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. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #4

    I’m sticking with the architectural theme from yesterday’s post. So, let's see what's on the Holiday Horror shelf!

    The year is 1959, you are a teenager, and you’ve come with a few friends to see the new Vincent Price movie, House on Haunted Hill. The lights have been dimmed for the opening reels, and now the theater is completely dark for the main feature. The screen is absolutely black. Silently, in white letters, this appears in the bottom left corner:

Allied Artists

Picture Corporation

Presents

    Then the screen fades to black again and you expect the film’s title to appear. But it doesn’t. For eight seconds the theater is silent and pitch black. Then, through the huge theatrical sound system, you are startled by a woman’s ear-piercing scream! It’s followed by moans, another scream, maniacal laughter, creaking doors, chains rattling, and heavy footsteps. And all of this without a speck of light to be seen. 

    Then, after 30 seconds of this booming, horror soundscape, the disembodied head of Elisha Cook comes flying at you from the foreground to warn that, “The ghosts are moving tonight. Restless. Hungry…”

    It might seem tame today, but in 1959 that was a pretty effective way to scare the crap out of an audience. 

    That opening was so popular that the movie's "audio jump scare" started the “spooky sound effect records” craze. You can still buy similar sound effect/ Halloween music CDs today.

    40 years later, the remake of House on Haunted Hill did an admirable job of opening their film with a gut punch, too. That and the first scene with Geoffrey Rush and Lisa Loeb (!) in an elevator set the tone for the movie: This is going to be a wild and dark ride, and you can’t trust everything that you see. I also like Chris Kattan’s unhinged performance. I believe he was encouraged to go off script. 

    For me, the colorized version of the original is meh. I prefer the film in black and white. I bought this DVD for MST3K's Mike Nelson's commentary and for his signature.

    Return to House on Haunted Hill is a direct-to-video release from 2007. According to IMDB trivia, "The film was designed for use with the Navigational Cinema technology which allows the viewer to choose between two ways the story can go at certain times within the film, ultimately featuring 96 different story possibilities. The feature is only present on the Blu-ray Disc version of the film." It's too bad I only found the DVD at Goodwill. I'll keep looking.

    Waxwork Records released the soundtrack to House on Haunted Hill in 2024. It’s a combination of dialogue, score, and movie effects. The art work is really cool. At least I think it is. I haven’t broke the seal on this one, yet. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #3

 It’s the 2nd day of October, the rain finally stopped, and I get to mow… let’s see what on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    From left to right:

    From the Cauldron Films’ website: "Enter the Houses of Doom… a 4 film horror series that was made for Italian Italian television in 1989, but things didn’t quite turn out “safe for TV” when producers enlisted cinematic madmen Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi to direct! Far too gory and violent for television and essentially shelved until home video many years later…” I bought this set on preorder, and it came with that keychain in the middle. of the shelf I still haven’t found a good use for it.

    The House on the Edge of the Park was one in a set of three "Psycho Killer" DVDs, and that’s the only reason I own it. Not recommended. 

    House by the Cemetery is also by Lucio Fulci and was released in 1981. When the DVD first came out I found a copy at Best Buy that was priced $0.00. I pointed this out a sales clerk who was walking by. He took the DVD and said, “I’ll be right back.” He returned ten minutes later with a slim camera case. He handed it to me and said, “I can’t sell you a free DVD, but my manager said you can have this instead.” I tried to explain that I only wanted to know what the real price was, but he just walked away leaving me holding the bag. Weird. I left the camera case on a checkout counter when I left the left the store. 

    House of Exorcism (1975) is what you get when you take a vastly superior film by Mario Bava called Lisa and the Devil (1973), remove 35 scenes, and add a bunch of pea soup vomit to capitalize on the success of The Exorcist in the US. It bombed. Still, I’d like to meet the person who donated this to Goodwill. Also, you can see House of Exorcism featured on a theater marquee in Wood Allen’s Annie Hall. 

    1976’s The House with the Laughing Windows is like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like…

    I like how you can see the model on the FireHouse LP peeking between the movies like she’s the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart.” I got this LP in a five record mystery bundle from Real Gone Music. I’m a sucker for grab bags. “Love of Lifetime” is the band's biggest hit from this album, but I’ll going with “Home is Where the Heart Is” for today’s post. It mostly fits the theme.

    Today’s theme: Italian architecture. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #2

     I like how Google’s AI describes the plot of Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (1981),"The narrative shuns traditional linear logic, opting instead for a fever-dream sequence of graphic, nightmarish set pieces (including acid attacks, blind spectral figures, and a famous, brutal tarantula attack).”

    Fulci was nicknamed the Godfather of Gore, and this movie was retitled 7 Doors of Death, given a new soundtrack, and was cut by about five minutes in order to get this Italian film into the American market with an "R" rating.

    From left to right: 

    Grindhouse Releasing’s uncut version of The Beyond on Blu-ray with the original soundtrack on CD.

    Also from Grindhouse, this is the alternate soundtrack for 7 Doors of Death on a blood-red LP. 

    I bought 7 Doors of Death on DVD in 2000 when it was released by Diamond Entertainment. There was a lot of buzz about this DVD on the internet forums because it was a cheap alternative to the much more expensive releases of The Beyond. There were also rumors that the DVD was actually the uncut version of that movie. 

    It wasn’t.

