It's Halloween!

Each October I concentrate on horror for the month, usually trying to focus on a theme. This year that theme sort of ended up being a personal one by default. Just entering into a new job I didn't have as much time to write and so when I did, more often than not, it was a personal recollection, like watching The Exorcist with my dad, watching horror movies with my daughter or an unnerving experience I had hiking in a forest. And so, it seems only fitting to wrap up this October with a personal posting, or clipping, if you will, of me with my brother, sister and mother demonstrating Halloween safety for the good people of Charleston, South Carolina way back in 1970 [pictured below]. I've had the paper for years (40 to be exact) and figured it was about time I scanned it for posterity.

Now, I have no clue how this all came about. None at all. I'm sure my mom told me several times but I've long forgotten. All I know is that, somehow, we were chosen for this piece and the paper provided the costumes. You can tell we're in a military town by my costume, a Special Forces uniform, at the height of American dissatisfaction with the Vietnam war. I'm sure The Green Berets was probably still playing in Charleston and was a big hit, hence the choice. Personally, I thought it was about as cool as you could get. I was so bummed when I had grown out of it the following year because, I mean, come on, Green Beret man! I still have the costume, neatly folded up in my closet at my parent's home. And it's still cool.

A few observations:

1: These Women. What the hell's up with that? There was a section of the paper entitled, These Women? It sounds dismissive, doesn't it? "I just don't know what to do with these... these... women!"

2: Fireproofing. I never knew how to fireproof clothing. Now I do. Thanks, These Women!

3: The clown costume: I don't know one way or the other, but I'm guessing my brother didn't really enjoy wearing that thing.

4: No horse play!: 'Nuff said.

5: Reflectorized tape: Oh, it's a word, I just love that they used it, and not the duller "reflective tape." Go "reflectorized!"

Finally, while I can't imagine they'd care, I have blacked out the names of my mother, sister and brother since it isn't their fault I decided to put this up.

[click to enlarge]

And as an added bonus, for true Halloween frights, here's the ad that's on the other side of this priceless piece of familial nostalgia. "The Greatest Wig Show on Earth," because, you know, there are just so many. Anyway, hope it doesn't wig you out.

[click to enlarge]
HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

Horror - But Once Each Year?

Every year around this time I feel like an interloper. The great blogs with a focus on the darker side, from Arbogast on Film to Final Girl, from Frankensteinia to Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire and even Cinebeats and Coffee Coffee and more Coffee, not exclusively horror blogs as they cover all genres of films but are certainly comfortable tackling horror with precise expertise, must get annoyed at all the non-horror blogs suddenly joining the club for a scant 31 days and acting like they know anything at all on the subject. I must admit that with each post I write in October I imagine they are all out there shaking their heads thinking, "I've read about this topic about a million times before on horror blogs dude. If you read them too you'd know how stale this is." And I know that while my most paranoid visions may be false the general belief is true. For instance, I wrote a post on Peter Cushing this October. How many posts on Peter Cushing have there been on horror blogs? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? And yet each October I feel compelled to celebrate horror despite my amateur standing in the community. I feel compelled because I love both horror and science fiction and the fantasy elements they bring to film. But why only once a year?



I cannot stick to one genre for very long I admit. I once tried to do a whole month of nothing but Sci-Fi banners and even that I abandoned after a mere week. I love Sci-Fi but the idea of not using so many other great banners from so many other genres gnawed at me until I caved. In another case, a couple of years ago I devoted a whole month to movies and events important in the history of the Production Code. By the end of the month I was so sick of it I've yet to broach the subject again. But that's not the real problem. The problem is that I foolishly avoid the genre for most of the rest of the year. There have been times, too many to count, where I have an idea for a horror post that I don't do because I think, "I'll save this for October." Then when October finally rolls around the post has disappeared into the cobwebbed recesses of my doddering mind.

This has all been swimming around my brain lately because this year in particular proved a difficult one for saying what I wanted. There were and are many obligations that stood in the way of a full scale celebration of horror, mixed in with a generous dose of blogger fatigue and an ever increasing captivation with photo blogging (three of the four places I blog at are photo blogs). And so many of the posts I had planned never materialized, including a video post where I narrate the images to express my thoughts on the subject. And frankly, I know if I wait until next year almost all the ideas I had for posts this year will be lost forever and I'd still like to write them.

