Showing posts with label OCTOBER. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OCTOBER. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

GREENDAY

Happy October everybody! Your Humble Narrator must confess that I am all too vulnerable to seasonal marketing for this, my favorite month. Recently I tried...

...Fanta's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice tie-in pop, Haunted Apple, and also...

...Hostess Limited Edition FrankenCakes, "with SCREAM filling!"

The FrankenCakes tasted, to me, exactly like a regular, tasty cupcake. Perhaps the SCREAM filling would have had more creepy impact if, like the frosting, it was green. As for the pop, at least it commited to the macabre conceit; it had an elusive flavor that I might describe as "very sweet, but moldy." I finished one bottle but I suspect I am unlikely to buy a second.

Thursday, October 21, 2021

DIBBUK WAS BETTER

In October's honor...

...Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival presents its first horror movie, for free! The unnerving short subject Dibbuk, about the efforts of a minyan to exorcise a man of the titular spirit, may be viewed from October 21 through October 24. Go to gpjff.org/dibbuk to watch.

Thursday, October 7, 2021

CHI DEVIL WOMAN

If you need an intriguing read for October, you might consider...

...The Case Against Satan, a brief 1962 novel by Ray Russell of Sardonicus fame. Somehow I had never heard of this one, now out in a respectable new edition by Penguin Classics if you please, but it's a gripping fast read, and it seems inarguably influential.

Set in a Roman Catholic rectory in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, Russell's book dramatizes an exorcism. At the time, apparently, this rite was so rarely performed and archaic that it was a novelty to readers it would not be a decade later, after the release of William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel The Exorcist and its 1973 movie adaptation popularized the concept.

In Russell's yarn, the possession victim is a pretty teenage girl. The exorcism is performed by a younger priest with a drinking problem and an interest in psychology and other "modern" ideas; he's supervised by his Bishop, an older, more traditional sort. The victim is bound to a bed, and at one point she has an upset tummy to a projectile degree.

In short, the book has broad resemblances to The Exorcist that seem unmistakable. Unlike Blatty, however, Russell leaves matters ambiguous; the story could, however unconvincingly, be interpreted in non-supernatural terms.

The author's narrative tone toward then-contemporary religious attitudes is snarky and contemptuous, referring, at the novel's opening, to the modern idea of God as "...a nodding Santa Claus with twinkling eyes and a spun glass beard..." and to modern religion as "...an unnatural thing of all light and no shadow, a pious bonbon so nice, so sweet, so soporifically bland that a Karl Marx can call it the opium of the people not without justice..." Russell, who died in 1999, lived long enough to see conservative religious attitudes in our culture swing the other direction; I don't know if he was comforted by this change or not.

I, for one, am fervently hoping for the Nodding Santa Claus. That said, if you're looking for a diabolical tale to pass an autumnal evening, rather than revisiting Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist this year I'd suggest you pick the devil you don't know.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

FALL FLING

Happy October everybody! My favorite month of the year is off to a horribly rough start; let's hope it gets better.

Check out the October edition of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands...


...for Your Humble Narrator's article on the origins of Lost Lake, Phoenix's big new music festival debuting later this month in Steele Indian School Park, and also my "4 Corners" column on new and new-ish Valley chowhouses, especially those in which one might obtain a nice bowl of soup for the cooler weather.

A few days ago I accompanied The Wife on one of her favorite fall traditions, going to Target and checking out the Halloween decorations and other merchandise...

 
It was there I obtained...

Monster-of-the-Week: ..this week's honoree, one of a box of Peeps Frankensteins...


Have no fear, I assure you that the abomination in question was devoured mere seconds after this photo was taken. Along with his box-mates.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

I'M BEING FOLLOWED BY A MOON-SPIDER...

Happy October everybody!

October at last—my favorite month, especially in Arizona; the month of Halloween and the month of gradually falling temperatures.

Also, it’s the month of Phoenix Magazine’s “Best of the Valley” issue:


Once again, a bunch of this year’s picks were written by Your Humble Narrator. No prizes for guessing which ones, but you can check out the issue here, or on newsstands Valley-wide.

Monster-of-the-Week is back, too. This past weekend, we had a “supermoon,” seen here over Bell Road in north Phoenix...


 …and last week we also had the story about a woman in Indiana who jumped out of her car when frightened by a spider, leaving her 9-year-old son to crash into a school bus (no one was seriously hurt). So, between the two stories…

Monster-of-the-Week: …only one choice seems possible: The terrifyingly realistic giant moon-spider that attacks the astronauts in 1953’s Cat-Women of theMoon (aka Rocket to the Moon):


Thursday, October 30, 2014

COFFIN/KING

We’ve been doing Draculas for the last few weeks so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s wrap up this most monsterish month with one of the all-time greats, probably the first supernatural monster of the sound era, the great Be1a Lugosi in the title role of the 1931 Universal version of Dracula.

Happy and Safe Halloween everybody!


Thursday, October 2, 2014

THE GILL-MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

Happy October everybody!

This past Christmas I was given a wall calendar, now adorning the wall of my office, called Cinema Noir. Along with posters for The Big Sleep, The Killer That Stalked New York and The Third Man, it bafflingly includes posters from The Birds, Citizen Kane, King Kong and the original Dracula.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a cool calendar full of cool posters for cool movies, and I’ve been enjoying it all year. But…noir? Citizen Kane? King Kong?

October’s selection is…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this poster, featuring this week’s honoree…



…the Gill-Man, in The Creature Walks Among Us, the neglected third chapter of Universal’s Creature of the Black Lagoon trilogy, in which the Gill-Man is surgically altered and becomes, rather poignantly, more human.

I’ve always had a liking for this odd, melancholy little movie, but even so at first glance its inclusion in a Cinema Noir calendar seemed preposterous. But when I thought about it, it probably can make a better case than some of the others. After all, its main plot is a love triangle, and the Gill-Man witnesses, and is framed for, a murder. He may be a primordial abomination from the muck, but in this movie, he’s just a patsy.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

OCTOBERFEST

Happy October everyone!

As always, I must note that this is my favorite month of the year, partly because it’s the month when we finally get a bit of a cool-down here in Arizona, but also because it’s the month of Halloween. So in honor of Monster Month...

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s acknowledge the quintessential monster, the Monster, arguably the image which the word “monster” conjures up for many modern people; the Frankenstein Monster popularized by the great Boris Karloff in James Whale’s 1931 Universal film, under the makeup of the great Jack Pierce: flat-skulled, hulking, greenish-gray skinned, with electrode bolts in his neck:





For Phoenix folk who have never seen this truly classic, haunting performance at the heart of this really fine piece of moviemaking, you can catch the Universal Frankenstein at Filmbar in Phoenix this coming Sunday at 2 p.m, where it’s part of the FilmBar Frightmare Series, a monthlong program of scary pictures: Other titles include Psycho, The Lost Boys, An American Werewolf in London and Young Frankenstein, and there’s also a Halloween-day extravaganza featuring local horror host Dr. Diabolic, Dario Argento’s Dracula and the wacky Horror Remix. October!