In trying to keep with the “Halloween Countdown” that has been going on since August, I suppose that I shall keep on target. The last time I tried to post this a couple Halloweens ago I could not narrow the list any shorter than thirteen-thousand so with careful deliberation I have crowned a lucky five to be THE MOST ANNOYING HORROR MOVIE CHARACTERS. Why five? Why not?
Ellie Creed. Ho boy, it was a tough one figuring out which character to choose from in the Stephen King movie Pet Semetary. The amount of over acting and down right bizarre overreactions throughout the film makes me squirm. Besides Jud, Zelda and the old stomachache complainer, there are no real people of substance. But of all the annoyances the surviving kid, Ellie Creed, takes the cake. If you have seen this movie you know what I am talking about. Don’t tell me you didn’t want her hit by the truck. This kid cried and whined for almost two hours and what do we get? Nothing. Not a shovel to the face nor a zombie bite to the ear. I guess we can take comfort that she had to live with the two dick-hole grandparents.
Judy Rose. Man, it was a tough choice between these two cousins in the 1990 remake, Night of the Living Dead. Both are hillbilly buffoons but her incessant screaming, horrible driving and the inability to understand that a zombie apocalypse is happening when she goes shit-house-mad after Mr. Greggor takes a 30/30 round to the back of the head, makes her the obvious winner. I also hate two first names. The satisfying part though, is watching her and her cousin/boyfriend explode when they decide shooting off the lock to a gas pump was a good idea.
Pvt. Salazar of George Romero’s Day of the Dead. It is possible to understand being in a bit of bullocks when the world is being overrun by blue faced zombies and you are attached to the worst national guard unit in the world but Pvt. Salazar is about as useless as giving Michael J Fox a shake weight. He is just a certifiable pussy is every sense of the imagination. He reminds me of the really skinny prick at a restaurant that has an above average wife and he keeps talking about how he hasn’t had a successful bowel movement in almost two weeks. Then he blows his nose at the table and leaves exactly a twelve percent tip. I’m glad he died.
Dana Freeling. I know. I know. The real life character is dead and many believe it was the curse from the movie but this post is not about the actors, it is about the characters. Dana Freeling, in one of my favorite movies, Poltergeist, was a self absorbed teenager that was either eating or snot-slobbering in terror. Oh, and she points out that there was a tornado in the back yard right after the rest of the family was just INSIDE OF IT! A captain of the obvious too. This picture above is a great compilation of her character. The world is coming apart, her family is being tormented by ghosts, they are about to be sucked into another universe and she shows up after, what looked to be, a very vigorous make-out session based on her neck and what is she doing? Screaming “WHAT IS HAPPENING” like a jack hole because she has only experienced maybe five percent of the horror in comparison to the rest of her family. What do you think is happening, Ass? A cookout? They should have listened to Robbie and driven away.
Constable Parkins. The sheriff that is suspicious of everyone in Salem’s Lot and only because they are not a weirdo Maine-inite. I don’t know why but he just gets under my skin and at the end of the movie, he runs away to leave the people at the mercy of “the monsta”. I believe he is also the inspiration for Chief Wiggum. But that may just be me. Actually, that is the entire reason I included him in this post.
So there you have it. I know there are hundreds more but I am in the middle of packing for a spooky trip that I can not wait to show you! So, I left you with five. Five. Five idiots. Five idiot foot long. God shoot me.
I remember a time when a trip to the video rental store was a Friday night must that determined what I would be up to for that night and possibly Saturday night too. The whole process took almost an hour to decide what two hours I would sacrifice my youth on because in a store with nearly ten thousand movies, there was a high probability that you could end up with a doozie. That probably explains why Iron Eagle was rented close to two hundred times. And Muppets Take Manhattan. And National Geographic documentary on Sharks. Anyway, I had a very particular genre of movies that didn’t leave much room for anything new and looking back, my parents must have really dreaded Friday nights in the living room. Who can possibly take that many volumes of Gallagher stand-up without going a little mad? But all that changed one fateful night in 1991 when I slipped the surly bonds of Blockbuster’s normal selection to touch the face of horror and forever alter my Friday nights…and sleeping habits. This video was True Hollywood Ghost Stories and it terrified me. And perhaps it took hold psychologically because even today in my Youtube search, when I found this on a whim, because everything is on Youtube, I had this overwhelming need to look behind me.
