7Roulette - BODY BAGS

Anthology movies have always been my jam. Instead of one movie, how about 3 or 4? It also helps that I have a short attention span. Body Bags started out as a series hopeful for the Showtime network to compete with the insane popularity of Tales from the Crypt. Even though we only got a feature out of it, what we did get was pretty damn great! NO ONE can compete with the cool factor of The Crypt Keeper, but horror master John Carpenter hamming it the fuck the up as our "Coroner" and ghoulish host, is beyond excellent. He pops up a lot throughout the feature and I would have gladly taken more.

The first of the three parts, "The Gas Station," is my favorite part. People are so much more vulnerable when working essentially outside in the middle of the night. That's when all of the weirdos come out. Add to it that it's your first night on the job and you don't know who you can trust. Survival instincts kick in and you must fight to save yourself, whether you're ready or not.

Then we have "Hair," part two in the twisted triple threat. Imagine looking at yourself in the mirror every day and feeling like your own reflection will break the glass. But there's someone who can help you. He can make you beautiful again. Unfortunately it's going to come at the greatest price of all.

And finally we see "Eye." Your dreams have come true. You're a well respected professional baseball player on his way home to bang his gorgeous and loving wife when a life changing accident occurs, leaving you without your eye on the ball. But low and behold, there's a specialist who can restore it, or will it be really fixed? Mwah ha ha ha!

Vulnerability seemed to be a theme throughout all three of these. There's a real terror in losing what you value most: your life, your vanity, your dreams. People will do whatever it takes to hold onto it for dear life, even if it means losing it in the end. A

- Babes

To me, one of John Carpenter's greatest strengths has always been his sense of humor. Obviously it would manifest itself in much more abstract ways in his earlier stuff than it did in the mid 80s and beyond, but it wasn't never not there. But beginning with Big Trouble in Little China in '86 the winks and nudges began to share the stage with the thrills and chills, and he never seemed more laid back than he does with 1993's Body Bags - Showtime's failed attempt to compete with Tales From The Crypt that resulted in this Horror Anthology flick (as so many of these attempts often do). The movie features Carpenter as "The Coroner" - the wraparound MC pulling his energy from Beetlejuice, The Crypt Keeper, and every punny TV Horror Host you've ever seen, introducing three segments. 

The first is "The Gas Station", an old-fashioned campfire tale about a madman on the loose and the woman he terrorizes. Directed by Carpenter, its simplicity (and its parade of Horror icons and Carpenter regulars) are what make this otherwise humdrum cliche really very enjoyable. The second installment, entitled "Hair", is also directed by Carpenter and sorta fits in with his typically grim outlook on the fate of humanity; it maintains its small scope, following Stacy Keach as a man who undergoes an experimental hair growth treatment and lands on a very gross and depressing resolution. The last story, directed by Tobe Hooper, is called "Eye", starring Mark Hamill as a totally believable-looking baseball player who loses (wait for it) his eye. Doctors try (wait for it) an experimental procedure and transplant a "donated" eye in its place. Of course, the new eye belonged to a deranged murderer so now Mark becomes one as well. We've all seen this setup a few dozen times but I gotta say the Hooper/Hamill synergy is one of inspired extravagance. 

In summary, there are no "filler" segments as they're all good in different ways - very different; there's nothing cohesive in tone, theme, style, or setting to connect the stories, nor to make them stand out. I love variety but it felt like three different foods from three different menus. B+

- Paul

7Roulette - CAST A DEADLY SPELL

Every girl's fantasy is to live in a world where magic rules. Poof and there's a cute puppy. Abracadabra and swish and you're living in a mystical castle and riding unicorns. But the enchanting world to which these characters live is anything but beautiful. It's a place of fear and death, riddled with otherworldly creatures, and living gargoyles.