So write them I shall.

If you'll forgive me, this year's October celebrations will spill over into November, December, January and on through to September and why shouldn't they? Why restrict myself to one month out of the year? I don't want to be the interloper anymore. I don't want to feel like the Johnny Come Lately showing up at a bar full of regulars and acting like I own the place. So I think I'll follow the lead offered by Kimberly Lindbergs and Peter Nellhaus and throw horror into the mix whenever I feel like it. I still don't have anywhere near the expertise of either of them, or of the great Arbogast on Film, but I have a love for the genre and a compulsion to express it. If I'm honest, I suppose this whole post is just a way of saying I'm sorry I didn't do more this year. I'm sorry I let you down.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween and a safe one. This year it falls on a Saturday which, if you have children in their late teens and early twenties (and I do), is always a bit of a worry. Trick or treating is much less fretful than late night parties with kids who are under the delusion they're adults. No matter how much guidance you give, how many restrictions you enact, at some point, it's up to them and for a parent that's always a bit scary especially when you look back and realize you didn't figure anything out until around 40.

So have a safe one and a happy one boys and ghouls. Happy Halloween!

________________________

P.S. - That's me in the blog banner (as well as the picture at the top of this post) by the way. It occurred to me that most people didn't know after I asked a couple about it. I don't look like that all the time, I just hadn't had my coffee yet.

P.P.S. - I would be remiss if I did not point out that both Bill and Arbogast made the decision to do a special post each day (31 posts on horror fiction for Bill and 31 posts on horror movie screams for Arbogast) and by God, they stuck to it! Spend some time reading through them all when you get the chance if you haven't already. I humbly bow before both of them.

October 2009

They're Coming

October, 2009.

A Personal Nightmare: The Monkey's Paw

My trailer for October Kill Fest ends its list of upcoming features with "and a personal nightmare just for you." Well, here it is. It's a true story, every word of it. I wish it wasn't.

Most Cinema Styles regulars know that I attended Catholic University and studied theatre. I had many rewarding experiences on the stage while there, some not so rewarding but ultimately enjoyable, some bad and one nightmare. One big nightmare. One that stands apart. One that puts every other bad theatre experience of mine to shame. One I can never forget. The Monkey's Paw.

When I hear that title, even on an old rerun of one of The Simpson's Halloween Specials, I get a chill. And the memories flood back in. Allow me to explain.

It was my sophomore year and I went to a cattle call for the Directing MFA projects. For the non-theatre folks reading this, that means the students getting their Masters in Theatre, with the concentration on directing, held a massive audition, or cattle call, in which no one is auditioning for a specific part but for any number of parts in any number of shows. Three directors chose me for their projects (there were seven of them) all to be juggled schedule wise throughout the semester. The one that has forever stayed with me is The Monkey's Paw.

It was to be directed by Amy (Last name withheld) for the first part of her Masters Thesis ( a one act in the first semester followed by a full length play in the second). Why she chose this particular clunky one act for her thesis I have no idea but can tell you from my experience with her during the show that forethought and common sense were not among her strong points. The Monkey's Paw would play in October and I believe she was attempting "get into the spirit" of the month much like we do around the blogs this time of year.

The Monkey's Paw tells the tale of a Sergeant Major who has come into possession of a monkey's paw that will grant three wishes to the holder but beware, each wish could lead to misery. He gives the paw to the Whites and Mrs White wishes for 200 pounds to pay off debt. Her son is then killed in machinery at his factory and Mr. and Mrs. White are compensated with 200 pounds. Then they wish for him to come back and his unseen corpse is heard outside the door pounding away until Mr. White wishes for something unspecified in the play to himself and the pounding stops. The end. I played Mr. White.

The rehearsals started as all rehearsals do: Introductions all around, a read-through of the script and the director enthusiastically telling the cast how wonderful it's all going to be. Amy told us one of her objectives was to really spook the audience. Having just read through this poorly written one-act I had to stifle my laughter at this notion but gave her the benefit of the doubt. In the hands of a well-prepared director anything is possible. So we left the first rehearsal with optimism and good cheer.