I am not sure why I rented this particular video. My idea of a scary movie back then was Harry and the Henderson’s so it’s a wonder how this ended up in the family VCR. Looking at the cheesy late-eighties graphics, there isn’t much to be too disturbed about but that is where this film takes a turn for the unsettling and really takes on the same creepiness as the popular show, Unsolved Mysteries, with that amazing Robert Stack voice. The cool part about this film is it has a documentary feel to it and it is composed mostly of clips of old to recent horror movies. The kicker, and reason it made my blood run cold, was how it explained the supposed real ghost cases that the movies were based on and behind the scene disturbances while making them. Now imagine, if you will, a young boy who had never seen a horror movie, getting all the scariest scenes grouped together and then learning about how they may be true. Yeah. There was a spike in the utility bill that month from the hall light being left on at night.
Meet the host, John Carradine. He wastes little time in the introduction to shift from zero to one hundred when he begins with how the film, and the scariest thing I have ever seen, The Exorcist not only had evil happenings on the set but was based on a real event. I had never even heard of this movie until I rented Real Hollywood Ghost Stories so when I first laid eyes on that grotesque appearance and raspy voice of the possessed Regan, I think I just sat on the floor and cried. I’m not kidding, I was a little pussy as a youth. During little league baseball I once dove for cover from a pitch that ended up being a strike. So, seeing the most terrifying movie ever made and learning how it was true all in the time span of ten minutes, I shorted out. And this video rental only got worse from there.
The beginning of The Exorcist part was the author, William Peter Blatty and he described what his inspiration for writing the book that later became a movie many believed actually had the devil imprinted in the film itself. He said he witnessed a phone picking up off the receiver itself and come down onto the table. I am the believer that chairs, dishes, phones, shoes, anything that doesn’t live and moves on their own is so much scarier than a creature jumping out at you. So as a very impressionable kid hearing this account had me captivated. Especially when it was followed by this face:
Even as I type this I hate looking at that picture. It had such a profound effect on my as a child and it was many years later that I finally summoned the courage to rent it during a high school sleep over. But this introduction to The Exorcist was enough for me at the time. Especially learning it was all based on true events, people died working on the film, it caused audiences to go crazy and not to mention the fact that I was looking at something beyond my comprehension to what I deemed scary. It’s like growing up training ponies and then someone puts you on a bull at a rodeo. I could have used a gradual transition to horror.
The next story was of a real haunting of a house in Hollywood owned by an affluent couple, the Sommer’s and it was so bad they ended up selling and becoming a world-wide media spectacle after their story was published in Life magazine. Even the photographer was a skeptic couldn’t explain why or how his film kept having shadowy figured in motion from frame to frame. I loved the story but of course, as a kid I took it all very seriously and every bump was a ghost and every settling noise was a poltergeist. This didn’t help much, especially when they tied in the story of Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hopper’s, Poltergeist, and how much like The Exorcist, people died from this film and the set even burned down. Great. I don’t think this would have been quite as impacting if it didn’t have detailed accounts from Life magazine and NBC reporters that witness all these events. Even though I was an impressionable kid, I knew the difference between loons and credible people. Especially the next “true” Hollywood account about a woman who was assaulted by what was to be believed to be an entity. Hence the title The Entity.
This didn’t go over well either because learning how the local university recorded and documented this story and it became a constant in the world of parapsychology, even studied at the prestigious Duke University, I did not like learning about rape-ghosts. Nope. It’s as if this video kept trying to out-do itself! Each movie and real case scenario was a segway to the next bone-chilling tale. Like how The Entity was a great shift to the world renown Amittyville Horror. And of course, I got a taste of it by only seeing the most frightening scenes.
