Halloween '26: Group Photo #14

    Today’s shelf is full of "Found Footage” horror. So, all of these were presented as if they were the real deal (think Blair Witch). 

2023’s Late Night with the Devil is set on Halloween night in 1977. According to IMDB, the filmmaker's inspiration for the set design, “… was a lot of those game shows and talk shows from that period, but we were fortunate enough to have a production designer who worked in that era on local TV here... It was all too easy for him I think to come up with that design. And that palette of browns and oranges and beige. It all felt very of the time, and we really embraced that.” I was in 3rd grade in 1977, and sometimes on family trips we would stay in a hotel. After the kids' bedtime, our folks would watch "The Tonight Show" starring Johnny Carson. I remember  pretending to sleep while listening to the jokes and trying to figure out what they meant. If I did catch a peek of the TV, the set would have looked a lot like Late Night with the Devil. 

2013’s WNUF Halloween Special is set on October 31st, 1987. The movie is aiming at recreating the shot-on-VHS look of a local, UHF news program. 2022’s sequel Out There Halloween Mega Tape is set on a Halloween night in the 1990’s. This time the filmmakers wanted to reproduce the feel of a tabloid talk show like the programs that Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer hosted.

1992’s Ghostwatch aired on the BBC on the actual Halloween night of that year. The program was presented as a “live” news investigation into “Britain’s most haunted house.” Many of the actors were real, trusted, television personalities who were using scripted lines but acting as theirselves. Some parents let their kids watch this adult program because one member of the cast was a host on a Saturday morning children’s show. The presentation was very believable, and so many people thought the actors were in real, supernatural danger. There was such a controversy that the program hasn’t aired on any UK-based television channel ever again. It took ten years for the BFI DVD to be released.

Inspired by all the clamor, the documentary Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtain was also released ten years later, "It explores the creation, broadcast, and national reaction to the infamous Halloween hoax special.” This 2022 Blu-ray contains athenew 30th anniversary documentary Do You Believe in Ghosts?. 

    Today's musical choice is the 2025 Night Owls soundtrack. That's a great name for a fictional late night talk show. Here's the jazzy outro on YouTube.

    I went with the picture disc "Hypnowheel" variant. It ties into the plot and looks sweet.

Halloween '26: Group Photo # 13

    Today's song, "Graveyard Tramp", comes from the Bad Checks' 1985 album of the same name. I bought this LP blind last year at a record show. Turns out this punkabilly/garage rock band from Durham, NC toured with The Replacements. Color me impressed. 

    1971's The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave is an Italian giallo. In Wesley Stenzel’s article, "The 50 best thriller movies of all time, ranked," he describes a giallo as, "... a suspense subgenre that usually blends elements of slashers, murder mysteries, and psychological horror, resulting in dark, pulpy thrillers that are often more explicit than comparable American films from the same era." Well said.

   The DVD for 2006's The Gravedancers (filmed in the Bad Checks' stomping ground of North Carolina) features a fun commentary with Director Mike Mendez and his buddy Composer Joseph Bishara where they play a drinking game every time they see a lit lamp in the film.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #12

    Okay, I'll admit it. Of all the "of the ...Dead" items on this shelf, I'm most proud that I kept the packaging for The Pinball of the Dead for the Game Boy Advance (2002).

    What a great title.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #11

    From left to right: 

  Silent Hill on PS1, Silent Hill DVD,  Silent Hill 2 on PS2, Resident Evil DVD, Resident Evil 2 on PS1

    Clicking on the game's title takes you to the Video Game Critic's review. I do believe all of these games came from Goodwill after the launch of XBox 360 on November 22, 2005. Too bad they're all "Greatest Hits" editions, but you get what you get when you thrift.

   You can still find PS2 and Xbox 360 games at thrift stores. I think the employees often mistake them for DVDs, and they are marked as such on the price tag. Check the media shelf.

    Despite the competition and the auction sites, don't give up on thrift if you want to try it. You can still get lucky. I found this last week:

    The LP is in decent shape. It isn't warped, and you can only hear the light surface noise between the tracks. Fun stuff is still out there. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #10

The Sega Genesis was released on January 9, 1989 for $189.99 ($525.54 in today’s money).

The Sega CD add-on for the Genesis out on October 15, 1992 for  $299 ($706.34 today)

The Sega Saturn was launched on May 11, 1995 for $400 ($880.37 today).  

I couldn’t afford any of these consoles at the time.

    By 1996, Sony's Playstation and the Nintendo 64 had hit the market, and the Sega consoles were all but forgotten. Retro gaming wasn’t a thing in the 90’s when I first started teaching. Old game consoles weren’t cool, they were just, well, old. People just got rid of them and moved on to the next new thing.

    Thrift stores weren’t cool, either. I would’ve been openly mocked by my high school students if I had admitted to them that I had bought something second-hand. Trust me on this. I know. 

    So, I thrifted every Saturday morning when I was least likely to be spotted going in or coming out of a Goodwill or similar store. Back then, used Sega products were all over the shelves. Whole systems were $4.99, loose cartridges were 25 cents, and long box games like these were $.79. But, like I said, retro games weren’t considered cool, so I certainly didn’t show them to people. I kept them in a box in my closet. Times change.

    I’m not really comfortable with describing video games, so I’m going to let the Video Game Critic described these for you. Just click on the title, and you should be taken to his review.

D   Mr. Bones   Bram Stoker’s Dracula

    It didn’t take too long before Sony’s Playstation and Playstation 2 games and consoles were next to be donated, and I’ll write about that soon.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #9

  Tonight, from 5-8pm, is the Homecoming Street Party at Urbandale High School. There will be games, inflatables, a duck pond, a DJ, and several food trucks in school’s parking lot. The parade starts at 6pm, and Char will be marching with the band along with the floats and the flags. Should be fun for everyone.