And then? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Amy cancelled one rehearsal after another because she had new ideas for what was going to happen that she needed to work on. When she was there she did homework, prepared for tests and wrote papers. It was clear these rehearsals were at the bottom of her list of priorities. Eventually the four of us in the cast started to complain. The show was quickly approaching and we had no costumes, no props, no set and without that we had no blocking. Blocking is your map of movement so to speak. It's where you walk and move around on the stage during the play. Without knowing where any of the furniture would be we couldn't map out our movements on the stage. Amy assured us this would all be taken care of in time. It wasn't.

The four of us bitched to each other daily about the rehearsals and what was going to happen. Then, two days before the opening - Two Days! - Amy brought in furniture for the set and decided on costumes. As for the set, still nothing. Sound and lighting? Nothing. Final rehearsal? Cancelled. Too much for her to do and she had confidence we all knew our parts well enough anyway. Then came opening night. What follows is my description of that opening night taken from my direct experience as well as what was going on offstage that I was told later by the parties involved when the show was over. Here goes.

My fellow actors and I arrived at the theatre only an hour before the show because Amy had asked us to show up then and no earlier. When we arrived we were horrified to discover that Amy and the Directing Program T.A. were assembling and painting the set. And it was only happening because the T. A. had been sent by Dr. James Waring, head of the Directing Program, to get it done. He was furious it had not happened sooner. At the scheduled time for the show to start the theatre doors were still locked. The four of us were getting in costume and trying to desperately work out our blocking while Amy and the T.A. were still painting. We asked about make-up. Amy said she had some grey hair spray paint and told Mrs White and I to spray our heads with it. She threw me some prop glasses as well. "Wear these!" Finally, Waring ordered the doors opened. We went backstage to prepare for our moment of truth.

This stage was a small one. The theatre held about 75 people and the backstage area was a small hallway running along the back of the set. I mention this because it occurred to us as the lights went down that Amy had not set up any lights backstage. When the lights went down it was dark. Pitch black dark. We couldn't find the prop table. We bumped into each other. We made lots and lots and lots of noise. And everyone could hear us. We finally figured out how to get to our positions in the dark and the lights came up. Something else came up too - the sound! You see, Amy had decided that the first scene should take place with a raging storm outside for atmosphere. She had never told us about this nor anyone else. She was in the soundbooth running this herself. The effect was overwhelming, in a bad way. It was loud. Beyond loud. It was Who concert loud. We, nor anyone in the audience, could hear a word we were saying. My fellow actors and I were not yelling our lines, we were screaming them. We were attempting to read each others' lips to know when it was our cue. Somewhere in all of this, I noticed that Mrs. White and I had grey hair paint all over our costumes from our mad dash to "apply our makeup." And the Sergeant Major had set paint on his costume from coming in contact with the freshly painted flats. Things were not looking up.

After what felt like an eternity but was probably only one or two minutes at most, Dr. Waring turned to his T.A. (again this was related to me after the fact) and said, "You get up there right now and turn that GODDAMN SOUND DOWN!" The T.A. made his way to the sound booth to tell Amy about the problem. The volume was too high. And what did Amy do? Do I really have to tell you? Don't you just know what Amy did? She turned it off. Not down. Off. Abruptly. Who was screaming their lines onstage at that very moment. Me. Do you know how awkward an adjustment it is to go from screaming to normal conversational tone without warning? No? You don't want to know. I felt like an idiot and wanted that monkey's paw to be real so I could wish for all of it to be over. The first scene mercifully ended and the lights went down.

And now the fumbling about backstage happened again. We couldn't find anything and were each tripping over furniture onstage. Again, Waring told his T.A. to go up to the booth and tell Amy to stop lowering the lights. Just leave them on between scenes. The lights came up and we could finally see but now it was even stranger for the audience. The lights were up but no one was onstage. And when Mrs. White and myself walked onto the stage it was uncomfortable at best. We had to walk onstage in full view of the audience and then start the scene as if we'd been in that room the whole time. My humiliation was quickly turning to rage until I noticed Mrs. White's lips quivering because she was attempting to suppress laughter. What was so funny I wondered. Well, as it turns out, a combination of sweat and grey paint had created an abstract dripping design across my forehead, which when viewed in the mirror after the show was quite a sight to see. It was embarrassing but that wasn't the main problem. The main problem was that I was now improvising because Mrs. White could not speak her lines because she was trying too hard not to laugh. So I was doing the lines for both of us. Oh joy. Then the news comes that the son is dead and Mrs. White breaks into hysterics which finally allowed her to laugh out loud and pretend it was sobbing. End scene.

