I love Halloween. I love dressing up in Halloween costumes. I love going to Halloween parties. I love putting my artistic talents to good use by carving a pumpkin with something other than triangles for eyes and nose.  I love buying the candy I’ll give out on Halloween night. My absolute favorite is seeing the little kids who are Trick or Treating for the very first time because mom or dad are usually the ones doing the asking. The babies are always adorable and I always give them an extra handful of chocolate.  What I can’t stomach is the scary movies which inevitably come out around this time year.  I have not seen a thriller in the movie theater or on television since Halloween came out in 1978.  Go ahead and call me a Halloweenie.  I admit it.  I don’t like being scared to death.

The Michael Myers character scared the fuck out of me.  Still does.  The movie haunted my dreams literally for years.  Debra Hill and John Carpenter, the authors of the screenplay, have fucked up imaginations.  I refused to watch any of the 9 sequels.  Yes, there are ten Halloween movies.  There must also be quite a few fucked up fans out there who enjoy this serial killer story for there to have been ten motion pictures.  The creepiest part of the original, if you can believe this, wasn’t all of the grisly murders of teenage girl babysitters.  It was the ending of the movie after Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, shoots him 6 times.  You think he’s finally dead but Michael’s body is missing from the front lawn, where he fell when Loomis shot him, and the movie ends.  Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck!  I still get chills thinking about this scene.  HE’S STILL OUT THERE!

Before Halloween came out, the only other movie which gave me the chills was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.  To this day, I get very nervous around birds.  I don’t like them and I don’t trust them.  I guess in some ridiculous way the plot seemed plausible to me – various species of birds attacking and killing people.  Somehow, this seemed like cosmic justice for our airborne creatures when all we humans do is kill them.  The only thing I like about birds is eating them.  So many foods taste like chicken because chicken is fucking delicious.  Take that you scary fowl!

I long to watch some of the classic, black and white, horror films of the 1930’s and 1940’s.  Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, and The Wolf Man were some of my favorites until Hitchcock and Carpenter came along.  My dad introduced me to this old school movie genre and I enjoyed watching them.  These horror movies didn’t give me nightmares.  In fact, looking back, they were kind of funny.  The acting was campy and the costumes were simple.  I loved the makeup and would often dress up like one of these classic characters when I was a wee lad getting ready to go Trick or Treating.

My kind of movie is the parody of a classic scary movie.  There is none better than Young Frankenstein.  So many quotable moments in that film.  Whenever it’s playing, I will stop what I’m doing to watch.  The scene with Gene Hackman as the blind priest having dinner with the monster is my favorite of all time.  Now, this is what I call the perfect Halloween movie.

Laughter, giving out candy, wearing funny costumes, carving pumpkins.  This is what being a Halloweenie is all about.  It isn’t about getting so scared you can’t sleep or you can’t be comfortable around a flock of seagulls.  It’s about having fun and enjoying the celebration.  Wait a minute.

Holy shit, did you hear something in the closet?