Detective Lovecraft must find the most important spell book before the evil magician brings about the apocalypse. Sounds fun right? Sadly it was boring. I found myself on my phone a lot and ignoring the movie. In absence of enchantment it just wasn't magical enough for me, or spooky. I suppose that's the little girl in me wanting wands and flying brooms. D

- Babes

Boy, nothing reminds me more of the early 90s than midcentury American Crime Noir. Seriously, between Roger Rabbit, Miller's Crossing, The Rocketeer, The Two Jakes, The Shadow, and a whole bunch more, fedora nostalgia dominated my youth to the point that they rarely stood out as the period novelty they were often aiming for. The lavish weirdness of 1991's Cast a Deadly Spell feels like the beautiful but crazy lovechild of Dick Tracy and Twin Peaks and has way more fun with its gimmickry than that year's overly self-serious Naked Lunch. The story follows Fred Ward as Harry Lovecraft, a hardboiled detective (which is exactly the role he should've played more often) who's been hired to track down the Necronomicon (as in The Book of the Dead), and in addition to hired goons and double-crossing dames, he's also gotta contend with gremlins, gargoyles, unicorns, demons, and, of course, magic spells. In this reality, 1940s Los Angeles is more like a literal Oz or Wonderland, and every resident dabbles in magic like it's a popular designer drug (though I'm sure the whole scenario is an analogy for something). Harry doesn't use magic, just his brawn and his wits - both of which fail him often. The dialogue leans hard into the snappy sing-song detective lingo and the very colorful and competent cast pulls it off with ease, with standouts from Clancy Brown, David Warner, and Raymond O'Connor. Julianne Moore comes across as a little stiff but she certainly looks the part - she's done better in better period stuff. But ultimately this is a Creature Feature through and through - enough to land the cover of Fango upon its release, and rightly so; most of the optical effects are predictably clunky, but all the makeup and puppetry moments are top notch. HBO Films was largely known for Biopics and movies that dealt with some social or political issue, so even in hindsight a movie where a giant rock monster gets kicked in the nards is still a breath a fresh air. B-

- Paul

7Roulette - THE TOMMYKNOCKERS

Stephen King has notoriously stated that he hates this book and the cocaine-fueled state he was in while writing it. This extends to the 1993 TV miniseries. While King felt that the team behind the movie didn't get the story, I feel that all of the symbolism was overt. There's a small town bewitched by a mysterious alien presence that changes its residents' minds, bodies, and souls. There's even a novelist character that completes whole books while unconscious, with the aid of her extraterrestrial typewriter. Whether it works or not, it's certainly a time capsule, and one of the most honest and fantastical depictions of addiction out there. C

-Babes

A Stephen King miniseries reminds me so much of Fangoria, the 1990s, and childhood in general. I'd read about them and see ads everywhere forever, and then on the night they'd air I'd end up watching Nick at Nite instead. Now with the technology of time travel I get a second chance to watch something like The Tommyknockers for the first time, and man does it put me back in that time and place - I was nostalgic for it without having ever seen it. But it has that feel, the one that's present in all made-for-TV stuff - you can always guess roughly when it was produced just based on the film stock, the set design, the costumes, and the actors. But in the case of a Stephen King miniseries there are a handful of comforting caveats: a giant cast of characters, all with their own "thing" going on in a small New England town, and then everything spirals outta control once the paranormal shit hits the foreshadowed fan. Also as usual, the performances are really what carry the whole film while the hokey scary stuff kinda detracts from it. 

Jimmy Smits plays a recovering alcoholic (a plot point they reintroduce every 4-7 minutes in a 3hr. runtime) in a town whose residents themselves have become addicted to some inexplicable energy radiating from a large object buried in the woods. Said energy is depicted as a lotta glowing neon green light which redirects the whole production into 1960s Science Fiction territory. Eventually we have an entire Village of the Darned with only a few unaffected characters attempting to Fight The Power. While the whole story is a thinly veiled analogy for addiction itself (with a likely focus on cocaine) I can honestly say I wasn't sure where the premise was going; I was certain ABC wouldn't air anything too abstract so eventually these shenanigans would have some explanation - and I can also honestly say it was a surprise (though by today's standards it's probably predictable). But the journey there was an adequately engrossing trek through King Country. B+

- Paul

7Roulette :: October 2025

When we're not binge watching seasons of scary shows, we're hunting for scary Made-For-TV features. (Obviously, in either case, it's just something to watch while we eat more junk!) And in our hunting and gathering we've decided to set aside 7 of these epics with modest budgets and limited commercial interruption. Some of these we're familiar with and pulled right off our own shelves, some we just stumbled upon, and some we had to really dig deep to find. It's been a minute since we've done one of these so here's a refresher: we're watching one movie a night starting October 19, and on October 20 we'll begin publishing our thoughts. Feel free to join in if you can or want to, but don't be late - these broadcasts are once-in-a-lifetime Television Events! Stay tuned!

