The Most Wonderful Time of Year: Halloween

It's that time of year again, my little ghouls and goblins. The time when I feel most alive, when the leaves start to change colors, the air turns crisp and comfortably cool, and my free time is consumed with thoughts of deliciously horrific imagery.

My desire to start celebrating the Halloween season begins in earnest early in August. I don't care about the summer fanatics who complain that it's "too early" to talk about Halloween. Bite your tongue, heathen! It's never too early to begin celebrating the most wonderful time of year (sorry, Christmas).

Now's the time of year when my already powerful obsession with horror kicks into even higher gear. I'm reading Carrie at the moment—one of the Stephen King blind spots in my reading through his ouevre over the years—after having just finished Grady Hendrix's wonderful new book of heavy metal horror, We Sold Our Souls.

I'm trying to schedule as many horror films as possible into my free time, in between working, parenting, dealing with crazy people in my life that are unfortunately related to me, etc. In the last week or two I've been fortunate enough to fit in Tobe Hooper's gonzo cult classic Eaten Alive (loved it, can't believe I hadn't seen it before), Robert Eggers' critically praised The Witch (appreciated it, but didn't quite love it), and Pano Cosmatos's batshit crazy psychedelic horror phantasmagoria Mandy (loved it, especially the lush cinematography and Nicolas Cage's best performances in years). More films, both first-time viewings and repeat watches, are on tap.

Also, every Halloween season, I can't help but feel wistfully nostalgic for my misspent youth, when I was first becoming a horror fanatic, thanks to weekly late-night film festivals hosted by Elvira, Rhonda Shear, and Joe Bob Briggs. These three curators of b-movie madness were my gateway drugs into the weird, wild, wonderful world of horror. This is the time of year where I pay tribute to them, and to the movies they introduced me to, as well. Elvira, Rhonda, Job Bob: thanks again for rotting my brain at an early age and setting me on the path that I'm still lovingly traveling all these years later. I keep threatening to write an exhaustive appreciation for these three legendary horror hosts, either for this blog or elsewhere, and one of these days it's going to happen, I swear.

Writing has been tough to fit in between my increasingly hectic schedule lately, though, so while I have every intention of jamming this space full of Halloween and horror stuff over the next month, please understand that time may not permit it. Never fear, though, I will be living my best Halloween life during these next several weeks. Nothing's going to get in my way of enjoying the most wonderful time of year.

Happy Halloween, and unpleasant dreams.

Comments

Paul SOctober 2, 2018 at 12:39 PM
I often dream of New York in the fall, maybe one fine day I'll make it there.
Have a great, gruesome month my friend.
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