"Six more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween/ Six more days to Halloween/ Silver shamrock!" - Jingle from "Halloween III: Season of the Witch"
Have any of you out there seen "Halloween III", the third movie in the "Halloween" series that has nothing to do with Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, or Dr. Loomis? If you haven't, don't bother. The only thing worth remembering about this movie is the annoyingly fun jingle that appeared on commericals throughout the movie.
With Halloween being only six days away now, I am doing a follow-up to my list from a couple of weeks ago and listing my favorite Halloween TV specials, made-for-TV movies, and TV episodes. So grab a popcorn ball, a handful of candy corn, and a cup of apple cider and relive some of these small screen classics with me.
1. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - No Halloween special will ever top this one. Good old Snoopy fights the Red Baron as a WWI Flying Ace, Sally joins her sweet baboo, Linus, in his quest to get toys from the Great Pumpkin, and Charlie Brown has trouble with scissors, cutting dozens of eye holes in his ghost costume (hey, some of us still have a little trouble with those darn scissors...). It's a little piece of everyone's childhood since 1966 that is as feel-good as they come. Especially at the end when Lucy, shedding her smarty-pants, know-it-all image for a minute, goes out at four in the morning to retrieve her sleeping, shivering little brother from the pumpkin patch, which evidently, was not quite sincere enough for the Great Pumpkin.
2. Freaks and Geeks: Tricks and Treats - Easily the funniest episode of this great series that didn't last nearly long enough. There's a reason it has risen to cult classic status. I just love geeky Bill's Bionic Woman costume (my family quotes him all the time from this episode) and when Lindsay, the girl caught between her geekdom past and her freaky new friends (more burnouts than freaks, but that's beside the point), kicks a jack-o-lantern and gets her foot caught in the pumpkin as she tries to make a run for it. If you haven't seen this show, do yourself a favor and check it out. You just may find a new favorite!
3. That '70s Show: Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die - This episode is totally brilliant! Paying homage to Alfred Hitchcock, the king of suspense, the gang from Point Place, WI fill the half hour with parodies of "Psycho", "The Birds", "Vertigo", "Rear Window", and "North by Northwest". I especially enjoyed "The Birds" homage, with Laurie getting pooped on by a bird and being terrorized off and on throughout the show. She was evil and deserved it. So there. Oh yeah, and the scariest part was Fez dressing up like Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Yikes!
4. Roseanne: Trick Me Up, Trick Me Down - If you are a fan of this show, you know how much Roseanne loved Halloween, and this is my favorite of her annual spooky episodes. I love how she becomes paranoid, thinking her "needle butt" (another episode...) neighbor, Kathy, is out to get her back after she pulled a prank on her. Plus, DJ is dressed as a killer Alfalfa. Fantastic!
5. Home Improvement: The Haunting of Taylor House - Brad dressed like Raggedy Andy, Jill dressed like a giant carrot, and Tim scaring everyone, including Shawn from Boy Meets World in a cameo appearance, with his "Catacombs of Terror". A very hilarious episode that is - brace yourself - 19 years old. Wow.
6. Friends: The One With the Halloween Party - I love Friends! And what's better than when all the friends get together for a party at Monica's? I realize that she might not be the most fun-loving character in the bunch, but she's my favorite. In this episode, we have a showdown between Catwoman (Monica) and Supergirl (Phoebe), Joey dressed as Chandler, Ross dressed as a satellite/potato (Spud-nik), and Chandler dressed as a giant bunny. Hey, maybe he should have gotten together with Jill from Home Improvement. Plus, Phoebe's twin Ursula shows up and she is engaged to Sean Penn! The best moment though, is when Gunther arrives at the party dressed as Charlie Brown. Perfection!
7. 8 Simple Rules: Trick or Treehouse - This episode from season one is just good family fun. The girls are too old to want to participate in Paul's Halloween traditions, and Rory is more interested in toilet papering the neighborhood than having a family camp out in the backyard treehouse. Of course everything ends up perfect at the end of the night since this is a sitcom, and it's a nice show to look back on since less than a year after this aired, the world lost John Ritter, the patriarch of the Hennessey household and a very talented comedian.
