Halloween '26: Group Photo #29

    I didn’t know I had purchased Tubular Bells when I bought a used record from Goodwill. The LP was hiding inside the other record’s sleeve. That’s kind of creepy when you consider that Mike Oldfield's piano motif was used as the opening and closing theme to 1973’s The Exorcist, a movie about a little girl who also has something hiding inside. 

    1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic is in the top ten of movie dumpster fires. But how many horror movie sequels get a full documentary 48 years later that gets rave reviews? (See Boorman and the Devil.)

    I believe The Exorcist III contains one of the most effective jump-scares of all time. While watching the scene at first you feel like something's going to happen, and when something does happen, you think Oh. Okay, that was it...     And then the movie drops the hammer. 

    I was in college when The Exorcist III came out. I remember talking about it with my friend Jim. He said, “Money, I got to tell ya, that actor [Brad Dourif] at the end? He didn’t hardy move, and he still scared the s— out of me!” 

    That is some high praise.

    Agreed.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #28

    In all three of Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead movies, 1981’s The Evil Dead, 1987’s Evil Dead II, and 1992’s Army of Darkness, you will see the director's personal car that his father bought new, a 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88. I fact, this model of car appears in all 16 films that Raimi has directed.

    The Evil Dead DVD has two audio commentaries, one by Bruce Campbell, and the other by Sam Raimi and Producer Rob Tapert. Both are great, really, but I like the Campbell commentary more. It’s like watching the film with a friend who is way funnier and more informed than you. When the Delta 88 appears on screen, Campbell says, “What a piece of junk. Sam loves that car. Watch, he'll call it a classic in his commentary,” anticipating that Sam Raimi will refer to it as a classic on his own commentary track (which Raimi does).

    Today’s LP is AC/DC’s For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) since it was released the same year as the original The Evil Dead. I'm going with the second track “Evil Walks." 

   

    Delta 88s in action. (Picture swiped from Facebook.) I would have liked to have thrown up "Delta 88 Nightmare" by X as the song of the day, but I don't have a physical copy.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #26

   I  haven't read any of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books. I haven't seen any of the movies that are based on those books. I haven't had any regrets about that.

    What I do have is the soundtracks for the first three movies. These are melancholic October bangers thanks to the efforts of Emmy-winning music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas. New Moon is the winner, but Twilight and Eclipse are really good as well. You get A-listers and indie greats right next together. These movies were so popular that getting an indie track on one of these soundtracks could very well change a band's trajectory. That alone is impressive. 

    I found all three of these CDs at the same thrift store at the same time. I think someone grew up, and they decided that they had moved on, and they were ready to put their teenage years behind them.

    I also think that they will buy one of these soundtracks again once they start missing those years. "Wow. I used to have that CD..."

    Music is like life. It's a circle. You always come back to it. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #25

    I was surprised to find the soundtracks to 1975's Deep Red and 1977's Suspiria on LP at Half Price Books last January. These are from Cinevox's economical "Ciak" soundtrack line. Ciak is Italian for "clapperboard," hence the jackets' artwork. The music's score was written and performed by the Italian progressive rock group Goblin.

    

    I was also surprised that I hadn't updated my Suspiria media to a Blu-ray. Apparently I'm still rocking the three-disc DVD set from Anchor Bay. I'll have to fix that. But I'm keeping the Bay set. It has the soundtrack on CD.

    The third surprise was find a media press book inside the Suspiria sleeve. There is ten pages of black and white promotional materials including poster artwork, stills from the movie, and ad copy. Maybe the LP was part of the promotion? You never know what you might find inside a used LP. 

    Also, whoever came up with the creepy veiny-heart letter font was a genius. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #24

    In this movie from 1988, the Black Roses are a  group of demons posing as a heavy metal band. They put on a show at their hometown high school and prove that the protesting PTA was right and that metal music really is evil… umm… what?

    From IMDB’s trivia: "Sir Patrick Stewart said in an interview that when he finished reading the script [for 2015’s Green Room] at his country home in England, it was so terrifying, that he locked up his house, turned on the security system, and poured himself a Scotch.” I’ve said this before. Stewart’s performance is absolutely evil in this movie.

    1988’s Lady in White is an independent film that was directed, produced, written, and scored by Frank LaLoggia. Set in upstate New York in 1962, the film does a great job of giving off a small town Halloween vibe. "The New York Times movie critic Caryn James praised the film stating that: 'Here are the bones of an ordinary ghost story. But the writer and director Frank LaLoggia brings them to life with exceptional vitality... The extended Scarlatti family—warm, funny, so real they make the characters in Moonstruck seem like impostors... Mr. LaLoggia creates an unusual, effective child's-eye-view of a sinister wide world, a restless afterlife, and the comforts of family.’” (Wikipedia).

    2015’s The Blackout’s Daughter is the directorial debut of Osgood Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates in Psycho). This movie was featured the “Hidden Gems” episode in Shudder’s second season of “Horror Greatest.” 

    Today’s theme is "more movies with colors in the title," and yay!, today is also National Horror Movie Day. I got a halftime marching band show to help with tonight, but I'll find something to watch when I eventually get home.

Halloween '26: Group Photo # 23

    Black Sunday is the directorial debut of the great Mario Bava. Directors Francis Ford Coppola (1992’s Dracula) and Richard Donner (1976’s The Omen) both incorporated recreated scenes from Black Sunday into their films in honor and homage to Bava. Director Tim Burton has stated in interviews that Black Sunday is his favorite horror film.

    AIP renamed Mario Bava's 1963 Italian film Black Sabbath hoping to recreate the success of Black Sunday. Hoping to recreate the crowds that this scary movie was bringing in, the British band Earth renamed themselves Black Sabbath, decided to make scary music, and the rest is heavy metal history.

