Today is 31 October. It is Halloween.

Well, kiddies, we made it. It is the 31st of October – Halloween!

There were a few close calls, times when I didn’t think I’d get my blog post written in time, but like a good horror movie hero, I made it to the final reel in one piece – hopelessly insane, but in one piece.

How to end the month, then? Who or what is going to see us out as we move from Halloween to All Saint’s Day? It should be something scary (natch!), simple, and a little melancholy.

W. W. Jacobs’s short story, “The Monkey’s Paw,” is a stone-cold classic of the genre. I can remember reading it in my junior high school English class, and being very taken by it. I also recall reading a lot of Edgar Allan Poe and even "Leiningen Versus the Ants," so kudos to my 7th grade English teacher!

The story is simply told: at the turn of the 20th century, an English family is visited by a friend just back from serving in India. The visitor has in his possession a souvenir from his time there: a shriveled, mummified monkey’s paw. He tells the family that it allegedly grants three wishes, but those who tempt fate through the paw’s powers are forever sorry they do so. The visitor tries to toss it onto the fire and burn it, but the paw is saved and kept by the family.

What does the family wish for? Do they get what they want?

What follows is a tale of terror and bitter irony that still sends a shiver up my spine. “The Monkey’s Paw” is a marvel of construction, simple, but with powerful moments leading up to its heartbreaking climax.

If you’re brave enough, you can read W. W. Jacobs’s short story here. You may also listen to Roslyn Hicks read the tale at HorrorBabble.

There have been quite a few movie adaptations since the story was published in 1902. Many, however, are considered lost. There is a British-made film from 1948 that doesn’t quite stick to the simplicity of the source material. More faithful adaptations have been made for TV and as short films.

It should come as no surprise, however, that my personal favorite adaptation is a radio drama. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio series, Nightfall, was a very late entry in the radio drama game, but then again, radio drama never quite disappeared from the air in the Great British Commonwealth the way it did in the United States. Produced from 1980-1983, the series aired 100 episodes of supernatural horror.

“The Monkey’s Paw” was the second Nightfall episode to be broadcast. It is a very creepy version with wonderful performances and terrific sound design. The chanting that is slowly potted up as the sergeant-major tells his story is so spooky and perfectly chilling that it is guaranteed to haunt your dreams.

So, for now, I bid you adieu. The past month has been a lot of fun, but it is time to say good night. So, wear a mask, enjoy the horror-thon, don't forget to watch the big giveaway afterwards, and…Happy Halloween…

It is 30 October. There is 1 day until Halloween.

What would a month-long celebration of Halloween be without a mention of those men and women who take it upon themselves to further the case for horror films to generations of TV (and now internet) viewers?

I am speaking, of course, of the TV horror host.

The TV horror host was born in the early 1950s, when Maila Nurmi first pulled on her skintight black dress and, as Vampira, screamed into the cameras of Los Angeles station KABC-TV.

Things didn’t really start to gain traction nationwide, however, until Screen Gems released the Shock! horror film collection to TV stations in 1957.

Shock! (and later Son of Shock!...and, later still, Creature Features) was a package of movies that clearly needed some adult supervision. So, what TV stations began to do was take a page from radio’s playbook. They created hosts to keep the audience company during the broadcasts. Similar to the hosts of such radio shows as The Witch’s Tale, Inner Sanctum, and Quiet, Please, the TV horror host wasn’t just a neutral, uninterested voice at the head and tail of each show. No, sir! The TV horror host was a part of the show, commenting on the movie during commercial breaks with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Sometimes, like Zacherley at New York’s WABC-TV, comments were made during the actual movie! Heck, most of the time, the movie was so lousy, it was only the host segments that kept your attention and kept you from switching over to studio wrestling or the off-the-air test pattern.

Every major and minor market in every city seemed to have their own horror host. Usually employees of the station itself, these men and women were, like poor old Larry Talbot, just ordinary weatherpersons or newscasters by day, but by night (one assumes when the moon was full and the wolfsbane bloomed) became creepy ghouls and ghoulies. Mundane TV studios were turned into castle dungeons and mad scientists’ laboratories.