• October 19th The Tommyknockers (1993)
• October 20th Cast a Deadly Spell (1991)
• October 21st Body Bags (1993)
• October 22nd Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989)
• October 23rd The Midnight Hour (1985)
• October 24th Nightmare on the 13th Floor (1990)
• October 25th Full Eclipse (1993)

STATIC SHOTS

The Halloween Tree (1993)

 

 

STRANGER THINGS Insta-Dri Crackle Nail Color

If there's one thing Stranger Things gets right about 1980s nostalgia it's the product tie-ins. This is not revelatory, we as a culture recognized their efforts early on, but once they revived New Coke as a Season 3 promotion it became clear that they were committed to this bit beyond just slapping Eleven's face onto a box of Kleenex. Much like the decade it attempts to recreate, this show sells itself in the grocery store and drive-thru with an aggressive vigilance that I've not seen since George Lucas was making STAR WARS movies - and most of it's connected to junk food. And while the world of t-shirts, trading cards, and posters still exists (to varying degrees), they're nowhere near as readily available as the products you can find in, say, the cosmetics section of CVS.

Stranger Things The Flamethrower! Actually this is cooler - this is like Halloween makeup, a magic trick, and an art project rolled into one. But what initially drew me in was the big cardboard display featuring the "80s" model in the jean jacket and her pet Demogorgon. On it were some eye and lip stuff from Covergirl, and those are entirely too much of a commitment for me, but I did spot an array of Sally Hansen "Crackle" nail colors in four different shades: Rift, Between Worlds, Nether, and Missing. 

I went with "Missing" purely based on its closeness to purple -- but the purple's only gonna show up if I use a base coat first. Frankly this already goes above and beyond the effort I'd typically put into painting my nails, but apparently I need to follow each step kinda closely for this polish to have the desired effect. The idea is that, once applied, the black color is supposed to develop a "cracked" style that's meant to somehow mirror the aesthetics of the show. Do I the have presence to pull off the metaphorical makeup? Fortunately, it came with instructions (and a $2 coupon!). 

Ok so the directions were a little too verbose for something as simple as "apply first layer, let dry, apply second layer". But again, everything about this was so reminiscent of the makeup kits from my trick-or-treating years - particularly the makeup models who've applied these products with a mastery that us civilians rarely achieve. Though I should probably speak for myself, I splash this stuff on with the casual abandon of a discount streetwalker. Or I just don't have steady hands. At any rate, I got most of it on the nails. 

There are lotsa ways to analyze how they came out - my initial reaction was that it looked like I'd simply colored my fingernails with a crayon. But I wasn't playing this game for beautification purposes, I was here solely for the Sally Hansen sorcery that unfolded before my very eyes. And sure enough it did the thing - the black polish shriveled and separated to reveal some slightly lavender highlights, which didn't specifically remind me of Vecna or Winona Ryder or Kate Bush, but the activity itself definitely put me in a seasonal state of mind. Plus I get to rock a set of nails that look like a scuffed up gymnasium floor. Bitchin'. 

- Paul

I SAW IT ON TAPE - George's Island

I've found that most people have at least one memory of a movie that exists in their mind only as cursed fragments and abstract ideas; a simple plot detail or character exchange or maybe even a whole set piece that is only that much weirder when it lives without context. Usually it's either scary or sexy because those cut the deepest, though no matter how provocative the scenario is, we're often faced to ask the question: was that part of a movie I saw, or did it come from my own mind? Did I see this late at night on TV at someone's house, or was this a dream? I know I certainly have a few rattling around in me, but I can almost guarantee that it would've been a lot more had I not taken action when I was about 9 years old. I've mentioned it a buncha times before, but it's pertinent to this tale: by the time I was in Fifth Grade I'd began a Movie List, which started out as a compilation of only my favorites, but then it quickly became a comprehensive, handwritten record of every movie I'd ever seen and continued to see. (There's an exquisitely boring video of me showing it off here.) For the next ten years I added to it, with every new viewing as well as doing my best to dig up my past. I was meticulous in building what I thought was an airtight account of everything I'd watched, so imagine my surprise when I discovered a mind-boggling flaw. 