Now we're at the end where the son's mutilated corpse returns knocking at the door. Fortunately this is only implied and not shown in the play because I imagine Amy's makeup idea would have been to throw spaghetti on his head and have him wear a skeleton Halloween costume. Or maybe just the spaghetti. So we're at the end. The son's at the door. And you know what makes a dead son at the door even more chilling? That's right, a storm! It was clear at this point that Amy was not in possession of even the most rudimentary learning skills. Yes, it was loud. Again. This time, Waring did nothing. I honestly believe he was in shock. I think we all were. And so the screaming began again, our costumes were now practically covered in paint from fumbling around in the dark and interacting with the set, a Jackson Pollock painting covered my forehead, I had long since lost the glasses, Mrs. White was now a casualty of the production leaving me to wrap up the plot by myself and Dr. Waring looked like a ghost. My character makes his final wish, the knocking stops, the storm once again abruptly cuts off and we exit the stage. What followed was the saddest curtain call I have ever been a part of.

The four of us walked onstage, our heads held low. We did not look forward as is customary with a curtain call but down. And then there was the applause... of five people. Maybe it was more but it sure didn't sound like it. I'd say it was around five people. When I did look up I noticed the theatre, all 75 seats filled when the show began, had about twenty remaining members, all students in the department. We had made so much noise backstage in between scenes I hadn't noticed the sound of hordes of theatre goers fleeing for the exit. Then we went to the dressing rooms to take off our costumes. Amy told us it was a great show. At this point, I honestly felt sorry for her. "You're kidding right?" Those were my words to her in the dressing room. She said, no, we were all great and everything went off without a hitch. We just stared at her, numb. And then we left.

There was supposed to be three performances but Dr. Waring nixed that and the premiere was all there ever was. As I headed out of the theatre I received the strangest accolades I have ever received after a show. The theatre students I encountered said things like, "Hey listen... um... I'm really sorry. If there's anything I can do. I mean, really, you weren't bad considering, you know, everything. Again, I'm really, really sorry." It was depressing. Years later, new students would be told the story of The Monkey's Paw as it morphed into a bizarre cattle call cautionary tale. I would get reactions of "You were in that? That was you? Oh man I wish I could've seen it!" Amy never did that second semester three act play as she was booted out of the program. And I fortunately went on to much better productions and enjoyed many great successes while there. But that night has always stayed with me, sometimes making me laugh, sometimes sending chills down my spine.

That night as I walked into my dorm room depressed and dejected, Joe from across the hall saw me and let out an audible gasp.

"What the hell happened?" he said looking at my gray hair and head.

"I did a play tonight," I said.

"Oh," he said, "for a minute I thought it was one of those freak occurrences where someone has a traumatic experience and their hair turns white."

I stared at Joe and said, "Actually that may have happened. I won't know until I wash my hair."

It's Witchcraft!*

When one thinks of Horror, whether in books or the movies, one imagines being scared. One wants to be scared or at least mildly spooked. This may amount to momentary shocks and jumpscares, provided by most slasher films, or creeping menace and lasting fear provided by stories that rely on fears of the supernatural, from vampires to demons to the devil himself. And of course, there are endless variations in between. But one character seen every Halloween in great numbers; on television, in ads, as costumes and as a general symbol of the holiday just behind jack-o-lanterns and black cats; the witch, is not particularly scary to most people at all, once past childhood. Horror has barely ever scratched the surface of using the witch as a central horrifying character, leaving the character of the witch to be exploited by fairy tales and children's stories, from the Hansel and Gretal to The Wizard of Oz. It doesn't take much to figure out why.

Witches were given the blame for crop failures, broken marriages, unexpected storms - and any other variety of ills that could be imagined - for centuries. As a result, innocent women were executed. Women that today might be regarded as intelligent and confident were then seen as evil and demonically possessed and burned at the stake. Here's the opening passage from A Treatise of Witchcraft** by Alexander Roberts, B.D. (Bachelor of Divinity) written in 1620:

With a true Narration of the Witch-crafts which Mary Smith, wife of Henry Smith Glover, did practise: Of her contract vocally made between the Devill and her, in solemne termes, by whose meanes she hurt sundry persons whom she envied: Which is confirmed by her owne confession, and also from the publique Records of the Examination of diverse upon their oathes: And lastly, of her death and execution, for the same; which was on the twelfth day of Ianuarie last past.

