Month: October 2023

Geek Punditry #43: The Halloween Special Special

blakemp Geek Punditry , , , , , , , , ,

A few days ago I was watching TV with my six-year-old son and we happened to land on Disney+, where I saw something that got me excited. Something lovely. Something that was a true work of beauty, a rare creature that seems to always dance on the edge of extinction, only to be pulled back time and again. Something that I want to share with my child.

A new Halloween special.

“Mickey and Friends III: Season of the Witch”

I grew up in the 80s, the apex of holiday specials on television. Oh sure, they weren’t new when I was a kid, but I’m from that generation where the classic specials from the likes of Rankin and Bass and Mendelson-Melendez were still in perpetual rotation and original specials were premiering every year, sometimes many of them. It was simplicity itself to mix the old specials with the likes of the Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the other Saturday Morning heroes of my youth. Like so many things when it comes to the pop culture landscape, it’s changed. And like so many things for those of us of a certain age, it doesn’t feel like it’s gotten better. They don’t show the classic specials on TV all that much anymore, first of all. As people have drifted to the streaming world, the days of everyone needing to be in front of the TV at the same time if they’re going to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are pretty much over. And don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that I can watch the DVD any time I want, but it’s not the same as knowing that they’re watching it next door and down the street and somewhere in Cincinnati at the same time.

This is good, but somehow it’s even better if I’m watching it at the same time as someone I’ve never met in Patterson, New Jersey.

And while it’s true that specials are still being made, I don’t feel like we’re getting them with the frequency that we once did. Of course, part of that may be that they’re now all spread out amongst a thousand streaming services and you don’t even know that they’re there. And those that do exist haven’t broken into the cultural zeitgeist, again, probably because of the preponderance of sources. Even as I was typing this sentence I thought of nearly a half-dozen Halloween specials from the last few years that I’ve watched, but I haven’t re-watched most of them like I do the classics. Great Pumpkin was, and remains, essential viewing before Halloween. So was and is Garfield’s Halloween Adventure. But when I think about going back and watching, for example, LEGO Star Wars: Terrifying Tales from 2021, I know that if I skip it this year I’m not going to feel like I’ve missed anything.

One of these is a legendary piece of animation history based on a globally-beloved property and is appointment viewing every Halloween season. The other one is a Star Wars movie.

LEGO Star Wars, by the way, was also a Disney+ special, and I have to give them credit for turning out more things like this, especially for kids, than most of these streaming services. The new special Eddie and I watched this week was Mickey and Friends: Trick or Treat, in which Donald Duck (of COURSE it’s Donald’s fault) convinces the rest of the gang to trick or treat at a haunted house that happens to belong to a witch who doesn’t appreciate visitors. It isn’t a mind-blowing cartoon, but it’s cute and it’s new and – maybe best of all – it’s stop motion. If a new Halloween special is an endangered species, a stop motion special is a friggin’ unicorn. There was a stop motion Christmas special last year featuring Mickey and Friends as well, and while none of these are going to join the pantheon of the greats, I have to applaud their effort.

Disney+ is also responsible for Muppets Haunted Mansion, another 2021 special in which the Great Gonzo and Pepe the King Prawn spent Halloween the night in…well…Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It had the requisite music and celebrity cameos that one expects from the Muppets, and it was decent. I actually watched that one a second time last year, but I haven’t gotten around to it in 2023, and I’m okay with that. The difficulty here was that this not only had to live up to the great Halloween specials, but also had to live up to great Muppet movies, and in both categories it’s just middling. 

If “It’s okay, I guess” was a picture.

So the question has to be, where will the great Halloween specials of the future come from? Don’t get me wrong, I intend to watch Garfield and Charlie Brown every October for the rest of my life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want more. (I feel like I need to get this put on a T-shirt because I seem to say it in this column at least once a month: What do fans want? MORE!) Is there anybody out there carrying the torch of Mendelson, Melendez, Rankin, or Bass?

There are some people doing Halloween content, fortunately. Movies, for example. Feature-length films are in no short supply. Prime Video this year gave us Totally Killer, a time-travel comedy about a girl who goes back to the 80s when her parents were teenagers to face off against the slasher that terrorized them then. Not a family movie, but it was original, and I liked it. Last year there was Spirit Halloween: The Movie, a film about kids who sneak into one of the ubiquitous Halloween pop-up stores overnight, unaware that this particular store is haunted for real. Disney+, again, gave us a sequel to the Halloween favorite Hocus Pocus, which is included here to prove that just because a movie is about Halloween doesn’t automatically make it good. 

But that’s not what I’m looking for. I love a good Halloween movie, but a holiday “special” is, to me at least, a different sort of beast. I’m talking about the one-off films, a half-hour to an hour at length, which take characters that we already know and give them a seasonally appropriate adventure. The classics mostly fit into this category – Garfield and the Peanuts gang, for example, spring from the pages of newspaper comics, and even most of the Rankin and Bass Christmas classics were based on preexisting stories. Many of their best specials (and here I’m thinking of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Here Comes Peter Cottontail) were based on popular songs. There were a few based on Bible stories, one on a novel by Oz creator L. Frank Baum, and so forth. There are a few Rankin and Bass classics based on entirely new ideas, but the truth is, those aren’t the ones we remember.

Even their one great foray into Halloween wasn’t wholly original – 1967’s Mad Monster Party was a stop motion feature film that featured characters they couldn’t technically call the Universal Monsters, but anyone who watches it knows they’re really the Universal Monsters. It was easy for the public domain characters – Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, a generic werewolf – but they even managed to sneak in characters obviously based on copyrighted monsters like the Creature From the Black Lagoon and (people don’t lump him in with the Universal Monsters, but they SHOULD) King Kong. Hell, it even starred Boris Karloff as Baron Frankenstein. 

