6WH: Saturday, September 20th

On this first day of Halloween, C convinced T to come over and join in the fun for the first time. T is a self-professed not-fan of horror movies. He'll admit to seeing parts of the Elm Street flicks, but pretty much avoids the genre completely. It's always a treat to show people good movies they've never seen before. Here was a rare opportunity to lay some quality horror on a virgin brain. What to choose?

Phantasm trailer (1978)
Slumber Party Massacre II trailer (1987)
Looney Tunes: "Hyde and Hare" (1950)


Tales from the Crypt: "None But the Lonely Heart" (1992) directed by Tom Hanks
Horror by Tom Hanks? That's what the season 4 opener of Crypt brings us. It's pretty much a stereotypical Crypt tale. A bad man marries rich, older ladies and kills them for the inheritance. Someone blackmails the bad man about his crimes and he freaks out. The bad man is killed by the corpses of the dead wives. Insert quip by the Cryptkeeper. Nothing particularly special -- outside of watching Tom Hanks get shoved into a TV -- but satisfying, nevertheless. (6/10)


Evil Dead II (1987) directed by Sam Raimi
Raimi at his manic, creative best. Check out the camera work in this one. Before Fincher was cheating by using a computer to fly cameras through impossible shots, Raimi was doing it the old fashioned way: throwing the camera through doors and bouncing it on bungie cords.

C and I thought this would be a good example of fun horror for T to take in. It's gory but not grotesque. It's got one of the best everyman protagonists in film history. It moves along at a brisk pace and you're never sure what the deadites are going to do to Ash next. The sounds the evil hand makes are hilarious. I think I heard T chuckle a few times. (9/10)


The Wicker Man trailer (1973)
Rubber Johnny trailer (2005)
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror: Bart Simpson's Dracula" (1993)


Near Dark (1987) directed by Kathryn Bigelow
C and I chose this one after getting to talking about vampires (due to the Simpsons short we'd just watched). I suggested it as it's my favorite vampire movie of all time, and I thought we should switch gears into a more serious film than ED2.

"I'm afraid" is Mae's last line in the movie, after she wakes up in Caleb's barn cured of vampirism. Caleb makes the mistake of thinking she's afraid of the sun, which Mae hasn't see for four years. Yes, that's a part of it. She's also afraid of the future. She's just spent four years killing people with impunity every night of her life. How do you go back to living like a normal person after that?

This is one reason I like the movie so much. Caleb steadfastly refuses to compromise his morality during his time as a vampire. No matter how hungry or sick he got, he could not kill another person. This is not what you normally see in a vampire movie. As an audience, I think, we tend to want to live vicariously through the vampires onscreen. We admire their ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want (provided it's after sundown). But, really, if you were infected with a disease that meant you needed to eat people every night to stay alive... would you really? I don't think it would be quite that easy. (9/10)


Jacob's Ladder trailer (1990)
The Return of the Living Dead TV spot (1995)
Michael Jackson: "Thriller" (1983)

In the end, T was pretty nonplussed about the movies. We really couldn't get much out of him one way or the other as to what he thought, which I took to mean that he still a not-fan. Well, we tried. We threw some of the best at him and it didn't make an impression. Will he return? We shall see in future weeks!

The Halloween Jones Soda flavor of the week was Candy Corn. They've changed the cans this year: gone are the jack-o-lanterns of the last three years, replaced by horror movie monsters. Candy Corn is a werewolf, kinda looking like Michael J. Fox. Though the outside is different, the contents are exactly the same: Candy Corn tastes just as it did last year. It's Candy Cornish. Drinkable, but not something you're gonna order with a burger and fries.

The Candy Drawer is Fully Stocked