Mocking Halloween: Halloween

It was only a matter of time before I came around to talking about John Carpenter’s masterpiece horror film Halloween. It has stood the test of time and is considered to be the greatest Halloween film in history as well as one of the greatest horror movies of the past 50 years. It made history and it made its mark on cinema. The story is simple, an escaped psychopathic killer returns to his hometown to finish what he started when he was just a little boy. You see, as a kid he killed his sister with a knife and he was about to do the same to his baby sister until the cops intervened. Now, his baby sister is all grown up and is in high school and living with her foster parents… little does she know a hardened killer is after her. What can I possibly say about this movie? There is nothing bad to report on it. Everything about it is done so well and there is a strong sense of tension but… I often found myself asking the question: is this movie really that scary nowadays?

Sure, to most senior horror fans this movie will always be scary for them and while they are over their childhood fears they’ll always remember how freaked out they were when they saw Michael’s mask but that’s just it. The film is nowhere near as scary as it was when it first came out and probably rightfully so. To call is frightening is a huge stretch unless you are talking to a group of kids between the ages of 7 and 13. It’s rather sad but true. Kids these days are being exposed to so much more brutal things on the TV or on the Internet that they wouldn’t find Halloween to be scary at all but rather boring. I believe I am part of the last generation of kids that would truly find this movie frightening in all its aspects. Even though Zombie remade the film for modern audiences he completely bypassed everything else that was good about the original so for me, a true remake of the film has never been done.

I’m sure Halloween will continue to be classic in the film world as long as there are people who truly admire the film and/or were once afraid of the film. If that stays with it’s audience than we can be sure that Halloween will be popular in the many years to come. However, I believe that within the next 50 or so years, it will be seen as a campy movie (or a cult classic) than being just a classic. The film has a huge fanbase and those fans are introducing their kids to it as soon as possible and maybe that’s the way you preserve the film’s horrific beauty.

Yeah, it turned into a rant rather than mocking the movie. Oh well.

Mocking Halloween: Trick 'r Treat

Even though Trick ‘r Treat is relatively new, it has been a Halloween classic since the night it was released on DVD. Much in the vain of Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology of different stories that take place on Halloween night, in which they all interconnect somehow. There is the story Principal Wilkins and his dark homicidal secret, the story of 4 kids who decided to play a prank on the school ‘weirdo’ but end up getting more than they expected, the story of a young woman is trying to find Mr. Right but ends up find the wrong person and the story of curmudgeonly old man who is visited by the spirit of Halloween in effort to change his ways. They’re all really good stories but there was one thing that bothered me about all of it.

Again, I might be getting a little nitpicky here but the way that Dougherty shows a town celebrating Halloween is so over-the-top and flashy. It reeks of Hollywood. Perhaps it’s my bitter outlook on the suburbs or maybe it’s because I lived in the suburbs too long and I started noticing trends but… no matter how much a town is crazy for Halloween, I’ve never seen anybody go that far. Sure, they may have a parade and that’s fine but every single house on the block had jack-o-lanterns, some sort of Halloween décor and was passing out candy. In my neighborhood, at least, we were lucky to get 3 consecutive homes that passed out candy. To me it seemed like a really flashy depiction of Halloween and it wasn’t even the right type of depiction. I guess you can argue that it was meant to be flashy because the whole movie was based off of a fake comic book but still…

Now, the idea of showing a Hollywoodized Halloween didn’t take me out of the movie nor did it affect my overall opinion of the film but I did shrug and say, “Oh c’mon, who does that stuff?” whenever I saw something that was overkill. A good example of a time where I said this was when we first seen Rhonda’s house caked in jack-o-lanterns. I don’t care if you have the biggest hard on for Halloween; you’re not going to make 3 dozen jack-o-lanterns. The good news is: there wasn’t really much to complain about Trick ‘r Treat. It’s an almost flawless movie!

Mocking Halloween: Sleepy Hollow

What isn’t there to love about Tim Burton’s Gothic masterpiece telling about the classic ghost story? Sleepy Hollow is what happens when you give a man, who loves the style already, the source material and he runs with it. Essentially it’s about Ichabod Crane, a New York detective, who travels to the town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of strange beheadings. While in the town he is told of the Headless Horseman; the vicious ghost of a Hessian horseman who chops off heads at his will and townspeople believe he is the one doing it. Old folktales. Well, Ichobod, futile in his attempts to prove them wrong through science, soon realizes that the legend is true. What bothered me about this movie was the fine-tuned plot.