8. The Worst Witch - This is a children's made-for-TV movie from 1986, starring Tim Curry, Charlotte Rae, and 12-year-old Fairuza Balk that my sister and I watched over and over again as children. There is something entertaining and endearing about young Mildred, a witch-in-training who has nothing but trouble with every spell she tries to cast.
9. Everybody Loves Raymond: Halloween Candy - Frank is left at Ray's home to pass out candy to trick-or-treaters and runs out. He looks through the kitchen and thinks that he has discovered some chocolate coins. Wait Frank, not so fast! Uh oh, too late. When Ray and Debra come home, they find out that Frank had actually passed out condoms to all of the neighborhood children. As if Debra's life wasn't hard enough before Halloween! A very funny episode!
10. Modern Family: Halloween - I love everything about this show, and this episode is so good it's worth watching again every October. Gloria speaks in a weird English accent, Mitchell is stuck at work in a Spiderman costume, and Phil becomes paranoid that Claire is leaving him. Really, Phil, who else would be patient enough to put up with you? And then there's Cameron, traumatized by his childhood "accident" in front of the whole town, who is pretty much the highlight of every episode. Funny, in an episode centered around a children's holiday, I don't really remember the kids' roles in this episode at all...
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Tuesday's Top Ten - Halloween Movies
"Psycho killer/ Qu'est que c'est/ Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better/ Run run run run run run run away." - "Psycho Killer" by The Talking Heads
Halloween is less than three weeks away, so I thought I would devote the latest Top Ten list to my favorite scary movies. Are yours on the list? Did I make a glaring error and leave off the best horror film of all time? Let me know!
1. "The Shining" - For those of you who read my post about this movie last week, this should come as no surprise. The creepy faces Jack Nicholson makes can give even the most seasoned veteran of horror movies a serious case of the chills. Not to mention room 237, Danny's imaginary friend Tony, "All work and no play...", and REDRUM!
2. "Psycho" - Alfred Hitchcock at his finest. When this movie premiered in 1960, it was so terrifying that many people were afraid to take showers after seeing what happened to poor Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) at the Bates Motel. From today's perspective the gore and violence are very mild, but 51 years ago, it was groundbreaking. The best line in the movie is, "We all go a little mad sometimes." Well said, Norman.
3. "Halloween" - The original in the movie series about mute boogie man Michael Myers from 1978 not only kick started the career of Jamie Lee Curtis, it also opened the doors for future horror movie franchises like "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" (eww, Freddy Krueger!). It was the first, and in my opinion, the best of the series movies. What could be scarier than a homicidal, silent, escaped mental patient that stalks young girls? Oh yeah, and the mask he wore was made from a mold of William Shatner's face. Enough said.
4. "Friday the 13th" - The first installment of the series is my favorite. I have a thing for the first part in a long series, I guess. I just like to see how the story gets started. In this movie we get introduced to Camp Crystal Lake, a young Kevin Bacon, and Jason Voories before he got a hockey mask. A true classic.
5. "Scream" - Once again, the first movie in the franchise. I loved this movie when I was a teenager and it first came out, and I still do today. I especially liked how Randy, played by Jamie Kennedy, was such a horror film buff and seemed to know exactly what would happen before the event occured, except when it was happening all around him. "Look behind you, Jamie!"
6. "Misery" - This movie, based on the Stephen King book of the same name, is fantastic. Kathy Bates is terrifying as the obsessed, sadistic fan of writer Paul Sheldon (James Caan) and said a couple of great lines in the movie that my family will quote from time to time. Is that weird? Probably, but it's definitely fun! Along with "The Shining", this movie has made it clear to me that as a writer, I should never hole up in a hotel in the mountains for an extended period of time to work on my novel. Bad, bad idea.
7. "Silence of the Lambs" - Definitely the most critically acclaimed and award-winning film on my list, "Silence of the Lambs" is also the scariest. It's equal parts psychological, crime, and horror, the trifecta for truly scary movies in my book. The reason it isn't higher up on my list is because it lacks the humor that some of the other movies do, which is a little more up my alley. Still, this film is amazing. And I will forever have the image of Hannibal Lecter (shudder at the mention of his name) in the cannibal face mask emblazened in my brain for the rest of my life.