Unless the clowns show up...

Halloween '26: Group Photo #8

     Today there are quite a few parties on the Holiday Horror Shelf. Let's check 'em out.

When Glenn Erickson (The DVD Savant) reviewed the Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular DVD he wrote, "This eclectic bag of oddities is a Halloween-themed grouping of scores of strange bits of film... everything with a ghost or haunted house or spook show pedigree ... plus two feature films thrown in for good measure!” Basically, this whole DVD from 2001 is an Easter egg hunt. The main menu is just a long haunted landscape that you have to explore with your remote.

    The filmmakers of 2007’s Murder Party, according to the trivia section on IMDB, couldn’t find investors, so the actors also had to be the crew, and they had to pay for everything themselves. Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier went on to write and direct Green Room in 2015 starring Anton Yelchin and a very evil Patrick Stewart. 

The DVD gets bonus points for including instructions on how to make a cardboard knight costume and a loaf of pumpkin bread. 

2000’s Psycho Beach Party is a 50’s psychodrama, a 60’s beach movie, and a 70s slasher film all rolled into one. The movie is based on an off-Broadway play with the same title.

!986’s Killer Party starts off as a horror movie. Then it becomes a horror movie within a movie. Then it becomes a horror movie within a heavy metal music video. Then it becomes a horror movie within a music video within a horror movie…. all in within the first nine minutes. Like Psycho Beach Party, this isn’t a film that takes itself too seriously. Also like Psycho Beach Party, it’s quite a mix. The case’s description says, “Killer Party is the stuff of legends, a one-of-a-kind slasher-horror-musical-sex-comedy of terrors!"

Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party is a 1969 detective novel featuring Hercule Poirot. The 2023 film, A Haunting in Venice, is loosely based on the book. For years the librarians at UHS decorated for Halloween with the same  old “spooky books.” It became a bit of a tradition for me to walk into their space and see Hallowe’en Party beaming from a display shelf during the first week of October. When we hired a new media specialist, she cleaned house and put all the old decoration books out for recycling. Luckily, I was able to rescue Hallowe’en Party from that fate. Now she beams from a shelf in our home. 

Today’s music choice is a slice of new wave pop from 1985. I’m going with the title track from Oingo Boingo’s "Dead Man’s Party." 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #7

    When October comes, the first thing I do to set the mood is to play these two Halloween mix CDs. 

    Now That’s What I Call Halloween has 18 “standard” Halloween songs that are great, but a bit predictable. The songs on Halloween Hootenanny were chosen by Rob Zombie, and he did the artwork as well. The music is a fun mix of rock and roll, psychobilly, and horror rock. That might sound serious, but it’s all good-natured fun. I like how Zacherle (a television horror movie host from the 50s and 60s) opens and closes the show.  

    This started me thinking about creepy songs that don’t usually make it onto party CDs. I’m sure there are many others, but I found these three in my collection.

    Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby” can be interpreted as the story of a teenager who is perceived to be mentally ill. She plays her radio all day, and she has no friends except the imaginary ones she dances with in her room. One night a local boy, who has been watching her through her window, enters her room when her parents are gone. He intends to assault her, but he becomes disoriented when she turns up the volume on her radio. He is lifted off his feet. As she turns the radio down, the boy begins to shrink until he is absorbed into the radio where he is trapped forever. He is never seen again, except by Angie who makes him come out with the music each night so he can entertain her. Its good to have a friend... The song reached number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at the end of 1974. 

    PJ Harvey’s "Down by the Water" can be interpreted as the story of a young mother who drowns her illegitimate child in a river. When she returns to the scene of the crime, it breaks her mind and all she can repeat is “Little fish, big fish swiming in the water. Come back here man, give me my daughter.’ She whisper/sings this nine times for the outro.This song peaked at number 2 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1995.

    I found Elvis Costello’s live version of Leon Payne’s murder ballad, Psycho, on this music sampler. Like PJ Harvey’s song, this is sung from the murderer’s perspective. By the end of the song he has killed his ex and her new guy, his brother, his brother’s puppy, a little girl he met at the park, and presumably his mother, “You think I’m psycho don't you mamma? Momma why don't you get up?”.Makes me afraid for the crying baby in the first verse. 

    Okay, yeah, these are a little dark. I think I’ll go out and get some sun.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #6

     Since yesterday’s Pet Sematary is the real deal in terms of serving up the chills, let’s go the other way today. 

    None of these mummies are scary. I’d argue that 1959’s The Mummy is actually boring. Brendan’s Fraser’s Mummy films are fun PG-13 action adventures. The same can be said about Tom Cruise’s film, but I don't know about the fun. My favorite mummies are in the funk band Here Comes the Mummies. 

    The only thing scary about these mummies is if they came to your town, and you missed their show.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #5

    Pet Sematary is the scariest book I have ever read. Full stop. I was in high school when I finished it very late at night, and I was terrified at the thought that Gage was lurking underneath my bed.

    It doesn't get more Halloween than that. 

    The Pet Sematary movies are fine. I like the original the most. I think I'll watch the remake tonight in the basement while Daphne and her sister watch something British upstairs. It's their weekly ritual. 

    Bloodlines is a prequel. Bloodlines was part of a used, two-pack DVD set, and I wanted a newer version of the original DVD (the new one has a commentary), so now I own Bloodlines, too.

    I found the Ramones Maxi-Single locally, which was fun. The vinyl soundtrack arrived via Discogs.

    I bought this worn, book club edition of Pet Sematary for a buck last spring. I like how its real wear and tear matches the faux deterioration on the DVD's artwork.

    

    FYI: It's hard to type "Sematary" with autocorrect messing it up all the time.