I have a very peripheral idea of what "movie time" is like in public schools nowadays and it's certainly different from how I remember it. I'm sure today's students get stuff like Frozen and Shrek because of the ease with which all media is available to us now, particularly (if not predominately) the mainstream stuff. When I was in school, not so much; year after year, grade after grade, when they turned off the overhead fluorescents and wheeled in that 25 inch Zenith I knew we were about to flirt with the cutting edge of Underground Cinema. If it wasn't a video from our school library's collection of oddities, it was something a teacher taped off TV from a channel that only aired in East Berlin. I doubt any of my classmates cared or appreciated just how bizarre some of the "Children's Entertainment" these clueless educators subjected us to, but I was always sure to take note - once mentally, then physically. And during Halloween season in Sixth Grade (this would've been 1994) they screened for us some Canadian weirdness from 1989 that I never forgot, though would somehow contradict my well-kept records. 

I don't remember the opening credits, but I do remember that it was told to us that the name of this movie was Jellybean's Island. I remember it being said out loud, and it's the title I have written in my Movie List.  And it's actually a really neat title as it lines up with my only real strong memory of the film - something I remember most vividly because it came with a verbal warning. The teacher cautioned us that there'd be some mild violence at the very beginning, and so I'm sure like everyone else in class my receptors were all turnt to 11. It's been over 30 years but I recall the scene well (or I think I do): some pirates arrive on an island in the middle of the night and bury their treasure in the sand, and then it is the duty of one of them to guard the treasure once they've left it. The captain or lead pirate nominates Jellybean, a lowly deckhand or cabin boy, to keep watch over the buried booty, which excites Jellybean. And with a swift swipe of the sword they cut off Jellybean's head, and so now the ghost of Jellybean protects the treasure for all time. "Jellybean's Island" -- makes perfect sense. 

Flash forward to the 21st Century and I go looking for it on The Internet. I get no results. I ask Google, Yahoo, Jeeves, no one's heard of Jellybean's Island. "80s/90s Canadian pirate kids movie" -- I get results, but no Jellybean. I certainly wasn't about to take my case to Reddit or some other troll community, so I just cut loose and typed in the entire opening scene that I just described to you in a search bar. Lo and behold, our good friend Artificial Intelligence coughed up George's Island, complete with a premise that was familiar to me, and a cast list that included Maury Chaykin, which opened another little drawer in my memory as I recalled watching it and thinking "Hey, it's the Dances With Wolves guy!" So there it is - teachers gave me bad information, changing history to better fit their agenda I guess. But seriously, based on everything I described, I think we can all agree that Jellybean's Island is much more fitting (and fun) title. 

- Paul

HALLOWEEN SNACKS! The Scary Edition

Now it's time for witches and cats, spiders and bats. Wolfman, Dracula, and his son. These are the treats that succumbed to the allure of occult power and traded out pretty leaves for severed limbs. These are the kindsa snacks I remember from when I was a child, back when "spooky season" didn't begin in July and it leaned more on mummies than it did on coffee. In short, this is the kid stuff, which is exactly goddamn where this holiday belongs. Mash good!

- Paul

Fanta Chucky's Punch

Fanta has fast become the new official soda of Halloween and I'm entirely delighted with this; with its array of flavors and colors it so easily fits into the mold of "monster parade". This year's lineup pulls from Halloween, Five Nights at Freddy's, M3GAN, The Black Phone, and Child's Play (which, by my calculations, are all Blumhouse properties) making for a widely eclectic (and mostly modern) selection. I went with Chucky because 1) my son is a fan of the franchise, 2) it's apparently the only new flavor of the group (which is a really fun carbonated fruit punch), and 3) the stripes on the can that are meant to mimic Chucky's outfit are really rad and incidentally make it reminiscent of various diet cola cans from the 80s. 

Dum Dums Flavor Fusion

Dum Dums lollipops are never not fun; their spectrum of flavors leaves nothing out and the accompanying illustrations on their respective wrappers are Louvre-worthy artworks. But these are, in many ways, a different animal; classic disc-shaped pops instead of their usual spherical appearance, combining two flavors into each lolli. Actual palatable taste aside, I grabbed these for three more listable reasons: 1) the thicc witch on the front with the cauldron full of bubbling rainbow goodness, 2) the Dum Dum Drum Man's fabulous vampiric glow up, and 3) the playfully "scary" flavor titles that read like short little poems - Petrified Pineapple Orange, Boo Berry Lemonade, Spooky Strawberry Kiwi, and Creepy Caramel Apple. Scientifically, they all taste better because of their whimsically foreboding modifiers. 

