Welcome to Primetime

When you think of the Halloween Season, what sorta imagery comes to mind? Falling leaves, cartoon ghosts, black and orange accents? What about the other sensations? Stale candy corn, a witch's cackle, squishy pumpkin guts? Depending on your ASL, not all of this stuff is always readily available to bring you cheer, and unless you're going to Target every day there isn't a lotta manmade atmosphere to rely on outside of your own personal space. But I'll bet there's one place we've all been to and continue to revisit to give us the creeps we crave: The Television. 

I couldn't possibly list all the nuances and hallmarks of home media that help define our holiday(s), but when I'm pressed to think back, most of my most cherished memories of Halloween are connected to the TV - especially scary movies. I honestly have trouble remembering too many new release Horror Films I've seen in an actual movie theater during the month of October -- certainly none of the "classics". Nearly all of the Greatest Hits of my mind involve sitting in front of the tube: John Carpenter's Halloween theme, David Naughton's werewolf transformation, Fathers Karras and Merrin's "Power of Christ" chant, all trace back to my first "edited for time and content" cable viewings on some October Saturday afternoon. 

But I'm not just talking about the terrifying moments we casually walked into during scheduled blocks of creature features. The videos we rented, the DVDs we bought, the movies we voluntarily streamed or downloaded, they've all filtered their way through the small screen and into our lives. Every Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser, and Chainsaw Massacre premiered on a television for me, making it the most valuable tool we have to celebrate the season.  

I'd say it's more than that. I'm certainly not the first person to analogize the TV to the campfire, nor am I just impassively celebrating the invention that shows shows. When it comes to Halloween, the TV is the Christmas Tree. It's the fireworks. For all intents and purposes, it's the modern day jack o'lantern -- there are actually tons of videos and channels out there right now that feature a Yule log-type carved pumpkin. Something like that would never be my first choice, but for those of us who no longer subscribe to cable, there's certainly a comfort in letting your TV take the wheel for a while. 

To my understanding, there are still a handful of cable channels that attempt to keep up the morale -- Freeform's "31 Nights of Halloween" and AMC's "Fear Fest" are still going strong. When I was growing up, it seemed like every channel got into the spirit; stations like MTV and Nickelodeon would frame all of their programming with some spooky theme, PBS would unearth some old gothic costume dramas and foreign fairytales dubbed into English, and all the local channels would air all the scary movies they had lying around - it wouldn't be uncommon for Charles in Charge to segue right into The Fog at 2pm. 

Even during the primetime hours of TV the vibe used to carry over; a lotta sitcoms would use the holiday as a plot device, and there was always the chance a network would roll out a full-fledged Halloween Special - beyond Charlie Brown and Garfield, there were countless 30-90 minute narratives that commemorated the moment like a shooting star. With some luck, the premium channels like HBO and Cinemax would break away from their automated programming and play some seasonally appropriate film - sex and gore and all. 

Nowadays you can pull up any streaming service and for the entirety of October their "Horror/Sci Fi/Thriller" selection will be front & center with trending titles that everyone is exhaustedly familiar with. I'm not about to go off on one of my curmudgeon tangents about about the impotency of streaming (though if you're in a combative mood you can read my gripes here) - frankly with some further calibrations and innovations the technology could easily achieve the TV utopia for which I pine. 

Several years ago we brought our son to the Halloween Parade in the center of town. It's basically just an excuse for kids to galavant about the downtown area in their costumes in broad daylight several days before the actual Halloween holiday. The idea is that shop owners and firefighters and bank employees can stand in front of their establishments and hand out candy - in theory it's all heartwarmingly quaint, but in practice is was simultaneously disorganized and dull. But I digress. The point is that this event is walking distance from our home, and we somehow took that convenience as a cue to not bother turning off the television (something I wouldn't otherwise do). Apparently, before I'd left, I was watching Shudder's "live" stream, because when we got back we walked right into the middle of Witchboard from 1986. The equal parts surprise and familiarity of the random Horror Movie playing on my TV during an afternoon in October created a soothing environment that made me feel like a kid again. 

