Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 31: HALLOWEEN

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Wednesday October 31, 2018 · 8:31 AM PDT

2018/10/31 · 08:31

Today is the day, and this is the movie for it!

The sire and still best of all the slasher films, John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN broke the mold of the psycho-killer movie and remade it in its own image. Think of all the current tropes of the slasher film (Killer in a blank mask, butcher knife, teenagers in danger, etc.) and you will find their genesis in this movie. Intelligently directed, perfectly cast, and brilliantly constructed, John Carpenter’s micro-budgeted Horror opus was a standard-setter in 1978 and continues to influence Horror films of every type. From the opening strains of Carpenter’s “Halloween Theme” over the main title, to the eerie, muted breathing of the boogyman over the montage at the end, HALLOWEEN was a thoroughly new, exciting, and harrowing experience.

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Halloween (1978)

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Halloween (1978)

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22 votes

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2 votes

Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 30: THE WITCH

cmcolin

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Tuesday October 30, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/30 · 08:30

One of the darkest phases of American history was the witch hysterias of the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries. It is nearly impossible for us, living in our modern world, to understand that to the settlers of colonial New England, bewitchment was a very real and terrifying prospect. That a person can live according to God’s law and still be beset with bad luck and a hard life was difficult to for them to understand. Other forces must be at work - Satanic forces with ill designs on Godly people. We, with the distance of hindsight and the clarity of science, look upon those times as being infested with ignorance, fanaticism, paranoia, and ambition. We look upon the stories told and testimonies given as fanciful – ridiculously so. We see the accused witches as victims of their neighbors’ own fears and jealousies. We see the witch hysterias also as cautionary tales - warnings to us from antiquity to guard against abandoning reason in favor of supernatural answers. However, that one nagging, uncomfortable question always remains in the back of our minds; “What if?”

What if the tales and testimonials were true? What if the settlers of the time actually experienced a terrifying reality that we have somehow lost the ability to see? What if the witch hysterias were, in fact, justified? These questions were explored in an astounding Horror film from 2015. That film was Robert Eggers’ THE WITCH.

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The Witch

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The Witch

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15 votes

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1 vote

Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 29: THE SHINING

cmcolin

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Monday October 29, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/29 · 08:30

One of the great aspects of Stanley Kubrick’s legendary career is the oft-forgotten fact that he dabbled in so many genres. Historical epics, war movies, Science Fiction… all of these got the Kubrick treatment. One of his greatest achievements was his foray into Horror when he gave us THE SHINING, which is, to this day, the very best movie ever based on a Stephen King novel.

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The Shining (1980)

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The Shining (1980)

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40 votes

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3 votes

Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 28: PRINCE OF DARKNESS

cmcolin

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Sunday October 28, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/28 · 08:30

The Religious Horror sub-genre is a tricky thing. It takes a lot of care to make the subject matter credible to a skeptical audience, much less scary. The religious aspect of the story needs to be presented in a unique way for it to hold the interest of many. In 1987, John Carpenter made a Religious Horror film that did it. Speaking for myself, it hooked me so completely that I have returned to the movie for several viewings every October – and I am not one for Religious Horror. That movie was the wholly original and frightening, PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

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Prince of Darkness

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Prince of Darkness

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23 votes

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1 vote

Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 27: THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

cmcolin

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Saturday October 27, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/27 · 08:30

In 1982, Disney had a surprise success with a stop-motion animated short called VINCENT, which was the brainchild of one the many animators on their payroll. This animator had another idea that he had been kicking around for years, and started developing it as a 30 minute television special. The development stalled after a while, as these things so often do, and the animator eventually left Disney in 1984 to produce and direct his own films. The idea never went away, however, and when this now-successful film director found out that Disney still owned the rights to his idea, he approached the studio to see if they would be interested in producing it as a feature film. They were, and production started right away. The animator was Tim Burton, and the film that he could not let go of was the now classic Holiday film THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

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The Nightmare Before Christmas

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The Nightmare Before Christmas

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33 votes

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1 vote

Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 26: TALES OF HALLOWEEN

cmcolin

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Friday October 26, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/26 · 08:30

As John Carpenter was writing and filming “Halloween”, the original title of the film was “The Babysitter Murders”. It was an awful title that everyone involved with the film wanted to change. When the title “Halloween” was suggested, it was initially eschewed because, they believed, there must be dozens of films called “Halloween”. In doing their research, Carpenter and his crew were stunned to discover that not only could they not come up with any film called “Halloween”, they had a very hard time coming up with a film that even had the word in its title. The change of title from “The Babysitter Murders” to “Halloween” instantly gave depth to the film – as if the movie was there to capture the essence of the holiday. Halloween is constantly ranked second only to Christmas as people’s favorite holiday of the year, and yet, there really have been few movies about the holiday at all. There are tons of movies that capture what Christmas is all about, but even though we get a lot of wonderful Horror entertainment this time of year, little of it tries to tell us what Halloween is all about. All that changed when director/producer Axelle Carolyn assembled a group of dedicated Halloween aficionados (who also happened to be terrific filmmakers) to create the definitive cinematic love-letter to the holiday. The result was 2015’s TALES OF HALLOWEEN.