Reese's Peanut Butter Skeletons

I've mentioned these before on this site in passing, but I don't care. These consist of just the regular ol' Reese's recipe of chocolate and peanut butter, but I don't care about that either. Why these are important and I why I get them every year is because of their killer artwork! These shiny foil wrappers with the friendly skeletons create a nostalgic aura of comfort and joy that's evocative of all Halloween stuff from 30-50 years ago; candy, stickers, decorations, advertising, even clothing (I swear I had a sweatshirt with a very similar skeleton on it). It's fun and kinda funny how the generic stuff ends up becoming the name brand of our unconscious. Also, if you hold one just right you can pretend it's one of Jame Gumb's death's-head moths. 

Amos Gummy Eyeballs

There's a lot to unpack here. No really, these eyeballs are individually wrapped which makes "snacking" on them feel like a tedious arts & crafts project. But I get it, these were meant to be handed out to trick-or-treaters or placed in goody bags (as opposed to mindlessly consumed by a 40-something on his couch watching Ghost Hunters reruns on a Tuesday night). I bought them because I love eyeballs and eyeball-related things, but my expectations re. the quality of these seemingly nonspecific gummies were purposefully low. So, it was with blissful surprise that I found them to be really good! They're noticeably soft with a flavor that isn't just "sugar" -- in fact, it's tough to determine, but each different colored pupil may actually carry its own flavor. I'm determined to figure that out by the end of the bag. 

Doritos Collisions Stranger Pizza x Cool Ranch

It's been my understanding that Doritos Collisions were two flavors of chips mixed into one bag, but everything in this bag tastes the same - and I shit you not, they taste like pizza. Frozen pizza specifically, which feels like an even stronger flex. I've had my share of pizza-flavored things throughout the decades and I shrugged them off as the cute attempts that they were, so these had an element of surprise. They also have a phone number printed on the front - a hotline you can call as part of the Stranger Things Season 5 promotion. Introvert that I am I can't even bring myself to order a pizza over the phone, so without thinking about it for too long I dialed the number which connected me to a recording telling me about the "Hawkins Tip Hotline" and a telethon to rescue the town that's been ravaged by The Upside Down. After that little spiel they connected me to Paula Abdul, which was most likely also a recording, but when she asked for my name I got nervous and hung up. (And then I quietly but shamefully quoted the "Straight Up" lyrics to myself: "A-b-b-bye-bye, b-b-b-bye-bye".)

ROGER CORMAN and CHEESE, part XIII: "The Wasp Woman" and Stranger Things Palace Arcade Pepperoni Pizza

A few years before Roger Corman found a reliable home on the SciFi channel, he produced a series of features for Showtime, under the banner Roger Corman Presents. While technically still "TV Movies", the lack of limitations on a premium cable channel environment allowed the traditional graphic Corman content to thrive. This "series" was definitely a high point in the filmography. 

A lot of the Roger Corman Presents movies were remakes of his older stuff (they actually made a third version of Not of This Earth) and in 1995 Jim Wynorski directed an "update" of 1959's The Wasp Woman. In this one, Jennifer Rubin plays an aging cosmetics mogul/model who feels she no longer has the beauty or the youth to be the face of her own company; in her profession she's constantly surrounded by a slew of bimbos in tight dresses (because Roger Corman, but mostly because Jim Wynorski) and so there's a bit of catty competition at play. Out of desperation she volunteers to be a test subject for an anti aging/rejuvenation serum made from wasp hormones. The experiment works, making her beautiful -- and bad; not surprisingly she turns into a giant wasp. Not in a gradual Jeff Goldblum kinda way but more like a werewolf back-and-forth deal, and she can seem to turn it on and off whenever. The transformation process employs 90s morphing technology, which may've been the lowest period in all of visual effects, but as a giant wasp (that maintains human female cleavage) the costume is just menacing and awkward enough to be unironically creepy. There's a predictable climax involving a cave and cocoons and an explosion and all the stuff you'd expect, but there's a true comfort in that predictability. 