Today we have a lot more control over our choices (as well as a lot more screens in our homes from which to choose), but the point is that while some fun sized Almond Joys and an apple scented candle can put us in the mood without leaving our couch, it's our haunted TV sets that continue to provide the audio/visual kaleidoscope of the mad and macabre that will always put me in the spirit most. 

- Paul

10 Best BUFFY Baddies

   In the spirit of televised horror, I had to revisit one of my favorite spooky shows of all time. Buffy the Vampire the Slayer is scary, funny, and melodramatic; all things that were perfect for little teenage Babes. I can highlight any number of moments of perfection, but tis the season, and these are the badasses of bad. The worst of the worst. Of all of the monsters that graced the show, these are the absolute most heinous, or in some cases, the funniest. 

- Babes

Angel without his soul

   Snuggly Angel is darling. He gets to play kissy face with Buffy and rescue her when in peril. That is until he takes her precious virginity, thus reversing the gypsy spell, and ripping him of his very soul. What is left is is the most vicious monster the show ever has. He even dares to criticize her of her performance between the sheets. Buffy can fight anything evil, but what if it's the one you love?

Der Kinderstod

   Buffy finds herself hospitalized with a bitch of a fever. On the plus side, this give her the advantage of being able to see an invisible Freddy Krueger-esque child killer stalking the hospital halls. This baddie straddles kids to trap them, and then uses its nightmarish tentacle like eyes to literally suck the life out of them. 

Bad Willow Rosenberg

   Our show's hero wouldn't be complete without her geeky sidekick. She's nerdy, Wiccan, and sometimes gay. But when someone murders her girlfriend before her very eyes, all she can see is red. Our happy girl goes on a rampage that results in the shows #1 most gory onscreen death. One down.

Ted Buchanan

  Buffy has a mostly absentee Father, and is largely raised by her single mother. So it's no surprise when Mom brings home Ted, as the new possible Daddy. He may bring you delicious treats, but he wants more than to be part of the family, he wants to keep you forever, alive or dead. And you can't kill what isn't alive to begin with.

Gachner

   One of the many things this show did right were the Halloween episodes. This time the gang finds itself trapped in a haunted frat house with its spooky decorations coming to life. All of the unfolding hell is at the hands of the Dark Lord of Nightmare and Bringer of Terror. Actual size.

Gnarl

   After returning from a very long chill out session/exile with Giles in England, Willow is captured by this freaky thing. On top of mountains of guilt from having shredded the local townspeople, she now has to endure being frozen, slowly skinned, and eaten alive.

The Gentlemen

   These ghastly creatures have stolen the voices of all Sunnydale residents, making it impossible for the attacked to scream for help, and our heroine to save them. With no one to hear you, these monsters cut into you, and steal your heart. 

Demon Giles

   One of the gangs' longtime human foes is Ethan, a former gang member of Giles', and general conjurer of chaos. After running into this tyrant by happenstance, and wallowing in self pity with him, Giles wakes to find himself as a horrific demon. Unable to communicate his problem to his friends that can help, Giles accidentally goes on a monster tirade, destroying everything in his path. Wackiness ensues.

First Evil

  Very clever of the series for Buffy to defeat a bad guy early on, only for it to return in its final season extra pissed off and apocalyptic. The catch is, this being has no form, and cannot be killed.

Caleb

   The aforementioned meany of all meanies, having no ability to touch, relies heavily on more tangible forces to do its work. The General of its Army is a misogynistic priest that is used as a vessel for the evil itself. Caleb's attitude towards women makes you grind your teeth, reminding you that not all monsters are disfigured or dead. 