If you haven’t seen this movie, it counts as a character flaw.

Pulling out new specials that fit the mold of the classics depends largely on which characters you can use. Disney, as we said, is making use of the likes of Mickey and his pals, and they worked in their Star Wars and Muppets characters a couple of years ago, but there’s more that could be done. Could you imagine, for example, a Wreck-It Ralph Halloween Special in which Ralph and Vanellope have to make it through a (kid friendly) survival horror game like Silent Hill or Five Nights at Freddy’s? Or more Marvel content – last year they gave us the excellent MCU Halloween Special Werewolf By Night, based on a classic Marvel monster comic from the 70s, and I loved it. But why not an animated special featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy on a “Planet of Terror?” Have Doctor Strange fight some sort of Lovecraftian horror? Heck, tie it into the What If? brand and you could do virtually anything – there’s already a zombie universe out there in the MCMultiverse. 

Then across the metaphorical street (by which I mean one row over on the apps on my Roku), we’ve got Disney’s rival, Warner Bros. Their MAX service also has a new Halloween special this year, a Sesame Street show called Oscar’s Handmade Halloween. That’s not bad. I’ll take any Sesame Street content I can get for my kid. But considering the depth of Warner Bros’s catalog, what else have we got? Admittedly, last year there was a Scooby-Doo Halloween movie, and that’s all well and good, but how about the DC Universe? They brought in the Super Sons in an animated movie earlier this year – I would love to see a half-hour cartoon about Superboy trying to convince Robin to go trick-or-treating with him, with all the chaos that would inevitably ensue. How about a new Looney Tunes Halloween special? Witch Hazel is sitting right there in the catalog, guys. 

And what about other characters that aren’t necessarily tied into any huge IP farm like Warner Bros or the Walt Disney Pictures Shadow Government and Pedicure Emporium? In this year’s Halloween episode of the Totally Rad Christmas podcast (a show about Christmas in the 80s, except when it’s about things that aren’t from the 80s and/or aren’t about Christmas), the hosts talked about their love of Monster Cereals. After going after the hard questions (why is Frankenberry British?) they asked the obvious one – how is it possible that Count Chockula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry never got their own animated special? That’s a great question. I suppose the answer is that, when those cereals were ascendant, there were laws in place that prevented children’s programming from being used as advertisements for a product, so they couldn’t make such a special. But those laws have been gone since the early 80s, since the birth and explosion of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Do you mean to tell me that, in the years since, nobody has thought to call up General Mills and get an animated special going?

Look me in the eye and tell me these guys are less deserving of a Halloween special than Raggedy Ann and Andy.

I know that I sound like an old man waxing nostalgically for things from his past that are gone and are never to return, but there’s a good reason for that. I am an old man waxing nostalgically for things from his past that are gone and are never to return. Except for that last part, actually, because I don’t think I’m ready to accept that things like this are gone forever. There are still children in the world – I’ve met at least seven of them – and those kids still watch TV and still like cartoons. And those kids have parents who would love to have new things to watch with them instead of watching that same Mickey Mouse special 17 times before Halloween. 

The audience is there. All we need is for somebody to step up and give us the content.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. Three words, Disney: Encanto Vs. Freddy. C’maaaaaaaan, you know you wanna. 

Geek Punditry #42: Halloween — the TV Series?

blakemp Geek Punditry , , , ,

Last week Miramax Pictures (motto: 100 percent Weinstein-Free these days) announced the news that horror fans have been waiting for with baited breath. They have acquired the rights to make a TV series based on John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise. And if that wasn’t enough, there are talks about spinning it off into (drumroll please) a new cinematic universe! Isn’t that great? Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t this the best news you’ve ever heard?

Yeah, I thought the same thing.

Look how happy he is. Like a kid on Christmas.

I’m sure the question most of you are asking is, is a universe really necessary? The answer, of course, is “No, of course not, what are you, high?” Marvel pulled the cinematic universe off, but nobody else who has tried it has come close to their level of success. Of course, this hasn’t stopped people from attempting it with everything from the works of Roald Dahl to the world of My Little Pony. I’m frankly stunned that no one has tried to link the recent movies Air, Flamin’ Hot, and Blackberry into a “Folks Coming Up With New Products” Cinematic Universe, although now that I’ve willed it into existence, no doubt someone will try.

As for making a TV show out of it…eh. I have mixed feelings. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making a TV series based on a horror franchise. It’s been done before to some acclaim (such as Bates Motel and the current Chucky series), after all. Freddy’s Nightmares cast the titular Krueger as a sort of Cryptkeeper lite, narrating anthology stories, although he occasionally took part in them as well. Then there were shows like Friday the 13th: The Series, which had nothing to do with Jason Voorhees except for a cameo appearance by a hockey mask. It could go either way. The question should be, is Halloween really the best choice for this kind of a project? 

The good, the bad, and the Freddy.

First of all, what storyline are they planning to follow? The film series has been rebooted and restarted so many times that there are no less than five different continuities spread out among the 14 movies, which most of you will recognize as being at least four too many. What’s more, each and every continuity has its own fans and its own detractors, so the idea of choosing one that will satisfy a majority of fans seems slim. The best option is probably to start from scratch and not worry about any of the previous continuities – of course, going that route will only result in a sixth iteration of the franchise. (Which is five too many.)

Realtime photo of the Halloween continuity.