This is a pretty big spoiler alert, however. See, the Headless Horesman was raised from the dead by a conniving bitch that wanted to get revenge on somebody for evicting her when she was younger. Also, she wanted to kill off all the heirs to her husband’s, who was the landlord who evicted her, fortune as well as anybody who caught onto her financial get-rich-quick scheme. What the fuck? As a kid I didn’t care about heirs and old women getting loaded off their dead husband, I wanted this to be a real ghost story and not about the dead getting raised. I had to watch the movie several times just to figure out why the woman wanted everybody dead and what her plan was. That’s not really something I want to do when I am watching a ghost story. It should have been simple and straight to the point. Sure it was Burton’s own twist but… I want a ghost and not a Hessian lackey.

Mocking Halloween: Jaws

What can I possibly complain about the Stephen Spielberg classic Jaws? Well, it’s something that always left me a little cold and it happens in the infamous opening sequence. The movie is about a shark that terrorizes a picturesque summer getaway known as Amity Island but to show the shark is a cold blooded killer they need a first victim and this is where the beginning comes into play. A young and rather sexy looking woman takes a dive into the water while her boyfriend lounges on the beach, this of course is happening at dusk I think. The shark grabs the young woman’s feel jolting her back and forth and eventually consuming here. This is what always got to me, even now as I re watch it.

This woman is screaming her brains out for somebody to help her and her boyfriend doesn’t even pop his head up to see if she is okay, he just assumes that she is. It always bothered me because if I were him I would be running out into the water to at least try to help her. Perhaps is the Hollywood convention that prevent him from doing anything, you know, in order to build suspense and fear but that still leaves me bitter. The woman shouldn’t have been killed… she was making it very obvious that something was attacking her and nobody came to her rescue. They played it off as though the boyfriend didn’t know she was being attacked but I say that’s a crock.

Mocking Halloween: Signs

Ahh yes, Signs. Shyamalan's ode to Hitchcock and one of the first movies he directed. When this movie debuted it received pretty positive reviews and was Mel Gibson’s last movie till Edge of Darkness. The story follows a priest who lost his faith after a drunk truck driver hit and killed his wife. While his family tries to adapt to his new lifestyle they are unwillingly thrown into the middle of an alien invasion after crop circles appear in their cornfields. Sure the plot seems a bit random given the hard-hitting story but that’s not my beef here. I don’t want to complain about the ‘twist’ since I feel as though water as the alien’s weakness is NOT a twist but rather something minor. It was a scene that always made me go… “What are you doing? Just pack your shit up and leave!”

When Gibson’s character confronts the drunk driver (who happens to be a local and played by M. Night himself) he is sitting alone, calm, pensive and spooked in his car. He gets into the car with him and they have a little chat about what happened the night of the accident. It’s not until they are done having their 10-minute scene of exposition till we realize he locked an alien in the pantry. At that point I was like, “why are they sitting their talking about an accident when there are aliens running around the place, especially when one is in the damn pantry?” I understand that it was for dramatic effect but if I were M. Night I would be like, “Yeah, man, sorry about your wife but holy shit there is an alien in my pantry. Go home! Save your kids! I’m out of here!” Perhaps I am being nitpicky, oh darn, but this scene felt way to dramatic considering the circumstances of everything around them.

There are other scenes throughout the movie where Mel is talking to his kids about how they were being born while giant Amazon sized aliens are attacking the house and I was left flabbergasted. For the love of everything holy… grab your kids, throw ‘em into the cellar and tell them to calm down or shit WILL hit the fan. Oh Shyamalan; you and your dramatic talks.

Mocking Halloween: Friday the 13th

Honestly, what isn’t there to bitch about Friday the 13^th? This is a franchise that has gone on for way too long and just influences the stereotype that horror movies are stupid and all about the body count. However, I want to focus on just the first film. Essentially it’s about a group of youthful camp counselors who reopen Cam Crystal Lake after a bizarre death occurred years before. Little do they know, a killer is stalking them and killing them one by one. Can it be the ghost of the deformed boy that drowned in the lake? Or perhaps it’s really him and he never died to begin with? Only time will tell. I don’t want to make this into a review of the film because I can really nitpick the hell out of it so instead I will focus on some key things.