    Mario Bava basically invented the giallo genre with 1964’s Blood and Black Lace. 

    1971’s Black Belly of the Tarantula is a giallo with quite a few connections to the Bond films. The film features Claudine Auger (Thunderball), Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me), Barbara Bouchet (1967’s Casino Royale), and Giancarlo Giannini (2006’s Casino Royale and 2008’s Quantum of Solace).

 
    1981’s The Black Cat is a loose interpretation of the short story by Edgar Allen Poe. Spoiler Alert! The cat wins… sorta.

    Today’s theme is Italian movies with black in the title. Why Not? It's National Color Day, and in my world black is a color.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #22

     I’m still quoting Jim Vorel’s article, “The 25 Best Werewolf Movies of All Time”.

 
    2014’s Wolfcop is ranked at #15, "More than anything, you feel a very genuine love for the utter ridiculousness of the premise. It’s a film that people clearly enjoyed the hell out of making, which makes that fun infectious to the viewer."—Jim Vorel
 
    2017’s Another Wolfcop (“Dirtier. Hairier.”) didn’t make the top 25 list, but it’s still low budget fun. A Kevin Smith cameo is always a plus.
 
    2020’s Wolf of Snow Hollow is ranked at #10, "The wry, snappy banter gives the Wolf of Snow Hollow a prickly skin, and the restrained application of FX gives it tension. At just under 80 minutes, that economy is key. It’s not so much that the horror is elevated as controlled." —Jim Vorel
 
    1989’s The Wolf's Hour is a World War II horror novel by Robert R. McCammon. Michael Gallatin is a British secret agent who goes behind German lines to stop a secret weapon from being launched against the Allies. Oh, Gallatin is also a werewolf who can change at will. (Robert R. McCammon also wrote 1991’s Boy’s Life, and for that I will be eternally grateful to him.)

    Today's theme is werewolves and uniforms.

     You can click on the title of the article to read the complete descriptions for each film. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #21

  I enjoy reading Paste magazine. I had an actual magazine subscription before they went completely online, and I still get their newsletters. They posted the article/ list "The 25 Best Werewolf Movies of All Time" last October, and I wanted to see where some of the movies I own ranked, if at all. 

    All the following quotes were written by Paste staff writer Jim Vorel

The Wolfman in yesterday’s post is ranked #17, “…an absurdly large $150 million budget pushed it into being the marketed as the blockbuster it should have never attempted to be. But you can still do far worse in the werewolf movie canon.”

             Bad Moon in last Sunday’s post about “Final Dogs” is ranked at #9, "Why the filmmakers used any of the atrocious CGI you’ll see in the transformation scene is beyond me, given how spectacular the actual suit looks. Don’t sleep on Bad Moon—it’s the best werewolf movie you’ve never heard of."

            Last Friday's An American Werewolf in London is at #1, and deservedly so, “The film lulls you into comfort with its witticism before springing shocking, gory dream sequences on the viewer, which repeatedly arrive unannounced. The key moment is the protagonist’s incredibly painful, traumatic full transformation, set to the crooning of Sam Cooke doing “Blue Moon,” which is still unsurpassed in the history of the genre. 

            Here’s four more movies from the top 25:

           1974’s The Beast Must Die (on laserdisc) is ranked at #24, "Near the end, this goofy flick even features a 30-second “Werewolf Break,” where the audience is asked to guess the wolf’s identity."

           1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (on DVD) is ranked at #8, "It can’t stand up against the better entries in the Frankenstein series, or the original Wolf Man, but there’s no substitute for seeing two of the original monster icons go toe-to-toe.” 

           2002’s Dog Soldiers (on DVD) made it to #4, "If someone ever asks me to venture an opinion on the best-looking practical effects/full-body werewolf suits used in a feature-length horror film, the choice of Dog Soldiers will be an easy one to make.”

           1981’s The Howling (on DVD) is up at #3, "1981 happens to be the best year in the history of werewolf cinema, thanks to three films: An American Werewolf in London, The Howling and Wolfen. Of those, The Howling can’t quite compete with the macabre humor and budget of John Landis’ British werewolf classic, but it still ranks among the best lycanthrope movies of all time.”

    You can click on the title of the article to read the complete descriptions for each film. 

Halloween '26: Group Photo #20

    2010's Wolfman disappointed at the box office despite earning Rick Baker another Academy Award for Best Makeup (his first was for An American Werewolf in London) and using David Lee Roth and Gene Simmons for some of the Wolfman's howls. 

    Had Wolfman earned better numbers, Werewolf: The Beast Among Us would have been a theatrical prequel. It was retooled into a stand alone, direct-to-video release. That's too bad, but this is still a very watchable film.

    Dean Koontz's 1973 novel, A Werewolf Among Us, is mystery/ science fiction mashup. Not really horror, but with that title, c'mon, I had to put it on the shelf.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #19

     Today's shelf theme is "final dogs*." I'm not even sure if that's a thing.

    In Bad Moon (1995) Thor is a very good boy.   

    In Crawl (2019), Sugar is a very good girl.

    In Good Boy (2025), Indy is a very good boy.

    In The Lost Boys (1987), Nanook is a very good boy.

    *No fictional dogs were harmed in the making of this post.

Halloween '26: Group Photo #18

    We had TWO different marching band competitions to help with today, and right now I'm spent. It's 12:17 AM in Johnston, Iowa. So, I'm giving myself a softball shelf tonight. No movies and no comments. Maybe I'll add comments tomorrow... doubt it.

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...