Let’s say, just for the sake of discussion, that they go in this direction: a new continuity, unbound from any of the previous films. And let’s be generous and assume that they do it really well, in a way that all of the fans (okay, let’s be realistic here – a plurality of the fans) are satisfied with the show. That still leaves the question of how the hell you turn a single-villain slasher franchise into a cinematic UNIVERSE. I just don’t think there’s enough meat on that bone.

 If you decide that you want to tie together multiple existing horror franchises, it could make sense. They did it with Freddy Vs. Jason, and the criminally underrated film Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is implied to place in a world where ALL the classic horror movies are canon. The comic book series Hack/Slash takes this approach as well, using generic villains that “feel” like the classics most of the time, but it has also included several official crossovers with horror franchises including Chucky, Hatchet, The Crow, Army of Darkness, and Re-Animator. Of course that’s a comic book, where quick crossovers are relatively easier to negotiate. In a practical sense, with the rights to all these franchises spread out among dozens of different studios, it’s all but impossible to see such a cinematic universe materialize until the Walt Disney Corporation and Shadow Government and Tanning Salon finally gets around to buying up all the different companies, which isn’t scheduled to happen until next Tuesday.

How do you make Halloween, by itself, a universe? There’s only one antagonist, first of all. Maybe more if you count the “Curse of the Thorn” storyline that ran through a few of the films, but that’s frankly one of the weakest ideas in the franchise’s history – never adequately explained and butchering Michael Myers as a character by making him a sort of victim of supernatural forces rather than the personification of evil that makes him so iconic. What other characters could you build a world on? I could see someone planning a prequel series about the life of Dr. Loomis, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea. Prequel series are fraught with their own landmines that make them difficult to do successfully. As for the other main characters, does anyone really want to watch Laurie Strode without Michael Myers? For that matter, does anyone really want to watch Laurie Strode without Jamie Lee Curtis? 

As odd as it sounds, if Miramax simply must try the cinematic universe idea, there’s really only one place I think they could look. They need the weirdest, most off-kilter installment of the entire franchise. They need Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

“Help me, Obi-Wan Tom Atkins. You’re my only hope.”

Quick history lesson, for those who don’t know how this happened: when John Carpenter was approached to do a third Halloween movie, he decided to take it in a totally different direction. Rather than bring Michael Myers back for Round Three, he tried to make the franchise into an anthology series, with the plan being to make a new horror movie every year or two centered on the holiday of Halloween but totally standing on its own. Season of the Witch is about an evil novelty company that has a bonkers scheme including Druids, Stonehenge, and rubber Halloween masks with the intent to murder millions of innocent children for reasons. It underperformed and was torn apart critically, and the franchise has not deviated from the story of a Michael Myers since. 

In recent years, however, people have begun to reexamine Halloween III, calling it an underrated gem of a film, that it works as a clever deviation from the audience’s expectations, and that Tom Atkins’s mustache does not at all look like a caterpillar hoping to eat his upper lip. I…I’ll be honest, I don’t agree. I mean, the movie has a certain cheesy charm, but that’s far from calling it a good movie. That said, I agree that it may have been received better (as many argue) if it was the second film in the franchise instead of the third, or if it had just been released as a standalone film divorced from the Halloween franchise, or even if it had come out 30 years later, when anthologies were on the rise. 

But the truth is, it doesn’t even matter if the movie itself was good or not – it’s still the bedrock upon which this cinematic universe should lie. I’m not saying they should ignore Michael Myers, of course. Doing a Halloween series without Michael Myers would be as ludicrous as doing, say, a Scream series and changing the mask.

This never happened.

But I think if they link Michael directly to the doings of the Silver Shamrock company, makers of the demonic masks, this may be the linchpin the universe needs to get started. It’s true that Michael Myers should not be a supernatural character. He’s much more frightening and interesting when he’s a murderous, unspeakably evil human being. On the other hand, that’s not the same thing as saying that the supernatural cannot exist in the same universe as him. 

What I would do, were I the showrunner of this hypothetical Halloween series, is start with a sort of platonic ideal of Michael Myers. He’s a killer, he’s escaped from custody, he has terrified the town of Haddonfield, Illinois in the past. I would not marry him to any specific continuity from the previous films. I might mention Laurie Strode or Dr. Loomis, but only in passing – wouldn’t even confirm one way or another whether they’re alive or dead in this universe. The story here is that of the insidious Silver Shamrock company, whose attempt at destroying the world some years ago failed (way to go, Tom Atkins and his mustache!) but they’re ready to try again.

“A little louder for the people in the back!”

This time, their scheme hinges on Michael Myers. If they can get their hands on the real-life boogeyman, who is again unleashing havoc on a small town, they can use their magic to weaponize the pain and anguish he has caused for their own nefarious ends. How are they going to do it? They’ve got to replace his iconic mask with one of their magic ones. Our heroes, now, are a new group of characters who start out trying to stop Michael’s killing spree (like you do), but halfway through the first season discover the Silver Shamrock connection and realize that they not only have to defeat him, but they also have to save him from falling into Silver Shamrock’s hands. 

So there’s the first season. But how, Blake, does this sort of thing lead into a full-on cinematic universe? Well, there’s a few ways that it could go, but here are the two I would find most interesting, and they’re ideas that compliment each other:

  1. Silver Shamrock is a big company, with lots of different cells around the world, each of which is dedicated to wreaking havoc using the local boogeyman of that area. This would not only allow us to create new villains, but we would no longer be limited to just slashers. Bring in other monsters – vampires, werewolves, do a season set in New Orleans featuring the Loup Garou. The possibilities are endless. The important thing is, wherever the current chapter is set, it’s about trying to weaponize fear.
  2. They’ve been doing this for a while. Who are the other heroes that have stood against them? Perhaps an entire underground society of monster-slayers has risen up, a kind of Buffy crossed with John Wick organization, dedicated to ending the threat of these menaces once and for all. Maybe Loomis was part of it, maybe not. Maybe, if they get really ambitious, they could try to recruit Laurie Strode. Or maybe not – again, if it ain’t Jamie Lee Curtis, that would be a hard sell.