[We interrupt this blog post for a Film Studies nerd interlude…

[It’s kinda fun to imagine the Jekyll & Hyde aspect of TV Horror Hosts in those early days. The TV station was seen as a wholesome, if stodgy, source of information and entertainment. It was the first place the community turned to when trouble reared its ugly head. Yet, at the same time, at night, when everyone had gone home for the day, these spaces mutated into breeding grounds of anarchy. And at the center of this midnight massacre of rules and regulations was a person who, only a few hours earlier, dressed neatly in a coat and tie or a conservative blouse and skirt, had soberly delivered the day’s news. Only now they were dressed up as a beatnik ghoul and chucking firecrackers at their cameraman. Incredible! There’s another blog post there somewhere…

[Back to our regularly scheduled program…]

In Pittsburgh, our horror host was none other than Bill “Chilly Billy” Cardille. Some of you may know him as the on-location news reporter in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Chilly Billy (and other late-night horror hosts in other markets) was so popular in the 1970s that Saturday Night Live was pre-empted and shown after Chiller Theatre. Executives at WIIC-TV certainly knew who paid the bills in Pittsburgh, and it wasn’t John Belushi.

Sadly, by the time I was old enough to stay up and watch (and, more importantly, appreciate) shows like Chiller Theatre, Chilly Billy was taken off the air. Local TV stations, thanks in part to the Reagan Administration’s FCC, were no longer required to air their own programming. Instead, they opted for infomercials and syndicated programming to fill the late-night hours.

What was a burgeoning monster kid to do?

Thankfully, cable television in the early- to mid-1980s was still kind of a wild west show. There were plenty of channels that thought the late-night time was the right time to air the outré. It may surprise some readers that the USA Network was ground zero for weirdness. USA showed Kung Fu Theatre, Saturday Nightmares, The Ray Bradbury Theater, Night Flight, and, my personal favorite, Commander USA's Groovie Movies!

The Commander was a wise-cracking superhero, who, from his secret headquarters beneath a local shopping mall, brought viewers some of the greatest and crummiest movies ever made. And the Commander was always on the side of the movie. He may have joked about them, but he was always enthusiastic about his movies. And so was Lefty, the Commander's right-hand man.

Like, tonight’s movie. It's a special Halloween episode of Commander USA’s Groovie Movies replete with commercials and promos and all sorts of VHS goodness. The Alligator People (1959) has got a bit of everything: Beverly Garland, cheapjack hypnosis, alligator men wearing pants, and that scene-stealer extraordinaire, Lon Chaney, Jr.!

So enjoy the festivities and remember to keep your nose to the wind and your tail to yourself!

It is 29 October. There are 2 days until Halloween.

At first glance, I must seem a rather poor excuse for a Halloween fan. I don’t like parties. I don’t like dressing up. I’m not much for decorating the house. Fact is, I’m not in this for the socializing, people!

One other Halloween activity I can do without is the haunted house. Maybe it’s the closed-in-ness of the rooms and corridors, the noise, or the fear of being photographed in full-on “flight” mode, but they just don’t appeal to me.

That was not always the case.

In high school, I got the chance to be a part of a neighborhood Halloween tradition. Yes, I was a teenage…

No, I was a teenage…

Let me finish…I was a teenage haunted house worker!

In my neighborhood during the 1980s, the Berry family had been putting on a scare show for a few years. Their haunted house was a must-see stop on the trick-or-treating route. The scares were legendary. As a younger trick-or-treater, I can remember walking past the house and being freaked out by the screams and crying kids. Truth be told, I never went in. Too scary!

Fast forward to high school: trick-or-treating was a thing of the past, but I still had that itch to participate. As luck would have it, a friend was dating the Berrys’ daughter. As October approached, Mr. Berry asked us if we would want to help him plan and build that year’s haunted house.

I’d be the scare-er and not the scare-ee? Count me in!

For the next few weeks, the Berry family, my friends, and I planned, prepped, and built a haunted house in a one-car garage.

You read that right – a one-car garage.

Through the clever use of painted cardboard, plastic sheets, and wooden frames, Mr. Berry showed us how to expand the space of the garage by limiting it. We built a corridor that twisted and turned back and forth across the width of the garage. This corridor seemed to go on forever thanks to the scares that were planted along the way. A mad scientist cackled and gibbered in the doorway that led from the garage into the house. A witch hid in an alcove just before the trick-or-treaters entered the back room…er, I mean the burial chamber.

The back of the garage was laid out like a castle dungeon. There were a couple of coffins, one lying flat, the other standing up. This is where a friend and I waited. He was Dracula, lying in his coffin, and I was standing in the corner wearing (if I remember correctly) a skull mask, leather gloves, and black robes. We’d wait patiently a moment or two as the entire group entered the chamber, then – BOO! My friend would slowly sit up, while I raised my arms and shuffled forward.

Outside the house, through the judicious use of sound effects records, creepy silhouettes in the upper windows (including Mrs. Bates!), and a local kid armed with a chainsaw (minus the chain, natch) roaming the streets, our ballyhoo game was strong.

