletoe. Now that is often reality that we don’t want to consider..

    Watching time run out changes you. Work still has meaning, life still has structure, but you see it differently. You understand what’s real and what’s man-made.

    Christmas comes but once a year.
    Make it the best. It could be your last .. God willing you will have a hundred more.

    Same with summer. Same with every moment.
    You don’t always know what’s going to become a profound memory until years later.

    It seems we are all struggling this year to find the Christmas joy.

    And if you, reading this, are trying too, you’re not alone.
    We’re in this together.
    We’re human.
    And we’re speaking the quiet part of Christmas out loud.

    People can call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for themselves or if they are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support. No matter where you live in the United States, you can reach a trained crisis counselor who can help. If you or someone you know has a mental illness, is struggling emotionally, or has concerns about their mental health, use these resources to find help for yourself, a friend, or a family member: https://go.nih.gov/Fx6cHCZ .

  • It was a Silent Night.. It was a deadly night for a movie called Silent Night Deadly night

    It was a Silent Night.. It was a deadly night for a movie called Silent Night Deadly night

    Picture it: November 1984.. Ronald Reagan just won re-election handily.. the nation was fearing a beat in the woods but raising the flag in patriotism…
    The chill is in the air.
    Christmas gifts are getting scooped up at those 1980s malls where the speakers are blasting 1980s music at a volume that feels illegal now.
    And right there, near the food court, near the arcade, you catch a glimpse of the movie times. Because maybe… just maybe… in the middle of the hustle, you’ll buy yourself a break. A breather. One big-screen, Hollywood-ish escape.

    In Cressona PA you see Prince and Purple rain.. but there is another one..

    Silent Night, Deadly Night.

    How bad could it be?

    You show up, ready for a cheesy seasonal slasher… and you find out you stand no chance. The movie’s getting pulled. Not “it’s selling out.” Not “we don’t have your showtime.” Pulled, as in: some theaters won’t run it, and the distributor starts backing away like it touched a hot stove.

    Because in 1984, people stood their moral ground… and this was a national argument.

    What makes it funny (in a dark way) is that today we live in an era where Christmas horror is practically its own aisle. We’ve got full-on gore carnivals, movies that treat the holidays like an excuse to paint the walls. Even Terrifier 3 was out here reminding everyone that December can be a bloodbath if a filmmaker wants it to be.

    So in 2025, Silent Night, Deadly Night almost looks… gentle. Like a troublemaker from a different generation.

    But in 1984? People didn’t see it as quaint. They saw it as a threat.

    When “Killer Santa” hit daytime TV

    A big part of this firestorm wasn’t even the movie itself but it was in big part, the marketing.

    TriStar ran TV spots that mashed up holiday cheer with the image of a Santa figure doing what Santa is not supposed to do—breaking in, weapon in hand, violence implied. And the big mistake? Those ads didn’t just run late at night for adults. They landed in daytime slots, when kids were watching.

    THIS was the ad that ill-fated the film:

    That’s the part people forget now: the outrage wasn’t abstract. It was parents seeing the commercial in the middle of normal life and concerned their child saw Santa with an axe.

    And then it became organized really fast.

    Variety reported protests in Milwaukee from a group calling itself Citizens Against Movie Madness, led by local mothers. The protests spread—New York, the Bronx, Brooklyn—signs and chants and that old-school civic energy that feels almost extinct today. The leader was Kathleen Eberhardt, then 32.

    Stations reacted too. According to reporting summarized in Vulture’s deep dive on the controversy, at least some TV outlets moved the commercials to late-night, and others yanked them altogether.

    Then the cultural heavyweight moment hit: Siskel and Ebert went after the movie hard on TV, and Gene Siskel aimed directly at the people behind it, calling the profits “blood money.”

    Suddenly, the controversy wasn’t a local protest story. It was national, loud, and embarrassing for a “respectable” distributor.