Anyway, with this set-up, you’ve constructed a universe that allows for virtually any kind of horror movie story you want to tell, which is what Carpenter wanted to do with the franchise back in 1982 anyway, except this time it’s all tied together. As for the title – well, that’s simple enough. Under the rules of this shared universe, all of the evil forces we encounter are at their strongest at – drumroll please – Halloween. You can bring in Michael Myers any time you want, but you’re not beholden to him. It’s possible to build a dense mythology, with shows or movies focusing not just on Michael, but on the monster-slayers or any of the various monsters or the history of Silver Shamrock. Hell, you can even throw in the Curse of the Thorn as one of the various evil organizations our monster-slayers fight against. A set up like this would give the world room to grow.

This is what I would do, anyway. But I’m not on the payroll of Miramax (although I would be willing to discuss compensation for this obviously brilliant idea), and odds are if they’ve even gone far enough to tell people they’re planning a cinematic universe, they’ve probably also got an idea already as to how they want to do it. That’s their prerogative. What I’m here for is to suggest a way to do it that’s not just a case of retreading old ground. 

And if they instead just do more of the same and it flops…well, I guess I’ll see you at Halloween Iteration Seven. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. Come back next time when he explains to you the intricacies of the Prom Night cinematic universe! (Hint: there isn’t one.)

Geek Punditry #41: Playing Favorites With Horror Movies (Part Two)

blakemp Playing Favorites , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Horror Without a Death

Last week, in a column that has been-fast tracked for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Blog Posts about Horror Movies (probably not a real thing) I asked my friends on social media to give me suggestions for categories of horror. I would then report back on your suggestions here and talk about some of my favorites in each category. I got a lot of great suggestions – so many, in fact, that I couldn’t fit them all into a single column. So buckle in, my friends, it’s time for Week Two of Playing Favorites With Horror Movies!

Horror Without a Death

Duane Hower came at me with one of the toughest suggestions of the whole batch: what’s my favorite horror movie in which NOBODY DIES? (And a note here – just the fact that a movie can be mentioned in this category qualifies as a spoiler, so if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, you may want to hop down to the next category.) 

It was tough, guys. There aren’t that many films that meet the criteria – after all, the point of horror is to instill fear, and that inherently brings with it the fear of the void. There are plenty of horror/comedies that fall into this category, sure, but straight horror? It’s not easy to find good examples.

A few eventually came to mind. Poltergeist is about a family that moves to a new home only to discover malevolent spirits already inhabit their dwelling. The Others is about a family that moves to a new home…only to discover that malevolent spirits already inhabit…okay, there’s a pattern. But 1408! That mixes it up! That’s about a travel writer who gets a hotel room! And finds that malevolent spirits inhabit the dwelling. 

“I see dead people. Not fresh ones, though.”

Still, these are solid films where nobody dies (well…depending on which cut of 1408 you watch). The thing is, they’re also all ghost stories. And ghost stories rock, don’t get me wrong, but they’re stories about somebody who has already died. Can I count them in this category, just because the deaths in question happened before the movie began?

If I rule out ghost stories, the pool gets even shallower, but there are still a few tasty fish in it. Tod Browning’s Freaks from 1932, for instance. The director of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula followed it with this movie about performers in a circus sideshow and an unscrupulous woman who plans to take advantage of them to seize an inheritance one of them is due to collect. The movie is pretty wild, and was so controversial at the time that Browning’s career was essentially destroyed. But nobody dies in the film…although by the ending, there’s someone who may wish they were dead.

I also need to give credit to One Hour Photo, a thriller starring the late, great Robin Williams. Williams plays a man who works for one of those one hour photo development labs (kids, ask your parents) and becomes dangerously obsessed with one of the families whose film he processes. Williams, of course, was a legend for his comedic roles, and often showed his dramatic chops as well in movies like Dead Poets Society and Good Morning, Vietnam, but this is the only movie I can think of that showed how outright SCARY he could be when he set his mind to it. The man was a unique and priceless talent, and I feel like this is a movie that doesn’t get talked about enough, possibly because the entire premise is centered around a piece of late 20th century culture that doesn’t really exist anymore.

Hammer Horror

My old buddy Eric LeBlanc wanted to know what my favorite movie was from the Hammer Films catalog. In the 1950s, after Universal Studios quietly put an end to their monumental run of monster movies, Britain’s Hammer Films saw an opportunity to fill the void. Not only did they start pumping out horror movies at a pace that would have made Carl Lammle Jr. pick his jaw up off the floor, but they did so by borrowing a heck of a lot of the goodwill that Universal had built up, using the same public domain creeps like Frankenstein’s monster, vampires, mummies, and werewolves. 

I never got quite as deep into Hammer as I have into the Universal library, but I’ve seen a lot of their films and I definitely have my favorites, the top being 1958’s Horror of Dracula (or sometimes just Dracula). Incredibly stylish and colorful, the movie is also a bit more faithful to the original novel than the Universal version. Plus it has two of the giants of horror in some of their best parts: Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. Lee is creepy and charming, and the only reason he’s not considered the definitive version of Dracula is that Bela Lugosi beat him to it. And Van Helsing? Sorry, Hugh Jackman, but Peter Cushing owns that role. 