7Roulette - FULL ECLIPSE

I love werewolf movies, and this is by far the worst one I've ever seen. A group of police officers dose themselves with a tonic that gives them super animalistic strength to defend the city streets from hardened criminals. Being wolf-like gives them the upper hand, in that they are impervious to bullets and maim from their opponents, and can take anyone down with amplified force.

They wear helmets in battle that are reminiscent of Magneto's and shoot out claws from their knuckles much like Wolverine. Needless to say, the line to X-Men is a direct one. The transformations are silly, but the acting is worse. Our evil bad guy is dull and unassuming. In the end, he reveals himself to be a monstrous beast, but the early 90s CGI is laughable, even for HBO. The best part of watching it was being with Paul, and making jokes throughout. But that's the point, right? F

- Babes

Vampires and Frankensteins and Werewolves were all the rage again in the first half of the 1990s, and I was there for it as much as Fangoria Magazine was - HBO's Full Eclipse made the cover back in '93, and I'm sure 10-year-old me wasn't the only person who thought they were selling a live action X-Men film. Of course, the filmmakers admit (in the article of that very Fango) that their Werewolf Cop Movie was as close as they could get to adapting the Marvel property, and upon watching it I certainly found it to be closer to a goofy comic book than a Horror Action movie. 

I used to catch glimpses of it late at night back when it came out, always hoping to catch costar Patsy Kensit in various stages of undress. Between the magazine coverage and heavy HBO rotation the premise was easily figured out: crimefighting werewolves. Watching it end to end, I found they really don't scratch beneath that surface too much; there's a conflict I don't care about, a backstory I don't understand, and a resolution that feels rushed. It's super stylish (director Anthony Hickcox made this the year after he did Hellraiser III) but it's nowhere near as sexy, scary, exciting, or weird as it should have been. D+

- Paul

7Roulette - NIGHTMARE ON THE 13TH FLOOR

This movie aired on Halloween night in 1990, and I'm pretty sure I was there. I remember watching it and loving it enough that even after all this time, I made Paul find me a bootleg copy on eBay.

You can't go wrong with Satanists and the occult, and this one is oozing with both. It's just a perfectly good business trip that goes terribly awry. A travel magazine writer is visiting a prominent city hotel, and instead of critiquing the bed linens, she gets the story of her life, by nearly losing it.

 

It doesn't have to be gruesome to be scary. The all-red velvet decor of the setting of the murders is equally pretty and frightening. It was ingrained in me since childhood. The killer's office is filled with evil artifacts and creepy music to give it more flavor. His implement of destruction is an axe, which for cable TV, seemed risqué, but considering they never show carnage, they got away with it. I typically don't care for slasher movies, but I dig this one, and always have. Maybe because so much is left for the viewers' imagination. A-

-Babes

The idea of a scary movie premiering on Halloween Night that's aimed largely at grownups is wild to me. But in 1990 that's exactly what the USA Network did with Nightmare on the 13th Floor - a sorta Supernatural Murder Mystery that I picture old ladies watching while they sit around waiting for trick-or-treaters to ring the doorbell. The movie follows Elaine (Michele Greene), a Travel journalist who may (or may not) have stumbled upon an elusive 13th floor in the Wessex Hotel where people go in and never come out. It immediately becomes apparent that the hotel staff is aware of the phenomenon and are trying to cover it up (for reasons that are eventually revealed).

I like conspiracy stuff; the paranoid climate of "who do I trust" and "everybody's in on it". But this has such a gentle coziness to it that it rarely appears threatening - Elaine's biggest obstacles are a hotel manager and a concierge. None of this is a complaint, these are the kindsa low key thrills I crave from something of this caliber. The atmosphere is about as spooky as an episode of Murder, She Wrote but some mild violence, strong production value, and fun performances keep this broadcast on the move. B

- Paul

7Roulette - THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

When researching made-for-tv horror, this popped up the most as a fan favorite, and I can see why. With its stellar and likely expensive soundtrack and oh so many tropes, they seriously went big. It's a rom com at heart, which keeps it sweet. And anything spooky has some serious quirk, which makes it light. The romance is effective, but that's television for you. It knows how to make people fall in love.