Later, Roberts lays down the six reasons why witches should be punished, from deals with the devil and recruiting others into their fold to worshiping false idols and consecrating their children to Satan. But the sixth reason is where the modern reader understands what was really bothering Roberts. He says "they deserve death as inhumane and barbarous tyrants" because they "oftentimes by the helpe of their grandteacher, sowe discord betweene husband and wife, sollicite maydens, yea enforce both them, and married women to uncleane, and unlawfull lusts,and heerein implore the helpe of the devill, to accomplish their malicious designes, which trangression is capitall."

Yes, they made men lustful, broke up marriages and even made women, women(!), enjoy sex too by marrying them to unclean and unlawful lusts. Those poor men, made to suffer by having sex through no choice of their own by such demonically powerful women.

And we all know there are still people in the world today who believe women are "unclean" products of the devil. So with that kind of baggage, who would want to make witches the villain? It feels dated and out of place. Add on to that the fact that the practice of Wicca in the real world is benign and witches start to seem like your next door neighbor, your co-worker or your wife. Certainly not a horror villain.

The movies use them almost exclusively in the non-horror sense from comedy (I Married a Witch), fairy tale (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) and fantasy (The Wizard of Oz, Clash of the Titans) to period use (Sleepy Hollow) and historical exploration of fanaticism (The Crucible). At this point it seems unlikely that the witch will ever be a central figure in horror. When it is a central figure it is portrayed as a girl or woman who learns the dark arts (The Craft, The Witches of Eastwick) rather than a supernatural figure along the lines of Angelica Huston in The Witches. The Blair Witch Project is one of the few to actually make the witch (although unseen and undefined as the classical witch of fiction) the central horror figure where high school jealousy or sexual adventure doesn't come into play. Although it could be said that the real horror in the film is what is present in the three protagonists minds as their tent is attacked and they find strange crafted stick figures in the surrounding woods.

It's funny. For a character so closely associated with Halloween, the witch is conspicuously absent from the horror canon. Is there any chance at this point of making the witch a fearful antagonist outside of fairy tales, a terrifying villain in the realm of horror? One that represents pure evil in such a way that the audience can successfully divorce the character from the history and hysteria that surround it in the real world? Probably not. Still, I'd like to see someone try. For now I'll have to settle for Margaret Hamilton, Veronica Lake and Agnes Moorehead, and that's not a bad group to settle on. Given the history surrounding the character, I guess I'll have to take them any witch way I can.

__________

*Were this Jeopardy and the title of the post the answer, the question would be, "What is 'That sly come hither stare, that strips my conscience bare.'"

**spellcheck had a field day with the passages from this book.

Evil, Pure and Simple

"I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, even the most rudimentary sense of life or death,of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six year old child with this blind, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil. " - Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) Halloween.

Some time ago, my father told me a story of a classmate of his in high school who seemed as average, as "normal," as everyone else. One day this classmate went to his English teacher's house and knocked on the door. When she answered, he took the hammer he had brought with him and beat her to death. He was arrested, convicted and locked away. Decades later he was released and one day, by chance, my father recognized him on the sidewalk, leaning against a building, unkempt and dirty, living on the streets. He recognized my father as well. To my amazement upon first hearing the story, my father told me he spoke to him, briefly. "What did you say?" I asked. "I asked him why he did it?" he said. "What did he say?" "He said, 'I don't know, just felt like it.'"

Horror movies have a dizzying cast of characters, from vampires, re-animated monsters and werewolves to zombies, demons and poltergeists. But it is the cold-blooded killer, the remorseless unblinking murderer that has always instilled the most fear in the real world. When one leaves the theatre after seeing a vampire movie, one may be spooked or jumpy but there is no real fear of an undead parasite actually materializing and sucking your blood. But the killer, the mad killer... that's real. That actually exists.

