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 #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.

MST3K ’26: Group Photo

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 original run on TV ran from 1988 to 1999 with a total of ten seasons. There’s been three revival seasons since then, but now, 27 years later, the original crew from 1999 is doing more episodes for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments thanks to crowd-funding. Yay! 

Let’s see what’s on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    I found the 1996’s Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie DVD at Goodwill last weekend. This one’s an anamorphic upgrade from my old DVD, and it’s what got me thinking about the old crew from the Satellite of Love again. 

I think the back of the LaserDisc is more interesting than the front, so I flipped it around for this pic. The first DVD of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie went out of print pretty quickly, and it was really expensive and hard to find for a while. The LD’s widescreen presentation was upgrade from the VHS tapes’ full frame presentation. 

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide also came out in 1996. I had a friend who had a copy of this book, but his was autographed by the main crew. I think he pointed that out to me every time I visited him. I nodded my head, told him it was cool for 5th time, and was secretly green with jealous rage (Hot Rod).

I knew I had an old folder of MST3K stuff, but I was thinking it was just a beat up school folder.

     I had to smile when I found this wedged between some car magazines in a box on a shelf. Luckily, the magazines kept the folder in good shape. I doubt I have opened this up since the 90’s. Let’s look inside without any commentary. 

I bought the stuff in the folder and this pin from the catalog portion of the Satellite News newsletter. I never wore the pin, even I wasn’t that nerdy, but thought the pin was cool. Years later I bought the light switch cover from a seller on Etsy. It was a decoupage project that didn’t look very good when it arrived. Daphne upgraded it with some clear varnish. 

Speaking of art projects, here’s how to make Tom Servo’s puppet head: 1) Go back in time to go to the mall to buy a candy dispenser from the Mr. Bulky candy store (remember them?) 2) Tape off and spray paint the candy chute silver.  3)Paint the floor of the candy chute black with a small paint brush.  4) Proudly display Tom in your classroom for the next 25 years even if none of the modern students have a clue who he is. At least that’s what I did.

My favorite episode of MST3K is Mitchell. It was the first episode I had seen (I hadn’t even heard of MST3K before), and I watched it at a friend’s house with three other like-minded teachers. We each had a couple of beers and laughed out loud the entire time. I can’t think of a better way to be introduced to the show. 

    I'm glad to see the MST3K gang is back in town.

Labor Day 2026: Group Photo

    Happy Labor Day! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    In 1974's made-for-TV movie Killdozer, six men on an island are hunted down by a bulldozer that has been possessed by an alien. I know, I know... but I love 70's made-for-TV movies.

    In 2011's The Innkeepers, Claire and Luke work the Yankee Pedlar Inn's final night of business. The two leads have real chemistry, and they're fun to watch, but it still doesn't end well for them. 

    In 2001's Route 666, Lou Diamond Phillips deals with road construction zombies. SPOILER ALERT: His zombie dad comes to his rescue. I like that.

    Stephen King wrote Road Work in 1981 under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. The plot deals with a grieving dad whose home and workplace are threatened by an interstate highway extension.

    I worked road construction as a way to pay for college in the late 80's. For one week all I had to do was sit at the end of a road in town and tell drivers to to turn around because they couldn't drive across the the soft, newly poured asphalt. I killed time by reading the paperback volumes of Clive Barker's Books of Blood. I still remember one old woman getting freaked out when she read the title of the book in my hand, Nice. 

    Men at Work's LP Business as Usual came out in the US in 1982. At the time I loved "Who Can it Be Now?,"  but now I gravitate towards "Be Good Johnny". My favorite Men at Work cover song is Lazlo Bane's version of "Overkill." About two thirds through the song Colin Hay comes in and just kills it. 

    Don't work too hard this weekend!

In Memoriams

     Let’s check the horror shelf in memory of Tim Curry.

    I found Mr. Curry’s LP, Read my Lips (1978), in a thrift store in Victoria, Canada. I think the autograph looks legit. I almost didn’t buy the record because I didn’t want to worry about how to get it home...

    But then I remembered he portrayed Pennywise in 1990’s TV miniseries It. Talk about nightmare fuel. 

    People paid to see Tom Cruise in 1985’s Legend, but they went home talking about Tim Curry’s Darkness (and his horns). Legend, indeed.

