Drusilla: Do you love my insides, the parts you can’t see?
Spike: Eyeballs to entrails, my sweet. That’s why I’ve got to study this Slayer. Once I know her I can kill her. And once I kill her you can have your run of Sunnyhell. Get strong again.
Drusilla: Don’t worry. Everything’s switching. Outside to inside.
—Buffy, 1st Halloween episode

I think Buffy would like my boots

Cut to a place where the everyday norm is monstrous and strange while it’s Halloween that tends to feel tired, a little ho-hum. Welcome to Sunnydale, California, a.k.a. Hellmouth, U.S.A. Yes. We’re going there. Buffy territory, ya’ll. Love it or leave it. And you better love it.

Now, during this blessed time of year, I urge you to go back to Buffy and her Scooby gang (or visit with her for the first time, if you dare) because this show really captures the silly/crazy/ugly/funny monstrosity of being human. Starting with cheesier, dorkier episodes, the show grows with its cast and audience answering life’s questions from: “why must I be a teen werewolf in love?” to “how do I come out to my mom as a ‘kinda gay’ witch?” to “what is my greatest gift and how do I share it with the world while protecting mankind from total demonic destruction?”

This crafty beaver's homage to the kick-ass queen of Sunnydale

Me (chanting): One of us! One of us!

And let me reiterate, if you love Halloween as much as I do, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a real treat. The first Halloween episode cleverly plays out the psychological desires that linger inside one’s costume of choice by turning each character into the ghastly ghoulie or pretty princess they thought they were merely portraying. Chaotic hilarity ensues. Each Halloween show is awesome, in my humble opinion, but like I mentioned above, in Sunnydale and in the Buffyverse by extension, everyday is pretty Halloweeny, so settle in and let the sugar rush take hold.

Not convinced? Oh, but there are many reasons to (re)watch:

1. You get to see a female hero (whoop, whoop!) cope with and learn to own her identity as slayer, savior, leader, daughter, sister and friend.
2. Teamwork abounds and each character is loveably flawed, quirky, angsty, hilarious and inevitably at some point, poorly dressed.
3. Even the villains and extras are freaking fantastic and they return throughout the series with realistic regularity so that you feel like you’re peeking in on a real universe full of real relationships. There is no forgetting; the past is always part of the present and future of the show, which also makes for classic call-back catch phrases.
4. The monster metaphor speaks to the awkward, the outcasted and the queer—a part of all of us and the identity of many who don’t usually have the luxury of seeing their story on TV
5. Stemming from my first reason, issues of “girl power” intricately build into the furious glory of ultra feminism in the last season. Legend-… (wait for it)…-dary. Literally. Like, whoa.

So, what say you we make Halloween last a little longer this year? Carry the candy hangover well into Turkeyday (there’s a good episode about that, too) and invite good ole Spike and Drusilla over for a little cuddle and a wee bit of evil—How does that sound?

Insane troll logic? Well, that’s my favorite kind!

—

[This piece originally ran on October 27, 2010]

Ana Holguin writes PopHeart for The Idler.

I was going to say that that must mean The Ring (2002) was the scariest movie I’ve seen, but now I’m thinking it has to be I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). I know. Hear me out.

It was the first horror movie I ever saw. I was in eighth grade. We were spending the night at my friend Hayley’s house, and it was dark and thunderstorming. Hayley’s living room had big picture windows facing the woods that left me glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. Mid-movie, the power went out. We had to crawl our way back through the unfamiliar house in the pitch blackness to her bedroom. I lay the rest of the night sweating, as tense a wire, staring into the black abyss under her bed. I still sometimes shudder when I see Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Gavin Craig—When I was a bit shy of two years old, my family was spending Thanksgiving with my grandparents during a broadcast of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978). I’m told that the general atmosphere was one of mirth, and that there was no thought of what effect the movie could be having upon me. After all, there is nothing graphic in the film. Only shot after shot of screaming extras fleeing from produce rolled in their direction by off-camera assistants. My imagination had no difficulty filling in the details. I knew what the screams meant.

My grandmother, unaware, was preparing lunch in the kitchen. The Craigs have always been fond of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. I screamed.

I have not eaten a tomato since.

Ana Holguin—1. Jaws, all of them. I know the third one at the aquarium is supposed to be really stupid, but come on! An underwater walkway? You are completely surrounded by the ocean! An ocean that will break your stupidly fragile “protective” plastic barrier. Claustrophobia + sharkfear!! Two words: chomp, chomp.