The shrieks and screams inside and outside the haunted house were really something to behold. Boys and girls were equally affected. Even kids my own age who were usually too cool for school jumped and crowded each other when I lurched forward from my coffin. 

That night ended too soon. As kids headed home to go through their hauls of candy and visitors became fewer and farther between, we were able to take stock of the evening’s work. We broke down the haunted house and ate whatever candy Mrs. Berry had left over. We compared notes and relived the best scares – “Did you see that guy’s face when I…” “Did you hear the scream that girl let out when I…” We figured out what worked and what didn’t. Next year’s haunted house would be even better. 

Only there wasn’t a next year. The Berrys moved away, and the Halloween spook shows came to an end. 

You know…my wife and I are talking about buying a house in the next year or so. Maybe…just maybe…if it has an attached one-car garage…the haunted house, like the town of Pleasant Valley in Herschell Gordon Lewis's 2,000 Maniacs, could make another appearance…

It is 28 October. There are 3 days until Halloween.

I watched a lot of TV in the 1980s. A lot.

Maybe too much?

Every night – especially late at night – there was some cool show on the USA Network (Up All Night!, Commander USA, Saturday Nightmares, Night Flight) or on HBO (The Hitchhiker; Tales from the Crypt; Philip Marlowe, Private Eye). Throw in The Young Ones on MTV, The Joe Franklin Show on WOR, and Letterman on NBC, and every hour brought some new, offbeat form of entertainment.

Sometimes, you didn’t have to wait until the top of the hour to see something weird. Every so often, whatever you were watching would end early. Usually, a show would end three or four minutes before the start of the next program, thus allowing the station to play a few commercials and promos. Once in a great while, however, those three or four minutes would be five minutes…or ten minutes…or fifteen minutes.

What was going on? you wondered. The TV Guide didn’t say anything about this. It simply said Program A ended at 10:00 p.m., and Program B picked up right after.

Into these gaps in programming, some channels – like USA and HBO – fit short films. Hardware Wars, the famous parody of Star Wars directed by Ernie Fosselius in 1978, was one such piece of filmic filler. Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969) by Marv Newland was another.

But, like everything else, I was drawn more to the short horror films that would get played late at night. Whenever an old favorite or a new classic would get airtime in the rotation, I felt like James Woods in Videodrome, as if I – and I alone – was being sent a secret message by some cathode ray cult.

Here’s a collection of amazing work that you may never have seen before. Two films in particular – Louis La Volpe’s The Dummy (1982) and Recorded Live (1975) by S. S. Wilson, who would later write the screenplay for Tremors – are ones that I vividly remember seeing and being very freaked out about.

Recorded Live (1975), dir. by S. S. Wilson

The Contraption (1977), dir. by James Dearden

Living Dolls (1980), dir. by Todd Coleman

A Minute of Mystery (1980), dir. by Joey Ahlbum

Arcade Attack (1982), dir. by Mike Wallington

This one is a bit of an outlier in that it is nearly 30-minutes long, but I can remember seeing just the animated portion of it once.

The Dummy (1982), dir. by Louis La Volpe

Night of the Living Bread (1990), dir. by Kevin S. O'Brien

It is 27 October. There are 4 days until Halloween.

Over the past few years, I’ve rediscovered an appreciation and a love for the made-for-TV movie. Thanks in large part to Amanda Reyes’s podcast, Made-for-TV Mayhem, and her book, Are You in the House Alone?: A TV Movie Compendium 1964-1999, I think a lot of other people are, too.

Since listening to Ms. Reyes’s podcast, I’ve gone back and re-watched some old favorites and discovered more than few new ones like...

FACE OF EVIL!!!

Far from being a poor relation to the feature film, the made-for-TV movie has a lot going for it. For one thing, the running time is just right. Most made-for-TV movies come in at around 75-90 minutes. That means that there isn’t a lot of time for fooling around. Every scene has to forward the plot/story in some way. Another reason to enjoy made-for-TV movies is that there are loads of roles for older actors. Whereas most feature films tended to skew younger in cast and viewers, the made-for-TV movie was a wonderful chance to see veteran actors strut their stuff and do what they do best. Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, and Barbara Stanwyck all performed memorably on TV.

Although made-for-TV movies were made in a variety of genres, it’s the thrillers and horror films that people tend to remember most fondly. I still recall watching Dark Night of the Scarecrow when it aired in 1981. It scared the pants off of me!

Just as scary as the actual movie sometimes was the TV spot advertising it. You’d catch sight of what was to come and listen to Ernie Anderson’s voiceover, and you couldn’t wait for it to hit the airwaves.

