Halloween '26: Group Photo # 17

    When it comes to horror/comedy, 1981's An American Werewolf in London is a masterclass in both.

  "A naked American man stole my balloons." is one of the best lines of dialogue in cinema.

    Obligatory inclusion of Warren Zevon's album, Excitable Boy, on CD. It contains his only top 40 hit "Werewolves in London". Zevon wrote it in 15 minutes with some friends. I plan to use this album again in another group photo.

    "Will the Wolf Survive?" is a song from 1984 by Los Lobos. In literal terms, in regards to the movie, no, he can't. 

    

    The DVD's insert sports a really popular image for the film.

    I like how the Chicago band, Local H, paid homage to the that picture on one of their Pack up the Cats concert posters. This hangs in my basement. It looks better in person.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #16

  1997’s Mimic was directed by Guillermo del Toro. I was surprised to learn that. I thought the movie was okay when I first saw Mimic back in the day. It's certainly nothing like his other productions that came later. Turns out Miramax had really messed with the final edit, like adding all kinds of secondary unit scenes, and the end result was disowned by the director. Fifteen years later del Toro used the original footage to reassemble the film into something close to what he had envisioned. This is that version: Mimic “The Director’s Cut” on Blu-ray. 

Mimic 2 came out in 2001, and Mimic (3): Sentinel was released in 2003. Both films were direct-to-video productions. Of the two, and neither is great, I think #3 is more interesting. That can happen with B-movie trilogies. The second film tries to be more of the the same, but by the third one the filmmakers feel like they can throw out the rulebook. #3 is basically Rear Window but with giant cockroaches. AND #3 stars Lance Henriksen. AND he’s awesome.

The soundtrack for Mimic was released on Record Store Day in 2022. The LP’s fold-out jacket opens to reveal a giant Judas Breed insect hiding inside. The vinyl is a dirty, dark green, of course.

One of the unintended consequences of organizing these group photos is that it gives me the chance to make some space on my shelves. I’m looking at the DVDs of Mimic 2 and 3 and thinking, Yeah, you were fun to find, but it is time to let the next person have that fun. Into the donation box you go.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #15

Most people had tube TVs (CRTs) in the early days of DVDs. Director Stanley Kubrick didn’t like the way his widescreen movies looked on the 4:3 screen. He thought the black bars on the top and the bottom of the screen were distracting and in widescreen the movie looked too small. His solution was to release his later films on DVD in an open matte aspect to fill the screen. Technically, you were getting more movie because you could see everything the camera filmed, but you wouldn’t get the intended 1.85:1 composition. Ironically, the film has black bars on either side of the screen on today’s TVs.

These DVDs came with a disclaimer on the back cover. It almost reads like an apology, “We know... We know... It's not our fault."

As you’s expect, the Blu-ray corrected this 

It’s well-known that Stephen King hated Kubrick’s film interpretation of The Shining. King tried to correct course with the 1997 TV mini series that he wrote and produced. This version of The Shining closely aligns with his book. I found this DVD at Goodwill last Monday. I bought it to hear the feature-length commentary by King and the crew.

The novel, Doctor Sleep, is the sequel Stephen King wore for his book, The Shining. The screenplay for Doctor Sleep is the sequel King wrote for both the original book and the original movie. For example, The Overlook Hotel burns down at the end of the novel and the miniseries. At the end of the original movie, the Overlook is live and well and evil. King had to admit that more people would be aware of the film than his miniseries, so some of Kubrick’s ideas like the Overlook made it to Doctor Sleep as well. I bet Stephen grumbled about that a bit.

Steven Spielberg made some great changes when he adapted Ernest Clines’s book, Ready Player One, to the big screen. The VR car race through a recreation of New York City is probably way more exciting than watching a guy and a knight in armor playing Joust on an arcade machine. Also, with no disrespect to 1983’s film War Games, having the players navigate a game level designed inside The Shining was amazing! Daphne and I went to see this movie in the theater, and when we got that part I exclaimed, “They’re going into The Overlook!” The people around us just nodded and smiled in agreement. No one scowled at my small outburst.

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."