2. Jurassic Park (mostly the first, but again all of them). Ok, I don’t get why more people don’t share my paralyzing fear of dinosaurs and their terrifying museum-display bones. People, dinosaurs are freaking ancient giant bird-lizards that ruled the Earth! Does not their stature, their mere presence as immobile artifacts give one sublime pause? Three words: enormous tyrannosaur eyeball!

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Not scary like a slasher flick, this movie just creeps and slinks its way under your skin (so to speak). I didn’t realize how terrified I was until after the movie was over and I began to register how tense my (brain and body) muscles were. Unlike the first two movies on my list that prey on our baser instincts and primitive fear, Massacre shows us post-rational man and the deepest darkest regions of his mental/emotional life. *shudder*

Rosemary Van Deuren—As a kid, Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985) was one of the few horror movies I watched to completion, because it was not scary enough to force me to flee from the room. I was a weird, introspective child, easily immersed and susceptible to getting swept up in movies to the point of jubilation or terror. I thought hard and deeply about anything I watched, and Cat’s Eye had enough horrific scenarios to pique my precocious interest and start my wheels turning about how I—nine-year-old me—would deal with the torture-related dilemmas brought upon the characters through the fault of their own broad flaws. Would I be able to walk the ledge of a skyscraper over the plummeting dark while pigeons pecked at my fingers? How would I possibly bear it if people I loved were electrocuted while I were forced to watch? Or what if some well-meaning but misguided adult put my pet cat outside for the night so he was unable to protect me from the evil troll that lived in my house? I laid awake that night pondering these serious issues, as well as thinking about how cool it would be to have a troll-fighting cat of my very own.

Mike Vincent—I don’t remember if the movie as a whole scared me but the performance of Julian Beck in Poltergeist 2 (1982) definitely unnerved me. I remember his sweaty, gaunt visage and creepy smile like it was yesterday. The maggot creature in his likeness was totally creepy but nowhere as creepy as Beck himself. Later I would come to discover his work in the creation of The Living Theater.

As Poltergeist 2 descends into a wacky, blue screen nuttiness it sort of loses its edge. Granted, this was a necessary development as Beck died during filming. But when I think about films that scared me, that really creeped me out, the sight of the wincing, sweaty, cult leader that led innocents to their death.

Perhaps this is a testament to the last performance of Beck, the triumph of acting. Maybe it was all his experience with the confrontational theater he founded. Perhaps in that setting he mastered the art of making another uncomfortable. Perhaps it was my own youth, or the concept of following someone to your own death. Aren’t the things that scare us really just the things that we truly fear?

To close out a week of shudders and scares, in “Idle Thoughts,” The Idler’s writers answer the question “What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?”

In “Dysphonia,” Mike Vincent shares a story of an album, loved, lost, and rediscovered. Read “The ballad of Jackie Lomax”

In “The Cinephiles,” Kevin Mattison celebrates the welcome return of a Halloween tradition, the horror movie marathon. Read “How AMC and TCM saved my Halloween” And as a Halloween Week special, Landen Celano lists his “Top 10 traumatizing childhood movie moments”

In “Diary of a Casual Gamer,” Gavin Craig says that sometimes you know that a game has been really successful when you have a hard time figuring out how to describe it. Read “The horror before words”

In “PopHeart,” Ana Holguin prescribes Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the perfect Halloween tonic. Awesome boots optional, but recommended. Read “On how she slays me Halloween and every day”

In “Rounding Third,” Angela Vasquez-Giroux shares her last-minute, playoff-inspired Halloween costume ideas. Read “Suggested Halloween costumes for my party Saturday, baseball playoffs edition”

In “The F Word,” Jill Kologowski makes pumpkin truffles for her roommate’s birthday because only mutants don’t like candy. Read “Jill and the Great Pumpkin (truffles)”

And a new comic from Zac Gorman

How many people have even HEARD of this one?

AMC and TCM have saved my Halloween.  Not simply by airing horror marathons, no, but by airing phenomenal horror marathons.  AMC’s “Fearfest,” which runs from October 18^th to the 31^st, started off like every other year.  Friday the 13^th parts one and two?  Imagine that!  Even the cable guide description seemed disinterested: “Killer stalks another group of teens.” But then… day two.  Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Brain Eaters (1958) & The Funhouse (1981)!  Say word?!  Anyone who has been paying any attention knows how close Night is to my heart.  And The Brain Eaters?  What a fantastic left-field choice!  It even features a brief appearance by a young Leonard Nimoy, whose name is misspelled as Nemoy in the credits.