The HORROR…of a world without photoshop.

Stephen King Adaptation

Rachel Ricks played right into my hands by asking for my favorite Stephen King adaptation.

Project ALF.

Iiiiiiiit’s baaaaaaaaack!

As anyone who has read this blog for more than a day knows, I’m a huge fan of Stephen King’s books…but what about his movies? There have been over 200 adaptations of King’s novels and short stories (I checked IMDB), so which one is the best? Truth is the really great ones aren’t actually horror movies: The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Stand By Me are some of the best films ever made based on King’s work, but none of them qualify as horror. When you get into the scary content, the sad truth is that a lot of the adaptations are sub-par. (I mean…have you SEEN Maximum Overdrive? Whoever directed that movie doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea what Stephen King is all about. It’s like he was on cocaine or something.)

That said, there are SOME good horror movies based on King’s work. Many people would point immediately to The Shining, but I’m not among them. Look, it’s a good movie, but as an adaptation of King’s book it is terrible. I’d rather focus on movies that DO adapt the books more or less faithfully.

I already mentioned 1408 earlier, and I’d place it close to the top of this list. At the VERY top, though, would be Misery, the James Caan/Kathy Bates adaptation about a writer (it’s a Stephen King movie, of COURSE it’s about a writer) who gets in a terrible car accident only to be saved by his biggest fan. As he begins to heal, though, he discovers that he may have been better off in the wreck. 

Some people, however, would classify Misery more as a thriller than a horror movie, so for those who like to split hairs, let’s talk about The Mist. A mysterious fog full of murderous monsters rolls over a small town, trapping dozens of people in a supermarket. The adaptation is solid, but what really elevates it is the ending. Frank Darabont, who wrote and directed this film (and Shawshank and The Green Mile, so you see his pedigree) changed the ending of the story, something that I usually find outrageous. But the ending he put on was so shocking and dark that even Stephen King himself says he prefers it to the original. 

And I’ve got to give credit to It. I consider this one of King’s best novels – perhaps THE best Stephen King novel – and we’ve gotten TWO pretty good adaptations. The original miniseries from the 90s did the best it could on network television, and Tim Curry is iconic as Pennywise. But in 2017 we got a fantastic adaptation of half of the novel, with Bill Skarsgard taking Pennywise and making him his own. Admittedly, It Chapter Two from 2019 didn’t quite live up to the first part, but you can watch the first part on its own and get a solid, satisfying story. It’s darn near perfect.

It’s good to be the King.

The Wonderful World of Disney

Ryan Tait gave me a category I NEVER would have thought of, but absolutely love: my favorite Wonderful World of Disney Halloween movie. Back in the day, before even the Disney channel, Wonderful World was a delightful showcase for Disney content of all stripes, and some of those made-for-TV movies still hold a warm place in my heart today. My favorite for this category is going to both show my age and make a lot of people wonder what the hell I’m talking about, but I have a deep abiding fondness for the 1986 film Mr. Boogedy.

From the studio that brought you Old Yeller.

A novelty salesman and his family move into a new house that turns out to be haunted (SO MANY of these movies are about people who move into haunted houses, and there are some downright unscrupulous realtors out there) by both some kind ghosts who have been trapped there and by the malevolent spirit who has kept them prisoner. It’s a silly, cheesy movie, but it’s so much fun. And the cast has a great pedigree. Richard Masur of the 90s It, a pre-Buffy the Vampire Slayer Kristy Swanson, a pre-Married With Children David Faustino, and young Benji Gregory, on the cusp of superstardom for his role on the sitcom…not making it up this time…ALF. 

Benji wasn’t in the movie, though.

Both Mr. Boogedy and its (perhaps even better) sequel, Bride of Boogedy, are available on Disney+…but I’m hesitant to tell you to go and watch them if you’ve never seen them before. It’s one of those things where I know my fondness for the movie comes from having watched it over and over again as a child, and I suspect that somebody watching it now, for the first time, as an adult, wouldn’t love it the way that I do. But if you HAVE seen it before and remember it warmly, go check it out. I watched it last year and I still love it.

Installments Past a Sequel

Jasper Fahrig asked what I thought were good installments of a franchise past the first sequel. It’s a truth of filmmaking that long-running series often suffer from diminishing returns. The deeper you get, the worse the franchise often becomes, so finding a good movie that’s part 3 or higher isn’t always easy. Fortunately, Wes Craven is there to hook us up with not one, but two films in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Craven wrote and directed the original Nightmare, but sat out the sequel. When Part Three (Dream Warriors) was made, he came back to help with the story. After a part two that many people admittedly enjoy, but doesn’t really fit with the rest of the franchise, part three is GREAT. Robert Englund is in top form, Heather Langenkamp returns as Nancy (the BEST final girl outside of Laurie Strode), and the crazy horror dream imagery is used to the best effect in the entire series. What’s more, the movie was directed by Chuck Russell (whose remake of The Blob I mentioned last week) and co-written by Frank Darabont. Maybe I’m NOT a horror fan, guys, maybe I’m just a fan of several very specific filmmakers.

But Craven wasn’t quite done. He stepped away from Freddy after that and three more sequels incredibly diluted the character before Wes came back to save the day one more time with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Langenkamp is back again, but this time she plays HERSELF, an actress who finds herself haunted by the spirit of Freddy Kruger, the killer from that old movie she made years ago. Craven also appears as himself in the movie, as does Robert Englund, playing both himself and Freddy Krueger. The movie uses the language of the Nightmare series to make a statement about the power of storytelling and belief. It was ” meta” two years before Craven would redefine “meta” with the Scream franchise, and it’s hands-down my favorite Nightmare.

