The F Word spent her Halloween eating tacos and drinking beer and watching a stream of Black Swans, vampires, and drunk updates pop up on Facebook. Don’t be sad—it was wonderful. Being generally cheap and self-conscious, I’ve never been able to get it up for Halloween the way other people seem to. I never have the urge to be a slutty Disney princess, and I’m not imaginative enough for anything else. I have such trouble dressing myself on a daily basis that Halloween is just way too much pressure. My plan for Halloween last year, Hipster Barbie, would never fly in San Francisco—I’d just look regular.

My mother was always strict about candy. We never had any in the house (or she just hid it really well from my sister and me), so Halloween was a chance to get that elusive sugar high. Even now, I don’t keep candy in the house because I have zero self-control (and I have really bad teeth. I can brush my teeth three times a day and still end up with cavities. Deep grooves and soft enamel mean that I never go to the dentist for cavities—it’s always a root canal and a crown. If I were a mummy, my grave would definitely have been robbed for my silver crowns by now). Send me a box of chocolates? It’ll be gone in two days. Give me a candy bar? An hour, tops. I must be trying to make up for lost time.

But I’m just as picky with candy as I am with food. Why would you snack on Swedish Fish when you can have something as awesome as Lindor Truffles? I’m going to help you pick through your hypothetical candy bag (or your kid’s candy bag) and tell you which to trash and which to keep.

Hershey bars: TREASURE.

While not the greatest chocolate, these can help you cleanse your palate between the Reese’s cup and the Mounds. Very important. (Unless they’re white chocolate, in which case throw them the hell away. What is the point of white chocolate? It’s not vanilla, but it’s not chocolate either. Just get rid of it.)

Smarties: TRASH.

Why would anyone willingly eat these? It’s like chewing on dusty chicken bones. PASS.

Sour Patch Kids: TREASURE

I tend to not like fruit-flavored candy because why would you eat that when you can have chocolate? But even though Sour Patch Kids give me an instant headache, their sweet and sour goodness can’t be replicated. (Off-brand versions are unacceptable.)

Milk Duds: TRASH

Who in the fuck can eat these? They pull my teeth right out of my head, and they don’t even taste good. You might as well be eating a chocolate-scented candle.

Milky Way:  TREASURE

The houses that gave out king-sized versions of these bad boys were always the farthest away, down the creepiest, most deserted streets, but they were worth every terror-filled step. In the Milky Way vs. Snickers debate, I fall firmly on the Milky Way side, especially now that there are dark chocolate Milky Ways.

Laffy Taffy and/or those strange fruit-flavored Tootsie Rolls: TRASH

These make my jaws hurt. Eating candy should never be work. It’s un-American. I always seemed to end up with the banana-flavored ones, which is pretty much the worst flavor of anything ever. Not only that, but these also induced orthodontia-related nightmares—they taste and feel like those terrible molds for making your retainer.

Licorice: TRASH/TREASURE

Halloween licorice is dangerous because it varies wildly in quality. Those wide strips of licorice were always so hard to chew that they must have sat on a drugstore shelf for more than one season. The pull-apart licorice, on the other hand, is perfection. Always soft, and sanctions playing with your food before eating it. I’m for it.

Reese’s Cups: TREASURE, OBVIOUSLY

The best thing about Reese’s cups, especially the miniature ones, was always that there were so many of them. At houses where you were only allowed one handful, even my tiny hands could grip quite a few of those bad boys. Or if you were only supposed to take two or three pieces, I’d could sometimes hide a few in my palm and end up with four or five. Greed and deceit are important Halloween traditions.

Tootsie Rolls: TRASH

Throw these in the trash where they belong. The big tootsie rolls just add insult to injury.

Candy corn: UM

I know this is contentious, and that tempers (and blood sugar) run high when discussing candy corn, but I JUST DON’T GET IT. They’re waxy. They’re more sugary than sugar. They don’t taste good. Can someone explain it to me, please? (Saying “they’re delicious” is not an explanation, because they are CLEARLY NOT.) On the other hand, the caramel apple-flavored ones are pretty legit.

Skittles: TREASURE

These were the golden ticket of trick-or-treating. If you could boast about a full-sized bag of these at school the next day, the popular kids might even make eye contact with you for more than a second. Special flavors like sour or tropical were like Abercrombie jeans. You might just be the coolest kid.

What did I forget? What would you steal from my candy bag when I ran to the bathroom to scrape the Milk Duds off my teeth? Which of my candies would you fish out of the trash?

Happy Halloween, everyone!

—

Jill Kolongowski is a freelance writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

Enough already. You have to make time for the things you love, right? And so, when Rec 2 (2009) landed in my mailbox (Courtesy of Qwi-I mean, Netflix) yesterday I resolved to finally take some time out for the subgenre that had started my Halloween obsession all those years ago: zombie films.

"You think you can name me Gage and just GET AWAY WITH IT?!"

