It’s Friday…
Ahem…I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…
It’s the Freakin’ Halloweekend!
So…
Because Halloween falls on a weekend this year…
Friday night…
All day Saturday…
Saturday night…
And all day Sunday…
Will henceforth be referred to as…
The Freakin’ Halloweekend!!!
And…
Every year around this time…
There is one thing…
That always puts me in the mood…
For my favorite holiday season…
More than anything else…
And that thing is…
John Carpenter’s immortal 1978 classic…
Halloween.
But this year…
In addition to the penultimate film…
That takes place during the holiday it’s named for…
I wanted to offer up my current top ten recommendations…
And because all of these films take place during this particular holiday…
They automatically carry with them…
An eerily, evil element…
A sprawling, spooky sensation…
That injects itself into the veins…
Of each and every one of these films…
And when you watch them…
They will infect you…
With a delightfully, devilish disease…
Known as…
The Halloween Spirit.
So, let’s take a chronological look at my Top Ten scariest, spookiest, and possibly even unknown to you, It’s the Freakin’ Halloweekend Movies…That are guaranteed to put you in that magical Halloween mood…In the years following John Carpenter’s Halloween.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) – Okay this wrongly maligned film is a close second to the 1978 original…In my opinion…The Freakin’ Halloweekend wouldn’t be complete without it…Hell…I start hearing the Silver Shamrock song in my head…Halfway through the first week of October for fucks sake…And as I’ve mentioned before…The butt-hurt bawl-babies that decided Michael Myers should be the next Jason Fucking Voorhees…Were dead wrong…And had they not created such a stink…John Carpenter might have been able to continue the franchise in the way that he had always intended…His plan was to release another original Halloween-themed film…Every year…Around Halloween…Just imagine if that had actually happened…How many more amazing films would there have been on this list?!?…So to those of you out there who still hate this one…I say to you…Thanks an ass-load, you stinkin’ fuck-puddles…As much as you think I’m a douche for loving this film…Your short-sighted love of Michael Myers…Robbed horror fans of the potential for an shit-ton of amazing Halloween-themed films…Thus making you…A waaaay bigger douche.
Night of the Demons (1988) – Within the first few moments of the animated title sequence…If you aren’t completely giddy with the Halloween Spirit…Then there’s gotta be something wrong with you…In this fun romp through a typical All Hallows Eve in the 80’s…Social misfit, Angela and her friend Suzanne, played by the titillatingly trashy Linnea Quigley decide to throw a party at the local mortuary…Before long it’s a bunch of dudes with mini-mullets that would’ve made Eugene Porter proud…And ladies with enough Aqua-Net in their hair to single-handedly cause global warming…This naughty and bawdy amusement park ride is still a ton of fun to go on…There is a perfect amount of horror crammed into this 80’s party movie…And when this party gets started…Everyone screams, “It’s the freakin’ Halloweekend!”
Idle Hands (1999) – In the 90’s…Stoners changed their name…To slackers…The nomenclature didn’t continue into the next decade…Making it exclusively…A 90’s thing…Thus forcing me to call this film…The quintessential slacker horror movie…It tells the gory and hilarious story of Anton, played by Devon Sawa (Final Destination)…A slacker who realizes…After he murders his parents, and his two perpetually baked best friends…That he is now the proud owner of a possessed right hand…Anton’s aforementioned recently murdered pals thankfully chose the undead route over the highway to heaven…Pnub, played by Elden Henson (The Mighty Ducks) and Mick, played by Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) were hilarious in the roles of the zombie stoners…Um, I mean…The zombie slackers…So bust out the Devil’s Lettuce and fire up a film that is guaranteed to put you in the right mood for the freakin’ Halloweekend.
Ginger Snaps (2000) – The next horror film to enjoy during your freakin’ Halloweekend…Tells the tale of a couple of twisted sisters who have a uniquely shared obsession with all things macabre…When Ginger gets her first visit from Aunt Flo…A cavalcade of events begin to unfold that…Although it is difficult to believe…Are actually a shit-ton scarier than a teenage girl going through puberty…This film breaks new ground in the werewolf genre…Filling it with all the angst of an independent film about the shared experiences of teenagers…And also adding strong, and unique female leads to a primarily male-dominated sub-genre…This film not only quickly rose to the top and became one of my all-time favorite werewolf movies…But it also became…One of my all-time favorite Halloween-themed horror films.