Home for the Holidays (1972), dir. by John Llewellyn Moxey

Killdozer (1974), dir. by Jerry London

Trilogy of Terror (1975), dir. by Dan Curtis

The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978), dir. by Leo Penn

I urge any of you who liked Midsommar by Ari Aster to read Thomas Tryon's novel, Harvest Home. You can thank me later.

The Initiation of Sarah (1978), dir. by Robert Day

The Ghost of Flight 401 (1978), dir. by Steven Hilliard Stern

Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), dir. by Curtis Harrington

Cliffhangers (1979), various directors

Not a made-for-TV movie, I know, but still pretty great!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1980), dir. by Henning Schellerup

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), dir. by Frank De Felitta

This House Possessed (1981), dir. by William Wiard

Deadly Messages (1985), dir. by Jack Bender

The Midnight Hour (1985), dir. by Jack Bender

Ol' Jack was a busy boy in 1985. The Midnight Hour AND Deadly Messages?! C'mon!

The Haunting of Sarah Hardy (1989), dir. by Jerry London

Women named Sarah don't seem to make out well in made-for-TV movies. Between being initiated and haunted, poor Sarah is not having a good time.

It is 26 October. There are 5 days until Halloween.

Every year when the MTV Video Music Awards roll around, I usually ask, “Who won Second Best Video of the Year?” After a beat or two, I explain (even though no one ever asks for an explanation) that since Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the greatest video of all-time – and always will be – logic dictates that today’s artists are vying only for second place.

No offense to Beyoncé, Childish Gambino, or Lady Gaga, but until you folks turn into a were-cat and dance with zombies then you will always be also-rans in my eyes.

Michael Jackson was the last artist you would have expected to release a horror-themed song and video in 1983. Certainly, you would have been forgiven if KISS or Alice Cooper were the first artists to spring to mind. Yet, it was Jackson who tapped into the burgeoning popularity of horror movies in the early 1980s. After seeing An American Werewolf in London, Jackson approached director John Landis with the idea of making a music video. Intrigued, Landis took up the challenge (established, feature-length filmmakers did not direct music videos in those days). With the help of special effects maestro, Rick Baker, Jackson and Landis made a video that changed the industry.

Jackson’s record company, Epic, was unsure of the 13-minute long music video that Jackson and Landis had conceived. In order to help finance the video, which would be shot on 35mm and cost almost $1 million (far and away more expensive than any other music video at the time), a making-of documentary was shot and sold to TV stations.

That doc is what really piqued my interests. I was a young, impressionable, wanna-be monster kid. Like Michael Jackson, I’d also seen American Werewolf (on HBO, not in the theaters, mind you) and was completely blown away by what I saw. I think my real love of horror began with the scene of David Naughton turning into a werewolf. As I watched the making-of film for Thriller, I thought: “John Landis is making a video for Michael Jackson?! And Rick Baker is involved, too?! I’m there!”

And so were a lot of other people. Thriller (the video) returned Thriller (the album) to the top of the charts. It also made a whole bunch of new monster kids. Aside from Jackson’s supreme talent and the inherent catchiness of the song, it’s the spookiness of the visuals that cemented masterpiece status for the video. The movie within the movie, the cutting-edge special effects used during Jackson’s were-cat transformation, the zombies crawling out of their graves, the grainy quality that only shooting on film can give you – everything about Thriller was exciting and new.

As a bonus, Thriller is also famous – at least to me – for being the basis of one of the greatest parodies of all-time – and it isn’t by “Weird” Al Yankovic.

In his HBO special from 1984, Joe Piscopo terrorizes Jan Hooks in a pitch-perfect version of Thriller. Instead of turning into a were-cat, however, Piscopo transforms into Jerry Lewis. Classic!

Even scarier is Piscopo’s Halloween special on HBO a few years later…

It is 25 October. There are 6 days until Halloween.

One of the pleasures of horror is the “I told you so!” moment. This is the scene in just about every short story, novel, and movie when the scales fall from the skeptical main character’s eyes, and they come face-to-face with the horrifying truth of their situation. It’s always fun to see some know-it-all get his/her comeuppance.

Obviously, the reader or viewer has known the truth all along. I don’t think there is a horror junkie alive who goes into a story or movie with an attitude of “Well, let’s wait until all the facts are in.” We know that the house is haunted; we know what lurks out in the moors. The pleasure is in watching the stuffy, obtuse main character’s rational worldview come crashing down around their ears.

Montague Rhodes James wrote stories filled to overflowing with such prissy, unbelieving characters. They are college professors and scholars and antiquarians, people more comfortable reading about things than actually experiencing them. Men (and they are always men) who wouldn’t believe the sun rose every day in the east unless they read about it in a properly researched and footnoted article in a peer-reviewed journal. The existence of curses, ghosts, and demons? Forget about it!