Much like the Poltergeist scene, a rocking chair doing what it does best by itself is about as scary to me as it gets. Especially when a kid is interacting with it and when an adult comes interrupts everything goes quiet. That is until the adult goes tot the window only to be met with glowing eyes and pig grunts. From then on I did my best not to look outside at night which proved to be tough because I had an atrium in the center of my bedroom.
Well, this fateful video rental kept up the creeps and went into the legends of Hollywood and their ghostly encounters like Houdini and the original Superman who committed suicide. It’s odd that both the original and the motion picture Superman was named Reeves. Is that a well-known fact? Maybe it is. Anyway, the scares peter down a bit but it is still a pretty good watch, even for today’s standard. They leave the viewer with a really cheesy music montage of a pretty corny song and truth be told, it’s absolutely perfect. It even manages to leave you with the warning not to take for granted you are ever alone in the dark. I took that warning to heart and kept the lights on almost through middle school.
You can watch the whole series on YouTube and I’ll start you off with the first part. Enjoy this as much as I still do. Sometimes it’s nice to look back and still get the same impression from when you were so very impressionable. Sleep tight!
You know what? I have not done a post like this in some time. I guess I forgot my roots or maybe it’s the fact that Matt from X-E hasn’t updated his site very much. Or at all. I will save that heartache for another day. But for now, someone has to pick up the flag and charge it ahead screaming, “I want people to read my opinions over shit that makes no difference!”. So today as I sit in my office, taking an earned brake from the stresses that stress others but not me, I will write about….movie themes that are scarier than the movie.
“Laurie’s Theme” from the movie Halloween:
I love this theme in the movie Halloween. It had a way of creeping you out in sense that even though it was day, there was a sense of impending doom after nightfall. Well, that’s how I felt when I saw it on Channel 46, mid-October, one Saturday afternoon many years ago. Since then this little piano tune that John Carpenter created has brought many memories of hayride smells, cider, pumpkins and latex masks. The entire mood of autumn is in these few notes. That and the intro to The Great Pumpkin.
2. The Shining
I think I am in the majority that claims the movie The Shining was not as terrifying in the way it has been portrayed. You can ask almost anyone that hates horror movies and they will tell you The Shining is the exception. And it’s the exception because it is smart and tolerable to many cinematric-snobbies. (made both those words up)
The musical score, however, is bone chilling. Perhaps it is the foreboding, heavy brass that paints this picture that a small nuclear family is going face to face with a giant in the form of isolation, impassable roads, unlivable temperatures and a hotel with dark secrets. Or maybe it’s just the damn creepy wailing between the brakes in music. Regardless, it is hard to listen to alone at night and as far as I am concerned, way creepier than the film itself.
3. JAWS
Ok, I have an artistic license to contradict myself here and say that in this case, the music is not a scary as the movie was. But still, I think John Williams deserves an honorable mention for trying because no matter where I am; pool, lake, ocean, tub, sprinkler; this score is playing in my head.This has always been a theme for something or someone that is inevitably about to be devoured. Whether it is shark vs. man, lion vs. zebra, or me vs. broccoli, I owe John Williams kudos for giving predators the ultimate theme song.
And it’s PG?!?!?! We were a lot tougher back in the day, huh?
4. Amittyville Horror
The more I watch this movie the more I realize that this could have been made to be far more frightening. They tried to remake it a few years ago but I won’t even try to trash it because it’s not worth the efforts of my fingers. That being said I will give a standing ovation supported by a golf clap for the theme music. Very disturbing and like the theme to Steven Spielberg’s (Tobe Hooper, really) Poltergeist, kids singing “laa laa laa” is always unnerving. Especially when you have an overactive imagination like mine and you assume those are dead kids singing from your backyard at night.