The full name is Netflix Stranger Things Surfer Boy Palace Arcade Pepperoni Pizza. (In the time it takes to say it Season 5 will have finally begun.) They previously released Surfer Boy Pizza as a tie-in to Season 4 but these are a legitimate upgrade, with artwork that's unique to the upcoming finale, as well as a sticker(!) inside each box. Yes, that's right, Pizza Box Prizes! That's enough to boost the experience a whole letter grade, but even without novelty adhesives we award bonus points for the generous helping of pepperoni -- no redistribution of the toppings was necessary before it went into the oven. Which brings us to the oven. If you've kept up with this series you may remember our temperamental oven that requires a blowing-up-the-Death-Star level of timing -- one minute too soon or too long and we end up choking down triangles of disappointment. We burnt the bottoms a bit too much on these so the crust became somewhat of a chore, though we try not to deduct for faulty equipment. We can't say it's entirely Surfer Boy quality, but it's definitely better than just about anything else Netflix puts out. 

The Movie: B

The Pizza: A-

STATIC SHOTS

Sharknado (2013)

MY FAVORITE EPISODES part ten

It's been nearly two years since we updated this series, but holidays usually seem like the best excuse to dust it off -- particularly now that we're in the midst of a literal boob tube binge. And I'm sure I've said it before many times in many ways but when a TV show celebrates the same time of year that I'm currently celebrating it creates a sorta cerebral role-play that makes me feel the season in in my heart and my pants; there's magically no more walls between my harsh reality and TV Land. And depending on the age of the program, they can often times transport me back to my own seasons past; fake cobwebs and plastic fangs feel generic on their own, but when they're on Home Improvement they have much more context. 

- Paul 

ALF

"Some Enchanted Evening" (season 2)

Much to the dismay of Willie and Kate, ALF throws a Halloween party in the Tanner home, which he himself attends in the guise of... himself (but with a zipper down his front to give the impression of an "ALF" costume). The point of the party was so Willie could get in good with his boss to secure a promotion at work, but really it's because ALF was desperate to experience Halloween in any possible capacity (he was denied trick-or-treating with Brian). It's prophetic that ALF's likeness actually did become a very popular Halloween costume throughout this era. 

Hey Dude

"Ghost Stories" (season 2)

During a dark and stormy night on the Bar None Ranch, the gang is confined to the boys' bunk, playing Pictionary - which soon turns to ghost stories. Ted legitimately freaks everyone out with a story about his great grandfather, visually aided by some hokey props. The remainder of the episode is everyone trying to get back at Ted with attempts to scare him as much as he did them. Nothing about this bright and sunny series ever hints at anything in the neighborhood of Halloween, but no one ever said that all macabre material is chained to a holiday. 

Night Court

"Come Back to the Five and Dime, Stephen King, Stephen King" (season 7)

Harry finds a 50 year old case file for a defendant who dropped dead during his own trial. This starts up angry poltergeist-type activity and everyone assumes they need to commence with the trial for the angry ghost. I like Halloween episodes (and also Christmas episodes) where actual supernatural stuff is part of the plot (even if it ends up being a misunderstanding). Night Court had a ton of Halloween episodes and they were always great - specifically because of Harry's infectious enthusiasm for the festivities. 

Friends

"The One With the Halloween Party" (season 8)

Monica and Chandler throw a Halloween party in the apartment -- cue funny costumes. "Mistaken identity" is a familiar trope with a setup like this, but this one is more layered as Phoebe's twin sister's fiancé (Sean Penn) mistakes her for Ursula (the crossover character that Lisa Kudrow played on Mad About You). Get all that? Obviously a show like this wasn't gonna lean into the anything spooky but at least there's a trick-or-treating subplot (which involves Rachel writing checks to kids). 

Hunter

"City of Passion" (season 4)

This epic 3 part(!) episode plays like an Altmanesque Crime Thriller with a hundred speaking parts in several intricate plot threads that all meet up eventually. In perhaps the most integral storyline we learn of a secret society of lawyers and judges and powerful people who wear masks and robes and sacrifice prostitutes to Satan. So, there's that. But during the investigation Hunter visits an occult store owned by Carel Struycken (of Twin Peaks and Addams Family fame) and I swear to you I wish we coulda spent all three episodes in this establishment; it's like Mario's Magic Shop from Pee Wee's Big Adventure combined with The Magic Mansion from Are You Afraid of the Dark? combined with some abstract third element that makes it cooler than all the others. Maybe it's because Lurch works there(?). 