    We were even led to believe that a that a Lewisburg woman saw a TV spot for the movie during ‘afternoon cartoon hours.’ She didn’t recall the station.. sounds like an automatic urban legend to me.

    In 1980 a movie called CHRISTMAS EVIL featured an ax wielding Santa.. No outrage. But that is because the advertising campaign just was not there like it was for Silent Night Deadly Night..


    The other brutal truth: it started dropping at the box office

    Now here’s the other piece that matters, and it’s less romantic than the protest narrative:

    The movie also started slipping financially.

    Opening weekend, it pulled in $1,432,800 and played in 398 theaters.

    Second weekend? It dropped 45.4%..

    But it was also facing a huge problem: It was released the SAME WEEKEND as NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, a movie that was more widely accepted and not protested. It was just a child predator with knife fingers. Not Santa.

    TriStar publicly started wobbling right around then, talking about whether it would even be “commercially viable” to keep rolling it out.

    And once a studio starts speaking in that careful corporate language, you can feel the exit coming.

    The pullback was real enough that the Associated Press was describing it bluntly: TriStar was dropping the film from U.S. distribution after protests and poor early earnings.

    And one of the protest organizers, Kathleen Eberhardt with Citizens Against Movie Madness, celebrated the decision with the kind of quote that sounds like it belongs in a time capsule: “Wow. I think it’s great.”

    The irony: pulling it probably helped create the legend

    Here’s what I love about this story, even if the movie itself is… let’s be honest… not exactly Oscar bait.

    In 1984, people talked about it like it was the end of civilization. We already had Jason slashing through forests

    In 2025, it’s basically a campfire tale about a moral panic—an artifact from a time when Santa still had a kind of cultural protection around him, like you could get grounded just for disrespecting the concept.

    And the greatest irony? By pulling it, they may have cemented it.

    Because there’s a difference between a throwaway slasher and a forbidden slasher.

    If TriStar had just let it play, it might’ve come and gone like a hundred other low-budget horror flicks. But once it became “the movie they tried to stop,” it picked up that outlaw aura. People love a thing more when someone tells them they shouldn’t have it.

    And that’s exactly what happened over time.

    The film grew into a cult item, spawned sequels, and eventually inspired a remake in 2012 (titled Silent Night) and the newest 2025 incarnation..

    So 40 years after the chaos of the citizens against movie madness … angry moms … TV ads during cartoons (it that really even happened), SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT has become an annual Christmas much watch.. not because it is a great movie. But because it is just that bad.

  • Last Chri$tma$: Deflating an inflated buying season

    Last Chri$tma$: Deflating an inflated buying season

    Christmas time is here again. The annual ritual of spending cash you really don’t have. Society expects it!! Get that card out!

    Like you, I’m out there right now wandering the stores, scrolling the apps, perusing the malls that still exist and matching the prices up with the Amazon option. I get panicky this time of year because I haven’t purchased much yet. I check my bank account (you do it too), and I realize there just isn’t much time left until the big day … food, medicine? Or Christmas gifts. What do you spend on in December?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9TByT3QlWc

    Every year I try to be one of those organized people who gets things done early.. knock a few gifts out in November, finish up the first week of December. Because we all know what happens if you don’t: the Panic Purchases begin.

    We’ve all been there.
    You see nervous husbands frozen in the appliance aisle.
    You see kids staring at some sad-looking afghan blanket, trying to convince themselves, “Yeah, Mom would probably like that.”

    Let’s be honest: most of us already have enough stuff. We don’t really need much of anything on Christmas. But we’ve been programmed for decades to think we have to buy, buy, buy.

    So go buy. Be a part of something.. 🙂

    As you get older, it actually becomes more fulfilling to buy something for someone else that genuinely makes them smile. The only problem is that we still wait too long to start looking for that “special” thing. So we end up right back in that blender aisle, trying to justify why someone in life might really want to circular-saw their fruits and vegetables into mush all year long.