A double feature to keep you up all night.

Award-Worthy Horror

Seth Pontiff wanted to know some horror movie performances that I thought were worthy of Oscar consideration. Oooh, that’s a good one. I’ve often complained about the way the Academy ignores genre movies, but there HAVE been a scarce few performances that got nods. Kathy Bates actually won best actress for Misery, and the next year both Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins would take home statues for Silence of the Lambs, but those are movies that the Academy can classify as “Thrillers” without getting their hands dirty in a straight-up horror movie.

So who should have been recognized, but wasn’t? I have to say, I think it’s an outright crime that Boris Karloff was never recognized for his work as the Frankenstein monster. He played the creature three times, twice in movies that are indisputable classics, and infused the monster with such depth and humanity that the viewer comes out the other end on his side. There was so much sadness and power in the character, interspersed with other moments like unbridled joy at those few times he thinks he’s found a kindred spirit, and Karloff sells every second of it. There’s a reason that every kid who draws a picture of the creature gives him a flattop and bolts on his neck, and it’s not because Mary Shelley described him that way.

Another performance that I think was awardworthy? Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode in Halloween. Not the 1978 film…the one from 2018. This is going to be controversial, I know, because that film has become EXTREMELY divisive among horror fans. And in truth, I was highly disappointed in the final film in that trilogy. But when I look at the 2018 movie by itself I am in awe of her performance. Curtis plays Laurie Strode as a trauma survivor who has spent her entire life preparing for the other shoe to drop. It’s a performance full of anguish and pain, and she sells it every second she’s on screen. I’m glad that she got her Oscar last year for Everything Everywhere All at Once, but I really believe she should have had it sooner.

I’m actually not great at Photoshop either, so pretend I made it look like these two are holding little statues.

Psychological Horror

And finally, AJ Peden asked me about my favorite psychological horror movies. What makes this difficult is that it’s really hard to define what “psychological horror” actually is. The Wikipedia definition (yeah, I looked it up) says it’s horror “with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience.” Well gee, that narrows it down, right? Another problem here is that so many of these movies overlap into other subgenres: ghost stories, slasher movies, found footage films, etc., have all had prime examples of what we could call “psychological horror.” 

I suppose my favorites in this incredibly broad subcategory would have to go back to the great Alfred Hitchcock. Psycho is the obvious example – it’s a great movie with a brilliant twist halfway through the film and a second brilliant twist at the end of the film. It’s also one of the prototypes for the slasher. So is Peeping Tom, which is also a dandy example of psychological horror. In that film, directed by Michael Powell, Karlheinz Bohm plays a photographer making a documentary about fear by filming the deaths of his victims. I suppose a 1960 audience may have been enticed by the title or the high sexual content (by 1960s standards) of the film, but the way Bohm’s character messes with your head is really powerful.

In the 60s, this was scarier than asbestos.

For more modern examples, I think Jordan Peele has kind of taken the forefront of the wave. Get Out, the movie that made people realize that guy from the goofy sketch comedy show was actually a master of terror, was not only a meditation on race relations, but a terrifying film about the potential of having your body literally stolen from you and the mental state that would result from – or compel somebody to do – such a thing. There have been a lot of films since Get Out that have tried to capture that same flavor (The Barbarian comes to mind, as does X and its prequel, Pearl), but I think as far as today’s filmmakers go, Peele wears the crown. 

And I think that’s going to wrap it up, guys. There are a few other suggestions I didn’t get to, but those are either in categories where I haven’t seen enough movies to really form an opinion (Patrick Slagle – sorry, I don’t have a lot of folk horror movies in my catalog) or categories where my answer is so basic that I don’t know that I have anything interesting to say about it. (Rene Gautreaux: the best religious-based horror movie is still the original The Exorcist. Tony Cirillo, my favorite puppet from the Puppet Master franchise is Blade, because blades are cool.) 

I hope you enjoyed this little experiment as much as I did. I had a lot of fun letting you guys tell me what to write about, and I think we uncovered a few gems in the process. May this two-parter help you find some new stuff to watch in the remainder of this spooky season, and keep your eyes right here! I don’t think it’s going to be too long before I ask you all to help me Play Favorites again. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. All this and nobody asked about the best zombie movie? Ah well, maybe next time. 

Geek Punditry #40: Playing Favorites With Horror Movies (Part One)

blakemp Geek Punditry, Playing Favorites , , , , , , , , , ,

One of my favorite things, as a teacher, is when you find a class that you just click with. You enjoy their insights, you can have real conversations with them, and you look forward to seeing them walk into your room every day. Sometimes, those kids even ask you questions that get your creative juices flowing. This week, for instance, in one such class, a student asked me what my favorite horror movie was. This was a tough question for, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really like ranking things. I feel like it can sometimes be a hotbed for division and argument, for one. Also, sometimes it’s REALLY hard. Favorite horror movie? How do you pick? There are so many different KINDS of horror. Is it really fair to compare something like I Walked With a Zombie to Saw, both technically horror movies, but so different from one another that any comparison is really inadequate?

Samesies?

But then a thought occurred to me. One of the things that makes it hard is that there ARE too many categories to compare…so rather than try, why not look at my favorite films in each of these respective categories? So I turned to my friends on social media for a little experiment. I asked them to suggest different categories of horror movies, and I would take to this week’s Geek Punditry column to discuss my favorites in each category suggested. If it worked, I figured, it would be a cheap and easy way fun and clever way to draw future topics for GP columns. And if not? Well, it’s just one week.

