Last year at the Fwoosh we attempted an incredibly ambitious experiment: 30 horror films in 30 days. And while we aren’t certain we can do it again, we sure as shit are gonna theme the hell out of this month. From a pop-culture perspective, it doesn’t get any better than October and Halloween! In many places across the Northern Hemisphere the days are getting dark and the air cold — the signals that winter is coming. Trees are starting to change color and lose their leave,s and the freak show that is the Dallas Cowboys dominates our TVs every Sunday. I’m not certain there is anything more scary than that. Well, maybe Dave Vonner’s obsession with them.
Yes, scary times are ahead, dark times, ’tis the month for Hallowing! For being Hallowed! You only need to switch on the TV to find American Horror Story and The Walking Dead on your screens. And many stations will be playing timeless classics like Halloween, Fright Night, The House on the Haunted Hill, Frankenstein, Dracula, and many many many more! And over at FwooshFlix, we’ll do our best to bring you up to date on some horror classics and some not-so-horror classics that are horrific by just existing!
I have fond memories of Halloween, especially from the short period when we moved to San Antonio, Texas, in the late ’70s. It was an amazing period of time; we lived in an area called Whispering Oaks and each and every year we would get costumed up and go out as our favorite monsters. I think I have pictures, long lost, of me dressed up as Dracula, some strange monster with a third eye, and I think Ace Frehley. Yeah bitches, those were the days. We would load up the plastic pumpkins and go knocking door to door asking “Trick or Treat.” Man, the bags of candy we would have.
And during those days, we were treated to a slew of new movies, Halloween, Aliens, Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Phantasm, The Shining, The Evil Dead, The Fog, Cannibal Holocaust, The Changeling, American Werewolf in London, The Howling, and Halloween 2, just to name a few. And that’s not including all the stuff that came out before that still scares the crap out of me. Exorcist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre gave me nightmares — and still do.
Along with this we had active and scary serial killers roaming the streets: Gacy, Williams, Dahmer, Bundy, Buomu Jr., Berkowitz. Moms and dads would tell their kids to be on the lookout, don’t talk to strangers, wait to eat your candy apples until you were home and they could be checked. Yeah, ’cause that story your parents told you about strangers and neighbors putting razor blades into them was enough to make you want to stay home. Or the one about staying away from vans since there were people that would kidnap you and sell you as a slave in Mexico because you had blond hair and blue eyes. Crazy crazy times to be kid.
But did any of that stop us? No, we went out and tricked-and-treated and got the shit scared out of us by older brothers, slackers, and stoners who thought it was fun to mess with the kiddies. And they were right, it was. Nothing better than having the local stoner or slacker pop out of the bushes wearing that scary-ass werewolf latex mask with arm raised and roaring his head off. And then a flock of little 5- to 10-year-olds running away screaming their heads off, laughing, and peeing in their pants was priceless. I never peed in my pants, but I did a lot of screaming.
Every year Fwoosh will try and capture a little of that lost magic, that time gone by. This week we’ll have some reviews of horror toys! In fact, we’ve already started. Check out Benty’s poetry of McFarlane’s Movie Maniacs, a classic line come and gone. And we’ll have more for you throughout the month!
Check out FwooshFlix for last year’s entries and remember — you still have time to order Halloween from Amazon.com!