Halloween night I took The Girls trick-or-treating. My lovely wife made costumes for both of them. She had made a pumpkin costume for Naomi, but at the last minute she didn't want to wear it. Instead, she wore a cowboy hat and cowboy boots of her sister's.
As you can see, Halloween night was unseasonably warm -- Naomi is in a sleeveless shirt and shorts. It was incredibly pleasant to be able to trick or treat in shirt sleeves.
It's a little late, but here's a roundup of Halloween-related links I didn't get to mention yet in October.
Here's the official Web site for the upcoming movie Alone in the Dark, yet another horror title based on a computer game. Slated for release next year, it's directed by Uwe Boll, who helmed this year's entry House of the Dead.
And in a recent (11/04) development, studios bereft of ideas are apparently rushing a movie of The Amytiville Horror into production, apparently unaware that a) the series has already been done to death anf b) the whole thing was a hoax (via FARK).
According to the Miami Herald, retro candy like Atomic Fireballs, Mary Janes, and Root Beer Barrels are hot this year. We're giving out Tootsie Rolls, ourselves.
Today's Internet Movie Database poll asks "Which of these classic horror movies would you be your pick for prime Halloween viewing?" I chose Night of the Living Dead, having already seen Halloween this month. Here are the results as of this time, subject to change of course, along with my comments. Overall, the list suffers from way too much padding with films that are thrillers, not horror movies. It's disappointing that the IMDb succumbed to such confusion.
Halloween – duh! 332 (22.1%) "Duh" is right -- the obvous choice, and a fine motion picture. The Shining 198 (13.2%) The Exorcist 196 (13.1%) Another film that retains the power to scare even on multiple viewings. Alien 110 (7.3%) A horror film in science fiction trappings -- excellent choice. Psycho 94 (6.3%) Night of the Living Dead 89 (5.9%) My personal pick -- a superb and frightening Halloween movie The Silence of the Lambs 65 (4.3%) The Sixth Sense 63 (4.2%) Poltergeist 54 (3.6%) The Omen 45 (3.0%) Dracula 41 (2.7%) What better time to revisit Universal's classics? Rosemary's Baby 36 (2.4%) Frankenstein 30 (2.0%) Carrie 26 (1.7%) I looked for, but couldn't find, this flick at the rental store, in fact Jaws 24 (1.6%) Vertigo 13 (0.9%) Vertigo, while a fine film, is not a horror film at all, but rather a thriller. It would not be on my list. Unfortunately, a trend begins here... The Night of the Hunter 13 (0.9%) By contrast, this superb and underrated flick is a horror film masquerading as a thriller. Blood Simple 12 (0.8%) Again, great movie, but doesn't belong on the list. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 12 (0.8%) A superb science fiction horror film. Watching it recently, I was startled as how effective the film is at generating an atmosphere of fear and paranoia. The Birds 11 (0.7%) Alfred Hitchcok's two overt horror films definitely belong on the list... Rear Window 10 (0.7%) ...but he only made two of them. Rear Window, again, is a superb thriller but by no means a horror film. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 10 (0.7%) Another offbeat but appropriate horror choice. Wait Until Dark 6 (0.4%) Cape Fear 5 (0.3%) Dial M for Murder 2 (0.1%) For pity's sake, this is getting ridiculous... Fatal Attraction 2 (0.1%) What's scary about this film is how morally reprehensible it is. Michael Douglas' character is given a complete pass for his actions, while Glenn Close is turned, in the film's last reel, into a parody of the indestructible killer from slasher films. A stinker, and unworthy of the list. Marathon Man 1 (0.1%) The presence of a good torture scene does not a horror film make.
Once again, this list is pretty lame. It'd be better served by cutting, so to speak, the final five entries altogether, and trimming some of the other non-horror movies as well. There's also nary a Hammer film to be seen, nor such much more obvious choices as The Haunting (the original, natch), A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Evil Dead, or even An American Werewolf in London.
Go pick a real horror movie, and leave your choice in the comments.