Day three:  Day the World Ended (1955) & They (2002)! Say word-er?!  Could it be?  Are we working on a legit, no joke horror movie marathon? Day is a great Roger Corman B-Movie about a scientist battling a mutant after an atomic war destroys most of humanity, and They features one of the most chilling endings I can recall.  I won’t bore you with the entire schedule, but suffice it to say, it’s top notch and it all culminates in the premiere of the new, Frank Darabont produced zombie television series The Walking Dead.  Can-not-wait.

The Unknown (1927) Forplay ain't easy when you can only use your feet. Or is it easier?

On top of that delicious Halloween sundae sits a nice little cherry in the form of TCM’s late night horror programming.  Every Friday they are running Hammer Horror films like Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed! (1969) and The Horror of Dracula (1958), which are always fun, as well as a dearth of silent horror classics like Freaks (1931) and The Unknown (1927). It’s great to see The Unknown in particular as it is, well, relatively unknown.  It features a super creepy, armless Lon Chaney Sr. murdering a man using only his feet!  So, there’s that.

And now I am a figurative zombie at work because I have been up so late watching literal ones.  I have no regrets and I have all of November to sleep.

Being a child of the eighties I inevitably share in the list of unavoidable traumatic experiences: the entirety of the Thriller music video, Large Marge from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, the creepy-ass ferry ride in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (it’s the worm! it’s the chickenhead!) Despite the across-the-board scares, every kid has been traumatized by a number of unique moments in film that have shaped who they’ve become. These, my friends, are candidly mine:

#10. The Sentinel (1977)

In this bizarrely entertaining supernatural horror flick, a young model finds a new apartment in New York City. Little does she know it not only houses her, but the gateway to Hell. This film is filled with a plethora of truly strange moments, but the scene that firmly left a terrifying impression finds the woman awoken in the middle of the night by strange sounds in her apartment. As she investigates an empty room, a demonic figure materializes behind a door and power walks across the room without acknowledging her. That alone gave me horrific paranoia that something would materialize at the foot of my bed and walk out of the room. I’m just happy I didn’t see the remainder of the scene as a child where she stabs the corpse repeatedly and chops off its nose – blech!

#09. Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

“What’re ya gonna do, knock my block off?”

The famous last words of the street tough that breaks the little Klown’s bike have seared their way into my childhood memories. Shown on as a Saturday afternoon flick on some random local channel, my cousin and I found the concept of wacky Killer Klowns irresistible. However, when this scene showed I quickly lost my bravery and spent the rest of the movie staring at the back of a couch pillow. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a head.

#08. Dr. Giggles (1992)

As children, sleepovers often tend to manifest as odd games of chicken. Your friend has scored a copy of some R-rated film you aren’t supposed to see, and it becomes a game to see who freaks out first. For me, it was Dr. Giggles, and I lost. Big time. As a woman struggles for life, she calls for a doctor. Dr. Giggles arrives on the scene to inspect the problem… The poor woman is already in an immense amount of pain when the doctor pulls out an instrument to peek up her nose: a spike that stabs through to her brain. I can’t quite say the extent that this scene had on me, despite its cheesiness, but It’s still been over a decade since my last check-up.

#07. The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

This film is the epitome of what children shouldn’t see. The opening scene is scary enough—Dan Aykroyd scared the hell out of me as a kid (he still does, but now it’s for more creepy-old-man-holding-onto-the-past reasons), but that’s far from what kept me (and subsequently my parents) up for night after night. Joe Dante’s segment involving a kid who can manipulate his surroundings to suit his every whim seemed fun enough… but it’s the reveal of his sister who is forced to endlessly watch cartoons that ripped my stomach to shreds. Those strained eyes! That mouthless face!!! I’ve never been the same. Even The Matrix brought back terrified feelings.

#06.  Hellraiser (1988)

This is an interesting scare for me as it’s not even a scene from the film, but one single image of a man without skin lounging around an apartment. I haven’t seen this film, but I caught this horrific image while staying the night in a family friend’s house for the first time. The unfamiliar setting mixed with such unnatural and gross imagery made for an utterly unpleasant night. If memory serves me right, I forced my parents to leave in the middle of the night and get a hotel. But then, I was only six, so I doubt I had that sort of power over my parents.

#05. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

I think from birth until around five years old this was my favorite movie. But then as my fragile little brain developed “comprehension” and I began to understand the concepts of “intention” and “consequences.” The Wicked Witch sending her evil monkeys to attack Dorothy and her friends was enough to send me into fits of rage as a child. Specifically the shot of the Scarecrow getting torn apart was too much for my delicate little mind. To this day I refuse to watch Johnny Got His Gun, and I blame it on the thought of the Scarecrow’s torso crawling around.