    That’s a different story for a different post. We have digressed too long.

    Toy Ad Nostalgia: The Real Christmas Catalog

    One of my favorite things about this time of year isn’t the new stuff… it’s the old stuff.
    Specifically: old Christmas ads. Especially toy ads.

    We all feel those toy ads, right?

    For me and many, the sweet spot is the late ’80s and early ’90s. That’s when my childhood was starting to age out of toys, but not quite yet. Right before everything shifted into “I just want money” mode. You may be prompted into the inebriation of nostalgia from the 70s, maybe the 50s.. Maybe even the 2010s! Any way you slice it, the same effects on the mind and body occur.

    Those were the years when the toy spreads in the Sunday paper or the department store flyers looked absolutely magical:

    • He-Man figures lined up like plastic warriors
    • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in all their neon glory
    • The Nintendo Entertainment System taking over living rooms one cartridge at a time

    I remember one of the greatest Christmases of my entire life like it was yesterday. I got:

    • A Super Mario game for Nintendo
    • A Batman game for Nintendo
    • A red bean bag
    • A blue bean bag

    The colors matched Mario. That was it. That was the list.
    And somehow, that simple combination still stands out in my mind as the Best Christmas Ever™.

    Before that, when I was younger, I remember getting Tonka toys—real metal, heavy, practically indestructible. That was also the year Christmas collided with a stomach bug. I spent part of that magical morning sick, but here’s the thing: even with that, the memories still come back warm. A little queasy, but warm.

    Old Ads, Old Prices, New Reality

    So here’s what I want to do with this post:

    I’ve got a couple of old Christmas toy ads I want to share with you. Take a good look at the prices in those ads. The toys, the games, the “big” items.

    Below each ad, we’ll break down a few of those prices and talk about what they’d roughly translate to in today’s money. How much would that Nintendo, that action figure set, or that Tonka truck actually cost now if you adjusted it for inflation?

    Because back then, a toy that cost $19.99 felt like a big deal. Now we blink at $49.99 like, “Eh, that’s just what stuff costs.”

    We used a typical inflation calculator to see what the Nintendo was.. $237 in today’s money. and even in today’s dollars that would be VERY affordable compared to the high priced almost $1000 dollar gaming consoles of today’s gaming market. And you ca n OWN a game then, BATMAN, for 40 bucks.. That would be $96 today. So yes.. we are being taken advantage of in today’s gaming market, right?

    But just stop and appreciate that 1990s. That was the year I got the bean bags, BATMAN, and MARIO 3.. life changing childhood moment.

    A year before the greatest Christmas ever I most likely before the $3.99 BATMAN action figures.. My parents got me BATMAN and the JOKER and BOB THE GOON. They spent $15 bucks on those, and in today’s money about $11 each. But yet in 2025, action figures in stores are 20 bucks or more… Again, are we being used by corporations?

    Kids drooled over the SEGA by 89 as Nintendo faced competition.. It was pricer at $189

    So now we are talking bigger money.. that is almost $500 in today’s cash. We are getting closer to the Playstation or xBox..

    Ad for the heck of it in 1986 when you may have craved a Wuzzle at the Schuylkill Mall.

    $1.99 then! Not even $6 bucks now .. Great deal. I am sure if they were existent today they would be $20 on sale. And if you kept it in a box, you could sell in on eBay TODAY for $99 bucks (according to sell prices), which by the way was $33 bucks in 1986. Reverse.. deflation.. See how that worked?

    So money talked.. Money was spent. Bills long paid, or ignored.. We have moved on.

    What make it all so special in the past?

    Maybe it wasn’t the price.
    Maybe it was the bean bags. They meant more than anything else..

  • Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 will be fine even if it is awful

    Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 will be fine even if it is awful

    Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Is About to Chomp Zootopia 2

    Five Nights at Freddy’s Part 2, the sequel to the initial hit, is about to take down Zootopia 2 at the box office this weekend. If you look at the Rotten Tomatoes website, you’d never expect that to happen. Right now it’s sitting at one of the lowest critic scores we’ve ever seen ..just 12%. That’s it. That means the overwhelming majority of movie critics basically despise this film and think it’s a waste of time to watch and maybe even a waste of time to make.