May (2002) – Lucky McKee wrote and directed this…His stunning debut…And it was a film that let me know just what kind of filmmaker I was dealing with…It’s a totally fucking warped story about a terminally strange gal named May…She is a troubled twentysomething whose desperate attempt to connect with someone…Mixed with her inability to make cogent decisions…Causes her to forge these connections by any bizarre and unnatural means possible…The ever-creepy Angela Bettis is at her absolute creepiest as the titular character…And if that wasn’t creepy enough…This must watch film for your Halloweekend…Also features a creepy doll…One that May’s creepy Mom gave to her…And that might seem like too much creepy…But in my opinion…It’s the perfect amount.
Murder Party (2007) – The next must-see film to view during your Halloweekend is is the feature film debut of director Jeremy Saulnier…A director whose subsequent films…Have established him as someone who can create taut, intense thrillers that place unlikely protagonists…In situations that start out horrible…And only get worse as the film progresses…This gory, tongue-in-cheek debut shows where Saulnier cut his teeth on that premise…When we meet this film’s unlikely protagonist, Christopher…He appears to be…Well…Basically…Me when I was in my twenties…A lonely magoo with not much else in his life besides his cat and his love for renting horror videos…But just like I used to…Christopher longs for more…So when he finds an invitation to a “Murder Party” laying in the street…He decides that going to a Halloween party might be a good way to make some friends…Unfortunately…The narcissistic art school sociopaths who are hosting this Halloween party have other plans for Christopher…But just as he did in his later films…Saulnier teaches us in his debut…That things don’t always work out the way you plan.
Trick ‘r Treat (2007) – In this Halloween-themed horror anthology…We experience something incredibly rare…The individual stories are all equally disturbing and entertaining…And on top of that…The stories are interconnected in a way…That is the polar opposite of the formula normally found in anthologies…And then there’s Sam…He’s our fun-sized host…Who binds the whole tale together…Travelling freely from chapter to chapter…And let me tell ya, folks…When Sam sauntered onto the screen…The little fucker instantly became an iconic horror character…Director Michael Dougherty (Krampus) carefully balanced the horror and the humor in this film…And gave us a film that was guaranteed to be added to this Freakin’ Halloweekend must watch list.
The Guest (2014) – Adam Wingard is a director that I dig…A lot…The first one of his that I saw was You’re Next…And after that…I was totally hooked…This film feels like Wingard dug up a rusty Knight Rider lunch box…That was buried in a trailer park since the summer of 1986…He opened up this makeshift time capsule…And pulled out a VHS tape that when played…Contained a synth-fueled soundtrack…Stunning visuals…Understated and organic performances…And then he pawned it off as one of his own films…And…Speaking of the performances…I gotta say…Dan Stevens and Maika Monroe in particular…Turn out performances that are so compelling…Your eyes will be glued to the screen during every scene that they are in…This is a film about a family…Having a difficult time coping with the loss of their son, Caleb…Who welcome a stranger with connections to Caleb into their lives…He quickly begins to inject himself into the perceived problems that each member of the family is having…The results of every single one of these interferences will startle the audience…As the film bulldozes its way towards a climax that lands squarely in the middle of the freakin’ Halloweekend.
The Barn (2016) – This one…Is a welcomed addition to my Freakin’ Halloweekend list…And has the potential to become a Halloween party selection for years to come…It’s Halloween night in the late 80’s and a bunch of partying teens accidentally awaken three evil creatures…Ones that actually feel like they could have been classic 80’s horror icons…The Boogeyman…The Candycorn Scarecrow…And, Hallowed Jack…This bizarre little low-budget film…Is equal parts cheesy and totally bad-ass…The memorable over-the-top kills are loaded with ooey-gooey practical effects…And writer/director Justin M. Seaman even threw in some horror icon street cred…With appearances by Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead)…And Ari Lehman (Friday the 13th)…So…If you are looking for an 80’s throwback that takes place during Halloween…Look no further.
The Video Store Clerk 