The biggest thing that this film suffers from is it’s characterization and this is something that has followed the franchise up until Jason met Freddy K. The characters are nothing but a bunch of stupid, sex-craved, alcohol addicted teens that have no personality and at times you want dead. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, but it caters to the fact that horror movies are dumb and pointless and they are not. There are plenty of good horror movies out there that are like Friday the 13^th but have characters that you care about and you want to see live. I understand that this is what Friday the 13^th is known for but when this movie first debuted, nobody would have known this and it could have had the potential of being original and engaging and not just dumb popcorn fun.

Friday the 13^th also suffers from really boring kills. They’re not really non-original but when somebody does get killed, it’s actually quite boring… at least in the camp setting. There is really no atmosphere unless the killing happens out in the woods and when it’s out there the music sort of fits with the mood. The kills that happen in the camp itself are really dry and sort of ridiculous. I can see the writers sitting down and thinking all sorts off summer camp motifs and wondering how they make those into killings. Perhaps I’ve grown away from Friday the 13^th but to me, it’s dumb and mind-numbing but I know it has a fan base that is huge and in that case… somebody’s got to love it.

Mocking Halloween: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

To horror fans, when you mention the word chainsaw they will immediately think of Tobe Hooper’s gritty realistic film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This movie paved the way for how horror movies were made and how future films would utilize its scare tactics. The film is about a group of teens that get stranded out in the Texas countryside. Little do they know the family that inhabits the nearby house is a family of cannibals that picks them off one by one. This movie is famous for introducing us to the immortal Leatherface and his cannibalistic clan but also for scream queen nominee Marilyn Burns. However, there was always something that seemed really out of place here.

This movie is set up and filmed to look like a documentary or at least to give us this sense of gritty realism. As scary as it may be, the one thing that always seemed really out of place was the acting towards the end. When Sally wakes up and sees the entire family at the dinner table they proceed to mock her and make fun of her. Sure this may be scary but it’s way too over the top and it takes me right out of the movie. It discredits all the realism from the rest of the film and makes me feel like I am watching a really bad b-movie. There has to be a point where you should realize that this might be a little too wacky for the film. As insane as these people are, I’m sure they wouldn’t be acting like Loony Tunes characters.

If that’s not enough, the dinner sequence is plagued by the constant screeching of Sally Hardesty. I know she is being held captive and is about to be killed but screaming like a gut-shot banshee is not going to help. When I saw this in a theater I had to cover my ears because it was so loud. Nobody came to help the first couple of hours and nobody is going to come the next couple of hours. Perhaps my ears are sensitive but… there also needs to be a point where the female character needs to shut up and stop screaming so dramatically.

Mocking Halloween: Child's Play

Though this is sort of a Christmas themed movie, I feel as though many people would be watching it this Halloween since it is a classic slasher movie, though it’s a bit different from others. You see, Child's Play is about a killer that performs some sort of voodoo ritual and transmits his soul into a Good Guy doll seconds before his human body dies. Than, a young boy is given the possessed doll for Christmas but begins killing people. The adults think Andy is going crazy but little do they know that his doll really is possessed by the soul of a Lakeview Strangler. There is a big problem with this movie and it’s sort of in the same vain as Phantasm and it shows that the film hasn’t really aged well with modern audiences.

The problem here is that that killer is a doll! Sure, it’s not as strange as killer metal balls but nevertheless a doll is attacking people!! Personally, every time I see the doll running around with his doll shoes, carrying a knife and jumping up and down I laugh and it takes me out of the movie. Even when the doll begins talking, especially the when it uses vulgarity, it comes off as extremely campy and ham-handed. But perhaps the best parts that are so stupid it’s funny is when Chucky attacks somebody and the person is struggling to get the doll off them. It’s a goddamn doll for Christ’s sake… and they can’t just pry him off? If I were them, I would pull the doll off of me and throw him in the fire or something. It’s a doll. Not a person.

Perhaps today, people want real hardcore killers and axe murderers and that leaves no room for imagination. I am sure that if you show this movie to a kid or even a pre-teen today they would scoff and laugh at it and rightfully so. It’s very corny but than again, isn’t that what made some horror movies great?

Mocking Halloween: Phantasm

What happens when you mix aliens with horror? No… not Alien but I’ll give you another hint. Aliens, horror and funeral directors; that’s right, you get Phantasm. A low budget horror movie that isn’t too famous but isn’t too obscure either. It’s about a group of kids that find out the dark and out-of-this-world secret of the local funeral director/grave robber and now they must expose him for what he really is. They just have one problem; they are trapped in the maze of the funeral home and pursued by his robotic weapons. This movie suffers from one thing and one thing only… the antagonist. No not The Tall Man but rather another antagonist.