HALLOWEEN SNACKS! The Autumn Edition

Welcome to our first official exploration of Halloween Snacks! Why have we largely ignored the famously titular "treats" of this holiday (at least in literary form)? Several reasons - honestly there's only so much we could say about Snickers, and it seems like most of the Web has it pretty well covered on a yearly basis. But more than that, comically small candy bars are so far away from the things I like about this time of year. Even as a kid, trick-or-treating was never about the candy for me, it was about tying nylon capes around my neck and putting smelly makeup on my face while a heavily-edited version of The Exorcist played on TV. As a grownup, those elements still reign supreme, but that doesn't mean I can't still go out and get the shit. And so that's what I've done - so much so that I bring to you Part One of my adventures, entirely focused on the "sweater weather" and "Fall vibes" approach to the season, free of all that pesky Satanic influence. That comes later. 

- Paul 

Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts

I stopped experimenting with novelty Pop Tarts back in the 90s when it became painfully apparent that every single iteration was destined to be frosted. When I was little, we had the option of frosted or unfrosted - now, unfrosted has itself become a novelty. I hate the frosted ones. But for art and science today I try the Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts, and I gotta say they nearly nail it (in their own way). It's only as sickly sweet as a Pop Tart can be, but it's unmistakably pumpkiny. The sprinkles add nothing - I don't care what color they are sprinkles are for Christmas. If nothing else, they left me with a melancholy feeling, imaging how awesome they would be without a layer of chalky sugared glue. 

Pumpkin Spice Cheerios

There are at least a dozen different flavors of Cheerios on the shelves at any given time of year -- twice as many during a holiday season. So I went ahead and picked this low hanging gourd because I already got a good sense of the Cheerios approach to kooky flavors; they don't go hard by way of sugars and dyes, so whatever you're dealing with it's not going to be an aggressive assault. Instead, we get pleasantness, and that's just what I wanted - a mild pumpkin experience that allowed me to remember I was eating cereal, not candy corn. This is obviously not the first time this "Limited Edition" has been unveiled but the marriage is so natural and charming that it could definitely be a year round thing. 

Albanese Apple Harvest Gummies

Apple stuff is truly tricky business. "Apple Cinnamon" hits a home run nearly every time, but "Apple" on its own can be a minefield of sour and bitter. As my lust for gummies carries me through this year I was blindly excited for these - they're just so pretty, and I was impressed at the attempt to divide the traditional "apple" into three different flavors: McIntosh, Granny Smith, and Red Delicious. Opening the bag unleashes a sucker punch of cider-scented cough syrup, but eating them as individual gummies is a slightly more subtle experience. I really tried to convince myself that I could tell the difference between the three flavors, and if you look at each one before you eat it then maybe you can, but I wasn't about to break out the blindfold. Ultimately they taste like apple flavored gummies, which is apparently something I'm not too crazy about. 

Pepperidge Farm Pumpkin Cheesecake Cookies

Christmas and Halloween are when Pepperidge Farm go into attack mode. Naturally when it comes to Halloween they embrace the Fall side of it, and rightly so - I feel like if they were to ever attempt something on the "spooky" side it would come across as really lame - like when I try to say things like "yeet" or "no cap". And so amongst their pumpkin-flavored products are these "soft baked" cookies "made with white chocolate drops, brown sugar, real pumpkin, and spices". A facade of "fancy" as usual, these things taste like straight sugar, no cap fr. 

Caramel Apple Turtles

Ok, so other than "Apple Cinnamon" I would nominate "Caramel Apple" as the other idiot-proof apple flavor. So that begs the question: if they can make caramel taste like apples, why do we even need real apples? But that's just it - without the crisp, cold juiciness of one of God's forbidden fruits contrasted by warm melted caramel, we're just left with some arduous chews. But there was no element of surprise here - I'm familiar with Turtles, and even if I wasn't I've got a firm grasp on chocolate, nuts, and caramel working together to create an event. Additionally, with a splash of "natural(?)" green apple flavor, the experience feel very autumnal.