8. "The Exorcist" - Why, you ask, is this not higher on my list since it is considered by some to be the top horror movie of all time? The answer is, because it freaked me out too much! There is just something about a child getting possessed by the devil that is a little too disturbing, even for me. And I don't get disturbed that easily. Still, this movie is a classic for a reason. People were seriously scared when this movie came out, I think because it combined the elements of very creepy special effects with the fear that people really can be possessed by Satan. If you have not seen this, go rent it, download it, or better yet just buy it, because this is a movie that horror film fans should watch every Halloween. It's that terrifying.
9. "Poltergeist" - I have only seen this movie once, maybe when I was 14 or 15, and I don't know why I don't own it and rewatch it every October. I think I might have to go shopping. Anyway, the terror in this classic from 1982 all begins with television static. Remember how late at night when all the shows were over, there would just be static or a test pattern on every channel? If you don't you must have been born after 1990 or so. Before the days of 24 hour programming and a thousand TV channels, after the late night movie, nothing would be on again until the morning news. That's when the evil spirits came out in the Freeling house, spawning the famous line, "They're heeeerrre!" For a TV junkie like myself, it's pretty freaky to think that ghosts can come out of your TV. I hope my neighborhood wasn't built on an old graveyard, although that could explain why my stuff keeps disappearing and why my dog barks at nothing all the time - or at least, I think it's nothing...
10. "The Amityville Horror" - One word - flies! Whenever I see a bunch of flies, I always flash back to the scene in this movie when the flies attack the poor priest who is there to bless the house. And if I wake up at 3:15 a.m., it takes me forever to fall back asleep. I even wrote that into one of my Willow books. Willow and her friends watch this movie on Halloween and one of the other characters changes her alarm clock to read 3:15, which she did not appreciate. Okay, back to the show. What makes this movie so good is that it is based on the alleged true story of the Lutz family who buy a great house at an even better price (gee, I wonder why?), only to find out that it is haunted by some very mean ghosts. Did it actually happen? Who knows, but after watching this movie, you might believe it did.
Halloween is less than three weeks away, so I thought I would devote the latest Top Ten list to my favorite scary movies. Are yours on the list? Did I make a glaring error and leave off the best horror film of all time? Let me know!
1. "The Shining" - For those of you who read my post about this movie last week, this should come as no surprise. The creepy faces Jack Nicholson makes can give even the most seasoned veteran of horror movies a serious case of the chills. Not to mention room 237, Danny's imaginary friend Tony, "All work and no play...", and REDRUM!
2. "Psycho" - Alfred Hitchcock at his finest. When this movie premiered in 1960, it was so terrifying that many people were afraid to take showers after seeing what happened to poor Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) at the Bates Motel. From today's perspective the gore and violence are very mild, but 51 years ago, it was groundbreaking. The best line in the movie is, "We all go a little mad sometimes." Well said, Norman.
3. "Halloween" - The original in the movie series about mute boogie man Michael Myers from 1978 not only kick started the career of Jamie Lee Curtis, it also opened the doors for future horror movie franchises like "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" (eww, Freddy Krueger!). It was the first, and in my opinion, the best of the series movies. What could be scarier than a homicidal, silent, escaped mental patient that stalks young girls? Oh yeah, and the mask he wore was made from a mold of William Shatner's face. Enough said.
4. "Friday the 13th" - The first installment of the series is my favorite. I have a thing for the first part in a long series, I guess. I just like to see how the story gets started. In this movie we get introduced to Camp Crystal Lake, a young Kevin Bacon, and Jason Voories before he got a hockey mask. A true classic.
5. "Scream" - Once again, the first movie in the franchise. I loved this movie when I was a teenager and it first came out, and I still do today. I especially liked how Randy, played by Jamie Kennedy, was such a horror film buff and seemed to know exactly what would happen before the event occured, except when it was happening all around him. "Look behind you, Jamie!"
6. "Misery" - This movie, based on the Stephen King book of the same name, is fantastic. Kathy Bates is terrifying as the obsessed, sadistic fan of writer Paul Sheldon (James Caan) and said a couple of great lines in the movie that my family will quote from time to time. Is that weird? Probably, but it's definitely fun! Along with "The Shining", this movie has made it clear to me that as a writer, I should never hole up in a hotel in the mountains for an extended period of time to work on my novel. Bad, bad idea.