The Tall Man is a rather frightening fellow and he is the typical scary, pale faced, tall, slip and eerie looking funeral owner but when I finally saw what his choice gadget is for killing people… I almost laughed. It’s a flying metal ball that drills into your head and sucks out your blood. I couldn’t believe my eyes. These guys are running from flying metal balls!! It’s just so out there and so wild that it seems to be awkward for such a moody and atmospheric horror film. What is even better is that as the film series progressed, the balls got more and more complex and sort of became a running gag in the franchise.

There are balls with razor blades on them, balls with long drills; swarm of balls, balls that drill and tear up your insides, a golden ball that does God knows what and a whole bunch more. In fact, the sequel’s tagline says it all: “This summer… the ball is back!” It’s the only bankable thing that the series has to offer and it’s sort of sad. I find it rather anticlimactic to see the main villain of a horror franchise be a metal ball from outer space but there is one movie that can beat this.

Mocking Halloween: Evil Dead

What isn’t there to like about Sam Raimi’s monster cult hit Evil Dead? It’s a perfect blend of horror, camp and comedy all rolled into one ‘cabin in the woods’ movie. The story follows a group of friends to travel to a cabin… in the woods… so that they can have a great time drinking and partying. Little do they know that there are demons lurking in the woods after the person who lived there before unwillingly summoned them from Hell. One might be asking, what can I possibly complain about Evil Dead. Well, I’ll tell you exactly that.

From what I know about the movie, this was supposed to be an actual horror movie and nowhere near a horror comedy or maybe it would have less comedy but more horror. It wasn’t until the sequel when Raimi decided to have fun with the genre. However, in the case of Evil Dead there are so many things that happen that just turn out to be hysterical than scary! Take for example, when Linda gets possessed she becomes insane and she laughs, giggles and pretty much stays in the same spot for a majority of some of the scenes. Perhaps it was intentional for it to be sort of silly but for a movie that has a huge reputation, it certainly didn’t live up to it. I don’t want to see demons laughing and giggling… I want to see them kill.

Even the infamous tree rape scene comes off as being really tacky and sort of out of place in the overall movie. When it happened all I could do was lean back and ask, “why a tree? Why couldn’t it have been something else?” Again, going back to the reputation this movie has… I want demons, not killer trees! I understand that there are demons in the movie, but still... raping trees? Perhaps this is one case where it isn’t the movie’s fault for being so ham-handed but rather the rabid cult fans of the film that make the movie seem as though it’s the greatest horror movie ever made… ever.

Mocking Halloween: Night of the Living Dead

I know what you are thinking, how dare I make fun of this movie considering its status as being one of the greatest horror movies of all time and seen as one of the most successful indie films too. That won’t stop me because after watching it again, there was something about it that disturbed me… no, not the zombies eating but something else. Let me first start off by saying that I am always a fan of the slow lumbering zombie rather than the 28 Days Later running zombie. I’ve always stated Night of the Living Dead as an example of a good slow moving zombie movie… but that has been compromised.

It may seem like a trivial thing and I’m not quite sure why anybody hasn’t noticed this but when the cemetery zombie attacks Barbara, she runs towards her car… and the zombie RUNS after her. Yes! There is a running zombie in a Romero movie. The zombie then picks up a rock and tries to smash open her window, while acting like a spaz. I was sort of surprised to see this and I guess it would have been fine if the rest of the zombies didn’t act like lumbering drones. So my question is, why was the cemetery zombie the only one to run and use a blunt object to attack with while the rest of the zombies walks slow and grab?

The other thing that I noticed was Barbara herself. I’ve already elaborated on this before (Click here) but it’s sort of misleading. I wanted to see Barbara as this strong woman who tries to pull herself together and help Ben and the rest fight off the zombies but she doesn’t. Throughout most of the movie she looks like she is high and tripping balls. Perhaps that’s the way it was meant but… it would have been nice to see her act a little better.

Mocking Halloween: Psycho

It was really nice to see Psycho on the big screen, up until the middle of the movie it’s pretty much a crime drama or just a romantic drama but it was still fun to look at. Universally regarded as a classic horror movie, it does have a lot of moments where I cocked my head in puzzled glaze and asked myself, “What the hell is wrong with this person.” That person was Marion Crane. With the exception of a lot of talking and few scenes involving Mama Bates, Marion sort of got what was coming to her. No, not getting killed in the shower but rather having a police car tail her. In fact, Norman was guilty of the very same thing. I’ll explain.