    But this is a tale of two cities and two audiences. While critics hate it, people in general love it, with an 89% audience score from 500+ verified ratings. The original movie made about $297 million on a $20 million budget, and it’s expected that this sequel might actually do even better.

    Is it going to be Oscar-worthy material? Probably not. It might not even be the best movie you’ve ever seen. But it’s doing something critics haven’t really tapped into.

    For a long time, 80s and 90s nostalgia reigned supreme. That era is fading. People now can’t always relate to a time and place that’s long gone, but they can relate to a time when they were playing this game.. or when they were parents of kids who were playing it in the mid-2000s. That’s what we have here: an homage to new nostalgia, something different and unique to this generation of people growing up now, and to Millennials who are older and had kids who downloaded this game. Parents and kids alike enjoyed playing it.

    Remember from in the mid 2000 teens how many Five Nights at Freddy’s–themed birthday parties we saw? That’s the energy showing up at the box office now.

    What this really shows is how little critics matter anymore. There was a time when a movie poster could boast a perfect score with critics or a Roger Ebert quote on the back of the VHS and that meant everything. Those days are so far gone they’ve turned to dust. Now it’s word of mouth, social media, instant reviews, and live theater reactions that matter, and that’s what’s happening here.

    We haven’t seen Five Nights at Freddy’s Part 2 just yet. We will. And when we do, even if it’s the “worst movie of all time,” guess what?

    We will probably enjoy it.

  • A decade that went upside down: From nostalgia to despondence

    A decade that went upside down: From nostalgia to despondence

    As we get closer to the two-night finale of Stranger Things dropping December 31, 2025 and January 1, 2026, it’s worth remembering one thing: we didn’t just watch a show for a decade .. we lived one.

    When Stranger Things started filming, David Letterman was still hosting late-night. Jay Leno had only recently walked away from The Tonight Show. Conan O’Brien was still on TBS. (We really miss him).. It was when late night was waning but two kings were still reigning.

    The streaming world was a completely different universe.
    Netflix was king and pretty much alone on the throne. There was no Disney+. No Paramount+. No HBO Max. No Peacock. CBS All Access was barely a whisper. Streaming was simple compared to the buffet line it is today.

    Politically? Well… it was Barack Obama’s America. Donald Trump hadn’t even been elected yet. There was no constant chaos cycle, no decade of non-stop political adrenaline. If you told someone in 2016 what was coming for the next ten years, they might have said you were living in the Upside Down.

    Celebrity culture? Justin Bieber was still with Selena Gomez. Prince William wasn’t even married yet. That’s how far back we’re talking when you think of it…

    Music-wise, the world was dancing to “Closer” by The Chainsmokers and “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber. In theaters, people were lining up at midnight screenings of Rogue One, dressing up, filling auditoriums — back when opening nights still felt like events, not a casual option between Netflix binges.

    Even in sports, the snapshot is wild:
    The Chicago Cubs broke their 108-year curse and won the 2016 World Series.
    The Denver Broncos, led by a retiring Peyton Manning, won the Super Bowl.

    We were just beginning dabbling in the nostalgia that the mid 2000-teens were about to present us.. We were just waiting for a show to come around and really bring it home.

    And television? Entire shows began and ended during the Stranger Things era while we were still waiting for the next season in Hawkins.
    Shows like Cobra Kai, The Umbrella Academy, The Good Place, Westworld, and others completed their entire lifespan before Stranger Things even got to its final chapter.

    And now here we are…

    When we look back at this time capsule — this Upside Down decade, if you will — it shows just how much everything has changed, and how much we have changed with it.