#04. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

I’m not sure what traumatized me more, seeing Christopher Lloyd’s terrifying transformation at the end of this film or finding out that the insane maniac Judge Doom was also Doc Brown! This was a double whammy for me. After his psychotic outbreak at the end of Roger Rabbit, (particularly the unbearable squealing as he was run over by a steamroller,) I wasn’t able to watch Back to the Future for years. The sight of Doc Brown scared me as at any second I expected red devil cartoon eyes to appear. And don’t even get me started on Angels in the Outfield.

#03. The Exorcist (1973)

I realize that this is rather a cliché choice, but after seeing The Exorcist, I was unable to even close my eyes for fear that I would see that demonic face—not the grotesque make-up effects on poor Reagan, but the chilling ghostly face that appears throughout the film. I saw this film at eighteen-years-old too young an age to deal with the idea of a demon consuming my mind and body. I had to fall asleep to Three’s Company Looney Tunes for at least a week afterwards.

#02. Fire in the Sky (1993)

Once upon a time on a lovely Saturday afternoon HBO changed my life forever. Unaware that a twelve-year-old boy baby might be watching the film, they decided to program Fire in the Sky. The twelve-minute abduction sequence is by far one of the most traumatizing scenes I’ve ever endured. The fear of those Don Rickles lookin’ aliens has never left me. Searching for the following clip was torture, even at nearly thirty-years-old:

#01. Robocop (1987)

While Fire in the Sky is certainly the strongest and most lingering traumatizing film from my childhood, the number one spot goes to the earliest memory I have that set the stage for all fears of film to come. First let me say, this is no film for a child to watch—it makes me nauseous even today. In a way I was lucky that the only part I witnessed was this scene near the beginning of the film where the evil ED-209 prototype is being demonstrated for a number of investors. “I’m sure it’s only a glitch,” he says… the sheer lack of humanity and the amount of gore those bullets produce was entirely and completely mortifying.  I blame this film for my later fear of war movies. It wasn’t the Nazis that made me afraid of Schindler’s List, it was Robocop!

So there it is. The late eighties were a rough time for me, but every fear helped shape who I am. For the most part I’ve gone back and conquered most of these films. These days there aren’t many films that linger with me, but I always enjoy the few that do. I don’t mind losing a little sleep if it reminds me that I’m still alive! Hopefully none of you use this revealing information to torture me in the future—but at least I didn’t reveal my fear of Harpo Marx. Shit!

These things fly at your head and suck out your life. That's pretty scary.

Some of the scariest (and fondest) video game memories I have, however, involve watching my roommate play Silent Hill 2 in the basement of our apartment. Part of this is because Silent Hill 2 is a well-constructed, genuinely frightening cinematic game. One of its master strokes is the figure of Pyramid Head, an unpredictable, lumbering Freudian metaphor who slaughters people in front of your eyes, and is, within the game, absolutely invincible. Even at the end, when he acts as the second-to-last boss fight, the player character never has the ability to damage Pyramid Head. All you can do is run, hide, and wait for him to finally destroy himself.

Hiding from Pyramid Head

In Silent Hill 2, the question of what Pyramid Head means becomes far more important than figuring out how he can be damaged.

It has to be admitted that the final explanations that survival horror games provide are usually pretty disappointing, but it’s the in-game execution of the encounter with the ineffable that make the experience so frightening, so mind-bending, and so much fun. Pyramid Head is a god, in the old pagan sense of the word. The ending is almost beside the point.

They're after your 401(k)!

In contrast, Silent Hill 2 is famously built on a Freudian psycho-sexual foundation where the player character’s guilt constructs and drives the purgatory he is forced to explore. To the game’s credit, however, Pyramid Head exceeds his role as a walking phallus. He’s not just Freudian, he’s Jungian. More than that, he’s something out of Lovecraft — something that finally cannot be comprehended, or even spoken. This is what horror is — the encounter with that which precedes description. It gets distilled into zombies, plagues, and vampires, but the difference between fear and horror is the difference between being killed and being eaten.

In all honesty, another part of the fondness of my memories comes from the fact that I was watching and not playing the game. I’m a bit of a chicken — I still can’t watch Alien — and the slight insulation that came from watching someone else play instead of playing myself meant that I experienced a game that I probably otherwise would have avoided.

I have toughened up a bit over the years, which is good, because I don’t have a roommate anymore. Now I have to run from Pyramid Head myself.

—

Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.

