Dear Crabby,
Every October, the Freeform channel does ’31 Nights of Halloween.’ The movies shown are pretty tame: The Addams Family, Ghostbusters, Hocus Pocus, you get the idea. Do you watch Halloween movies? And if you do are they the really scary ones like Nightmare on Elm Street?
Thanks!
Gwen Gothic
Dear Gwen Gothic,
Last year a reader asked what I thought about haunted houses. I told this person that I find daily life scary enough and I don’t need to fork over my hard-earned pension dollars to have someone scare me. The same goes for these so-called Halloween movies.
In my opinion, they are nothing more than glorified blood fests created to earn easy money from folks who think everything they read on the internet is real. Again, I can see enough blood and guts on the nightly news. Besides, these characters like Michael Meyers and Freddie Kreuger never die! Does anyone even know how many Nightmare on Elm Street movies there has been? And poor Jamie Lee Curtis just keeps coming back for more in those Halloween movies. Why can’t these bad guys get a clue and stay dead? Here’s a fun fact: Robert Englund the actor who plays Freddie Kreuger once attended Oakland University and trained at Meadow Brook Theatre. You’re welcome. Aside from lead characters who seem to be immortal, the plot of these ‘films’ all appear to have the same plot. If you’ve watched one, wouldn’t it stand to reason that you’ve pretty much seen them all? And not that I would ever watch It or the recently released sequel, but at least those stories are well written by the master of the horror genre – Stephen King. I guess that’s something to consider with your question, ‘What is a Halloween movie?’ Nightmare on Elm Street and its contemporaries I believe are generally seen as slasher movies (for obvious reasons). Whereas as It would be considered a horror movie. So, to answer your question, I do not watch scary, slasher, or horror-type movies. No. I prefer animated classics or those films filled with suspense.
When my grandkids were little, we’d have them over to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. While I thought Linus was an absolute ding-dong for passing up trick-or-treating, ya gotta admire his commitment to his cause. Another animated movie we liked to show was The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Bing Crosby narrates the Ichabod Crane character, while Basil Rathbone narrated Mr. Toad portion. Speaking of Basil Rathbone, I consider him and Vincent Price masters of all things spine-tingling. I particularly enjoy listening to these two masters read Edgar Allan Poe’s works. It takes me back to being a kid and listening to the radio. That’s all I need to get into the ‘spirit’ of the season. I hope that answers your question and… Boo!
Dear Crabby