Some categories are obvious, of course. Only a few weeks ago I spent an entire column talking about why Scream is my favorite slasher franchise. And not quite a year ago, before I even started GP, I wrote a blog post revealing that my favorite Universal Monster series is – to the surprise of absolutely nobody – Frankenstein. But I wanted to see what categories YOU guys could come up, and there were some doozies. So without further ado, I present to you the first ever Geek Punditry Presents: Playing Favorites…with HORROR MOVIES!

HORROR/COMEDIES

Lew Beitz kicked me off with a category I have a LOT to say about: the best horror/comedies. As people who’ve been reading my stuff for a long time know, I’ve covered this category in-depth in the past. Why, way back in 2012 I spent an entire month discussing 20 of the best horror/comedies of all time. 

You see, horror and comedy, I believe, co-exist on kind of a sliding scale. Both genres are absolutely dependent on an ability to build up tension and release it in a satisfying way: in comedy with laughter, in horror with screams. But the tools are largely the same, only the result is different, and it can be very easy to turn a moment from one where you laugh to one where you’re terrified with just the slightest twist to the left. Horror/comedies, as a subgenre, are also on a sliding scale. There are those that are mostly comedies, but use the tropes of horror movies as the backdrop for the fun (Bob Hope’s classic The Ghost Breakers falls into this category), whereas others are true horror movies that happen to have funny characters or funny moments (the best films in the Scream franchise go here – and this is where Freddy Krueger believes he exists, although his victims and, occasionally, his audience may beg to differ). 

Most people who know me know that two of my all-time favorite movies fall into the lighter side of this spectrum: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Ghostbusters. Abbott and Costello jumped into the world of the Universal Monsters and delivered an absolute laugh riot, using all the elements that made those monster movies classic and combining them with their own flawless comic sensibility. And as if that wasn’t enough, they had Bela Lugosi returning as Dracula (only the second time he would play the Count, and the final time as well). Lon Chaney Jr. was on board as the Wolf Man! All they were missing was Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster, although Glenn Strange did a fine job. There are two times I watch this movie: at least once every Halloween season, and any time it happens to turn up on MeTV’s Svengoolie. 

Wanna Laugh? Wanna be creeped out? No need to choose.

Ghostbusters, on the other hand, is a workplace comedy where the workplace happens to be an exterminator business for the dead. Legendary performances by comedic actors at the top of their game, special effects that are astonishing for the time (and the time constraints) in which the movie was made, and a script full of the best movie quotes ever written. My love for the real Ghostbusters knows no bounds.

But if you’re the sort of person who prefers their horror/comedy to slide further to the horror side of the scale, may I recommend Evil Dead 2? Bruce Campbell, a chainsaw, and an incursion of demonic creatures from beyond the grave makes for a gory and glorious time. And it doesn’t even matter if you haven’t seen the (scarier but less funny) original film, because the first 20 minutes is basically a condensed remake of that one. 

ALIENS SERIES

Sandy Brophy wants to know what I think the best movie is in the Aliens series. I assume he means Ridley Scott’s Xenomorphs, because if he just means any movie with an extraterrestrial, the scariest one is obvious: Project ALF.

Your cat is terrified.

But in the Ridley Scott series, we’ve got eight movies to choose from so far: the four films featuring Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, the two Alien Vs. Predator films, and the preboot films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. But if you’re hoping for a lot of fussing and prevaricating over this one friends, I’m sorry to disappoint, but this is an easy answer. It’s the original, by far. 

The tagline even makes a basic truth of physics scary.

To be clear, I haven’t seen all eight of these films. Alien3 was so bad that I just couldn’t bring myself to watch Alien: Resurrection. But with seven out of eight under my belt, I feel confident in saying the original wins the crown because it’s the only one that’s actually intended to be a horror movie. It’s a haunted house movie in space, and it hits all the tropes of that kind of story perfectly while still keeping it in a fully fleshed-out science fiction universe. A large part of what makes it scary was that you didn’t actually get a good look at the alien for most of the movie. Ridley Scott knew that what a person can imagine is far more frightening than what you can put on the screen. When James Cameron signed on for the sequel, Aliens, he wisely realized that it would be impossible to replicate that kind of suspense now that everybody knew what the aliens looked like and how they functioned, so he didn’t even try. He didn’t make it a scary movie, he made it an action movie, and he knocked it out of the park. Some may even make a convincing case for the sequel being a better movie than the original, but that’s not the question today, is it? The question is which is a better horror movie, and after the first one, the rest of the films in this franchise aren’t even competing in the same contest.

NON-XENOMORPH SCI-FI

Not to be outdone by Sandy, Jason Ritterstein asked for my favorite non-xenomorph science fiction horror movie.

Project ALF.

How many times can I get away with this?

But if that’s too scary for you, there are other options. I actually struggled with this one a little, as many of the most memorable sci-fi horror movies also fall into the “Horror/Comedy” category, like Critters, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and Little Shop of Horrors, all of which are worth watching. But if you’re looking for something that’s not trying to be funny, or at least not trying as hard as those other ones, I like Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of The Blob. He takes the premise of the original and updates it nicely to the 80s, although the effects are a little dated. The original is good too. And if neither of those is scary enough for you, get a change of pants and check out Event Horizon, a 1997 film about an expedition to recover a spacecraft that went missing seven years prior, and the absolutely terrifying things found on board. This came out at a time where all I really knew Sam Neill from was Jurassic Park (I would watch In the Mouth of Madness later), and holy gee willikers, it made me see him in a totally different way.