    The question becomes:
    Did we change the decade, or did the decade change us?
    Did we create Donald Trump, or did he create us?
    Maybe historians will be arguing about that long after we’re gone.

    What we can say is this:

    A full decade of life passed while this show unfolded. And our entire experience the this entire reality has altered.

    If your child was six when Stranger Things premiered, you’re now staring down the day they get their driver’s license.
    If they were Eleven (*like our star*) you are nervously waiting for that first legal drink.

    Time moved. Life moved. We just didn’t notice how fast.

    We watched these kid actors in a weird, neon-tinted horror-sci-fi show grow up on our screens. And the joke was always, “By the time season five comes out, they’ll be in a retirement home.”

    But guess what?
    So are we.
    Or at least we’re a lot closer than we were in 2016.

    The decade went fast .. and slow all at the same time. When we began 2016 the show tapped into nostalgia .. We were immersed in it. But by COVID and the arguments during the pandemic, the age of nostalgia vanished away.. we were instead enraged on an hourly basis, streaming actively and killing cable, staying at home and killing malls.. and wondering what our collective purpose was in this place and time.

    Now, as the final season airs a decade on, nostalgia–at least what it was then–is dead. The show seemingly has tried to stay stuck in a time that moved on… a decade is a long time. Especially THIS decade.. THIS upside down period of time..

    So take a breath.

    Take a moment and look around.
    A decade has passed in the blink of an eye.

    As we gear up for the final Stranger Things episodes, maybe even seeing it in a movie theater, surrounded by others who’ve taken the same ride, remember this:
    This was a snapshot of our lives.

    And just like Hawkins, we all came out a little older, a little wiser, and definitely changed.

  • The clown that dominated Thanksgiving 35 years ago: Pennywise’s first dance in 1990

    The clown that dominated Thanksgiving 35 years ago: Pennywise’s first dance in 1990

    Revisiting the 1990 It miniseries is like stepping back into a time when horror on TV had to dance carefully around the censors and when a clown named Pennywise became an icon dancing on the little screen.

    I remember it well: I was ten years old, my homework half-finished, and the only way I could get to watch that eagerly anticipated TV event was by promising I’d get my work done. It was absolutely life-changing for a young movie fan like me.

    ABC took a pretty bold leap adapting Stephen King’s It for prime-time television. Sure, they had to cut out the more graphic and adult themes from the novel. The blood and gore was minimized to nearly nothing. The unsettling moments got toned down so they wouldn’t scare the living daylights out of a wide audience watching that night. But even with all those network limitations, they created something truly special.

    A big portion of the magic was Tim Curry.

    His portrayal of Pennywise wasn’t buried in monster makeup. It was a deceptively simple clown design—almost friendly on the surface, which somehow made it even more terrifying. Curry didn’t rely on special effects or gore but instead was able to subtlety have presence, voice, and a simple smile. That haunting, unforgettable smile. In a time when horror icons like Freddy and Jason dominated with blades and blood, Pennywise chilled you with charm and menace and a little paper boat for Georgie.

    The production itself had challenges. There were delays, rewrites, and debate within ABC about just how far they could go. But the cast, both kids and adults, brought heart to the screen. The chemistry was real, and despite the limitations of the format, they managed to breathe life into King’s story. Curry’s performance was so commanding that he overshadowed everything else and become the most anticipated part of the made for TV series.

    Yes, even that ending with the not-so-great giant spider was lousy.. but being honest, that part’s a bit of a punchline now when you watch it again.. but somehow Curry held the whole thing together and ages like a fine wine.

    There are no reports of any dramatic on-set accidents or major injuries. It wasn’t a famously chaotic set. Most of the struggles came from trying to condense King’s dark, emotional, and layered story into something suitable for 1990s television.

    At the time, the reviews were generally solid, especially considering the restraints of the medium.

    Stephen King himself was pleased with it. And now, all these years later, it’s still fondly remembered—not just for the scares, but for what it represented: a moment when horror tried something different. When it became a prime-time event. When kids like me rushed to finish their homework just to be scared by a clown.