I searched for something appropriately Halloweeny, but also something that wasn’t cookies shaped like eyeballs, or “mummy” muffins that are only mummy in that they have coconut on them, or candy corn (but that’s mostly because candy corn is disgusting). I decided on pumpkin bread truffles, which is a combination of candy and the most autumny ingredient possible: pumpkin. The gist of the recipe was to mush (or something more poetic than that) crumbled pumpkin bread and cream cheese frosting together, then dip it in white chocolate candy coating, then roll the truffles in cinnamon and sugar. Which is basically the easiest thing ever. However, the recipe suggested making the frosting from scratch, because store-bought can be too sweet. Candy is already sweet, I thought, so I don’t want to overdo it. I decided to up the ante and make the recipe heart-pounding and anxiety-inducing enough for Halloween.

It turns out I did want to overdo it. Instead of buying frosting and pumpkin bread, I decided I was going to make the frosting and the pumpkin bread from scratch. The recipe provided no tips on either of these things, so I found high-rated recipes for both (http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/downeast-maine-pumpkin-bread/Detail.aspx and http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/cream-cheese-frosting-ii-2/Detail.aspx). I suddenly had three different recipes to make one dessert. It was ON.

I felt cool at the grocery store, since I had most of the ingredients on hand already. One thing they don’t tell you, though, about growing up and cooking for yourself and all that: spices are EXPENSIVE. It was over $15 for three jars: nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. And those jars are a more appropriate size for dolls than humans.

I decided in the store that I was going to do a neat healthy trick I’d heard and swap out the oil in the pumpkin bread recipe for plain applesauce. A gutsy move, one I had never attempted, as a part of a recipe I had never attempted either. I also bought Neufchâtel cheese (1/3 less fat than cream cheese, according to the package). I know from a disastrous attempt at homemade alfredo sauce that fat-free cream cheese is NOT a substitute for regular cream cheese. However, I decided I was going to give myself as many opportunities for worry as possible, and went with it.

I donned my apron and put on some loud music. First came the pumpkin bread. After I mixed the wet ingredients together, including the applesauce, I was worried. It was so much liquid. I followed the recipe to the T(-spoon), and stirred the dry ingredients into the wet until just mixed. My anxiety increased. It was more the texture of a milkshake than the dough I was used to baking with. I had no idea how it was to become bread. I resisted the urge to cross myself for luck, and poured the batter into the carefully-floured pans (prepared according to Google), and slid them into the oven.

Cream cheese frosting

At first I shook the powdered sugar awkwardly in the sifter, landing more on the counter than in the bowl. But by the time I sifted the second cup, I had a technique. I tapped the sifter on an angle, and I was done with the second cup in about 15 seconds, where the first had taken me a few minutes. And all of it landed in the bowl.

As I mixed it in with the creamed butter and Neufchâtel, the sugar made the frosting much less like cement and much more smooth. I was feeling pretty damn expert when the timer for the bread went off just as I was finishing the frosting. The kitchen smelled like pumpkin goodness, and I felt like I’d gone Martha Stewart on everyone’s asses. I pulled the bread out of the oven, and both loaves had risen and were golden and delicious-looking. I stuck a knife in the center to check, and it came out LIQUID. The middle was nowhere near done.

Two loaves of pumpkin bread, before I discovered they were far from done.

What I hadn’t counted on was that the pumpkin bread would have to cool before I could crumble it, otherwise the frosting would melt and they wouldn’t keep their shape. After spending that long in an oven at 350 degrees, cooling doesn’t happen quickly. I did a second load of dishes (I had managed to use a ridiculous amount of mixing bowls and spoons and whisks) and went back to touch the bread every ten seconds. After awhile, I decided to cut the bread into pieces to let it cool faster. I was so anxious to keep on with the recipe that I burned myself. ON THE BREAD. That shows you how hot the bread was, and also how impatient I am. After sneaking more than a few bites, I started to crumble the bread. Because the crust was slightly more well done, the crust peeled off the moist bread like an orange, and I went with it. I decided the peel wouldn’t make a very good truffle texture anyway.

Candy coating and crumbled pumpkin bread

Really gross-looking uncoated truffle

It was 1 o’clock in the morning. I was too exhausted to attempt to wait and taste them. I let my roommate know that they were ready for her in the fridge. On my way home from the gym the next day, I received the following text from Paige: “Holy shit Jill. Epic.” Martha Stewart, I’m watching you.

Postscript: No, I did not use a fresh pumpkin. I used canned pumpkin. I know. Before you scoff, please note that this recipe took me almost 3 and ½ hours to complete. 15 and ½, if you count their overnight stay in the fridge. I did not have the energy to deal with a pumpkin. Maybe next time. With all the spare time I have.

Finished product! (Presentation is not my strong suit--you can see my thumbprint in the middle candy where I picked it up before it was quite hardened).