Space is scary as hell, guys. Why do we keep trying to go there?

BEST WORST MOVIE

Amber Foret asked for “the funniest unintentionally comedic horror,” while Seth Pontiff wanted to find out what I thought was “the best worst low budget horror.” I combined these two because I think they’re really asking for the same thing: what’s a terrible horror movie that’s fun to watch? And that’s tough, isn’t it friends? Because there are just SO. MANY. OF. THEM.

Part of me feels a little bad to shine a light on this, because nobody really tries to make a bad movie, but people do it every day. Back when video stores were a thing it was impossible to walk through the horror section without seeing dozens of movies that should never be attempted without the assistance of a current or former occupant of the Satellite of Love and a couple of wisecracking robots. When a horror movie fails, it can fail for so many reasons: a bad story, bad special effects, bad performances, bad scare attempts, bad takes on contemporary issues…when you look at how many things can go wrong, it’s almost a miracle that anybody ever makes a good movie at all. 

But if you’re looking for the perfect storm of terrible horror movies…well, I’m sorry if you’re looking for a revelation here, friends, but there’s no awful movie that’s more fun to watch than Troll 2. A movie that has no trolls in it, that was retroactively retitled to be the sequel to a horror movie nobody remembers, Troll 2 is one of the most bafflingly stupid, inept, and poorly-made movies in human history. It’s glorious. A family goes on vacation, renting a house in a town called Nilbog (oh yeah, Nilbog) and soon find themselves the targets of a group of vegetarian goblins whose plot is to turn humans into plants so they can eat them. You can read that sentence another 17 times if you want, friends, it won’t make any more or less sense than it does now. 

The movie nobody asked for, and yet we can’t live without.

This movie is so legendary that 20 years later the child star of it actually made a very good documentary about the cult following it’s garnered, Best Worst Movie, which reveals many of the reasons for film’s ineptitude. For example, writer/director Claudio Fragasso evidently wrote the script in his native Italian and then translated it, but refused to allow any of the actors to change even a word of their dialogue to make it sound more natural coming out of the mouths of 90s American teenagers. (Actual quote: “I’m the victim of a nocturnal rapture. I have to release my lowest instincts with a woman.” Ladies, if you ever have a date who says he’s a victim of nocturnal rapture, call the cops.) Budget constraints led to the goblins wearing what look like off-the-rack rubber masks that were then shat upon by a horse. The actors weren’t professionals (pretend to be shocked at that), and one of them turned out to be a patient at a local mental institution who got a role and filmed his scenes while on a day trip. The only actor in the movie who seems to be enjoying herself is Deborah Reed, who plays the villain, Creedence Leonore Gielgud (and make damn sure you use the whole name). She spends the film giving a performance so ridiculously over-the-top and hamfisted she makes Elvira look like a wallflower by comparison. This movie is a train wreck caused by a plane crash that happened on top of a Native American burial ground, and it could potentially be used to interrogate political prisoners who have proven surprisingly resistant to waterboarding and bamboo shoots under their fingernails. It’s a masterpiece. 

FOUND FOOTAGE

Our last suggestion for this week comes from reader Erin Petit, who moves up to the front of the queue because she happens to be my wife. (Sleeping with the writer gives you advantages, people.) She wants to know what my favorite found footage horror movie is, because it’s becoming a favorite subgenre of hers.

We seem to be on the downward slope of found footage movies at the moment. For a while there, especially after Paranormal Activity, they were booming…mostly because they’re relatively cheap to make, and there’s nothing a movie executive loves to hear more than “relatively cheap.” In fact, I’m pretty sure that exact language was used to describe them when the WGA was making their demands during the recently-concluded strike. But this boom brought with it a lot of bad movies, and finding the good ones can be rather difficult. 

If I’m gonna pick one, though, I have to go with Adam Green’s Digging Up the Marrow. This may be slightly controversial, as Green himself dislikes calling the film a “found footage” movie, preferring to refer to it as a fake documentary. And he’s right, it’s not “found” the way that most such movies are, where the conceit seems to be that you, the viewer, happened to stumble upon an old VHS tape in a box and you popped it into the machine to see what’s on it. Green’s movie is filmed like a documentary, with the requisite cutaway moments, talking head interviews, and the like…but the best, most effective parts of it use the language of found footage, so I’m going to stick with my answer.

AAAHH!!! Real monsters!

Anyway, in this movie Green plays himself, horror filmmaker Adam Green, approached by a man named William Dekker who is sending him drawings of dozens of monsters…monsters he’s trying to convince Green are real. It’s a great movie with some amazing practical monster effects, and Green and Ray Wise (as Dekker) put forth a fantastic performance. The ending is so creepy and effective that when we first watched it, Erin made me get up from the couch and lock our front door because she said heard a weird noise outside. (Sorry if you didn’t want me to tell that story, sweetheart, but you asked.)

Wow, guys. This is already almost the longest Geek Punditry column of all time, and I haven’t even gotten through half your suggestions! So you know what? NEXT WEEK WILL BE PLAYING FAVORITES PART TWO! If I didn’t get to your suggestion this week, I’ve got them all saved and I’ll tackle more next Friday. And if you didn’t give me a suggestion, there’s still time! Drop it in the comments here or hit me with it on any of the social media platforms you used to find this column. And while you’re at it, tell me your thoughts on the categories I covered THIS week! There’s PLENTY more to talk about this Spooky Season, and want to hear from you!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He did not expect this new column format to be such an abundance of riches, and now it’s going to be nigh-impossible to prevent him from running it into the ground. Way to go, guys.