Tuesday, October 31, 2006

SHOCKING! SCARY! JUST PLAIN WRONG! This. Is. HALLOWEEN!

Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn't you like to see something strange?
Come with us and you will see
This, our town of Halloween
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Pumpkins scream in the dead of night
This is Halloween, everybody make a scene
Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright
It's our town, everybody scream
In this town of Halloween
I am the one hiding under your bed
Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red
I am the one hiding under yours stairs
Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

Greetings, o' ghostly guests. May your day be filled with fearsome frights, strange scares, spine-tingling thrills ... and may you have a hauntingly, horrifyingly Happy Halloween!

Yep, I'm now a long way removed from the days of donning a lame costume, five layers of sweatshirts on my parents' behest, and walking around the streets of Bloomfield in search of candy. But even if I now have to buy my own candy, and even if I'm in 75 degree California weather, it's still Halloween, baby.

But like I said yesterday, tonight I trade the dark gloom and eerie glow of Halloween for the bright lights of the big city - because I'm bringin' the SHOWTIME back to Los Angeles, as me and a veritable wolfpack of blodthirsty b-ballaz head to the hallowed ground of the Staples Center to witness NBA Opening Night - Lakers vs. Suns - THIRD ROW, so we can be LIVE and UP-CLOSE as STEVE NASH does the MONSTER MASH and drives a stake on the hardwood through the dastardly Lakers, as a full moon rises in the night sky of Hollyweird. So good ... it's most definitely SCARY.


So look for us on TNT - tonight, 10:30 pm ET / 7:30 pm PT - if things get crazy I may just have to step onto the court myself and show these "pros" how we things get things done, IBA-style.

- As yet another way to get myself in the Halloween spirit ... I've finally started reading the WALKING DEAD series - a critically acclaimed post-apocalytic Zombie epic by writer Robert Kirkman. So far I've finished Volume 1, and can attest that the series lives up to the hype. While the dialogue can be a bit over the top at times, the genius of Kirkman's work is that he puts character first and horror second, so that when the scares do begin, it's all the more terrifying because the characters are so vividly realized. Anyone looking for a bit of graphic fiction that is a little different should definitely, ahem, sink their teeth into The Walking Dead

- Over on IGN they have a pretty sweet article ranking the all-time top 25 Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segments. A good read but, um, where is 3-D Homer on there? Has anyone seen that movie Tron? No, no, no, no, yes - I mean - no. Check it out: http://tv.ign.com/articles/742/742680p1.html
Mmmm .... forbidden donut

- When it comes to scary TV, I've always had a soft-spot for classic horror-coms like The Munsters and The Addams Family. There's just something about horror and comedy that goes together like peanut butter and chocolate, says I. Mmmm ... Reeses Pieces .... But, um, anyways ... as is well-known to anyone who reads the blog, I am a huge fan of Chris Carter's X-Files and Millenium, and I am also a huge scifi anthology fan, particularly when it comes to in my view, perhaps the greatest TV show of all time, The Twilight Zone. And who can forget kids' classics like It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, all those classic Looney Tunes Halloween shorts ... And, dammit all, who doesn't love the classic Family Matters episode where Steve Urkel dressed up as Superman, but he and Laura got caught as hostages in a bank robbery, and Carl Winslow had to save the day, and Steve felt bad because he wasn't a real hero like Carl ...? Oh man, now THAT is good TV.

Now, since I do consider myself somewhat of a Twilight Zone afficianado (I wrote a 30 page paper on the show as a reflection of post-war America in college), and since the Twilight Zone isn't always known for horror, but more so straight sci-fi, I present to you:

The 5 SCARIEST ever TWILIGHT ZONE episodes:

(and no, I can't list Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - the William Shatner-meets-Gremlin classic, just doesn't do it for me like these other eps)

5. "Twenty Two" - When a woman is hospitilized for fatigue, she has a recurring dream in which she visits the hospital morgue, and a creepy nurse greets her with the chilling invitation - "Room for one more ...". The dream eventually proves to foreshadow a real-life plane crash. Man, that woman saying "Room for one more" gets me every time. This ep is one of the grandfathers of all "dream becomes reality" type horror

4. "To Serve Man" - If you don't know the secret of this classic episode, let's just say that those 7 ft tall aliens are not exactly as friendly as they seem ... While this ep has a somewhat silly conceit behind its big twist ending, you can't deny how classic that final revelation is. I love it

3. "Night Call" - An elderly woman keeps receiving strange, ghostly phone calls, seemingly from her dead husband. You know, most attempts at making technology seem scary come off as hokey in my book -- but this look at otherworldly phone calls is genuinely creepy. To add to its eerie factor, it was preempted from its original airdate by of all things, the Kennedy assasination
2. "The Invaders" - With this classic bit of opening Rod Serling narration, this truly trippy episode begins:

"This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who's been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror which is even now coming at her from the Twilight Zone

This almost wordless, creepy tale has a classic Twilight Zone twist ending, but the real meat of it is how it so elegantly plays on our fears of the small, the insect, the alien, the intruder ... just awesome.

1. "The Howling Man" - I love this episode, and it still creeps me out to this day. A stranded traveler finds his way into a strange monastary, where a group of creepy-looking monks provide him shelter and rest, with one stipulation -- no matter what the man hears, no matter what happens, do NOT free the man who is being kept prisoner by the monks. As the nights go on, the howls and cries of the prisoner haunt the guest, and when the two talk, the prisoner is utterly convincing in his conviction that he has been wrongly imprisoned. Of course, he finally convinces the man that he should be freed, but little does the man know what evil he will unleash -- because, kept in that cell, by those monks in their remote castle, was the Devil himself! Great, great, great stuff

QUICK TV STUFF:

- Last night's PRISON BREAK, again, did a pretty good job of kicking ass. While over the top as usual, the intensity in many of the scenes was great, and the interaction between Scofield and W. Fichtner's character was awesome, even if Michael did look pretty goofy the entire ep in those horn-rimmed glasses. The one weak link here were the Burrows father and son fugitive team, as, man, there was some clunk dialogue between the two of them that was very unintentionally funny. "How long have you known about girls?" Haha, come on, that was just cringe-worthy. Otherwise, good stuff

My Grade: B+

- Didn't watch HEROES yet, and to be honest, even though I liked last week's ep, I still am not really into the show. It's going to have to REALLY kick things into overdrive if it wants to stay on my radar once 24 comes back in a few months

- Will be taping GILMORE and VERONICA MARS tonight - look forward to checking out the Halloween-themed ep of VM

AND FINALLY ...

Well, it looks like we've reached the end of the road. Only eat wrapped candy. Don't cavort with transdimensional transsexual vampires. Walk softly and carry a big stake. Load up your squirt gun with holy water or else face the wrath of an undead Kiefer Sutherland. Beware of werewolves, therewolves, and overly large ladies of the night dressed as nauseatingly naughty nurses. Watch out for ghouls, ghosts, and Mark Foley (if you happen to be a 16 year old congressional page). Sayonara, so long, and I bid you .. . farewell


Happy Halloween!

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