By the way, the sequel is way more scary. It has possession, Catholic guilt, evil, incest, family violence and murder all wrapped into one hour and forty five minutes. Hooray for boobies. I don’t know…
Well, this was short and sweet but I felt that I needed to get something up and keep it in theme to what I love: all nonsense. And how annoying is it that YouTube redirects you to YouTube when you want to watch a video? Why can’t everything be how I want it?
Oh! And now I am in Moscow. Moscow, Idaho that is. Look it up because it might be the source for more “ripping on Idaho” posts. So far I like it a hell of a lot more that where I was but the other night I was almost accosted by interpretive dancers. No shit.
It has been a while since I have done one of these. But since we are less than a week away from Halloween I figured this would be a good time to add a new one. This time it will be all about October 31st. You see, Halloween is all about the scary movies for me. I can take or leave the candy, costumes and parties but when it comes to normal cable TV dedicating 24 hours to ghosts, ghouls and vampires, I come very close to taking off my pants and doing the Twist. Don’t worry, I watch them alone most of the time. So let us start off with one of my favorites.
“Oh! You’re so cool, Brewster!” Yeah, Charley was quite the hero in Fright Night 1 and 2. Even though he was a little high strung and his choice in a girlfriend was a little questionable. But still, his vigilance as a nosy neighbor payed off and call girls are free of death by vampire. Fear of STD’s, rape, murder, kidnapping and incarceration maybe, but vampires…no. Thanks to the heroics of Charley!
Charley Brewster was played by the great William Ragsdale and unfortunately, after Fright Night his career as the main character in film never took off. Sure he was in The Reaping and Big Momma’s House but William’s main bread and butter is TV. He has been in a number of episodes from different television dramas like “Judging Amy”, “Without A Trace” and “Medium”. I’m still holding out for a Charley comeback in a Fright Night 3 but I maybe alone. Here he is today. Actually, he hasn’t aged too badly. Oh Brewster!
The next star spotlight is a great one. There are plenty of films that have obscure actors who get the opportunity to be involved in the most memorable scenes of the movie. In Steven Spielberg’s film, Poltergeist, about a young family that is tormented by ghosts after they inadvertently moved into a house above a cemetery, one of the paranormal investigators is targeted, bitten by something and he had a delusion about ripping off his own face. You know the scene. And that is why we all love Marty.
“You got bit?!?!? Wow!” I have always had a soft spot in my heart for poor Marty. But think about it. In the famous “face tearing” scene, Marty leaves the safety of the den to go, alone, into the kitchen. And what is he about to do? He is going to cook a steak. Really? In the middle of the night he was going to fry up a steak? Make a sandwich, man, I like to imagine the ghosts that were messing with him because they didn’t feel like smelling fried steak all night. Well, poor Marty got the message.
Marty Casella was played by, coincidentally enough, by Martin Casella. That is him to the right and it is kind of funny that I always assume actors with small parts are beginning artists. Not true about Martin. When Poltergeist was being cast, Spielberg himself recruited Martin Casella. At that particular time Martin was teaching drama at a Santa Monic high school so I would say he knew a thing or two about acting.
Since Poltergeist, Martin has only been in a few films like Robocop 2 and Turner And Hooch. He had small roles in each but that isn’t where he excelled. Martin is a celebrated screen and play write and has been in a number of Broadway shows. The one thing that I loved about Martin is that of all the films he has been in, his character has always been his own name. It’s good to have a quirk.
Little Known Fact: In the famous “face tearing” scene, Martin isn’t doing the tearing. Those are Spielberg’s hands. Funny, eh?
I would like to take a moment to thank Ronnie Scribner who played little vampire Glick boy in the made for TV series of 1979, Salem’s Lot. Because of the three minute scene where he floats to the window and bites his brother, I have missed many nights of sleep. Even today at age 30, when I hear a weird noise outside I immediatley think of his evil little smile. God.