    The 1990 It wasn’t just horror—it was appointment television. And for a lot of us, it still lingers in the back of our minds, floating there like a red balloon in the storm drain of memory.

    Tim Curry…

    He made us all really scared of clowns. And that was more than enough for TV…

  • You can FEEL these images! The most important scenes from the Halloween movies had nothing to do with Michael Myers

    You can FEEL these images! The most important scenes from the Halloween movies had nothing to do with Michael Myers

    The Melancholy of Halloween: Why Halloween 4 and Halloween 3 Still Make us Glow!

    There are certain things about Halloween that never quite leave you.
    When you’re younger, it might be a family party, trick-or-treat night, or the excitement of dressing up for school. Maybe it’s the sound of leaves scraping across the pavement, or the cool autumn wind beneath a sky that can’t decide whether it’s sunny or gray.

    It’s melancholy.
    It’s nostalgic.
    It’s Halloween.

    And for many of us, two particular Halloween movies bring that feeling back stronger than anything else.
    Not because of scares or kills.. not even the music, despite that setting a certain tone to the films.

    Maybe you’re one of those people .. maybe you feel it too.

    The Opening of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

    The fourth installment movie begins not with screams or murders, but with a quiet, haunting montage of rural Americana. There’s no Haddonfield, Illinois because that town doesn’t exist .. but the landscape during the opening scene of the film feels like it could be anywhere in your back yard or field nearby. In this case it was actually filmed in Corinne Utah..

    Cornfields. A lone scarecrow. A rusted fence line. A jack-o’-lantern sitting in the dusk.
    All of it set to Alan Howarth’s mournful score and the sound of wind whispering through half-bare trees.

    I promise you cannot watch this and NOT feel it in your bones…

    Before Michael Myers even appears, the tone is already perfect. It’s not about the horror — it’s about the feeling. That sense of October. That moment when daylight fades a little too early, and you can smell the wood smoke in the air. For many fans, that opening sequence is Halloween. It captures the essence of the season better than any pumpkin-spice latte or store-bought decoration ever could.

    A few years ago, a Halloween website actually gave us a “then vs now” scene by scene of the opening sequence.. times have changed. And that is why this scene brings back to much..

    x x x

    The Beauty Within Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

    Then there’s Halloween 3: Season of the Witch — the most debated entry in the franchise.
    Some fans love it. Others can’t stand that it doesn’t feature Michael Myers. But beyond its odd plot about a mask-maker’s deadly plan, there’s something poetic hidden in the chaos.

    As the Silver Shamrock jingle plays and the movie cuts to shots of kids across America — trick-or-treating, laughing, wearing those creepy masks — it taps into something universal. For a few brief moments, the film isn’t about terror at all; it’s about childhood, innocence, and the fragile glow of Halloween night.

    And then, there’s that breathtaking final image: three silhouettes walking into the orange-gold horizon, the sun setting behind them.
    For a film so divisive, that single scene is pure cinematic beauty — a quiet, haunting symbol of the season itself.

    Nostalgia in the Shadows

    We all have our own movies that summon that peculiar Halloween nostalgia — the ones that make us feel ten years old again for just a moment. But for many of us, it’s these two films — and these two scenes in particular — that stir something deeper.

    I don’t know if movie makers envisioned it.. but beneath the Shatner mask and the famed John Carpenter music, Halloween has always been about more than fear. It’s about the passage of time, the changing light, the melancholy of autumn itself. Samhain….

    So as the season of the witch arrives once more ..
    Don’t forget to be in front of your television set for the big giveaway.

    🎃 Silver Shamrock. 🎶

  • Without Warning remains the best WORST Halloween made for TV movie of all time

    Without Warning remains the best WORST Halloween made for TV movie of all time

    This time of year always brings a certain melancholy reflection and a lot of nostalgia. For me, one of the oddest and most memorable parts of that mix is an old made-for-TV movie that somehow manages to be both terrible and fantastic at the same time.

