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Posts tagged ‘Halloween’

4 Fun Halloween Movies for Kids

Halloween can be a fun time of year and it often sees a large crop of scary and horror movies rolling out to “celebrate” the holiday.  The down side to this is that many of these movies are not appropriate for younger children; however, there are still many great Halloween-themed movies available at Blockbuster that you can watch knowing that they are safe for young minds.  I’ve listed four of my favorites below, but please feel free to share some more of your favorites in the comment section below.

4.  When Good Ghouls Go Bad

Based on a tale by R. L. Stine, When Good Ghouls Go Bad is great Halloween fun for all ages.  This funny, campy movie starring Christopher Lloyd originally aired on FOX Family channel in the early 2000s, but still holds a lot of spooky fun for kids with just enough Halloween scares and magic.  Danny Walker (Joe Pichler) has just moved to a small Minnesota town with his family and when his freshly hung Halloween decorations begin to mysteriously disappear, Danny and his Uncle Fred join forces to rid the community of the bizarre curse which prevents the citizens from celebrating or even mentioning the spooky October holiday. The answer, involving a long-dead artist named Curtis Danko, is found in the town’s deserted chocolate factory.

 

 

3.  Something Wicked This Way Comes

A “scary” movie from Walt Disney Pictures in the 80s, it’s a PG rated film so it would be ok for younger children to watch.  Something Wicked This Way Comes is adapted from Ray Bradbury’s story of the same name and it tells the story of the citizens of Green Town after a peculiar carnival comes to town. Many of the good citizens are compelled to follow their deepest desires, caught under the spell of the malevolent Dr. Dark who can grant those desires on one condition: that the grantees will forever join his freak show.  Dr. Dark is after two young boys from the town in particular, and as he works his own brand of voodoo, the citizens and the two boys — as well as the whole carnival itself — approach a final reckoning.

 

 

2.  Double, Double, Toil & Trouble

Remember when the Olsen twins were America’s little darlings?  Well, this 90s classic starring the girls should bring back great memories of Halloween mischief.  Laughter and chills are served up in equal measure in this made-for-TV movie for the whole family. Kelly and Lynn Farmer (Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen) are twin sisters, who, one Halloween, make a surprising discovery about their Aunt Agatha (Cloris Leachman) — she’s a witch! It seems Agatha isn’t an especially nice witch, either — she has a grudge against Kelly and Lynn’s father and wants to ruin him financially, and the twins have to step in to stop her. However, along the way they also have to help Agatha’s twin sister Sophia (also played by Leachman), who has been trapped by one of Agatha’s spells.

 

 

1.  Hocus Pocus

Apparently the 1990s were big on family-friendly Halloween movies and Hocus Pocus continues the trend.  Just before they are executed as witches in 1693, three witches — Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Mary (Kathy Najimy) –   vow to return to Salem 300 years hence on Halloween to exact their revenge. Three hundred years later, a young boy, Max (Omri Katz), explores the ruins of the legendary witches’ house and dares the witches to manifest themselves. Disregarding the warnings of his sister Dani (Thora Birch) and girlfriend Allison (Vinessa Shaw), Max lights the Candle of Black Flame. With that, the witches reappear to wreak havoc on the town. The kids take off with the witches’ spellbook and a musty tome of hexes and recipes. The sorceresses, who will die by the morning light if they don’t recite the incantation for immortality, have to get the books by whatever means they can. So, Winifred, Sarah, and Mary hop on their broomsticks for a chase through Halloween night.

5 Frightening Films that Actually Take Place on Halloween

There’s one week left until Halloween is upon us and everyone knows that that is prime scary movie season.  Now, there is a plethora of scary/horror movies out there, but considerably fewer scary movies that actually take place on or revolve around the actual Halloween holiday.  Because of this, I have taken the liberty of listing a few quality Halloween films that I would recommend you check out this week.

5.  Boo

In Boo, years of rumors about ghosts stalking the dark corridors of the abandoned Santa Mira Hospital have kept a frightened community at a safe distance. Determined to milk the legend for all its worth, a group of five mischievous college students sneak into the hospital on Halloween night only to discover that the rumors of a bloodthirsty entity who claims the life of all who dare enter the cursed hallways are true. These teens aren’t the only ones trapped by the murderous ghost though, and with each passing hour their hope of seeing another sunrise gives way to the screaming terror of a ghost whose hunger for death is only surpassed by his hunger for life.

 

 

4.  The Hollow

It was a toss-up between this and Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp, but I wanted to list this one since it is much less well-known.  When the dreaded Headless Horseman returns to a modern-era Sleepy Hollow in hopes of collecting some craniums, it’s up to a teen who just happens to be a direct descendent of Ichabod Crane to put a stop to the headless happenings in this terrifying modern spin on the classic Legend of Sleepy Hollow starring Nick Carter and Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco. Read More

My three favorite scary movie experiences

I’m not what you might call a “scary movie buff,” but I probably do watch more scary movies than the average person.  Every autumn leading up to Halloween is prime scary movie season, so of course I get a ramped up desire to watch something that is guaranteed to make me look twice at the dark corners of my house.