Ronnie had quite a career as a child star from 1978 to ’82 but nothing after. It’s funny to read about his ABC morning specials. Do you remember those? They were the hour long shows that aired about 11pm after all the cartoons were over. I think the last time I saw one was when “The Land Of The Lost” was still on the air. Anyway, Ronnie stopped acting and I can only venture to guess that it was because he either grew out of his cuteness or his parents didn’t want him to have a Hollywood life. Regardless, he now lives in Pasadena with a wife and kids. He is a mortgage broker. A mortgage broker that is still in my nightmares.
“Braaaaiiiiinssss” And this is Tarman. When I first saw Return Of The Living Dead I was about 12 years old. Too young to appreciate the campy humor of the film but old enough to appreciate the choreographed walk of the Tarman. I was both disturbed but mesmerized by his skeletal stride. Was it really a human behind all that gore? I will let you be the judge. Watch and see…
It’s hard to imagine that a person was behind all that in our age of CGI but I will remind you that this was back in 1985. Back when movies were fun.
Well, the guy behind Tarman is the great puppeteer, Allan Trautman. He has been in many films but more notably he has been behind the scenes in such great Henson productions like “Muppets Tonight” and the famous early 90’s sitcom, “Dinosaurs”. He received his BA in both Drama and physics and I say that makes for the right character to portray the Tarman.
“Hey creep, speed kills.” You didn’t think I was going to write a “where did you go” Halloween article without including Halloween, did you? of course not! I think I am going to give a little nod and hat tip to Nancy Kyes (aka. Nancy Loomis) who played the cute and sarcastic character, Annie Brackett. And she did an amazing job proving the smart girls were susceptible to death in horror movies and that girls in the 70’s never wore a bra.
I think Nancy had a close friendship to John Carpenter because she was in Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween 1-3, The Fog, and The Twilight Zone. All Carpenter’s work. I guess her real life sarcasm got her far with him but after 1992 she stopped working on the silver screen. I always wonder why people make the decision to leave from such a full career but I guess everyone has their reasons. She has a family and resides in LA as a sculpture. I think she is still smoking.
“Dude, you getting a Dell!” Remember this guy? It’s Steve, the boy next door that is always trying to talk his parents into buying him a Dell computer. Actually it is Ben Curtis and his small spot as the main face of Dell lasted right up until he was arrested for possession of marijuana. And that sucks too because if you are going to trash your career, go out with crack.
Ben ended up on top anyway ( so to speak). He came out of the closet and is in a very successful Broadway play. It’s gay play call Joy and it had rave reviews. He graduated from NY University and is now the front man to the band WHALE. I’d say getting canned for smoking weed was the best thing to happen to the dude from Dell.
*I don’t know why I included Ben in the Halloween post.*
Well, that is all I want to write. I think this Halloween edition was a little light but I still learned a little. And I hope you did too. Happy Halloween, deary.
SAME? Keeping with the October theme I want to shed some more light on my favorite thing to do this time of year and that is watch horror movies without getting weird looks from friends and family. Trust me, I have watched Jacobs Ladder on Easter morning and got more than a few raised eyebrows. It was my silent protest after spending two hours outside, freezing for sunrise service. But anyway, I do love the frightful TV programs on AMC and The Chiller Channel so much. It is what makes Halloween now that I am an adult. So today I will talk about some of the more memorable scenes, some fellow website pals that do a better job of listing horror favorites and some my odd childhood scares and items that I still hold close to my heart thanks to Tobe Hooper and the like.
MOVIES!
Ho-Boy! The 1981 classic, Ghost Story, isn’t well known to those who are fans of SAW or The Grudge but it will beat them hands down when it comes to the creepy factor. This movie has a little bit of everything for everyone and includes gore shots, boob shots and the controversial full frontal male nude shot. I wasn’t a fan of the penis shot but in a genre full of boobs I guess there should be equality.
The premise of the film is a group of four gentlemen who befriend a young woman and they accidentally kill her… so they thought. In their panicked state they load her body in a car and push it into a lake only to see her scream as it slips under the frozen water. Tormented with grief they vow never to tell about this until they are old men and she comes back to haunt them, taking their lives one by one. Excellent. Plus Alice Krige is super hot in this film, for a ghost. Take a look but please put down anything that can be spilled or dropped (i.e. coffee, tea, water, cat, baby….)