I immediately pulled up the Fear Fest schedule this year and, aside from finding it to be very Halloween (1978) heavy this year (Including Halloween H20 (1998), but suspiciously excluding Halloween: Resurrection (2002), starring Sir Busta Rhymes), I found it to be just as solid as usual. Night of the Living Dead (1967) had already aired, but given the fact that I have three different versions of it on DVD, I wasn’t sweating that too much. I still had Slither (2006) and Pet Semetary (1989) to look forward to. Yes, I realize that Pet Semetary isn’t what one traditionally thinks of as a zombie film, but tell that to the undead kid with the scalpel who wants to play with you.

Wanna join the mile die club?

Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009) were in there as well, but I immediately disregarded them as sad signs of a once great talent now merely going through the motions. Not to mention highlighting his complete lack of understanding with regards to current technology. Seriously, George, a small clan of Irishmen living on a tiny island (not in Ireland, mind you) decide to create a web video to lure people to them? Really? Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane (2007), not a Romero film, also snuck its way into the lineup, continuing the time-honored “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, just put it on a plane” formula.

And so, armed with Slither, Pet Semetary, Rec 2, and a darkened living room I attempt to recapture my Halloween spirit. Oh, and what’s that Netlfix? You now have the entire first season of AMC’s The Walking Dead streaming? Nicely done. The good news is: I think I’m already good for next year. Having just had a home inspection on our potential new property I noticed that the current residents had a huge bowl of candy on their kitchen counter, just waiting.

—

Kevin Mattison is co-editor of The Idler, as well as being an occassional film review contributor for Real Detroit Weekly, a filmmaker and videographer. You can follow him on Twitter at @kmmattison.

The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t

The news in Transylvania is it’s not Halloween unless the Witch rides over the moon at midnight, but she doesn’t fucking want to! Can Dracula, leader of the monsters and the rest of the gang change her mind before a two-thousand-year-old tradition is put to an end??

GASP!

For as long as we knew of it, and for as many years that it aired, Sister and I had a tradition of watching this special every year after trick-or-treating. It was absolutely our favorite. Dracula was chock full of wise cracks and Igor (as played by the late, great Henry Gibson) was the perfect bumbling sidekick (also, there’s a tap dancing Frankenstein!). Once it was over Sister and I would eat our candy and role-play the show, taking turns switching parts, quoting lines and squeezing every last ounce of fun from the remainder of the night.

Adult reactions:

• Some killjoy doesn’t fly over the moon and suddenly no more Halloween? Psssht! There will always be a Halloween as long as adults enable children to beg strangers for candy! Nut up, Transylvania!
• Also, WTF, Witch? You were bitching about how you’re tired of being ugly, but in the final scene you transform into a gorgeous blonde! Uhm, yeah, hi, did you not know you could perform magic on yourself before the disco party? (Did I mention this special ends with a disco party? YEAH. It’s the best! You’re welcome!)

Garfield’s Halloween Adventure

Garfield and Odie are trick-or-treating! In pursuit of more candy they cross a river to find a creepy old house with a creepy old man inside who tells them ghost pirates are on their way!

I loved Garfield when I was a kid, and I would go out of my tiny mind with excitement watching this. It’s lighthearted, but I was genuinely terrified of the ghosts who are onscreen for all of about 90 seconds. The soundtrack does a lot to heighten the fear. It’s a masterpiece, really.

Adult reaction:

• Until shit gets real, Garfield’s got a snarky remark for almost everything, and I remember quoting lines from this cartoon all the time. This must have been how I developed the “humor as a defense mechanism” thing.
• ALSO, still scared of the old man and the ghost pirates. Seriously creeps me out.

It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown is depressed as per usual (though I would be too if I kept getting rocks instead of candy), and Linus insists on waiting for The Great Pumpkin to rise up out of the pumpkin patch and bring toys to all the good little boys and girls (why have we never embraced this idea?! It’s awesome!)

Sadly, it is not on YouTube in its entirety. I happen to own the DVD. My heart aches for you if you are without it. Absolutely a classic!

Adult reaction:

• Watching Lucy and Linus carving the jack-o-lantern was always my favorite part, along with Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace. Watching him roam the French countryside after his Sopwith Camel is shot down was always super eerie for me.
• Also, someone call Lucy a bitch, please? Just once?

Mr. Boogedy

A family moves into a spooky house haunted by the ghost of a mean pilgrim with a magic cloak straight from Satan’s wardrobe! It’s a Disney Sunday Family movie starring John Astin (The Addams Family), Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), a wee David Faustino (Married with Children), Katherine Kelly Lang (The Bold and the Beautiful), Benjamin Gregory (ALF), and Richard Masur (or, as I know him, the guy whose head ends up in the library mini-fridge in IT).

Adult Reaction:

• What they’ve got is a run of the mill poltergeist. Call a priest.
• The kids go to the local Historical Society to find out the history of the house. John Astin tells them the tale via an old pop up book. Seriously? Someone made a pop-up book about a sadistic pilgrim?
• Worst parents in the world. The dad’s in the gag business and can’t take anything seriously, not even the genuine fears of his own children, and continues to antagonize them for cheap laughs.
• Mr. Boogedy bewitches a vacuum cleaner to chase a kid and it ends up sucking up his own magic cloak, defeating him. Again, can you not do magic?