7. "Silence of the Lambs" - Definitely the most critically acclaimed and award-winning film on my list, "Silence of the Lambs" is also the scariest. It's equal parts psychological, crime, and horror, the trifecta for truly scary movies in my book. The reason it isn't higher up on my list is because it lacks the humor that some of the other movies do, which is a little more up my alley. Still, this film is amazing. And I will forever have the image of Hannibal Lecter (shudder at the mention of his name) in the cannibal face mask emblazened in my brain for the rest of my life.
8. "The Exorcist" - Why, you ask, is this not higher on my list since it is considered by some to be the top horror movie of all time? The answer is, because it freaked me out too much! There is just something about a child getting possessed by the devil that is a little too disturbing, even for me. And I don't get disturbed that easily. Still, this movie is a classic for a reason. People were seriously scared when this movie came out, I think because it combined the elements of very creepy special effects with the fear that people really can be possessed by Satan. If you have not seen this, go rent it, download it, or better yet just buy it, because this is a movie that horror film fans should watch every Halloween. It's that terrifying.
9. "Poltergeist" - I have only seen this movie once, maybe when I was 14 or 15, and I don't know why I don't own it and rewatch it every October. I think I might have to go shopping. Anyway, the terror in this classic from 1982 all begins with television static. Remember how late at night when all the shows were over, there would just be static or a test pattern on every channel? If you don't you must have been born after 1990 or so. Before the days of 24 hour programming and a thousand TV channels, after the late night movie, nothing would be on again until the morning news. That's when the evil spirits came out in the Freeling house, spawning the famous line, "They're heeeerrre!" For a TV junkie like myself, it's pretty freaky to think that ghosts can come out of your TV. I hope my neighborhood wasn't built on an old graveyard, although that could explain why my stuff keeps disappearing and why my dog barks at nothing all the time - or at least, I think it's nothing...
10. "The Amityville Horror" - One word - flies! Whenever I see a bunch of flies, I always flash back to the scene in this movie when the flies attack the poor priest who is there to bless the house. And if I wake up at 3:15 a.m., it takes me forever to fall back asleep. I even wrote that into one of my Willow books. Willow and her friends watch this movie on Halloween and one of the other characters changes her alarm clock to read 3:15, which she did not appreciate. Okay, back to the show. What makes this movie so good is that it is based on the alleged true story of the Lutz family who buy a great house at an even better price (gee, I wonder why?), only to find out that it is haunted by some very mean ghosts. Did it actually happen? Who knows, but after watching this movie, you might believe it did.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monster Mash
"He did the mash, he did the monster mash/ It was a graveyard smash/ He did the mash, it caught on in a flash/ He did the mash, he did the monster mash." - Bobby Boris Pickett
Halloween is only about a month away, and I am making a CD for Riley and Alana of spooky, fun, and Halloween themed songs. Here's what I have so far:
"The Monster Mash" by Bobby Boris Pickett
"Witchy Woman" by The Eagles
"Witch Doctor" by Alvin and the Chipmunks
"Spooky" by The Classics IV
"Boris the Spider" by The Who
"Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley
"The Addams Family" TV theme song
"Bad Moon" by CCR
"Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon
If any of you have more ideas, I would love to hear them! The girls are into Halloween more than ever this year, so I know they will get a lot of use out of this CD. Plus, as an added bonus for me, I will enjoy listening to these songs too as I drive them all over town. Thanks!
Halloween is only about a month away, and I am making a CD for Riley and Alana of spooky, fun, and Halloween themed songs. Here's what I have so far:
"The Monster Mash" by Bobby Boris Pickett
"Witchy Woman" by The Eagles
"Witch Doctor" by Alvin and the Chipmunks
"Spooky" by The Classics IV
"Boris the Spider" by The Who
"Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley
"The Addams Family" TV theme song
"Bad Moon" by CCR
"Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon
If any of you have more ideas, I would love to hear them! The girls are into Halloween more than ever this year, so I know they will get a lot of use out of this CD. Plus, as an added bonus for me, I will enjoy listening to these songs too as I drive them all over town. Thanks!
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