GOOOOO! That’s just great, isn’t it?
Robert Wise 1963 film The Haunting is the creepiest movies of all time and I say the with hesitation. I know in a day full of special effects and gore, the possibility of a black and white film to be of the same scare caliber might seem iffy at best, but it blows any film away. I have seen this countless times and it keeps getting better. It truly holds up and even the remake by director Jan de Bont in 1999 couldn’t touch it proving that the only thing special effects do is remove the viewers imagination. And that is a crime.
This movie was as much psychological as it was supernatural. The camera angles, the inside the head conversations and the muffled ghostly sounds makes The Haunting truly terrifying. Wise hit a home run and please, please watch this clip. This has to be the greatest ghost moments of all times in the cinema and probably made our parents completely sleep deprived for weeks. Enjoy.
Poltergeist. (whistle) Just the name sends shivers down my spine. Who hasn’t seen this Spielberg/Hooper classic? Well if you haven’t, stop what you are doing, go to the movies store and get it. That’s an order. I can’t decide which scene is the best so I’ll just leave you with the trailer. I love the dude’s voice. I have already reviewed the movie here, so, that’s that.
SITES!
Robert Berry’s site, RetroCrush is by far the greatest site on the web when it comes to pop culture. He does an amazing job of archiving, interviewing and listing all things cool from yester-year and today. Recently he made a top 100 horror movie character list and it will have you blowing at least an hour out of the day scrolling through the actors. Even though I would move a few of the characters’ places around, he hit everyone and that takes eminence effort. Stop by and don’t forget to check out his list of the worst Halloween costumes. Hilarious!
Mystie has done some great work when it comes to Halloween reviews for the holiday, both food and cinema. If you haven’t been there it’s a trip down memory lane especially if you are a girl that grew up n the 80’s and 90’s. To me, her snarky sense of humor makes even an article about Polly Pockets fun. What can I say? I’m a fan and she is a very good friend. Click the Crown Combo picture above!
The Flesh Farm is all things great when it comes to archiving, reviewing and sharing clips and trailers to every horror movie available. J.P. Butcher and staff have outdone themselves with this site and I have been a fan for a couple of years now. Be careful when viewing this because there is some language and nudity so it’s not for the office or public computer viewing but when you get home, late at night, it’s a great way to spend the time. I give this site two severed thumbs up! Click the picture above to see what I am talking about.
Oh you didn’t think that was going to exclude X-E from the site shout out list did you? Of course not. It’s not like I haven’t plugged it about 300 times. But Matt is the king of holiday preparation and review so he earns a spot anywhere that Halloween centers as the topic of conversation. Even though the past couple of years haven’t been like the previous in scale it is still the place to go to find out what is hip in the world of spooy treats and decore. You can’t blame him. It’s near impossible to keep 45 days of holiday reviews alive while working full time and having a life. But we appriciate his efforts. Again, click the picture above to visit Matt and all of the X-E cult.
TV SPECIALS!
“You owe me restitution!” Who doesn’t love the classic, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charley Brown! ? Well besides one person I know. I won’t say who but you know who you are! Anyway, this signifies that Halloween is upon us and much like A Christmas Story, I will never miss this CBS Special that, for some reason, generally lands on a Tuesday night. I haven’t figured that one out yet. This is one of my favorites and no matter how many times I have seen it, it never gets old. My dad has seen it, I have seen it, my kids will see it, their kids will see it, their kid’s kids will see and then maybe an asteroid will hit. So, with that said I am going to go out and bury a copy in an airtight titanium case in the backyard. It must survive.
“‘Arrrr, I been Orange Beard The Pirate Cap’in, and this be me first mate….Odie the Stupid.”
This comes in a close second to Chuck Schultz’s master piece above, but still, it’s a classic. I can’t remember if they aired it last year or even the year before, but I hope so. When I was little I owned all things Garfield and the Halloween special really was close to my heart. Even the pirate ghosts were scary. Ok, ok…are scary. Happy?