Disney Halloween Specials

These were compilations of anything that might have ever been spooky about Disney ever. The Magic Mirror would host the segments concerning the classic scenes with the classic villains, which, let’s face it, are the highlight of most Disney movies.

Original shorts would be featured too. My favorite being The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as narrated by Bing Crosby (skip to 3:30 in Part 3 to get to the good stuff!). We had this on vinyl too, but something about watching a flaming jack-o-lantern fly at the screen was the epitome of spooksville for me. If you want to listen to the LP, Vinyl Whores have posted it here along with the videos. I can’t tell if the popping on the LP audio is just the record, or if it’s supposed to sound like a crackling fire for effect. Either way it induced quite a bit of nostalgia.

Adult reaction:

• Villainesses are BAD. ASS. Maleficent, baby, I’m looking RIGHT. AT. YOU.
• Donald Duck is an asshole of an Uncle.

Those are the Halloween specials I will always love. What are yours? Have I missed something awesome?

—

Lindsey Malta writes “Thoughtcicles” for The Idler.

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!

Two remakes that improved on their source material came out well before the remake train left the station. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) are less remakes as they are re-imaginings. They take the original’s themes and ideas and twist and craft them into something completely unique. These are not only great remakes, these are both horror classics. If you haven’t seen either of them, check them out immediately. In 1990, George Romero wrote and produced a remake of his own Night of the Living Dead which certainly isn’t in the same league as its predecessor but stands as a competent, fun remake.

The current remake trend really got off the ground with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003). Produced by Michael Bay, Chainsaw looks great and it cut together into one hell of a trailer but the glitz and gloss of the production takes away from the gritty, documentary feel of the 1973 original. It’s a great example of a film’s bigger budget working against it. Bay’s company, Platinum Dunes, is a factory of remakes. Save for one original film, they’ve remade The Amityville Horror (2005), The Hitcher (2007), Friday the 13th (2009), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) to mostly dismal results. Not a single one of these remakes has anything to add to the story. The Hitcher, for example, is almost a shot-for-shot recreation of the little-seen 1986 original. This year’s Elm Street remake managed to take the ingenious casting of Jackie Earl Haley as Freddy Kruger and turn him into a bland, uninteresting villain. The best of their remakes is perhaps Friday, since the originals weren’t all that great to begin with. That one, like the others, does nothing to up the ante.

Other non-Platinum Dunes remakes like The Fog (2005), Black Christmas (2006), The Omen (2006), When a Stranger Calls (2008), Prom Night (2009), The Stepfather (2009), Last House on the Left (2009) are all failures as well. If you don’t know of any of these films beyond their remakes or didn’t know they were remakes at all, please seek out the originals. With the exception of Prom Night (1980), a rather silly slasher, these are all classics in their own right and every single one of them puts the remake to shame. Black Christmas (1974) in particular is a criminally under-seen slasher that Halloween (1978) owes a lot to. Speaking of Halloween, Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007) is perhaps my most hated of all the recent horror remakes. Here is a film that is so woefully out of touch with what made the original film so good: The mood, the suspense, and the subtlety. Zombie’s film is an exercise in Blunt Force Trauma filmmaking that succeeds only in completely stripping the mystique from Michael Myers. Everything is over the top. There’s a case to be make that Zombie did a re-imagining and did his own thing here; trying to eclipse a classic is hard to do. I’d agree that Zombie’s take on Halloween is his and his alone, it just. . . sucks. There’s really no other way to put it. Unsurprisingly, I have yet to tackle Zombie’s Halloween II (2009).

There are a couple of current remakes that are actually quite successful. Dawn of the Dead (2004) is an example of a remake that really did its own thing. Let’s get this out of the way: The original is a masterpiece and one of my all-time favorites. I was pre-disposed to hate this movie but Zack Snyder is such a visually compelling filmmaker and it feels so outside of what the original was doing, that it’s hard not to get swept up here. Add to that some great special FX, a snappy script, and a cool cast and the new Dawn is one of the best horror movies of the last few years.

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) is one of the most raw and intense horror films of the decade. A true re-imagining in every sense of the word, Hills has enough of the familiar beats of the original and then amps everything up. Like Dawn, this remake has a skilled filmmaker, great cast, great FX, and music. The mutants are vile and when they get their comeuppance, we are right there cheering for their demise. I like the 1977 original, but the 2006 version stands with The Thing and The Fly as a remake that improves upon its source material. Feel free to skip the 2007 sequel.

Perhaps twenty or thirty years down the road these films will be remade once again. Most likely, we’ll see the break-out horror successes of this decade remade as well. With the supposed “Final Chapter” hitting theaters next week, it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable Saw remake. And if you’re saying to yourself, “Hey, Hellraiser hasn’t been remade yet”, never fear. A director was just announced for the remake today.