In Escape’s adaptation of M. R. James’s “Casting the Runes,” John Dunning is our skeptic du jour who is forced to reconsider his view of the universe. Snidely dismissing the work of a certain Mr. Karswell, Dunning soon finds himself the victim of a curse. Given only a few months to live, Dunning must put aside his skepticism and discover a way to escape his fate.

This episode of Escape was broadcast on November 19, 1947. It stars one of the greatest radio actors of all time, Sheriff Dillon from Gunsmoke, William Conrad.

There is also an adaptation from the CBS Mystery Theater in 1974 under the title “This Will Kill You.”

You can read James’s original story as you listen to Edward E. French reading it here.

Last but not least, there is Night of the Demon (a.k.a. Curse of the Demon), the excellent film adaptation made in 1957 by Jacques Tourneur. It stars Dana Andrews as skeptic John Holden and Niall MacGinnis as Karswell. Eagle eye viewers may recognize Peggy Cummins from the wonderful noir Gun Crazy (1950). The role of Joanna Harrington in Night of the Demon is quite different from the femme fatale, Annie Laurie Starr.

It is 24 October. There are 7 days until Halloween.

I don’t have to tell you that H. P. Lovecraft is experiencing a renaissance of sorts lately. The popularity of his works is at an all-time high. The man is ubiquitous across all media: movies, music, comic books, board games, video games, role-playing games, etc.

I also don’t have to tell you that these same works and the man who penned them are very problematic from a 21st century point-of-view. Name a race, a gender, a sexual orientation, a national origin, attach the suffix “-phobe” to the end, and you’d have a pretty accurate description of the man. His depictions of African-Americans are disgusting. His portrayal of Eastern Europeans and Asians would put World War One and World War Two propaganda posters to shame. His monsters are thinly veiled (if they are veiled at all) stand-ins for everything that terrified white Americans in the early-20th century.

Yet, there’s just something about these creatures from “outside” our world and our petty human understanding that draws people to them. Black, white, gay, straight, men, women, and every point on the spectrum these terms try to define – everyone, it seems, can find something in Lovecraft that they can use in their own work. HBO’s Lovecraft Country, Victor LaValle’s novel The Ballad of Black Tom, and Chris Spivey’s Harlem Unbound, an excellent sourcebook for the RPG Call of Cthulhu, are all ways in which black artists have used Lovecraft’s world, but not his worldview.

Perhaps one of the ways in which people find a way into Lovecraft’s work is via his overarching sense of “cosmic horror.” The opening paragraph of Lovecraft’s short story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” serves as a good definition of what that terms meant for him:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

Today’s story, “The Dunwich Horror,” is one of Lovecraft’s best. Like “The Call of Cthulhu” and At the Mountains of Madness, “The Dunwich Horror” combines scientific jargon, occult rituals, back fence gossip, and factual reporting into a cohesive, dread-drenched story of cosmic horror. Like his literary hero, M. R. James, Lovecraft is at his best when he is couching his unique vision of horror in scientific terms. His protagonists are usually college professors or dilettante antiquarians who stumble upon clues in ancient tomes, modern art, and newspaper accounts. His heroes are, for the most part, nerds. This is another reason, perhaps, that there is a newfound love and respect for Lovecraft’s work: nerd culture rules the world, and nerds come in all forms.

“The Dunwich Horror” can be found in its entirety on the H. P. Lovecraft Archive website. HorrorBabble has a wonderful audio adaptation. The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society of Glendale, CA, also produced an audio drama version in 2008.

There have been a couple of film adaptations. In 1970, Roger Corman produced a version for American International Pictures. It starred Dean Stockwell.

In 2009, the SyFy Channel produced a version also starring Dean Stockwell. It also had the man who most movie fans associate with Lovecraft: Jeffrey Combs.

My personal favorite adaptation is from the Golden Age of Radio. In 1945, the radio program Suspense aired a version starring the one and only Ronald Colman as Henry Armitage. It is utterly wonderful and horrifying. Its use of on-the-spot “live” radio reporting into the story – even going so far as to allow a moment or two of “dead air” to heighten the suspense and terror – is a nod to Lovecraft’s mixing of perspectives, voices, and media into his stories.

If you are interested in seeing what Wilbur Whateley may have looked like, then I urge you to visit the YouTube channel of SFX artist Chris Walas (Gremlins, Enemy Mine, Scanners). It will forever change the way you perceive papier-mâché.