    I finally got the uncut version of The Beyond on DVD when our local Borders bookstore (remember them?) had a huge sale on their Anchor Bay DVD sets. I got this Beyond tin, but I still regret not picking up the wooden box release of The Wicker Man. 

    Back then I sold my Diamond DVD to Half Price Books. I think they might have given me two bucks for it. I paid about that at Goodwill to get this DVD back. When I first spotted 7 Doors of Death on the shelf, I embarrassed myself by saying out loud, “Hey! I know you!” 

    If I think an image on physical media cover might be a bit much, then I'll cover it up with my "The Frightened Mogwai" trading card. 

    Fun Fact: “Seven Doors Hotel” was the debut single by the Swedish rock band, Europe (remember them? “It’s the final count downnnnnnn”). The song was written by the lead singer, and the lyrics were inspired by The Beyond. The song was a top ten hit in Japan in 1983.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #1

    It's FINALLY October! Yay!

    I had fun last year at this time, so let's play another round of "What's on the Holiday Horror Shelf?"

    1996’s Scream was a huge horror hit with my high school journalism students. It was pretty big news when it was announced that a sequel was being filmed. While we were waiting for that movie, someone (me) found a website the next year advertising a fan-made sequel called Scream Louder. I ordered a VHS copy with the intention of having a student write a movie review for our school paper. I don’t remember much about Scream Louder except the whole class laughed when we watched a clip of the killer trying and failing to jump out of a hot tub and attack someone. The actor hadn’t planned on their wet costume being so heavy and slippery.

I believe this was considered a "lost film" for a while, but someone (not me) recently uploaded the movie to YouTube.

The students had a lot of fun with Scream Louder, so the next year (1998) I ordered Writer’s Block from the same film makers’ website. I have since learned that there are no guarantees in education. A lesson that works with one class might fall its face the next year when you have different kids. That was the case with Writer’s Block. Not one student had any interest in watching the movie. Maybe it was the parent permission form that had to be signed before they could watch an “R” rated film. 

    I have seen references to Scream Louder online over the years, but not so much for Writer’s Block. I suppose it’s more of a "forgotten film" rather than a “lost" one. 

    It's cool that they included a supplements tape.

    I hope your October goes well, and you don’t have to be scared to walk by your hot tub at night anymore. That guy's not getting out there anytime soon.

I'm with the Band, but I Watch Football, too.

        October is almost here, but I'm going to post something non-horror related real quick. Football season is a holiday season for a lot of people, so I think this fits on the shelf.

    

    When Varsity Blues came out in 1999, a lot of my high school students were making fun of James Van Der Beek's bad southern accent, "I don't want your life!".  I didn't know why they seemed so offended. He wasn't messing up our Iowan accent. 

    Yeah, there's a lot of high school movie clichés in this film, but it's an interesting sports film that flips the script to have the antagonist be the school's own football coach. Jon Voight does an exceptional job of being dislikable, despite all the people on the commentary saying how nice he was in real life.

    Also, the scripted football scenes are great. AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" got a new life in sport montages after the football actors, real life high school and college players, showed the director how they used the song to get pumped up for their own games. 

    I like this film so much I bought a West Canaan Coyotes jersey from eBay. It doesn't hurt that it's in UHS's colors.

    Like I said, we're with the band at every home football game. Daphne and I volunteer to be on the pit crew. I helped drag out and raise up that drum major podium on the right in the foreground. 

    Someone seems to think we did an okay job.

    Okay, one horror related thing (can't help myself). "In Creature, set in the seemingly idyllic corporate town of Silverlake, Colorado, the 1989 book centers on a high school football team that never loses and a sinister high-tech sports clinic." 

    In a way, this really does relate to Varsity Blues. Just saying.

This Week's Popcorn Movie #2

  

  Today in Des Moines the high is 61 degrees, the sky is overcast, and it’s been raining for over week, So, it doesn’t really feel like the last day of summer, but it is. Fall officially begins at 7:05 tonight. Yay! I love autumn. 

    Late September, October, and early November really is my favorite time of the year. The weather is in my sweet-spot. It’s not hot and humid, and it’s not cold and snowy. Jeans, a jacket or a heavy sweater is an outfit that I want to wear. I can still work on projects in the garage, and I can still easily make dinner on the grill.

    I start the charcoal around 5:15 p.m. when I grill in the summer. It takes about 20 minutes to get the coals ready, and the grilling time is normally another 20 minutes. I can usually get the food on the table by 6 p.m. That’s the goal anyway. 

    That process works until daylight savings time ends on Nov. 1st. I don’t know how many times I’ve have gotten an urge to grill in November, but I have forgotten about the clock falling back. By 5:50, I’ll be standing in total darkness struggling to read my meat thermometer. I hate that. 

    That brings me to this week’s Arrow Video Screener Blu-ray.

        Grilling in the dark is one thing. Being eaten in the dark is something else.

    

    The Blu-ray (and its boatload of extras that I probably won’t get through) is going into the Riddick Trilogy case. Pitch Black is going back to Goodwill, but with an upgraded DVD from the trilogy set. Could be a nice surprise for somebody.

    I think it’s funny how the 1999 DVD release of Grad Tour: Disaster in Time tried to capitalize on the artwork from Pitch Black. The two movies aren’t even close to being similar. Grand Tour got a proper Blu-ray release (and cover) in 2023. The new artwork for the slipcover is okay, but it kinda looks like Jeff Daniels is farting while he runs through time to save his family.