After stealing the money Marion is confronted by a police officer asking why she was sleeping in a car on the shoulder of a desert road. Right off the bat she is acting extremely suspicious and then becomes ignorant as the cop is asking her questions. Why is she doing this? If I were her I would cool it down and answer the questions the cop asks in a polite manner. It gets worse when she buys a new car, right as the same police officer is watching her from across the street. Oh and if that’s not enough, she keeps looking over at him so now she is pretty much assuring him that she is up to something. At that point I was like, “Okay, I want you to get caught just to teach you to be more inconspicuous.” It annoyed me and from the get go she didn’t seem like that smart of a person.

Unfortunately, Norman is guilty of the same thing. When the detective asks him questions about Marion he starts off acting normal and giving a lie. When he is caught his lie transformers into the truth but he sticks with the fact that Marion left the hotel. I was wondering why didn’t he just tell the truth to begin with but say that she left real early in the morning? However, he began getting impatient and very snarky. I said to myself, “Are the people in this movie that bad at handling cops.” I can only imagine what would happen if a cop came up to Sam to ask him where the bathroom is:

“Where is the bathroom?”

“It’s um…” His eyes began to shift. His throat clenched up. His breathing was very heavy. “It’s over by the… um…” He stared into the officer’s blank black sunglasses. “By the… back door… next to the coolers.” His heart was racing and as the cop left, Sam bolted out of the building not knowing where to go since he didn’t do anything in the first place.

Mocking Halloween: The Shining

The Shining is probably one of the more surreal and horrifying films that the general public acknowledges. Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece is definitely surreal but is it horrifying? Is it scary? Is it a slasher as some would consider it? The answer to these questions is no. The Shining is a very dated horror movie and much like The Exorcist it is a very slow moving film that has hardly any type of scare whatsoever. In fact, the film may bore you and put you to sleep faster than it would scare you. It’s a case in which the time period in which this was made is definitely shown since it was made during an year were people had their imaginations.

One of the film’s biggest problems comes from the fact that it cons you out of a scare. The score builds up the tension and you are on the edge of your seat waiting for something to happen but when the score reaches its climax… the biggest thing that happens is ‘Tuesday’ appears on screen. Hardly anything happens until that final 10 or 15 minutes. Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing that this film does to make the viewing experience that much more boring.

Some of the scenes just drag on and on and on and after a while you just want them to stop. The scene were Danny is riding around the hotel won’t stop. The scene where Wendy and Danny are walking through the maze seems endless, much like the maze itself. When Jack checks out the forbidden room, it seems like Kubrick is taking his sweet dandy time to get to the bathroom. Also, there is surprisingly a lot of talking scenes and these also carry on and on. When Doc is talking to Danny about the Shining, when Jack is talking to Grady or the bartender, when Wendy is talking to the sheriff… they all seem to last forever.

If this film came out today, it would have failed miserably because the audience would be lost and completely bored. There are too many slow moving scenes, there are too many exposition scenes and the reasoning for a lot of the actions are too convoluted. It may have been feasible for the early 80s but in this day and age… it would probably be categorized as a drama. Only one person dies and for today’s standards that’s not enough. The bare minimum should be at 5.

Mocking Halloween: Scream

Ah Scream. Wes Craven’s revival of the teen slasher movies that made the late 70s and 80s what they were in horror. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest slasher films in recent times and has one of the most iconic serials killers since Hannibal Lector. But can we really consider it that much of a classic considering that is riddled with studio gimmicks, teen stereotypes and some uninspired scares? Perhaps it was Craven’s intention to show off some of the stereotypes and cliché scares because this is a parody after all… but the film still reeks of studio influence and control and I will briefly elaborate on this.

What I specifically mean by studio influence is that Scream feels very glossy and over the top at times. Hell, even Nightmare on Elm Street did the same thing but at least that was actually original. Everything up until the end of Scream was very cliché. The end makes up for it but still. A good example of this is Marco Beltrami’s score. It’s so overcomplicated as it uses bells, whistles and over-the-top strings. Even during some of the exposition scenes, the score makes you on edge when nothing is happening. During the scare scenes, it’s the score that does the work rather than the sound effects. It’s a great example of over the top studio cheese.

Another great example of this studio influence is over the top killer. In most indie horror flicks the killer uses a specialized weapon to match his or her theme, however in studio made movies the killer goes above and beyond to create elaborate kills (see the Saw franchise). Here, Ghostface is actually two people that set up the fact that the killer can be everywhere. These killers also utilized a very elaborate plan to frame somebody and they even use a voice distorter. It’s one of those moments where you lean back in your chair and say, “okay, this is getting a tad ridiculous.”