It's also the only sub-genre of Horror that exists in other genres as well with any regularity. Ghosts and ghouls and Frankenstein's monster are used in comedy from Ghostbusters to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein but even then they exist as their own subset of the genre, the Horror Comedy. But mad or remorseless killers are commonplace in Noir (Kiss of Death), Gangster Films (goodfellas), Police Procedurals (Zodiac), Drama (In the Bedroom) and in one of the most inventive crossovers ever, Science Fiction (HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey). The killer, the psychopath, the enraged lunatic - they're the most frightening characters horror has to offer because they are us. And we are them.

In No Country for Old Men Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) offers a more introspective version of Dr. Loomis' original statement from Halloween:

"There was this boy I sent to the electric chair at Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killed a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. 'Be there in about fifteen minutes.' I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, 'O.K., I'll be part of this world.'"

No Country for Old Men isn't a horror movie but it does have a remorseless killer and a character, in Sheriff Bell, who doesn't want to walk into something he doesn't understand. Few people do. Perhaps that's why the killer sub-genre of Horror has become so popular. Because people want to understand, people want to know why evil exists, people want to protect themselves and their loved ones against the horrors that await them in the real world. Perhaps for some it is simply the vicarious thrill of watching the act done at a safe distance. But that vicarious thrill could still be an attempt to understand on a different level. To understand the demons of one's self. In the end, it's up to the viewer to decide because in reality there are scant few answers.

I asked my father if he was afraid to talk with his old classmate. He said no. He had no fear of him and didn't shy away from asking him why he had done it. In fact, it was the first thing that came out of my father's mouth. He'd always wanted to know. Was the answer satisfactory? That depends on how you look at it. Would "she failed me on a test" have provided any fulfillment or only created more questions? I asked my father what his reaction was to the answer he received . He said he stared, slightly bewildered, and said, "Okay." He gave him some money and never saw him again.

Most of us will never have the opportunity to ask a killer why they did it and most likely, as in my father's case, no reasonable answers would be provided besides. Horror allows us to examine them from a distance, safely and comfortably. But once we leave the theatre we don't leave the characters behind. Dracula and the Wolfman exist only in the movies but the mad killer exists in our world as well. And that makes the mad slasher, the remorseless killer, the most horrifying character of them all. Pure and simple.

The Crying of Lot Salem 49

No big posts today, I've got too much to do. Larry Crocket called to say that he's got a great house for me to buy. Used to belong to some guy named Marsten years ago. Anywho, the current occupants are two guys named Straker and Barlow. I met Straker at his antique shop the other day. Nice guy. Haven't met Barlow yet but Straker told me, "You'll enjoy Mr. Barlow, and he'll enjoy you." Boy what a couple of swell guys!

So I'm going over there for dinner tonight to talk about the house, maybe help them hand out some candy to the trick or treaters. Straker promised me that Barlow would answer the door. I asked him to make sure he does because I really want to meet him and also because they're such great guys I'm going to surprise them with a couple of "moving out" presents.

First, since they're into antiques, I got this huge crucifix, I mean it's like three feet tall, and it's really old. Big-ass figure of Jesus on it and everything. And it's been doused in holy water from the Vatican and blessed by the Pope! Man they are going to love it!

Then, since they seem all European and sophisticated-like, I'm going to bring them a whole bushel of elephant garlic from my garden that they can use in their recipes. They'll love me!

Oh yeah, and you can't bring somebody a house gift that doesn't include something for the garden. Well, let me tell you I've got just the thing - Wolfbane! Tons of it! It's a perennial so I'll know they'll be happy.

Finally, since Barlow doesn't get out much (he's never at the shop with Straker!) I am totally going to make his day. I got a great deal on sunlight simulator lamps just last week - 5,000 watts baby!

So here's the thing and I'm really excited about it: I'm going to set up the lamps outside the door, drape the garlic around my neck, cover the threshold with wolfbane petals and hold the crucifix straight out in front of me after I knock on the door. When the door opens the lamps go on and boy oh boy are they going to be surprised! They just may give me the house for free after they see what a great guy I am.

Happy Halloween!

*****CLICK HERE FOR ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS FOR THIS POST*****

Cinema Still Life: Happy Halloween Part One

Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford are ready for the costume party. She's obviously some form of royalty and he's... uh... he's, you know... a guy with a boot on his head. They say Fairbanks was the life of the party. This picture does nothing to cast doubt on that.