So few movies actually take place on Halloween and this one has all the feels. With the costumes, decorations, and cemeteries, you won't be sorry to add this to your annual Halloween lineup. B

-Babes

A lot of these Made-For-TV masterpieces live a very short life; hundreds, probably thousands of features that had their debut and then faded into melancholic obscurity by Wednesday morning. Though some made a big enough impression to become Classics with legs that walk them into future generations, and apparently The Midnight Hour is one such Classic. I was only 2 years old when it premiered on NBC on the awkward date of November 1, 1985, and despite its enthusiastic following I'd never been aware of it until now, and only halfway into viewing it I was able to appreciate the hype.

In short, a group of high school kids (most in their late 20s) casually and carelessly recite an old curse in a cemetery on Halloween night. They then all take off to a party, not sticking around the graveyard long enough to realize they've resurrected zombies, vampires, werewolves, and old fashioned ghosts. We're talkin' full-blown Monster Mash here - the inhabitants of the cemetery amble off into the town, wreaking havoc and infecting citizens with their respective afflictions until the entire population is zombies, vampires, et al. It's notable (and obvious) that Thriller was just a couple years old at this point, so apart from the choreographed dance number, a lotta the makeup goes above and beyond the quality of most theatrical releases - in any decade. But for me the biggest strength is the soundtrack - a parade of pop songs that's most likely meant to mirror the vibe of American Graffiti (the voice of Wolfman Jack literally introduces the songs) but there are actually moments where the marriage of music and images reach Scorsese-levels of skillfulness. A- 

- Paul

7Roulette - AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES

The original Amityville Horror is one of the most boring horror movies of all time. The sequel isn't much better. But when I heard Vinegar Syndrome was releasing the later movies in a deluxe set, I champed at the bit, and exposed Paul to the fun.

These are the best, and the greatest surprised us both by being an NBC TV movie. Growing up I called this one "The Lamp Movie," because the evil escapes the house and transfers itself into a gaudy piece of furniture - evil house be damned. The lamp is then sent across the country to possess and torment a grieving family. For made-for-tv some scenes are genuinely graphic and disturbing. 

In the end love beats evil, just like it always does. And while the movie manages to remain goofy-free, it has a purrrfect yuk yuk ending fitting to secure this amongst the TV Movie shlock. A-

-Babes

At this very moment there are 45 Amityville sequels. Tomorrow, there will probably be more. But back in 1989 we were only up to Part 4, and despite the house blowing up at the end of Amityville 3D, it still stands pretty at the beginning of this tale. And it's yard sale day! In extremely poor judgement, realtors decide to sell off the contents of the cursed house. Thusly, the evil escapes - conveniently to California, so this production barely had to travel (even the Amityville House that's briefly shown is just a replica). The evil arrives at Grandma's house in the form of a possessed lamp, just in time for her widowed daughter and her three children to come move in with her and experience the wrath of the Amityville Floor Lamp.

The lamp itself doesn't really do much but it does stir up all the usual poltergeist activity throughout its new home, making things like chainsaws and garbage disposals turn on at just the wrong time. Actually there's a small handful of grotesque moments that feel surprisingly too hot for TV, particularly a moment when a plumber basically drowns in a geyser of grey goo - an image that certainly would've scarred me had I see this when I was 6 years old. It's funny, you can tell which parts of the movie aired after 10pm because they amp up the havoc in increasingly gross ways. All three of the first Amityville movies are clumsily "atmospheric" and mostly fail at maintaining their mood. The Evil Escapes is for the Friday Night NBC viewers who have tuned in for some family friendly frights and their attention span only goes so far. With that we get a tight, evenly paced pulp paperback that moves right along and gives us what we want when we need it. B

- Paul

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-