That’s the biggest gripe I have about Scream is that it’s way too over the top. If you look closely you’ll notice other things like the flashy camera/lighting work, the glossy depiction of high school and unlikable characters. You can tell this is a Wes Craven flick just by looking at the visuals.

Mocking Halloween: House on Haunted Hill (1999)

This was one of the first R-rated horror movies I saw on television and I was about 10 or 11 years old. I was so thrilled to see it, since my parents wouldn’t take me to the theaters, that I stayed up half the night to wait for it. When I got a little older I bought the DVD so that I can treasure that memory forever. Watching it now, on the big screen with a good sound system really puts the movie in perspective. My God Malone, that was one of the cheesiest, tackiest cornball of a movie I have seen since 2001 Maniacs. It’s obvious that this movie is heavily riddled with typical over-the-top Hollywood gimmicks and styles but this movie goes overboard with it at times.

As I sat in my chair I couldn’t help but notice how flashy and corny some of the scare tactics were in this film. Case in point: When Miss Marr is attacked by a ghost the film goes into this bombardment of obscure and surreal images that make no sense and contribute nothing to the film. It’s only there to leave the audience wondering the fuck is going on. The camera sways back and forth around the characters creating the old horror movie cliché of being surrounded by some force. There is flashy lighting, crazy camera filters, weird ghostly sounds that are struddled all over and the overused technique of the shaky headed ghosts. Even more so, the film uses a slew of one-liners and very scripted dialogue. Actually, I even remember a Scooby-Doo style montage of all the characters investigating the house.

House on Haunted Hill was made to scare modern audiences and you can tell that right off the bat with it’s flashy aspects. It doesn’t have the subtly and the charm of the original and it had Generation X written all over it. It proves that aesthetics and gloss don’t always make a good horror movie.

Mocking Halloween: The Exorcist

This film is considered to be one of the scariest films of all time and one of the greatest films in general. To call it the scariest film of all time is overstating the movie. The Exorcist is a slow burn movie and probably too slow for a film that is supposed to scare the living daylights out of you. Up until Regan mutilates herself with the crucifix, you are constantly on the edge of your seat waiting for something scary to happen. Even when the possession starts… it seems more like a poltergeist possession and a demonic one. Finally, when Regan gets fully possessed you’re relieved to see something frightening happen but even sill the movie makes effort to cut away from the action and instead focus on a priest jogging around a field. It’s not until Merrin shows up when things begin getting good.

Considering that kids nowadays are so pampered by TV and the Internet that they are accustomed to seeing people getting their heads lopped off, or people getting blown away by guns that they won’t look at The Exorcist as a horror. If you put this movie on for a 12 year old today, he’d probably fall asleep. I damn near fell asleep before the movie got to it’s middle. For horror fans, this movie is sacred ground but for most of the modern general public The Exorcist is a snooze-fest.

Introducing The Mocking Halloween Series

Alright, I was meaning to post this up at the end of September but because of a vigorous moving process I have been limited to the amount of time I can dedicate to uploading posts. I am aware that I have a lot of things to post and they are piling up… I just need to find the time. However, yesterday marked the beginning of October as well as the beginning of my little Halloween riffing so to speak. I was meaning to put up my first riff of The Exorcist up yesterday but I never go the chance. Anywho, I feel as though I must explain what I am doing so that I don’t offend anybody who holds any of the movies I will be watching in high regard.

I’ve stated it on Twitter several times that I will be watching some of the classic horror movies, many of these movies I have seen over and over again and they never tire me. I hold these movies in such high regard that I look at them as influences in my life… which is why I will be bring them down a peg by harassing and poking fun of them. This is sort of an experiment that I do on a daily basis with my friend for two reasons: 1) because I can. 2) because I am considered an asshole. More importantly I look at it this way; to show how much I love these films I feel comfortable poking innocent fun at them. Believe me, I’ve harshly criticized The Thing before so this action is really quite common.

Rather than celebrate all the magnificent horror movies this Halloween, I shall be mocking horror movies for the pure enjoyment. I will be playing devil’s advocate as well as a cinematic bully but I want everybody to understand, I am doing this because I love these films. If I didn’t love them, I honestly wouldn’t be wasting my precious time with them unless I had to but I’m not. So, I present to you… *drum roll*… The Mocking Halloween series.