Of all the scary movies that I have seen, four films in particular really jump out at me (get it?) as my all-time favorite scary movie viewing experiences.  Now these may not be the best horror films of all time, but they are my favorite watching-experiences because of the situations that I experienced when watching them.  Horror movies are often about the mood, environment, and circumstances when watched, and my circumstances viewing the following four were perfect.

3.  The Blair Witch Project

For those of you that watched horror movies in 1999, perhaps you remember the anomaly and phenomenon that was The Blair Witch Project.  It was the horror movie pioneer of the “found-footage home video” style of shooting and went on as the champion of this low-budget-to-mass-market-appeal up until 2009 when Paranormal Activity came out.

In 1999, if you did a search on the Internet for The Blair Witch, you might have come across an image like this, leading many to believe that these people really were missing.

What was great about this film was that it was marketed as if it really was actual video footage that was found about real missing people.  And what you have to remember about this is that in 1999, most people still didn’t really have steady access to the Internet and even if they did, it certainly wasn’t the robust source of information and dialogue that it is today.  People genuinely didn’t know if this was real footage or not (a relatively new marketing tactic for a horror movie at the time).

Well amidst all of the hype for the film, two buddies and I decided to rent and watch The Blair Witch Project once it came out.  There we were, three 13 year-old boys watching the “actual video footage” of three young people getting lost in the woods of Maryland as they sought out the truth behind the Blair Witch legend.  And as the characters got more lost and more scared, we huddled together and got more and more anxious in the dark of my friend’s living room.

While I do think The Blair Witch Project is a great film, what really leaves it Read More

Halloween Movies for the Easily Frightened

beetlejuice

It’s Halloween! While many people probably hit the theaters over the weekend to watch the newest Paranormal Activity, I stayed home and caught up on one of my favorite Halloween movies — Beetlejuice. That’s right, Beetlejuice. I’m not afraid to say it again either: Beetlejuice!

See, I’m one of those people that can’t watch scary movies that are actually scary. I can’t go to sleep, I have nightmares, I must have all the lights on in the house at night…for a few nights in a row. I can only handle a very mediocre-bordering-low level of scariness.

I know there are other people out there like me, and I’m here to help. Read More

The Aliens are Coming!

War of the Worlds

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles scared the hell out of millions of people with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast. The performance, based on the HG Wells novel, was done as a series of news bulletins detailing the landing of aliens in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, and their subsequent attack on the fair people of Earth.

Now, 72 years later, we have so many alien invasion movies that I don’t think anyone would buy a fake invasion story. To commemorate the creative genius of Welles and celebrate Halloween, here’s a good list of alien invasion movies.

Bad Taste
Critters
The Day of the Triffids
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)
Independence Day
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
It Came from Outer Space
The Blob (1958)
They Live
The Thing
The War of the Worlds (1953)
War of the Worlds (2005)

For even more space invaders, check out our Alien Invasion list.

Holiday Horror

SNDN

Continuing with our weekly October Halloween posts, here are some of my favorite horror movies based on holidays.

April Fool’s Day
It seems like a pretty great slasher flick, until at the end you find out it’s all a prank. I would normally give a spoiler warning, but the movie was made in 1986. With all the secrets revealed and ulterior motives in this movie, it kind of reminds me of Clue. Read More

Top Ten Hilarious Horror Movies

Critters

I’m a man that likes to mix it up, so sometimes I want a little humor in my horror movies. These are my top ten favorites that combine chuckles and charnel (yeah, that’s a stretch). These movies make genuine attempts to be funny. I’m not including hilariously schlocky, fantastic films like The Gate — that’s a different list. Read More

Poll: Favorite Documentary-Style Horror Movie

Blair Witch

Paranormal Activity 2 opens in theaters tomorrow, and that got us thinking about all the movies that use first-person footage to add realism to horror. When done well, it turns a movie that wouldn’t have been all that scary into something that makes you jump out of your seat. But not me. I’m too manly for that.

Poll: Favorite Halloween TV Episodes

Simpsons Halloween

Now that it’s October, I’ve been thinking about some of the great Halloween episodes of shows I watched growing up. All the series below are known for having excellent Halloween episodes, but which do you think has the best?

Five Reasons Why I Will Survive the Coming Zombie Apocalypse

Shaun of the Dead

Because we love Halloween so much around here, it’s become a longstanding (two-year) tradition to have at least one horror-related post each week of October. To kick it off, I’m talking about one of my favorite subjects: THE LIIIIIVIIIING DEEEAAADDDD!

I think about zombies only a little bit more around Halloween than I do the rest of the year. And much of that thinking revolves around how I will not only survive, but thrive, in the zombie-dominated future to come. Here’s why: Read More

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