Update: In a pleasing development, by the time the poll has concluded, The Exorcist had edged out The Shining. Here are the final top six results:
Halloween – duh! 1196 (21.2%) The Exorcist 749 (13.3%) The Shining 745 (13.2%) Alien 385 (6.8%) Psycho 383 (6.8%) Night of the Living Dead 360 (6.4%)
I just discovered the excellently named exploitation film review site Girls, Guns and Ghouls. It features looks at various horror flicks and trashy cinema.
At this point, I should annoy Jaquandor by mentioning that John Carpenter was kind enough to send me an autographed photo. (I have one of Wes Cravem too.)
October continues to be Planet Swank's highest traffic month ever; the hit counter passed 49,000, thanks to more than 5,200 hits this month.
Thanks for visiting, and don't forget that there's lots of Halloween celebration, left-of-center commentary, and general swankiness around! And for all visitors -- especially new ones arriving via search engines -- remember that comments are welcome.
Many of the U.S. firms doing billions of dollars of work in Iraq and Afghanistan have been big donors to President Bush and his Republican Party and fill their boards with political and military heavyweights, a report on Thursday said.
The report by the watchdog group, the Center for Public Integrity, said most of the 70 firms and individuals getting up to $8 billion in contracts for post-war Iraq and Afghanistan donated more to Bush's presidential campaign -- a little over $500,000 -- than any other candidate in the past decade.
"There is a stench of political favoritism and cronyism surrounding the contracting process in both Iraq and Afghanistan," said Charles Lewis, executive director of the group, which investigates public service and ethics issues.
Cronyism is certainly not unheard-of in any Administration, but seems to be endemic of this one. Was this sort of thing what Bush had in mind when he promised to run the nation in his own MBA style?
My copy of the Japanese rock-n-roll zombie flick Wild Zero (Japanese site) arrived today. I took advantage of Naomi's nap time to watch it. It's a massively good-hearted and entertaining film that resembles a mixture of Dawn of the Dead, Rock and Roll High School and Repo Man. I'll have a review at Destroy All Monsters presently. In the meantime, here are reviews at Snowblood Apple and Teleport City.
Today's wallpaper is from the 1979 Lucio Fulci horror picture Zombie, which I picked up for ten bucks at Best Buy last year, but haven't gotten 'round to watching this Halloween season. Still, it's a good combination of gore and chills, and remarkably coherent for a Fulci flick. (Reviews at Teleport City--which hosts reviews of several other gory Italian zombie flicks, as if there were any other kind--Stomp Tokyo, and Badmovies.org .)
Speaking of Fulci, I'd be remiss not to celebrate his zombie nightmare The Beyond (reviews at Teleport City, The Bad Movie Report and The Vault). Unfortunately, I haven't watched this one yet this month either (nor Fulci's uneven thriller The House By The Cemetery, for the at matter).
We're dealing with a sick child today. Our two-year-old, Naomi, woke up about four in the morning throwing up. We've just returned from the doctor, and she seems to be okay now, just very tired. I'm going to to try to put her down for a nap after lunch, and then I'll attend to things here. In the meantime, peruse the previous postings or check out the fine sites listed at left.
“Honestly, it’s a little tougher than I thought it was going to be,” Lott said. In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.” [Emphasis added.]
I'm sure glad the grown-ups are in charge. Sheesh.
Update: Arthur Silber has a juicy rant on the subject.
I just attended the annual benefits meeting at my place of employment. I noted that starting next year, my employer is extending health care benefits to domestic partners, same-sex or otherwise.
It doesn't affect me, of course -- my lovely wife and kids are already covered -- but good on 'em, anyway.
It's time to play "what loony lefty Commie terrorist-lovin' hater of Democracy said the following?":
Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq....there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.
Why, none other than George Bush senior, in his memoir A World Transformed. I might add that, if memory serves me right, arguments of this sort were also made by then-General Colin Powell in justifying what I now view as a correct decision not to invade Baghdad.
The extraordinary risks and inevitable costs of invading Iraq were well known. Justifying the invasion required an extraordinary rationale -- indeed, a truly imminent threat. "It seemed like a good idea at the time" doesn't come close to overcoming this very rational -- and now, self-evidently correct -- objection. Bush and the rest of the war hawks never got close to answering this objection. The best they could do was "cakewalk," remember?
