As an old guy living in a gated senior community, I no longer have to hand out Halloween candy at the front door, since no one here does trick or treating. In addition to eating the last two Reese’s peanut butter cups, I get all the ones that come before them! Pretty cool.
These days I spend Halloween watching horror movies. This year, with the holiday on a college football Saturday, I may not get in that many films. In any case, here is the potential playlist.
HALLOWEEN (1978)
This is THE classic Halloween movie, so it is a given. Whatever my other choices are, I watch this one every October 31st. The film was director John Carpenter’s first major success in the genre, and it launched scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis into a long and successful career. Made on a budget of $300,000, it grossed about $70 million, making it one of the most successful indie films ever. It carries a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” All this for a film that barely had a promotional budget back in 1978.
Many people credit Halloween as the first in an endless line of teen slasher movies. Unlike many of its successors, the film has a minimal amount of blood and gore. It is just—well, scary. Its success led to loads of sequels and reboots. What was original in Halloween became cliché in many of the slasher flicks over the next two decades.
You doubtless know the storyline. With a tagline of, “The Night HE Came Home!” we have six-year-old psycho Michael Myers—in a clown costume, no less—murdering his sister on Halloween in a small Illinois town. He is committed to an asylum but escapes fifteen years later and returns to his home town to kill some more—on Halloween, of course. Most of his victims are horny teens, but not “good girl” Laurie Strode (Curtis), who will ultimately face off against the “boogeyman.” If the tension doesn’t get to you, Carpenter’s creepy musical score will.
HALLOWEEN 2 (1981)
I usually skip this one, but I haven’t seen it in quite a while, so what the heck. It did well at the box office, though it did not earn anywhere near as much as its predecessor and it did not resonate with the critics. But it was a direct sequel to the original, beginning precisely where Halloween ended, with Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) shooting Michael Myers a whole bunch of times, then discovering that the boogeyman simply got up and walked away. Pleasence and Curtis reprise their roles in a film that is more reminiscent of the era’s many teen slasher movies. In other words, a lot more blood and gore.
PUMPKINHEAD (1988)
With that title this “dark fairytale,” directed by special effects master Stan Winston, seems like a natural for Halloween. But in truth the head of the film’s monster is quite creepy and looks nothing like a pumpkin. The locals in this rural Southern setting call it that because, when summoned, it emerges from a small pumpkin patch located in the middle of a cemetery. Weird…
Lance Henriksen, veteran of many sci-fi and horror films, plays Ed Harley in this cult classic. As a boy he sees his father deny a doomed man entrance to their cabin and then watches from the window as the guy is killed by Pumpkinhead. Flash forward a few decades, where Ed, now a widower, lives with his young son, Billy, whom he loves dearly. Together they run a small grocery store.
The requisite gaggle of older teenagers soon shows up and begins riding their dirt bikes near the store. Unlike most slasher films, there is only one real asshole in the bunch. Ed leaves his son to watch the store while he makes a delivery. Billy goes outside to watch the bikers and is accidently killed. All but one of the teens head off to a nearby cabin. Ed returns and is devastated by his son’s death. The teen tries to explain what happened, but the look on Ed’s face says that the kid and his friends are in deep shit.
Ed takes his son’s body to an old “witch woman” in the mountains, hoping for a miracle. Failing that, he wants revenge; he wants Pumpkinhead. He digs up the monster’s corpse and carries it to the old woman, who restores it to life. Let the slaughter begin—though with some interesting twists, as I do recall.
However you spend All Hallows Eve, I hope you have a safe—and scary—one. Happy Halloween!