    Speaking of horns, Curry voiced the Goblin King in Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King in 2008, and that might be the only Scooby-Doo movie that scared Char. 

    Curry also voiced the Mastermind in the Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights video game in 2002.

    Speaking of Scooby-Doo, I'm displaying this poster in honor of Curry’s performance as Ben Ravencroft in Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost (1999). This poster hung in Charlotte’s room for a couple of years.

    Tim, thanks for the music, the laughs, and the frights.

    I don’t have anything scary to refer to when I write about the loss of Dolly Parton, but I do have a cherished memory. It is also proof that Parton’s music has the ability to reach anyone at any age.

    I posted this in 2017 when Charlotte was six years old:

"Char discovered this Dolly Parton song while watching World of Dance. 

Even her cats like it!"

    I think Char replayed that YouTube video over and over for about 40 minutes, and I couldn't stop smiling the whole time. 

    

    Dolly, thanks for the music, the laughs and the love.

Halloween is Just Around the Corner!

    Our local Spirit store opened its doors last Saturday.

    Our local hardware store rolled out their Halloween decorations.

    And our local grocery store is stocked the shelves with Halloween candy. 

    I even bought a couple of Halloween candy tins that I emptied and am now using as refrigerator magnets.

    Yay! x 3!

    

    I really enjoy this time slot in the calendar. Fall, my favorite season, is almost here, and the stores aren't focused on Christmas, yet. I have a brief time to walk around and enjoy a preview of October and not just December. 

    So, let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    Okay, let me explain. DVDs were pretty expensive in the late 90s and early 2000s. The average price of a new release was around $24.90. That's $53.85 in today's money. Going to Best Buy to look at DVDs back then was luxury shopping for a teacher on one income... I couldn't afford anything there.

But, BUT!, but, I could afford to shop at Kmart or Walmart. AND! They sold cult and horror movies on budget DVDs from a company called GoodTimes Entertainment. 

    I found both Halloween II, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch at the Urbandale Kmart (that has now been demolished). I was so excited. They only cost 6 bucks each... SOLD!

     I grew up seeing this message on VHS rental tapes and movies airing on cable. So, watching a movie I loved in "WIDESCREEN" was incredible.

    None of this information meant anything to me decades ago. I didn't know "non-anamorphic" was a thing. These DVDs looked great on my 27 inch tube TV, and I couldn't have been happier. (BTW, no one called them CRTs, and no one could have predicted they would become collectible.)

    I was disappointed when I played my old GoodTimes DVDs on my new HD TV years later. I was used to the black stripes above and below the film, but the smaller image, imprisoned by black bars, threw me off. I could "zoom" in the image, but that made the film look even more pixelated. 

    I donated my GoodTimes DVDs when I upgraded to DVDs that were "Enhanced for Widescreen TVs" or in "16:9 Widescreen." I was totally pumped. The new movies looked so good!

    But then something weird happened. I  began to miss my old Halloween GoodTimes (don't we all?) when I started the Holiday Horror Shelf displays. That prompted a thrift store search that has proven to be more difficult than I thought. These budget DVDs are now 25 years old, and I guess most have probably been tossed away. 

    

    So, I was surprised to find H-III at a local Goodwill last week. The H-III DVD is in perfect shape, and I upgraded the case with a nicer one from a DVD that I bought from our local library for a buck. 

    Rather than hoping lightning would strike twice, I went ahead and bought H-II from a seller on eBay. That DVD arrived today. Its case didn't need a library upgrade.

    The total price of both DVDs is less than the original $12 that I spent back in 2001, and I'm totally pumped. They look so good next to each other with their "WIDESCREEN" banners. It was also satisfying to slide them next to their anamorphic Halloween brethren on the media shelf.

    

    I don't care if people think nostalgia for inferior DVDs is strange. I have always told my students, and my daughter, to not be embarrassed by what they like, "What you collect is a reflection of who you are and how you represent yourself. It doesn't matter how many people don't agree with your style. Those people aren't coming over to your place to hang out. But your friends are coming over, and they like you no matter what is in your room."

    I like how the GoodTimes VHS logo is dunked into electrified waters and emerges with a steaming new DVD logo... so modern.

    PS. I also enjoy that a '66 Dodge Sportsman Van was used for a crash scene in Halloween II. 

     I had a '66 Sportsman that I drove to college in 1987. Here we are together. I had a lot of fun in that van. Glad I didn't crash it.