Halloween Month/Marathon

Halloween, 1967

Boy: “We’re alone, aren’t we?”
Girl (Judith Myers): “Michael’s around here somewhere…”

You bet Michael’s around here somewhere – everywhere, in fact. That’s because this month (what with it being October and Halloween and all) is totally Halloween Month at Behind the Couch.

I thought it would be a totally good idea to watch all ten Halloween films (including Rob Zombie’s remake and its sequel) in the lead up to All Hallow’s Eve this month. Okay, I may have totally been drinking and watching Halloween H20 for the first time in ages when I had this brainwave, but hey, these things just have to be done sometimes.

John Carpenter’s seminal slasher classic Halloween set a benchmark for horror throughout the Eighties. An excruciatingly taut exercise in suspense and fear, Carpenter’s film relied on ‘less is more’ suggestiveness to create an atmospheric chill-fest that still proves highly effective today. Arguably the benchmark it set would go on to consist of ever more exploitative violence and diminishing quality in the slasher movies it inspired throughout the Eighties (including the film’s own sequels, sadly). That’s hardly Carpenter’s fault though. His low budget chiller was, at the time, the most successful independently produced film of the era. Its influence is still evident in horror today and the slasher craze it ignited in the Eighties would be rekindled in the Nineties by Kevin Williamson’s Scream – a post-modern love letter to Halloween and the myriad stalk and slash films it inspired.

So, have your Jack-o'-lantern and your William Shatner mask at the ready, refill your glass, and totally join me, if you will, on a bloody trek back to Haddonfield, Illinois; to where all the fun began…

And don’t forget to totally forget your chemistry book and your math book, and your English book, and your, let's see, your French book, and... Well, who needs books anyway, we don't need books; we’ve got Halloween movies to watch! I mean, it doesn't really matter if you have your books or not... Hey isn't that Devon Graham?

Halloween
Halloween II
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers 
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers 
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers 
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later 
Halloween: Resurrection
Halloween (2007)
Halloween II (2009)


Popular posts from this blog

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Image
Dir. Andy de Emmony After placing his senile wife in a care home, retired astronomer James Parkin (John Hurt) heads for the coast to revisit their ‘old haunts’, including the now out-of-season hotel they honeymooned in. By day he is stalked along the windswept beaches by a spectral figure dressed in white, and by night he is terrorised by strange sounds and someone, or something, attempting to enter his room… In the 2000s BBC4 attempted to reignite the old Ghost Story at Christmas tradition by adapting MR James’s A View from a Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006). This series was seemingly short lived though, as their next outing wasn’t until 2010, and an unusual reinterpretation of James’s classic chiller Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad . While de Emmony’s direction captures the atmosphere and tone of James very well, this film differs significantly from other adaptations, including Jonathan Miller’s supremely unsettling 1968 take . Neil Cross’s screenplay only incorpo...
Read more

Caveat (2020)

Image
Isaac, a brooding drifter suffering from memory loss, agrees to look after Olga, the niece of his acquaintance Moe. A troubled woman prone to bouts of catatonia, Olga lives in an old, ramshackle house on an isolated island in the middle of a dark lake. Isaac agrees to wear a chained harness that prevents him from going into certain rooms. He gradually comes to learn of the unsettling history of the house and the unquiet dead it harbours within its walls... Written and directed by Damian McCarthy,  Caveat  is steeped in the Gothic tradition. With distinct echoes of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, it is ripe with a lingering atmosphere of morbidity and decay. McCarthy's screenplay toys with themes such as psychological rot, dark family secrets, and the aftermath of unspeakable violence and cruelty. The story unfolds within the creepy confines of the lonely, mouldy house, with myriad forbidden rooms, hidden passageways and concealed bloody secrets. The house itself is cut off from c...
Read more

Random Creepy Scene # 587,336: Twin Peaks

Image
James, Donna and Maddy gather in Donna’s living room to sing a song . The three are united in their grief over their friend Laura Palmer’s death. Donna realises that James is falling for Maddy, Laura’s cousin, who also bears an uncanny resemblance to Laura. After the song, Donna leaves abruptly and James chases after her. Left alone in the living room, Maddy – who seems to share the same perceptive nature that Laura, and indeed several of the other townsfolk exhibited, and just seems able to sense when something is 'wrong' – feels a dark, creepy presence in the house. Suddenly she sees ‘Bob’ a filthy, lecherous man Laura wrote about in her diary, claiming he abused her and would eventually kill her, slowly appear in the room. He quietly skulks towards her from the other side of the room and we see it all from her point of view as she sits rooted to the spot with fear.   The sight of this dirty, carnal beast-man slowly advancing towards us and crawling over the couch with war...
Read more