announcement

i would like to announce that it is Halloween time.

The Many Parties of Halloween

Halloween is in a few days and it's giving me cause for great excitment and also great distress.
For as long as I can remember my maternal family (the Hansens) have had a fun family Halloween Bash at Nanny's (our matriarch) house. Each year has been a little different, but has always included; The 1949 version of Disney's Legend of Sleepy Hollow (narrated by Bing Crosby!), dry ice in a cauldron of root beer (it makes a cool fog), devilled eggs, 'worms in dirt' (gummy worms in chocolate pudding and crushed Oreos), music from Disney's Haunted Mansion, and general riotous behaviour from my 40+ cousins, most still in thier trick-or-treating stages.
Well, this year Nanny has decided that, after 25 years of putting on the darn party, she's ready to call it quits. So the tradition was quickly adopted my my parents, "Uncle Robert and Aunt Nellie" to the majority of my family. This puts me in a predicatment.
See, my family and I have had a bit of a disagreement recently, and sadly we find ourselves a bit estranged while we sort out our differences. And even sadder, the nature of our disagreement makes my welcome in the house a bit worn out.
So I may or may not be able to exersize my usual duties as the 'Hallow-queen' and spook up the place.
Either way, I'll be having a pre-party from 7-10ish and then later I'll be heading to a club called Edge for 'Night of the Dead', where my friends and I will indulge in a different type of riotous behaviour.

 

 

And that will be my Halloween Night. Until the afterparty back home.

But I have fun things yet to do until then! Today Chad and I are going to pick out our costumes, and on Monday or Tuesday we'll go to the cornmaze and carve some jack'o'lanters.

!!!

.

Dracula 1931 - Spanish! Did you know!?

Anyone who knows me know that I am DEVOTED to Bela Lugosi and the 1931 version of Dracula. But very few people are even aware that a second version of Dracula was filmed at the same time! Altho it is barely known, this version of Dracula is actually superior to the one that I laud in several scenes. I think that the Spanish version is cinematically superior, and I even favor a few actors altogether! If I could merge the two films, I'm sure I could get a classic we'd still watch around Halloween today! (I mean other than people like me who are huge nerds when it comes to classic horror films)
I'd keep Bela Lugosi as Dracula (of course),  Dwight Frye as Refield, Edward Van Sloan as Dr. Van Helsing, change the language to my far more beautiful English, and keep the rest of the movie in the Spanish version! Watch it and see what you think! (Oh yeah- and I'd keep the original names from the novel. I never got why they changed that.)

The Bride of Frankenstein

This Movie is kind of sad- I can't help but feel terrible for the Monster (who is not ACTUALLY named Frankenstein!)

I Am Throwing My Own Personal Halloween Party!

It's true. Because I have been left alone at Chad's house while he is running Aaron all over the universe, doing who-knows-what. And, being left to my own devices, I have just finished my fourth cup of coffee, created a Pandora station named "Monster Mash" and am dancing all about to my favorite hits. Including: (because no one knows about this song except for Hansens)...

Frightmare!

Yep. That's the one. I batted my eyes at Chad and asked nicely if he would take me to Frightmare this year, and he seemed pretty keen on the idea, so last night we (and a good friend, Aaron) all jetted off to see what all the fuss was about.

It waaaasssss..... "Frightmare!"

I'll be perfectly honest and say that I put that '!' on the end of the title with no small sense of sarcasm, tho it holds an appropriate air of tacky, worn-out desperation, kind of like the title is trying just a little too hard to be taken excitedly.
Now, I won't be a brat and say I didn't have a good time. Because I did. My favorite was actually 'The Black Hole'  which was an optical illusion. I really fell over and had to grab the dang hand rail because I thought I would topple right over the edge. I felt like I was training to fight Buggers or something.
'Ricker's Island' was thematically solid, and while there were plenty of jump-scares (not a challenge to scare me that way, friends) there wasn't anything memorably spooky- just a pile of guts over here, and a pile of guts over there sort of thing. It wasn't bad. Except for the part where Aaron about took a guys head off when the guy ran at him full speed firing a fake gun. Military.
Then we all sat down and Aaron and Chad forced a slice of pizza down my throat, and we all drank a ton of Mountain Dew and made sarcastic remarks about the 'Bill Pierce Courtesy Honda' sign plastered on the side of Ricker's Island.
Then off to the Black Hole, which as I said, was marvelous, and then to 'Clown Town', which was the least anticipated event for me. I am not a fan of clowns, unless they are the silly kind at the circus.
People always say, "Well, look at that clown? Isn't he scary?"
Yes, well, of course he's scary. Anything is scary when it's got fangs, or a butcher knife in it's head or in it's hand.
But Clown Town was pretty well done. They did some cool tricks with the lighting and 3-D glasses and it was well put together and had some un-anticipated jumps, which was refreshing. The thing I really liked was that many of the the optical illusions were original and memorable, two things that Ricker's Island really needed.
Then came the totally un-original Maze, which I was really looking forward to but did not deliver and probably took a grand total of a half hour to set up. And it had an un-godly long line.
The whole time I couldn't help but think how the whole operation had such potential, but just achieved, really, about half of it. You have about six million teenagers running around with cash-in-hand from thier parents who are happy to be rid of them for the evening. There was only one!!! food place. I'm sure they like the lack of competition, but a popcorn stand and a hot dog stand would have turned a tidy profit that night, I promise. And maybe a hot-cocoa place, it was getting a bit chilly.
And WTF is with this stupid trend of guts guts guts everywhere guts. Honestly. Three 'haunted' events and not a single ghost. Or vampire. Or witch or gypsy or werewolf or mummy or creature from the freaking black lagoon. There were a few zombie-types, so, props for that. But, really? I get it that the aformentioned creatures aren't SCARY to teenagers, but really, neither are piles of guts everywhere. And piles of guts are way lazy.
I would have added a few more tents. They needed a fortune-teller for all the girls to ask if the pimpley-faced boy their crushing on is thier true love, and an up-and-coming or a down-on-his-luck magician doing some tricks to secretly amaze the adolecents, despite thier cries of "LAME! YOU SUCK BALLS!" and other useful criticisms.
And they also needed an 18+ tent to attract the generally deeper pockets of that crowd. The burlesque-y artsy crowd would relish the chance to throw a Halloween show, and I am of the opinion that any event is made better by dancing girls, of verying genres.
So that's my opinion of Frightmare!
Thanks for taking me, Chad my lover. Mwah.

Creeper from the Black Lagoon

Okay. I'm sorry, but this has got to be one of the creepiest scenes ever filmed. I am  HUGE fan of old-timey horror flicks, and this one is one of the best. This scene is so iconic!