    You’ll probably think I’m crazy for saying it, but I’m talking about “Without Warning,” a CBS television movie from 1994.

    It aired on the anniversary of Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds broadcast — the one that scared the space aliens out of America in 1938 when people thought aliens were actually invading. CBS promoted Without Warning heavily, making sure viewers knew it was fictional. Still, that didn’t stop some people from calling the police that night, convinced that history was repeating itself .. another alien invasion, right on early 90s prime-time TV.

    The 1990s Were the Perfect Time for This Kind of Weird TV movie

    Let’s rewind to the great 1990s. Seriously, they were pretty great. The Clinton administration was just getting started. No one had heard of Monica Lewinsky yet. The economy was taking off (despite NAFTA and GATT which would eventually kinda sorta ruin everything).. And in the background, the paranormal was quietly creeping into pop culture’s bloodstream.

    Shows like Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM, Sightings, and Unsolved Mysteries made the supernatural feel just a little more believable. It was the perfect atmosphere for a movie like Without Warning .. a fake news broadcast about the end of the world.

    The entire film was presented as a series of breaking news segments. Sander Vanocur, a respected journalist at the time, played it completely straight. The first reports came in of mysterious asteroids striking the planet .. there were three impact sites, three disasters. But as the “coverage” went on, it became clear that these weren’t asteroids at all. They were intelligently controlled… and they were angry.

    Then we were joined by mom from Malcolm in the Middle!! Long before Malmolm..

    In the movie, the U.S. government (under a fictionalized version of the Clinton administration) launched nuclear weapons in a last-ditch effort to intercept the incoming objects. That, of course, made things worse. Soon, radar screens filled with hundreds of unidentified craft closing in on Earth. Cue the faux-emotional poetry, the panicked anchors, and the eerie fade-out that left everyone wondering if the end had already begun.

    CBS was ready.. they were knew that WAR OF THE WORLD caused panic.. so they thought they would devise a nifty course of action and tell people the show was fake every commercial break…

    That should work, right?

    NOPE.. it didn’t.

    Terrible… but Terrifying for a lot of people!

    The reviews were brutal.. But 14-year-old me? I loved it.

    I remember sitting there on Halloween night in 1994, too old to trick-or-treat and living in an area with few kids anyway. I was ready for Without Warning like it was the Super Bowl. When John B. Wells’ voice kicked in for the opening narration, I was hooked.

    Even today, I still sometimes throw it on YouTube as background noise though I almost hesitate to mention it, since no one has claimed the copyright and I don’t want to jinx it. It’s oddly comforting in that late-night, static-on-the-screen way. I hope this Youtube video with ORIGINAL COMMERCIALS FROM THE TIME doesn’t go away..

    Each time the movie returned from commercial break, a voiceover reminded viewers that this was not actually happening. Despite that, many people still believed it was real — a modern echo of Orson Welles’ panic nearly six decades earlier.

    Even with the warnings… even with the constant “we are fake” promos, hundreds of people called television stations in various cities and states in panic!! Reports at the time said some of those calling in were in tears.

    When Fiction Feels a Little Too Real

    What makes this worth bringing up now, 31 years later, is how eerily it ties into today. Right now, we have 3I/ATLAS passing near Mars .. an interstellar object that some, including Harvard’s Avi Loeb, speculate might not be a comet at all. Maybe it’s something… different.

    Could it be another visitor from deep space? Maybe even a kind of mothership?

    If that’s the case, if someone or something out there really did hear our old radio signals and decided to drop by to see what we’re about, then Without Warning might not just be a cheesy relic of ‘90s television. It might be a glimpse of how it all begins.

    Wouldn’t that be one heck of a way to end 2025?