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Tales of Halloween

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Tales of Halloween

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Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 25: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

cmcolin

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Thursday October 25, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/25 · 08:30

The Horror genre is much-maligned amongst critics - both professional and otherwise. This has always been a sore spot with those of us who believe that the genre plays an important role in our cultural and psychological identity. We who love and work in Horror take it very seriously as an art form. It is therefore always a joy to be able to point out such a critic that one of the most universally acclaimed,award-winning films in the history of cinema is indisputably a Horror film. I speak, of course, of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 masterpiece THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS - the 'prestige' film that gleefully embraced being a Horror movie much the same way that Hannibal Lecter embraced being a monster.

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The Silence of the Lambs

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The Silence of the Lambs

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Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 24: INSIDIOUS

cmcolin

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Wednesday October 24, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/24 · 08:30

Every so often, a new talent comes along in the Horror world that makes you stand and take notice. These new talents will sometimes release a debut film that is so remarkable and so striking that it will set a whole new sub-genre into the mix. One such director is James Wan, who in 2004 brought us the great “Saw” and ushered in the unfortunate sub-genre of ‘torture-porn’. Often, these new directors never follow up. The Horror genre is strewn with examples of directors who never lived up to their debut. One could be excused for imagining that, given the excremental imitators spawned by “Saw”, that James Wan would follow this example. It is, therefore, a delight to report that James Wan’s follow-up was a Horror movie that proved he is very much the real deal. That film was INSIDIOUS.

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Insidious

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Insidious

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4 votes

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1 vote

Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 23: ZOMBEAVERS

cmcolin

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Tuesday October 23, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/23 · 08:30

Some things are just ripe for parody, and one of the great functions of parody is it allows us to re-asess something ingrained in us. It allows us to pull the teeth out of a concept we take seriously and insert those teeth into a new iteration of that concept. Parody can tell us when it is time to hit the “reset” button, as it were. In recent years, so many films and television shows have exploited the zombie mythos that even the most hardened of Horror buffs are getting tired of zombies. Lumbering zombies, fast zombies, child zombies, and even Nazi zombies –we seem to have seen them all. Another well-worn Horror sub-genre is the Cabin-in-the-Woods movie, which usually involves teenagers trapped in a remote location and stalked by some evil. In 2014, a low-budget Horror comedy came along that cheerfully mashed up the Zombie and Cabin-in-the-Woods sub-genres and poked great fun at both. That movie was ZOMBEAVERS.

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Zombeavers

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Zombeavers

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6 votes

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Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 22: THE BABADOOK

cmcolin

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Monday October 22, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/22 · 08:30

The movies are a primary form of entertainment in our culture. It has been this way since the first silent one-reel movies were presented over 100 years ago. They have always been acknowledged and valued as a universally beloved diversion – a way to break from the realities of day to day living to sit in a darkened theater and be transported. In every genre, there have been filmmakers who have tried to create a piece of crowd-pleasing entertainment that is also unmistakably high art. There have been painfully few films that have successfully walked that tightrope – and only the very best filmmakers can pull it off. Every film – in any genre – to some degree or another, tells us something about ourselves, but few of them reveal and contemplate the human condition. It is just as rare in Horror. In 2014, however, a small Horror film from out of Australia attained a level of profundity rarely seen in the Horror world. That movie was Jennifer Kent’s feature film debut; THE BABADOOK.

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The Babadook

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The Babadook

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Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 21: TRICK 'R TREAT

cmcolin

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Sunday October 21, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/21 · 08:30

We take a lot of our traditions for granted. We know why we follow certain norms and traditions, but few of us know where they originated and why. That’s what folklore is, really - things that are in our cultural DNA whose origins can be murky at best. This reality becomes even starker during holiday seasons. Every holiday has traditions we observe faithfully every time the calendar turns its way, and many of us carry them out just because that’s what we’ve always done. The thing is, the traditions are there for a reason. There was once real belief behind them. What makes the Halloween traditions different is that they are born from humanity’s darkest places. The veil between the living and the dead is said to be at its thinnest at Halloween, so the traditions of the holiday were largely created to protect us from the dark side, and a failure to observe them was to invite horrible consequences. This idea was explored in a cool, scary little film that overcame its studio’s lack of faith and a terrible release to become a modern-day cult classic. That film was 2007’s TRICK ‘R TREAT.

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Trick 'r Treat

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Trick 'r Treat

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Halloween Movie Guide 2018 - Day 20: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD

cmcolin

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Saturday October 20, 2018 · 8:30 AM PDT

2018/10/20 · 08:30

In the summer of 1985, a zombie movie unlike any before it was released. It was not just the fact that it had a great cast, excellent make-up,and such – it did have all of that. What made this zombie movie different was that it was a comedy. Sure, it was labeled a “Horror/Comedy”, but it became very clear early in the film that the comedy was coming first. Though camp and satire were common enough in Horror movies, and there had been plenty of slapstick set in the Horror world, there were precious few examples of a truly comedic Horror movie – some might even go so far as to say none at all. To this day, it is still a difficult thing to get right, and one of the first – if not THE first – movie to get it right was Dan O’Bannon’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD.

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Return of the Living Dead

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Return of the Living Dead

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18 votes

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