COSTUMES!
You see this? When I was 8 I would have sold my soul for this plastic and cloth piece of shit. I begged for it from August to the last week of October. There were so many dreams of showing up to school, dressed in my amazing costume and wielding my deadly fist of blades. But when my Dad finally caved and bought the Freddy Glove, the thrill quickly faded. First off, it didn’t fit. Yeah I was eight and had hands the size of a cellphone but even today, and I still have it, it doesn’t fit. If I had bear paws for hands, maybe, but human hands? So that year I was knight. I love my Dad.
Here’s another one! I saw Halloween II and I knew that I was destined to be Mike Myers for Halloween in 1991. That meant my parents needed to shell out another $25 bucks for latex shit. And it was. The mask above pretty much looked identical and when I was at home looking in the mirror, the realization that I would be the subject of ridicule was eminent. Not only did I not look like “the Shape” but I didn’t even look scary. I looked like a dead Don Knotts. So that is what I went as. I put on a Hawaiian shirt, khaki pants and took off to plunder treats from the neighbors as a zombie Mr. Furley. This was my father’s idea and that makes him uber cool.
CANDY!
Fruit Stripe Gum was always in the Trick or Treat bag and I loved it. It’s too bad that the flavor only lasted 3.2 seconds. I remember that a lady went the cheap route and gave out individual sticks and later on that night it did not pass the parents/customs treat inspection. Still bummed and now that I am an adult and can buy mt weight in Fruit Stripe gum I must say, the thrill is gone.
Here is my second favorite Halloween candy, Spree! Doesn’t the sight of these just make that thing behind your jaw and under your earlobe tingle? Mine does. In fact, one year I ate so many Spree I numbed my tongue out until Christmas. Honest! Moderation is key when it comes to Spree.
OLD DECORATIONS!
Holy Hell! Remember these wall decorations? Tell me these weren’t all over your homeroom walls and windows in elementary school! I remember being truly terrified of the eyeball skull and witch as a child. But back in the early eighties, the folks thought the fright was cute and even tormented me by putting them on the outside of the front door. Do they even make these classics anymore? Or do I have to roam around the neighborhood and steal them off the elderly home’s like I did last year. Am I joking? Maaaaaayyybbbeeee……
Here are some more of the classics. God I love this time of the year! But seriously, that flaming skull still fucks me up.
I apologize about this post. There isn’t really any organized thought process behind it other than just verbal vomit of all things Halloween. But it was fun to write and I hope it was fun to read. Please check out the sites. They do a much better job but then again, they get paid for it. So they should.
Judy Rose. Man, it was a tough choice between these two cousins in the 1990 remake, Night of the Living Dead. Both are hillbilly buffoons but her incessant screaming, horrible driving and the inability to understand that a zombie apocalypse is happening when she goes shit-house-mad after Mr. Greggor takes a 30/30 round to the back of the head, makes her the obvious winner. I also hate two first names. The satisfying part though, is watching her and her cousin/boyfriend explode when they decide shooting off the lock to a gas pump was a good idea.
Dana Freeling. I know. I know. The real life character is dead and many believe it was the curse from the movie but this post is not about the actors, it is about the characters. Dana Freeling, in one of my favorite movies, Poltergeist, was a self absorbed teenager that was either eating or snot-slobbering in terror. Oh, and she points out that there was a tornado in the back yard right after the rest of the family was just INSIDE OF IT! A captain of the obvious too. This picture above is a great compilation of her character. The world is coming apart, her family is being tormented by ghosts, they are about to be sucked into another universe and she shows up after, what looked to be, a very vigorous make-out session based on her neck and what is she doing? Screaming “WHAT IS HAPPENING” like a jack hole because she has only experienced maybe five percent of the horror in comparison to the rest of her family. What do you think is happening, Ass? A cookout? They should have listened to Robbie and driven away.
Casserole of Disaster 