  • Horror trivia: William Shatner played Freddy Voorhees from the Halloween on Elm Street The 13th movie

    Horror trivia: William Shatner played Freddy Voorhees from the Halloween on Elm Street The 13th movie


    At this point, it’s not even trivia anymore—everyone knows that William Shatner’s face became the face of Michael Myers in Halloween. Horror fans have repeated this story for almost half a century: John Carpenter’s low-budget film needed a mask, so the crew went to a store, grabbed a William Shatner Star Trek mask, slathered it in white paint, widened the eye holes, and—voilà—the Shape was born.

    So, last night I stumbled across a nostalgic TikTok clip of William Shatner himself talking to Conan O’Brien back in the ’90s about this very thing. What should have been a fun exchange quickly turned into a painful mess. Shatner and Conan mixed up Jason and Freddy, the audience shouted out Friday the 13th when the real answer was Halloween, and Andy Richter, joking about being a “slasher movie connoisseur,” still couldn’t get the facts straight.

    In fairness, this may not have been as WELL KNOWN in the 90s–perhaps it was more of obscure trivia compared to the amount of knowledge people have today of horror and the Halloween films.. but when your face is the base for a horror icon, you’d think you would have gotten it right? (This aired in November 1997)..



    The whole segment is a horror fan’s worst nightmare—not because of Michael Myers, but because of how wrong everyone managed to be. It’ll make you wince, but it’s worth a watch..

    For some more reading, check out our October 2022 post about the aging Shape.. the fate of the original Myers mask and how it looked then.. It is falling apart..

  • It’s back to school time, so let’s teleport together

    It’s back to school time, so let’s teleport together

    The school year’s about to start. Today is a Sunday before many schools begin session.. others happen next week…

    The change is here.
    You can feel it.

    Even if you’re not the one carrying a book bag and lunch box anymore, there’s something about this time of year that still gets into your bones. The air changes. That first crisp edge eventually replaces the heavy summer heat. Evenings come a little sooner. Somewhere in the distance, there’s the faint glow of Friday night lights.

    It’s like the world is quietly telling you it is again time to turn the page.

    Starting school was always a rite of passage. New shoes, fresh notebooks, the awkward excitement of seeing who ended up in your classes. Adults now join in by posting their kids’ schedules and seeing who what other kids share the same homeroom as theirs.. and the photos on the first day blanket the socials…

    Fall itself is wrapped itself around it all—cool mornings, leaves crunching under shoes, the smell of sharpened pencils and pumpkin spice everywhere.. memories come back so easily you can almost hear the hum of the fluorescent lights in the hallway of your own school..

    Nostalgia..
    It’s warm. It’s familiar. But like I’ve said before—it’s a little like pulling a blanket out of the dryer only to realize it’s still damp. Comforting for only a moment and then the warmth vanishes and you are left with something very different than how it started..

    Our minds edit the past into highlight reels, cutting out the awkward moments, the bad grades, the stress. We remember the best parts and forget that life was never as flawless as the memory makes it seem.

    Sometimes, we try to go back—not physically, but mentally. Mental “teleporting.” Close your eyes. Block out the present. Let yourself drift to a hallway you once walked, a mall you once wandered, a crisp fall night under the stadium lights. Picture every detail—the way the air smelled, the sound of shoes on the floor, the weight of the backpack on your shoulder. If you let yourself sink into it, your brain can almost convince you you’re there again.

    I guess it can be healing for a bit..
    But here’s the danger—stay there too long, and the present starts to fade. You risk getting so wrapped up in what was that you stop paying attention to what is. Nostalgia can be a bridge, but it can also be a trap and a curse into oblivion..

    So use it wisely.
    Take the trip in your mind when you need to remember who you are, or to feel the spark of a time when things seemed simpler. But then—open your eyes. Look around. Notice the smell of this fall’s air, the sound of these streets, the people who are part of this chapter.

    Because here’s the truth—one day, right now will be the moment you’re trying to teleport back to.
    And when that day comes, you’ll wish you’d really been here for it.